World Advertising & the Talent Agency Update

This update adds a whole new passion project to ConsoleMe: the Talent Agency and also some immersion updates to the advertising / marketing.

First, we look at the Talent Agency.

If you've ever wanted to be the mogul behind the moguls (the person who finds breakout talent, wins ugly bidding wars, and brokers the deals that put creators on screens, in rings, and in studio credits), this one's for you.

Everyone important has an agent. Now they have yours.

What it is

The Talent Agency is a Mogul-tier side venture (like the Gym Chain or Fragrance House). You spend $5M from company cash to found a boutique representation shop, pick your head office city, set your brand (prestige vs volume, loyalty vs aggression, creative vs commercial), and build a roster from scratch.

You start with no signed clients on day one. Your scouts seed a watchlist and an open-market pool instead. The game expects you to discover, negotiate, and grow.

Available from 1990 onward on the calendar. Weekly running costs apply once you're live.

Where to find it: Empire → Mogul Profile → Passion Projects → Talent Agency, then open the Talent Agency tab in the sidebar under Ventures.

Founding your agency

The founding wizard walks you through:

• Head office city - London, New York, LA, Tokyo, and more, each with its own banner art. Your HQ sets agency-only corporate tax (separate from your game studio's tax jurisdiction).

• Brand identity - three sliders that shape how negotiations and placements feel.

• Founding specialty - biases which talent categories your scouts find first (game dev, film & TV, composers, wrestling, etc.).

Era gates apply: esports talent heats up from the mid-2000s; influencer categories from 2010+.

The weekly loop - ten desks

Once founded, you run the agency from ten sub-tabs:

• Overview - Command centre: commission trend, alerts, milestones, upgrade track, CEO activity log

• Map - Your HQ, regional offices, and rival agency HQs on a world map

• Roster - Signed talent: star power, contracts, morale, loyalty

• Scouts - Hire scouts, assign discover / watch / rival-intel tasks

• Deals - Open signing, renewal, and placement negotiations

• Decisions - Backstage forks: package offers, poach counters, scandals, retirement

• Clients - Client directory, weekly hiring needs, match hub, placement pitches

• Rivals - War board, dossiers, poach warnings

• Finance - Weekly P&L, HQ overhead, corp tax, regional office economics

• History - Press beats, signings, poaches, scandals

Advance weeks like the rest of ConsoleMe. Retainers and scout payroll drain cash; commissions from placements are the upside.

Scout, profile, negotiate

Talent profiles work like a lightweight scout report:

• Click any name for a profile modal: Overview, Talent stats, History, and Interact.

• Stats show as ranges until you've scouted or signed someone properly.

• Assign a scout to watch a prospect for three weeks to reveal hidden character traits and tighten estimates.

• Portraits sync to Who's Who.

Negotiations are multi-round. Each round, pick one or two moves: raise the guarantee, sell your vision, name-drop a client, leverage your empire's scale, apply deadline pressure, and more. A rival agency may counter; a cumulative score bar shows how close you are to closing. Star talent requires routing through your HQ desk.

Cap: four open negotiations at once. Failed talks trigger a cooldown before you can reopen.

Placements - two-phase client pitches

Signing talent is only half the job. The Clients desk is where you place roster members at abstract client studios (and at Your Studio).

• 20 fictional client studios with tiers, genres, culture tags, archetypes, typical projects

• Each week, studios post open hiring needs (roles, urgency, minimum ratings)

• The match hub scores fit and explains why a pairing works or doesn't

Placements run as a two-phase pitch:

1. Talent buy-in - convince your client the gig is worth taking (roster-specific actions, ~2 rounds).

2. Client pitch - the studio can accept, counter, or reject. A rejection costs relationship but the need stays open.

Your Studio skips Phase 2. If talent agrees, you pick contractor buff vs hire shortcut as before.

Weak-fit pitches on open reqs can trigger a rival contest: another agency submits a competing name in Phase 2.

Six rival agencies

You're not alone. Six rival shops sim every week:

• Meridian Artists (LA, prestige film & TV)

• Corner Office Group (San Francisco, commercial game dev)

• Pulse Talent (Austin, youth esports)

• Northwind Representation (Toronto, old-guard wrestling)

• Silver Lane Management (Vienna, boutique composers)

• Apex Creative Partners (Miami, volume influencers)

Each rival has a logo, HQ city art, a dossier (heat, wins, aggression, founding story, recent intel), and a seeded roster of poachable talent.

On the Rivals war board, click any competitor for the full profile. Meet a star for free intel, then Pitch poach to open a signing negotiation. Their agency will counter hard.

