Tried this game after about six months and I am disappointed. I like the idea, it looked promising, I want good management games in the genre, but...
The core gameplay has barely improved or not at all in some cases. Shooting porn is boring as ever, but now with more hoops to jump through, which makes it worse. Pretty much the same with running the company. And most added features are fluff that barely works and heavily underdeveloped, which in addition to weak core gameplay makes the game frustrating.
Some suggestions(Sorry for massive wall of text):
Stats. Currently the stats are pretty grindy and unfun. Maybe make them much more static and varied, so they represent natural tendencies, except fitness. Charisma, art, intellect, beauty, etc. Fitness is fitness and it affects stamina and it decays at certain rate, lets say 10% of your stat per week, so that and average one is easier to keep up, but chiseled body requires more investment. Other stats should affect effectiveness of...
Career paths and activities. Currently one of the big problems is that MC has very little to do, and what they do do, doesn't have enough impact or significance. Things like directing, HR/scouting should be activities like editing and award exp points, which turn in to levels, which, let's say allow you to pick one of the two perks per level. Hired people have and advance in one or two careers, MC can have all of them. And every career relies on, let's say two stats. For example:
Editing - Art + Int.
Porn-star - Beauty + Charisma
Director - Int + Cha
Scouting/HR - Int+Cha and so on.
At certain levels of career a character gains bonus to a base stat associated with the career. Keep certain professions like doctor, make-up artist or lighting technician limited to NPCs.
Instead of grinding charisma bar is another location to relax and scout.
Library replaced with college where you can sign up for courses to gain exp in your chosen subject.
Bonus perks from leveling give special powers, a scout can(or much more likely to) find potential models while preforming activities like relaxing or studying. Editor can fix fuckups during shooting etc.
Company should probably have it's own tech tree with stuff that make shooting cheaper and more efficient, bonus chemistry etc.
Shooting porn. Current system is needlessly complicated early and not fun soon after. And there is a lot of quantity over quality going on. Picking poses should affect the outcome. Duration should affect the outcome. Prep work should affect the outcome.
"Quckies" should stay and but more flexible and with some drawbacks. Amateur level at the start, slightly better later and peak at "Girls do porn" level when you have a proper set-up and skills to churn them out even without a crew. But with some drawbacks, like if you go into it blind with a new model, you might not know her likes or dislikes or special features(good or bad at blowjobs or facials etc.) and they might refuse to do some stuff or a massive fuckup may happen if you try something complicated. You may have a pre-lit set with cameras in place for quicker shoots and higher quality.
More pre-planned and high production shoots take more time and effort, but have more reliable results. You start by picking a theme, picking poses based on a genres you want to hit(vanilla, rough, anal, BDSM etc) and the duration. Pick a location(rent, get permits). Pick a crew(hire freelancers to fill missing slots you want to fill). Pick actors. Schedule, pay for rent, props etc. Prep work on set on the day(and you have to show up). Try to fix problems that occurred(one freelancer didn't show up or cameraman is down with flu etc). Shoot. Decide if you want to reshoot parts that went badly(random events) or fix them in editing later. You may want to hire a photographer to take photos for promo material or an editor can make a promo-video. Multiple thing going wrong should happen often, especially if the cast and crew are not too big, have good chemistry are not in over their head.
The amount of work editing requires depends on stuff like lighting, how many cameras, how many fuckups happened during the shoot, amount of footage and how much you want to polish it. There should be a cap how much an editor can improve the quality and the effort required should probably grow exponentially.
The complexity should grow very gradually.
Staff and scouting. Amateurs, semi-pros and pros. For a model it's something like "pure amateur"(that you or your scouts pick up on the street), semi-pros are prostitutes and cam-girls, pros are pros and legends are top of the field, possibly unique characters. Depending of what you are looking for, you scout in different locations. Cam-girls type on the internet, pros at agencies and porn-conventions.
Freelancers are less reliable, can be more expensive and uncontrollable, but usually take flat fee. People on contract require steady pay and maybe even a cut of the profits.
Scouts look for potential models in the bar, college or over the internet. And get the contact info to your database. Some may not want to work with your company. Some require a casting couch session. Some may have...
Special traits. Hidden things that you discover about cast and crew. A model may be really good at "theatrical" moaning and blowjobs, or the opposite. Really good at facials or make weird face instead. A director may be a creative type that goes off-script but their quality is better, or they may be a tyrant asshole people don't like to work with, but they get the job done. An actor may have an "iron hand" that holds the camera steady during sex, which is really good for amateur, semi pro or POV shots etc., etc. Those traits should be hidden until encountered or maybe a good scout can figure some of them out in advance.
Porn industry. Multiple studios and distributors that to their own thing. In the beginning you may work part-time at some of them if you have skills. You can hire out your contracted models and crew to them or hire theirs. You can make and sell videos for specific distributors or buy videos for your own website. Their output affects how saturated the trends are. A genre may be popular, but saturated to the point where you won't get noticed unless you put out something outstanding. Or a certain site may go down or get involved in a scandal leaving unfulfilled demand for you to jump on.
There should also be events where you can network and maybe raise your profile. Awards.
Industry Reputation. You earn by being good to people you work with and avoiding major fuckups(STD outbreaks, traumas on set, major assholes on staff). You lose doing the opposite. Loss of reputation is in "hits". First hit within last thirty days loses one point, second hit loses two, third - four, fourth - eight and so on. Bigger fuckups(STD outbreak, your star ODed) can cause multiple hits. You can mitigate some of the damage with good PR people on staff and rectifying the issues.
Depending on your reputation, models and higher level crew are more likely to work with you and even send in resumes if high, or refusing to work with you, demanding higher pay if low.
Publishing and website. Early on, instead of just clicking publish you sell your videos to publishers. Maybe for a cut of the profits, maybe for a flat fee if you need money now. You have very little control over the process, unless you upload to a site similar to pornhub with free porn and ad revenue.
Your own websites allow you to publish your stuff(or even third party videos) and control how you monetize them. Free(ad-supported) drive a lot of people to your site, has low revenue and requires higher sever costs and actively selling ad-space. Selling videos has higher profit margins, lower server costs but requires quality, and more marketing. Subscription requires bigger catalogue, unique content and regular update. Selling videos for a time and then adding them to your subscription catalogue might be a good option.
Livestreaming is also a thing both free with monetization options and as a unique content for subscribers.
One other thing. The options for player should appear gradually so the amount of options is not overwhelming. And automation of the process should also be gradual and not full-on after 30 minutes of the gameplay. But player should be able and required to do something significant at every point of the game with short, medium and long term goals. Right now the numbers just rise and replayability is poor with only one path to "the top" that doesn't really exist.
Here's a gameplay scenario:
Player starts with high int, medium charisma and 2 levels(out of 10) in web-admin and 1 level in scouting. Finds a job maintaining one of the pornsites for medium publisher. Starts his own site and looks for cam girls on the internet to make some content. Site grows, but revenue is low, so he takes out a loan, quits his job to maintain the site full-time, maybe starts producing videos with cam-girls, maybe rents a studio for higher quality production, hires an assistant, etc., etc.
Or player is a low level porn actor, and works with studios as a freelancer and decides to make his own videos because he is unsatisfied with what he does now. Picks up girls, makes some higher quality amateur videos, opens own studio and so on.
Or player is a cam-girl live-steaming on some platform and starts to make higher production videos, invites other cam-girls or picks up a dude, opens her own site and it grows from there.
That's a big wall of text...
