Suggestions for Media Firms

[Naselus]

I think that the current portrayal of Media firms is pitifully simplistic; having two bars to mess with is fairly minimal. I'm putting up a poll with a series of suggestions.

1: Media Firms should have a 9-grid, like factories and stores.

For this one, I think Media Firms would be better organised as a 9-square grid, which you can set up further as you see fit. They'd have purchasing advertising, content development and sales. Content development would provide the amount of advertising it's possible to produce (and the quality, increasing over time like farms). Sales would sell it. Advertising would allow you to spend money increasing the brand of your own media firm; you could advertise your paper in your own paper or in other peoples in order to increase circulation (tho it will use up some of your precious content hours).

Content could even be further subdivided into things like Music, News, Entertainment etc, to determine rating power.

2. Media firms should be able to advertise in other media firms.

This is partially included in 1, but has been included separately for those who don't want to have a grid layout.

3. Media firms should have inputs.

Currently, I run the most successful newspaper company in the world. I do this despite not purchasing any paper at all. I do not make paper; no-one in my city makes paper; in fact, the only place that makes paper is a port in Kuala Lumpur. My TV company does not use video cameras; my radio station uses no equipment. I think I should at least be buying paper for my newspaper company.

4. Websites would be awesome.

Simply this; where the hell is the internet in this game? We have smart phones, we have tablet PCs, we have desktops... and yet the internet in Cap Lab is a place of pure knowledge, with no marketing and absolutely no attempt to sell anything to anyone. Since we all purchased this game over the internet, and we have an entire subforum dedicated to finding ways to market the game via the web, this seems like a rather silly oversight.

[Esoteric Rogue]

Double post. (I hit "quote" instead of "edit")

[Esoteric Rogue]

[Personal note to William and others who know I'm generally strongly against developing finance: THIS is what I'm interesting in for the direction of the game. Inward, not outward. Services are a fundamental subset of this industrial game that are currently neglected. "Finances", on the other hand, are an all-encompassing super-set that I'm afraid will make the existing game irrelevant.]

I had spent over 2 hours composing a post, which started brainstorming how to implement services. My computer crashed and I lost that post. Anyway... I expect to take at least 2 weeks to flesh out anything I would consider an adequate suggestion. But here the summary of what I had typed.

I call "media" firms "advertising", because that's all they do right now. Right now, newspapers don't need paper because they don't produce a paper product to sell to consumers, they only increase brand ratings. (I'll mention a sub-point that the theoretical product they supposed to produce is "news" and the advertising is a secondary service that just happens to be much more profitable But is worth nothing that the I.P. rights of journalistic news is a current hot topic because of rampant Internet infringement. News is an "intangible good" that could be added to CapLab.) [I'll note that I am not a proponent of I.P., but it would be significant if CapLab could ever be used to test the merit of I.P. regulations. Well, I.P. is certainly a "capitalistic" idea ]

All advertising firms are services, as opposed to the more tangible goods which all consumer industries in the game produce. It seems that services will be added to the game once we flesh out how to do it. Thus, considering how to correctly implement advertising firms should be taken as how to implement all services.

Before we add services, I think I want to add equipment (as more than it's current of being just some "line-item"). Supplies are a short-term monthly expense, and equipment is a long-term asset that incurs depreciation and maintenance. Since all our current industries are product of goods, they all have some significant equipment needs, and the fact that some industries equipment costs should notably lower than others is overlooked. This is more of a problem with services, because some services will need nearly 0 equipment, and the requirements for some services are almost 100% equipment. (Quick examples: Ground Shipping needs Trucks as equipment (not supplies); Radio arguably requires nothing more than labor and a broadcasting tower.) But, the including of equipment is another subject.

All services need equipment, supplies and labor. The supplies may or may not be goods already in the game, like "paper", if a "newspaper" product were ever to be sold to consumers.

Of course Internet advertising is missing from the game. But about the time you mention that, I might mention you should remove newspaper from the game. Newspaper's been depreciated, and we all currently get to watch the former industry giants deal with that fact But I might mention I'm confused by what is supposed to be the Great Vision of how time passes in this game. CapLab introduced obsoletion of old products, yet they change the start date from 1920 to 1990? You just skipped over all the old products we want to phase out, lol. That's inconsistent to me, and that's possible a results of not following a single vision and having too many cooks in the kitchen. If we're supposed to be following history, a huge steel industry fell to fiberglass which fell to carbon fiber. But if your starting in 1990, okay, skip it, steel's not a giant. Compared to the significance of the fall of steel, the fact that Smartphones replaced Cellphones is nearly just a matter of semantics. They still often use cell towers as opposed exclusive wireless LAN connections. *shrug* Back on topic...

