Game Dev Tycoon has given Nate happy memories of developing fictional games with perfectly plausible names (Wolf Strangler, Triumph of the Blood Lads). For me that joy was captured in Software Inc. In this tycoon game, you can spend a decade working on the most ambitious videogame ever conceived, only for it to become an astounding commercial failure.

(more…)

Every Monday we send Brendan into a sweltering 1980s office block to sit down at a cubicle and file a report on an early access game. This week, he establishes his own videogame company in Software Inc [Steam page].

Fail fast. That s what the tech magnates of Silicon Valley always say. Stanley Codeman must have taken this philosophy to heart, because the first two enterprises of this short-tempered misanthrope failed spectacularly, both within two years of starting. In hindsight, he probably shouldn t have taken such high-interest loans and filled his offices with underpaid staff. It was also a bad idea to try and make two hyper-ambitious Operating Systems, back to back. Spending thousands of dollars on a toilet forest probably didn t help.

But it’s Stanley’s third failure that we all remember.

… [visit site to read more]