Capitalism 2 and Capitalism Lab Forum

We have considered several options of improving the advertising system but haven't found any of them really shine.

So we may just keep the advertising system as it is. If you have any suggestions, you may post here.


On a related note, we actually prefer to disable the option for the player to own any media firms as it has proven too profitable in the later stage of the game, overshadowing profits of other businesses. But we figured that some players may not like to see the feature completely disabled, so we are adding an option on the new game setting menu, for disabling the owning any media firms, whose default value is Disabled. Players who like own media firms can manually enable it on the new game setting menu.

Any comments are welcome.

For one thing, I've never seen AI to own TV stations etc. isn't that somewhat easy to implement...

This will probably give AI an unfair competitive advantages as media firms can be very profitable at the later stage of the game and AI may have more capital than the player for make acquisitions.

I think the old system of being able to purchase a media company should not be disabled, because whoever has the money, it is logical to buy the company. However, I think the price of media firms should be higher, maybe like up to a few billion dollars for some big TV stations.

I hope to see new advertising and media firms such as magazine companies and internet advertising firms. The cost of advertising in different firms should have a bigger difference to make it more realisitc. If possible, maybe you can classify magazines into different categories so that the related type of products will benefit from a bigger boost in public attention in that sector, for example, fashion magzine benefit products such as jeans, clothes, bags, shoes etc, computer magazines benefit electronic products, and there can be food & wine magazine, automobile magazine etc. But it may be too complicated.

Human and AI players should be made equal in every detail although nobody has written AI constitution yet.

1) The player will be able to enable/disable the ability to own media firms in the new game settings menu.

2) We will increase the acquisition cost of media firms, as you suggested.

3) The magazine is an interesting concept but it may be too complicated. The player may not want to go through the trouble of finding the right magazine to advertise each time, when there are so many products to advertise.

4) We have been thinking about Internet advertising as well but haven't drawn any conclusion about the best way to implement it.

In the real world, in general there are 3 categories of Internet advertisement:
1) keyword search advertising
2) banner (graphic and text banners) advertising
3) social media advertising

But they key is how to make it fun in the game for running Internet advertising, as opposite to just make it realistic. Any suggestions are welcome.

We will consider adding the ability for AI to buy media firms.

Another game idea we have been thinking about:

There will be more cost-effective advertising options available for a limited time period. If you take those options, you can spend less money and advertise more effectively.

If you have any suggestions about the ways such low cost advertising options to be presented to the player, please let us know.

To implement internet ads in a simple way, there could be an option 'Internet' in advertising units where you choose a certain newspaper publisher etc. Internet could have a fixed ad rating and cost always. I suppose it's generally lowest cost and ineffective. I'm not sure if the cost and rating should vary between different products. Can you really advertise bread and milk effectively in internet? Food and such could be unable to be advertised via internet. Or make internet available in ad units only if 'corporate brand' or whatever it was, is in effect. I haven't played Cap2 in some time and have forgot some specifics.

Dear David,

To make the game more funny, I suggest to add some mini-game into Capitalism Lab.

Secondly, the value of brand name rating - Awareness breakthrough is based on the result of mini game performance.

1) Add a game spot call "City commercial Centre"

2) Click the site, we can pay a promotion fee (say $100,000) and choice a product to conduct a marketing promotion interview process on the street, for example, cosmetic.

3) This marketing promotion process is a shooting game and bullets are gifts. The game needs us to throw a gift to the target customer.

4) Game programme will request us to shoot a random target, for example "young Ms student" or 'elegant lady", etc.

5) We should do the game under 20 second to throw 10 pieces gifts to elegant lady.

6) But, the street is so many pedestrian walking on it, like old man, male student, OL, etc.

7) If we have CMO, he will highlight the target for us.

8) And then the time will be counted down until finish.

9) At the end, you have conducted the promotion activities. How many targets be shot, the value of Awareness breakthrough will be the same number x a factor.

If any player do not like to play the game, it will not affect the advertising operation. It is suggested to make more interactive with player, and give them a small knowledge of the promotion process. And make Fun only.