After advertising, the other significant and more transparent service industry already in the game is freight or shipping. We pay freight costs, and products are shipped overseas, but it's otherwise invisible.

So, we need to start looking at how to develop these two servers and prepare to offer new services.

The 9-square layout: Although I'm a fan of the whimsical nature of the 9-square layout, there is plenty of opposition too it. The primary point is probably "versatility". I currently feel the 9-square-layout either should be eliminated, or greatly enhanced, but the great enhancement may require as much work as the whole game has already required. Thus, it should be eliminated. But, that's something to look at later in the process of developing services.

To start the process of developing services, I just wanted to start brainstorming. Give a list of services, their required inputs, their requirements for production, and what effects they produce. And all of this is arguable. But, get a bucket list, see what's feasible to include, what elements should be excluded, and then we can consider implementations such as the 9-square layout. Such as is it okay for dry cleaners to require chemical minerals as supplies, or chemical minerals & soap? No matter yet: I'm working on the framework, not necessarily the (sub-) specifics.

My template right now is: Inputs + Processing + Outputs
Service Industry: [clients/products + supplies] + [equipment + labor] = [product + effect]
I need to refine the format.

I seem to notice I want to exclude a lot of the supply links, because there would be too many. This is a substantial difference from current goods-focused industries. Our belt shop can easily show where it gets leather from. Our Advertising firms can show a long list of it's clients... but for other industries that not only have firms as clientele, but also the general public, it makes the idea of "client list" (a list of people who supply the goods or opportunity for us to work) become vague, nonspecific, and maybe irrelevant.

Advertising is in Game. Newspaper is notable as whether or not to include not only paper, but also intangible good [IP] "news". Dang, just realize the business of Journalism is the reselling of news. Newspapers do (or did) the most news manufacturing, followed closely by television. However, radio stations are resellers, not creators of news. We also neglect the entertainment produced by almost all media firms (which helps explain why I currently call them advertising firms and not media firms).

• Newspaper: [paper + dyestuffs + clients] + [labor + printing press] = increase brand rating + entertainment + news + newspaper
  Require paper & ink? Produce a physical product which could be sold at convenience stores, e.g.?
• Radio: [client + news] + [equipment + labor] = increase brand rating + entertainment + news
  Already partially implemented. Notable as you only need a single piece of equipment to start a potentially significant business.
• Ground Shipping: freight + packing supplies + [labor + vehicles] = relocation of products
  Shipping & Transportation! Now that's a big industry that does have a significant impact in the current game.
• Dry Cleaner: [apparel/leather goods + chemical minerals + detergent] + [equipment (steam-press, laundry) + labor] = apparel/leather goods
  A simple example of "refining existing products".
• Landscaping: [clients + supplies] + [equipment + labor] = Increased property value.
  Landscaping is interesting because the supplies and equipment it needs are mostly inexpensive and also highly variable. Will we require generic supplies for all industries? Or Will we exclude generic supplies? Or it depends?
• Waste Removal/Junk/Recyling:
  Here's a big idea. I get mad that I can empty my entire inventory with the click of a button. It should cost a small fortune to get of that stuff. That's why people end up with warehouse full of junk, because it often costs more to dispose of obsolete products than it does to store them. Big industry, closely related to shipping as far as game mechanics, I imagine.

Of course there's lots more. I just had to get something posted. I'll start a new thread in two weeks, tentatively.

tldr;
Internet advertising should be included.
But, how to properly implement advertising firms, shipping, and all future service industries is whole 'nother can of worms

{EDIT: Last updated to include junk / recyling}

[Belisarius]

...

Of course Internet advertising is missing from the game. But about the time you mention that, I might mention you should remove newspaper from the game. Newspaper's been depreciated, and we all currently get to watch the former industry giants deal with that fact But I might mention I'm confused by what is supposed to be the Great Vision of how time passes in this game. CapLab introduced obsoletion of old products, yet they change the start date from 1920 to 1990? You just skipped over all the old products we want to phase out, lol. ...

I have to admit that I had totally forgotten that you were able to start earlier than the 90s in the previous versions.
And I agree, it would definitely preferable to start much earlier (maybe not as early as the 20s, but 50s or 60ds would be O.K. ).

The current starting year (and product setup) has the unpleasant side effect, that it doesn´t really pay out to invest into cameras as they are phased out too soon. Before you have your camera technology improved to a state where they are able to be competitors for mobile phones sold by the harbor/local companies, they are made obsolete by someone developing the tech for digicams.
Starting with an earlier date would help a lot.

