After researching "Target Audience", the game prompt tells you that certain consoles and genres appeal to certain audiences (Young, Everyone, Mature). Does targeting a specific audience properly actually boost your sales and, if so, how would you do so?
How to target specific audiences
game-dev-tycoon
Related Solutions
In order to improve the ratings, you can do one of the following:
Selecting a good combo between genre and type, for example fantasy + RPG will get you a bonus in ratings
Set the sliders at the right level and for medium games and larger, you need to assign staff with the right competencies. This is actually quite complicated and would require a section on its own, a very detailed description can be found here
Hire more/Train your developers, this will allow them to be more productive during development phase. This option is unlocked before you make enough money to move to a larger office
Wait for the game to be totally debugged before to click on finish. You just need to wait until the number of bugs goes to 0
Spend money on research and game engines so that you can use better options
Focus on the important parts of the games, for example for RPG, you need better story, dialogues, world and decent graphics. Do not set things like sound to minimum or you risk getting the odd review telling you that you could have spent more time on sound
Later on, starting with medium games, you need to allocate the right person to the right part of the development or you risk not getting enough points in this part
One mistake many people do in their first games is to do too many game engines, the most important factor in getting high reviews is actually to train your staff and specialize them in order to assign them to the correct tasks in medium games and larger. Game engines should be developed only when you have done many research options that you want to incorporate (do not develop 1 game engine to incorporate a single research option)
To complete contracts more quickly, you essentially need to hire programmers that are good at the required discipline (design or technology). The solution is not so much "how to complete contracts more quickly", but more "how can I choose contracts best suited to the attributes of my team".
The amount of design and technology work you can complete is heavily based upon the skillset of your team. For example, I have James Carmack on my team, who is far superior with technology than he is with game design as you can see below;
Meanwhile, my own character is completely evenly skilled across the board;
With this in mind, whenever I take on a contract, I aim for technology heavy contracts. I know that if I go for a contract that requires a lot of design that I will fail it, as one of my programmers is very limited in this aspect.
In the early game, when there is only you working on the project, you are best off aiming for balanced contracts. I failed quite a few early on in this playthrough because I wasn't able to meet the output requirements to fulfil the contract in time. Another thing I noticed, is that if you put your programmer in a position where they've got to do something they're not good at, they will just sit there scratching their head, burning up precious time as your deadline fast approaches.
Best Answer
Once you have researched Target Audience, an option for rating will be added to the initial game development options. This is the audience you will be developing for. The combination of target audience, topic, genre, and platform will affect game sales and the game will let you know if your choices do not match.