efficient ways to get fans

Publishing deals might help you initially to gain fans at a faster rate. Initially getting 100K fans becomes crucial since that unlocks the ability to distribute Medium games on your own without a publisher. Doing so before you have 100K fans puts penalties on your game score, which makes publishing medium games on your own not so worthwhile.

So, I would recommend taking publisher deals initially to reach 100K fans. However make sure you chose the right deals with lower rating limits. Remember, your target with publisher deals are fans, not money. Just make decent games and this should net you more fans than you usually get from making small games on your own.

Once you hit 100K fans though you can stop doing the publisher deals and create your own in-house masterpiece that will take you to the big leagues.

Also further down the line you will unlock marketing. Use marketing to generate Hype for your game. Hype ensures that more people get to know about your game and thus generate more sales and fans. Choose an appropriate marketing campaign during development to generate Hype for your game.

Also try to time the developement phase to coincide with M6W1(Month 6, Week 1) every year. This is when G3 happens. Make sure you get a booth and have a game in production during G3. This will generate free Hype for the game. Thus increasing the sales and fans you get from the next game.

Also the most important factor for gaining fans is the Game Score of a game. Make sure you build good games. Building and Releasing bad games will result in a loss of fans. So make sure you dont release games that are not built right(Trash them if need be). Fans are everything!

PS: Publisher deals are for a single game and do not force a long term commitement/contract.

I have never done a publishing deal and I have basically got to the point where it is boring due to making to much money. You need to do the following:

• Make decent games (should be the most obvious)
• Attend all events
• Make the correct moral decisions when it comes to making decisions on random events, ie; if it asks you to help women get involved in technology, support it.
• Basically have a good team, with plenty of research and decent game engines that are capable of producing games with a rating of around 7/10 majority of the time and you will gain heaps of fans.
• Also, try not to give up when you get really low on cash. Just keep trying to produce the best quality games.

Good Luck!