I would also suggest, even with the current minimum starting date (to stay consistent with the system of new tech replacing older one) to have 2 kinds of TV ...
the first one being the simple CRT TV and the other one be Flatscreens (whose technology would first have to be researched in an R&D center).
After all that´s another major change that we experienced between the 1990s and 2010.

[WilliamMGary]

[Personal note to William and others who know I'm generally strongly against developing finance: THIS is what I'm interesting in for the direction of the game. Inward, not outward. Services are a fundamental subset of this industrial game that are currently neglected. "Finances", on the other hand, are an all-encompassing super-set that I'm afraid will make the existing game irrelevant.]

Acknowledged.

Your idea about introducing services is intriguing I think to introduce such a major NEW feature should be a new expansion pack maybe tied into finance enhancement and the subsidiary enhancements....these would be worth an additional $16.

[Esoteric Rogue]

I would also suggest, even with the current minimum starting date (to stay consistent with the system of new tech replacing older one) to have 2 kinds of TV ...
the first one being the simple CRT TV and the other one be Flatscreens (whose technology would first have to be researched in an R&D center).
After all that´s another major change that we experienced between the 1990s and 2010.

Yea, I definately went of topic there. But, I think the current "obsolete" system is confused, and therefore would disagree about any such additions. Also noting that "more of the same is not better". We already have T.V.'s. But the only two services we have are shallow and lacking.

Briefly, The earlier method of simply continually increasing tech was adequate ... but as has been suggested in another thread, it probably should have been made to be much more significant in certain industries.

Yes, TV have gone from black and white CRT, to Color, to LCD, to Plasma, to you never can be quite sure.
Cars and most products have continually changed. At least, I think Model-T's are notably different than Aston Martins.
But they're close enough. To call them a different product line is practically ridiculous. [N.B. I might be in favor of adding product lines, but that is another big deal, and separate from deprecation.]

As you imply, just going fullspeed to zero is too severe, possibly to intimidating to bother with. Why not make tech matter just 5 times as much for phones, so that a 400R&D cellphone does indeed completely dominate a 120R&D cellphone. If it's partially about name, that can be updated with brute force: IF R&D>=400, product.name="smart phone" else product.name="cell phone". Tada. (actually, what might be missing is an exponential factor rather than a linear factor like the "5 times".)

Totally off topic tho. Media is a service! We need services!

[TGLS]

Just a few thoughts on this.

Media sells significantly more than just news. There are comics in newspapers, music on the radio, and movies and other programming on television. Of course, these can be abstracted into just news, but if media were to be extended it should include other content.

On another note, I have put a little thought into how a newspaper would be setup. Newspapers would take paper and possibly ink as an input, and produce newspapers from them. On top of these, it would have a new unit, I call the content management unit. This unit would let the player control how much of the newspaper is news, how much is editorials, how much is advertising, etc. The player would then either buy or produce content which would need to be linked to the content management unit. Advertising would be treated separately, which would earn money. The unit that controls advertising would have the advertising controls similar to what currently exists. The content management unit would force the player to choose between a higher volume of advertisement or content. The quality of the newspaper would almost entirely be decided by the quality of the content with a very small amount relating to ink and paper quality. This model could easily be transferred to television and radio by instead of manufacturing newspapers, you would have a broadcasting unit.

In the interests of space, perhaps content production should be placed in a different firm, so micromanagement of equipment and sale of content would not be limited by space on the three by three grid. For some types of content, it may even be worthwhile to sell them separately to the general populace.

[David]

Gameplay for service industries for CapLab is something that have been discussed internally at Enlight time to time. We have evaluated many different design approaches but haven't yet found one that is promising in terms of good gameplay and realism.

Any suggestions on this are always welcome.

FYI: an older discussion about media firms: http://www.capitalismlab.com/forum/view ... f=14&t=233

[Esoteric Rogue]

I was hoping people would feed me more service industries to consider, and perhaps goods they could interact with.

[David]

Some very preliminary ideas for media firms. They are not concrete ideas, just posting them here to invite more ideas.

There should be some actual gameplay for managing a media company.

Talents Roster
-You sign contracts with talents for several years (2-10 years).
-You will have to negotiate the contracts one by one.
-Sign up talents with higher talent skills but low popularity for a low cost, grow the talent’s popularity over time, and enjoying the low wage thanks to the long term contract.

Talent attributes
-Popularity
-Talent
-Salary
-loyalty?

Non-performing Production Staff
-Skill level
-Salary
-Experience – increase reaching a certain Exp level will increase skill level


You may try to lure star talents from other media firms.

Service industry in general
For service industry in general, the gameplay model is to develop a talent base – hire people with talents and potential, train them, grow them over time.

This is the way to have a competitive edge over the competition.

The talent bases can be in: management, frontline employees, technical people, researchers, art and product design.