IdleCenter Studio Guide: Staff, Topics, Genres and Market
What each hire does and costs, the 8 topics and 6 genres, and how releases fade.
Your studio in IdleCenter runs on three things: people who make the games, the topic and genre each game is about, and the timing of its release. This page collects the numbers behind all three, read from the game's own content files. For the overall strategy, see the strategy guide on the IdleCenter page.
Staff roles
| Role | First hire | Effect per hire |
|---|---|---|
| Developer Your first hire. Developers carry the Build stage and help a little with Polish. | $15 | +1 build work per second; +0.25 polish work per second |
| Artist Artists own the Polish stage and lift the quality of every new release. | $60 | +1 polish work per second; +0.1 quality of new games |
| Designer Designers raise quality, generate ideas on their own and sharpen your combos. | $100 | +0.2 quality of new games; +0.004 combo bonus; +0.2 ideas per second |
| Marketer Marketers make new games launch bigger and fade more slowly. | $600 | +0.04 launch fame; +2% slower fading per hire |
How hiring costs grow
Every hire of a role costs 12% more than the last hire of that same role. The roles are priced separately, so a fifth Developer doesn't make your first Marketer more expensive. Here is what that curve means in cash, before the 10% discounts from Hiring Drive and Talent Agency:
| Role | 10th hire | First 10 in total | 25th hire | First 25 in total |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Developer | $42 | $263 | $228 | $2,000 |
| Artist | $166 | $1,053 | $911 | $8,000 |
| Designer | $277 | $1,755 | $1,518 | $13,333 |
| Marketer | $1,664 | $10,529 | $9,107 | $80,000 |
Milestones
At 10, 25, 50, 100 hires, a role's flat bonuses multiply by 2 again. These milestones stack:
- 10 hires: ×2 on that role's flat bonuses
- 25 hires: ×4 on that role's flat bonuses
- 50 hires: ×8 on that role's flat bonuses
- 100 hires: ×16 on that role's flat bonuses
The jump from 9 to 10 Developers is therefore worth far more than one hire. Nine Developers give 9 build work per second. Ten give 20. Percentage bonuses, such as the Marketer's slower fading, grow by a fixed step per hire and do not double, so they never run away.
Topics and genres
Each game pairs one topic with one genre, which gives 48 combinations:
- Topics: Space, Farming, Zombies, Cooking, Robots, Pirates, Music, Cats
- Genres: Platformer, Puzzle, RPG, Strategy, Sim, Arcade
Some pairings earn much more than others. Finding them is part of the game, so this page doesn't list them. Each combo you ship is recorded in your Codex, which you keep through Legacy. The Analytics research reveals every fit at once.
Releases, fading and the market
- Starting a project costs 10 ideas. It then needs 30 work in Build and 30 in Polish. Each release raises the idea and work cost of the next by 1.5%.
- Income fades. A released game's income halves every 2 minutes. It retires after 7 half-lives, about 14 minutes. A healthy studio is one that keeps releasing.
- Trends rotate every 6 minutes. A Hot topic or genre adds 50% income each, and the Cold genre takes 25% away. The effect is fixed at the moment of release.
- Crowding. Several live games in the same genre or on the same topic share their audience. Each extra game on one topic cuts its income by 10%, down to a floor of 50%. Rotating topics keeps every release at full strength.
- Sequels and remasters. A sequel costs 3× the ideas but needs no building. A remaster costs30 seconds of the game's launch income (at least $25) and gives an old game a second wave of income.
Legacy and Reputation
After researching Legacy, you can found a new studio once the current one has earned $5,000,000. Reputation grows with the square root of what you earned, and each point adds 3% income to every later studio. Doubling your earnings before a reset therefore gives about 41% more Reputation, not double. That is why it often pays to found the next studio once a run slows down, instead of waiting for one huge run.
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Enjoying IdleCenter? Try Primordial Tap, our evolution idle clicker, or Realm Forge, a medieval economy idle game, or browse all games at the Idle Center home page.
