Game Dev Story, the deliciously addictive mobile game that Kairosoft released in October, lets players like Gilbert simulate the inner workings of a game studio, Hollywood Mogul-style. But how accurate is it? Does it genuinely capture the development process? Can it really help you learn how to run a studio? How terrible an idea is it to put pirates in an adventure game?

I spoke to Gilbert, self-proclaimed Game Dev Story addict and a legendary game developer himself, to find out how true to life the game really is.

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Game Dev Story gives you access to a limited number of direction points for each game. You can use those points to emphasize a number of different criteria, each of which could have a different effect on how your game forms and how it ultimately sells.

"This is kind of a simplified version of real life," Gilbert said. "The points they're talking about here are really time and budget. Developers always have to say, 'I have this much money: Where am I gonna put it? Where's that money best spent?'"

So how accurate are the different fields? Do developers really pick between categories like "polish" and "game world"?

"Kind of," Gilbert said. "I dunno about realism ... but things like niche appeal and approachability are definitely factors that we talked about. How accessible is this game to people? Is it something you need to understand an Xbox controller to navigate, or is it something mom and dad could play?"

Innovation is one of the stranger categories, Gilbert added.

"I don't think anyone really sets out to make an 'innovative' game," he said. "It just kind of happens."

The problem with this point system — a problem that's very real for game studios — is the tradeoffs that developers must make when dealing with time and budget constraints. Gilbert's most recent game, comedy action-RPG DeathSpank, made a lot of those compromises.

"We made a lot of tradeoffs in [DeathSpank] with the reusability in that world," Gilbert said. "Lots of the buildings, trees, monsters, things that populate the world were re-textured and reused. Maybe if it had been a full product, instead of a downloadable game, every cave or monster would be different. But those are the kinds of tradeoffs you make."

Authors: Jason Schreier

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