Dear Retailers,
We’re rapidly approaching the end of Summer and it’s time to start looking ahead to our next update. With “Rise to the Top” last month, we looked at Building and Designing and saw some incredible designs. But the next update is on the way.
That being said, we have an enormous amount of work ahead of us, so while we are looking forward to a definitive “Red Letter Day” to get everything live, a lot of these releases will be coming out progressively over the next few weeks.
So as such, I’d like to start revealing some of the new systems coming into play with the next update, and how those pieces will eventually come together.
The Challenge: Simulating Reality
Throughout the pre-release and release of King of Retail 2, everything players do happens and responds in real time. In-game sales occur when an in-game customer picks up an in-game article from an in-game display, and so on.
In summary: everything happens as a consequence of something else, which is turned influenced by a huge number of environmental and contextual factors, right down to the mindset of the customer and the work attributes of your employees.
In short: simulating this when you’re not around is quite difficult. Our end goal is to create simulated and automated store activity for stores not under operation, using as much information based on player decisions, designs, and – for the purposes of this update, a look at how Employees will keep the lights on when you’re not around.
Employee Teams - Putting the MEAT in TEAMS
At this stage, employees follow what we call on the business side a “Flat Heirarchy”. All employees are equal to one another and share responsibilities, roles, and functions. The player character is the exception to this rule, leaving all employees answerable to the player.
A preview image of how players will be able to craft their own team heirarchy
Employee teams will be your day-to-day employees, assigned by store, that allow you to begin building workforces that work when you’re off doing something else. The structure will develop as automation is added, but in the short term, we’re adding functionality to:
Build, customize, and assign teams within your stores.
Assign the Manager role: the individual representing the store while you're away.
Build out a hierarchy for your team, including Assistant Managers, Team Leaders, and basic Employees.
This is where it begins, but where it can go opens up many, many opportunities for store automation.
Team Dynamics are Everything
The level of detail we’re building into Team Dynamics will as comprehensive as our parameters allow, and knowing how we’ve strurctured employee attributes, each individual employee will work differently with other employees, simply down to personality differences and shared (or differing) values.
Relaxed employees may not jive with hardworking employees. Cleanliness-focused employees won’t appreciate working under a slob of a manager. And slackers of all kinds can drag down the team dynamic and spoil everyone’s work ethic in the long run.
Conversely, employees can build bonds through shared values over time, energizing them to go above the call of duty and put in extra effort in turning a profit for your businesses.
Scheduling and team sizes also come into play. The ratio of Leaders to Workers is essential to running a healthy team! Too many managers? Wasted time and money on oversight, and too little actually getting done. Too few? Managers will get overloaded and overworked. Team Leaders and Assistant managers step into this dynamic to allow you to break up large stores into manageable dynamics.
We went back to the books to faithfully recreate corporate retail work dynamics!
The outcome is that the overall quality of your team and its organization will affect the income that stores can generate when you’re not around. The quality of the manager and their relationship with their team, and the relationship between individual team members all play a part in how hardworking your stores end up being.
This will also result in specific Manager traits affecting the long-term growth of the team under them. If a manager is a better teacher, then their team can develop their work skills under them. If a manager is confrontational, it can worsen mood and work ethic among the team so choose wisely. Constantly rotating teams also creates its own challenge, as teams that work long-term together can build positive bonds.
How we're representing employee behavior, from a very ground level.
The end goal is not only a novel challenge for players who want to dig into higher level retail management: but also the ability to correctly and compellingly simulate store activity while the player is away doing other things.
Teams are but one of the many, many factors that will allow this to be possible in future updates.
What’s Next?
We’ve gone over what Teams can bring to the table. Next week, we’ll be revealing what each new role brings to Stores, and how you can start promoting from within so players can start building Teams of their own. These will include what to consider when assigning Managers, Assistant Managers, and Team Leaders.
What makes a model employee ready for promotion? We’ll get into that next week. In the meantime, join us on the Community Discord where I am going into great detail on upcoming features. It’s really the best way to get active updates, but we’ll be sharing more info when more becomes available.
All the best, and see you all in the aisles.
-Daniel