https://store.steampowered.com/app/1220140/Cartel_Tycoon/
Ho-ho-hola Capos! ːcartel_loveː The end of the year is approaching fast, and we didn’t want to leave you without a present! So we decided to make this video! We’ll talk about our plans for 2023, answer questions from our Discord community and have a surprise at the end of the video!
Prefer the written word? We've got you covered. The full transcript is available below:
First things first, let’s talk about 2022. It was a big year for us - with your help we’ve released Cartel Tycoon 1.0 and tons of updates. You helped us so much by …. playtesting, providing feedback, playing the game, leaving reviews both positive…. aaaaand negative. Thank you!
This year we’ve also been working on many things that are yet to come out, and we’re so excited to bring them to you next year. Speaking of “next year”… What are our plans for 2023?
The year is going to be packed - we’re working on the next free content update which will bring a whole new arsenal of things for you to do. And our second map is getting better and better, and we’re almost ready to show you a sneak peek... Oh, we’re ready now? Then let’s show them! The map will feature new ways of transportation, a bigger playing area, new characters, and a whole lot of new regions to explore! We can’t wait for you to try it.
And the console release is also planned for 2023! We can’t tell when exactly, because there’s still a lot to do, but we’re excited for more people to try out our game.
The bottom line is - we’ve got a lot planned, and we can’t wait for 2023 to come and for all of you to try out new content!
But let’s get to the second part of the video - answering your questions! We’ve gathered some questions from our Discord community (by the way, join our Discord), and are ready to answer them!
Will there be a new and more efficient way to launder cash in the future?
It’s not a “new” way per se but we’ve got a couple of ideas of new ways with interacting with Dirty Money that won’t lead to Terror rising or buildings getting arrested. I can’t say anything else, guess in the comments!
What new features are planned for the next major updates? If any? Also, will there be more story quests?
We’re absolutely going to add more story quests and content. As for the features we’ve got 4 major features that are in different stages of development. Not all of them might make it, but we’re excited to show you what we’re working on next year!
When is mod support getting added?
We’re still collecting data and gathering all the ideas for possible mods. It’s not in active development right now, but on our short list of possible features. So continue sharing your mod ideas on Steam and Discord and in the comments to this video!
Will there be weapon dealing in Cartel tycoon and a remake of the power system?
Well, okay, spoiler alert - one of the designs we’re working on right now - is a revamp of our combat system which includes weapons. It’s rough around the edges and needs some more brain processing to refine it, so it has the right complexity vs smoothness of the experience. We’re constantly thinking about making fights more interesting and will continue working in this direction.
What criteria does the team look at to decide which community feedback is valid and what is not?
That’s a great and tough question with a long and short answer. We’ll give you both.
First of all, if something is broken - our QA team makes a bug, and we fix it!
Secondly, if the player experience is different from what we have imagined - we go back to the drawing board to find ways to fix it.
And If the feedback is regarding a system we ourselves want to change or improve - we take it into the consideration when redesigning this aspect of the game, which might take a long time, but it doesn’t mean that the feedback is forgotten!
And the short answer is - it all depends on how many available resources we have to implement your ideas into the game. When you’re a small development team you have to prioritize some things. If we could implement all of your awesome suggestions - we would, but sometimes even a small change from the players' perspective takes a lot of time to implement and requires a lot of work from the whole team, so, unfortunately, it doesn’t get into the game.
Turns out it was two long answers, but I hope we were able to give perspective you understand! It’s no secret now that we’re gearing up for our next project, and we learned (and continue to learn) a lot from Cartel Tycoon, including your feedback.
How did the focus on drugs come into the team? Was it a core idea for the lore or an afterthought? Was the separation of both cash (clean and dirty) a cause or a consequence?
Well, in the early stages we were inspired by “Breaking Bad” and wanted to make an experience focused on struggling with maintaining an ever-growing criminal empire. But we decided to focus on the bigger theme so we would have more narrative and design choices. At that stage, we were thinking about the game as the complete opposite of Ghost Recon: Wildlands, where you would play as an antagonist. So the drugs were here from the beginning.
The separation of money into Clean and Dirty was inspired by the story of how Pablo Escobar got caught and was added to the game in the first months of development.
But the structure and economics of the game were inspired by the great book called “Narconomics” which studies the bureaucracy of the drug empires
Why an unspecified country in Central America?
Cartel Tycoon takes inspiration from a lot of places, so we felt that sticking to a real country would close up a lot of opportunities in stories and game mechanics and we didn’t want the game to be “realistic” per se. That’s why we distance ourselves from real places and real people and want to focus on the player experience, and not the specific story of a specific location!
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Whew, hope you liked it! We want to do these kinds of Q&A’s semi-regularly, so if you’re interested - tell us in the comments below!
And now for the giveaway. Holidays are approaching fast, so we wanted to give something away to a couple of lucky people from our community! And what’s better than a huge-$*@ Cartel Tycoon-themed mouse pad? Enter our giveaway on gleam.io (the link is in the description) and win a mouse pad of your choosing, and we’ll send it.. uhhh, I mean Santa will send it to you.