Don´t get me wrong, I´m not mad at the developers or the game. My heart is just bleeding, because I love the atmosphere of this game and it could have been a true little gem. But sadly there are some deep cracks in design and mechanic that turn it into a shiny pebble.

When I started the game for the first time, I had the plan to found a little little company that would either produce raw materials or semi-finished goods (like the vast majority of production companies on Earth), accumulate some money and go on from there. I had to learn that this is not possible.
Since these materials cannot be sold in the Trade Centers, I have to rely on the Global Market. This trading platform however defies any rules on the equilibrium of demand and supply. Even if the demand is several times the existing supply, the sale price won´t go up. Only the purchase price rises until the point it is several times as high as the Sale price. In a nutshell: The Sale price will always stay below your production costs, and make you lose money.

So the only way to start a business is to sell consumer goods in your Trade Centers.
Producing them myself turned out to be barely profitable, though I adjusted everything very carefully.
The reason for this seems to be a curious thing: The number of sold units is somehow tied to your profit margin, NOT to the selling price.
I did an experiment on that, where I replaced Social Network Plugins purchased on the Global Market by ones produced in my factory. The same quality level, the very same selling price as before. The demand was still there, but the number of sold units plummeted to 0 while the number of stored units went up.
It seems like the customers realized that my production costs were now much lower than the initial purchasing price and were appalled by my now extreme profit margin.
I had sensed this phenomenon earlier, but now I had the exact confirmation (at least for the copy I have bought).

That means, the cheaper the goods are that you produce (e.g. by research), the less money you are going to get from the consumers. If the accepted profit margin is calculated as a percentage of the purchase price/production cost, the actual profit could even get so small that you will never be able to cover your other costs (like advertisement, research, etc.).
Vice versa, the higher your purchase price, the more money you will be able to extract from the customers as your profit.

As a result, the most profitable strategy in this game is to set up the maximum number Trade Centers, build a warehouse and start selling goods that you bought right away at the Global Market. Just make sure to keep the price high enough, so that you don´t lose money due to spikes in the purchase price curve. If you build a Research and Development Facility, you can also tap into other branches and sell more, higher priced and less competed goods, such as cars. Very soon, you will make millions of profits per day, whereas the tedious production of goods would bring you a ROI for which every CEO would get burned alive by analysts and investors alike.

At that point, I am sorry to mention that the Stock Market is as alive as a grave yard, with just up to 4 other participants, who will hardly ever sell some of their shares, since they have no reason to do so. I cannot even make them some insane offers, which they cannot refuse. If only there were some greedy co-founders who want to make a quick buck, so I can expand my empire. Alas...

After all, this game bears "Industry" in its name, but to my great grief it is completely centered around selling consumer goods in trade centers, up to the point that actual production is discouraged by the game mechanics.

Really, I still love the music, the setting, the graphics...it could have been a gem...


If you have made it this far, thank you for reading and for your time. ;)