Rivals also poach your roster when loyalty, morale, or contracts slip. Watch the poach warnings.

Find rivals on the Map tab too. Logo pins at their head offices open a quick dossier with a View rival dossier button.

Global footprint - HQ and regional offices

The Map tab is a world view:

• Your HQ pin: all deal negotiations run through head office.

• Regional offices: open boutique / standard / flagship branches with a focus (discovery, commission share, passive revenue, crisis PR). Each earns its own weekly P&L on the Finance tab.

• Build weeks, rent, staff costs, and leadership goals apply. The Empire CEO can open, retarget, or close branches when the agency is on autopilot.

Popups show city banner art, stat chips, and clear CTAs.

Agency upgrades, events, and backstage drama

Six Agency upgrades unlock from Overview (commission desk, scout desk, crisis team, placement desk, negotiation edge, prestige office): cash cost, build weeks, prerequisite chain.

Mid-game systemic beats keep weeks distinct:

• Client studio bankruptcy (placement cancelled)

• Award season (brand lift for star roster)

• Breakout auction (three-way bidding on hot free agents)

• Rival package poach on your top star (match or release)

• Retirement / burnout forks

Plus 12 scandal templates, newspaper wire beats, and an honest package-deal fork: take 2-3 signings in one shot, or hold out for a breakout bidding war.

Empire integration

• Your Studio appears as a tier-3 placement client. Successful deals can buff an in-dev project or add a hire shortcut.

• Industry reputation 60+: studio applicant pool skill +2.

• Industry reputation 70+: +3 acquisition readiness on your first meeting with each acquisition target (once per target).

• Empire Command Centre: portfolio card with poach alerts and open negotiation hints.

• Sector CEO autopilot: set the agency Hands-off; postures (grow / war / harvest / divest) change signing aggression, scout spend, renewals, placements, and regional office expansion.

• The Talent Agency is also fully integrated into the Newstand. So you will see updates on your talent agency, competitors etc.

Full guide: in-game Player Guide → Passion Projects → Talent Agency - full guide.

Saves

Older saves migrate forward automatically. If you already had other ventures, nothing is removed. The Talent Agency simply becomes available once you hit Mogul rank and 1990+ on the calendar.

If you founded an agency before this patch landed rival rosters or client hiring needs, those backfill on load.

If anything looks off after updating, tell us.

A note on what this is

The Talent Agency is a passion project inside ConsoleMe, not the core game loop. You can pour hours into building a roster and fighting Meridian Artists for every signature, or dip in between shipping your next hit. It's there when you want it.

All talent, agencies, and client studios are fictional. No real celebrities, no real agency names.

Next, lets look at the Advertising World Update!

What's New

Your marketing spend now shows up inside the game world, not just on spreadsheets. Rival and player ads appear on the Newsstand, you can bid for premium slots, and newspapers include a proper"Want to advertise with us?"path into the Ad Desk.

Newsstand: Ads Framed Around Each Paper

Ads are no longer one big block dumped above everything. Each paper now has ads wrapped around its content:

• Top: one banner ad

• Left & right: poster columns down the sides

• Bottom: a strip of smaller ads

Click path: Sidebar News → Newsstand → pick a paper tab (Industry Gazette, Game Pulse, etc.)

Each paper shows a different mix of ads (themed where it fits, e.g. games on Game Pulse), but every paper gets coverage so none are empty.

Ad Desk: Bid on Up to 3 Premium Slots

You can now promote up to three products at once (e.g. gym, airline, and a game), one per slot:

Click path: Sidebar Growth → Marketing → Ad Desk tab

On Ad Desk you can:

• Pick a product, set a max weekly bid, and choose a booking length (4, 8, or 12 weeks)

• Update your bid without cancelling

• Cancel a booking

• See per-slot results: won / outbid, clearing price, weeks remaining

• View share of voice and competitor intel

Note: Booking weeks count down every week, win or lose. That is your commitment length, not "weeks you held the slot."

Marketing Director: Auto Ad Bids

If you hire a Marketing Director and set mode to Delegated, they will automatically fill empty Ad Desk slots each week using about 22% of their budget. They pick products based on focus (growth, brand, launch support).

• Your manual bookings are never overwritten

• Director bookings show a"Director"badge on Ad Desk

Click path: Marketing → Marketing Director tab → set mode to Delegated and set budget/focus

Newspaper: "Want to advertise with us?"

Industry Gazette and Game Pulse now include a classified-style advert box at the bottom of the paper:

Want to advertise with us? → Open Ad Desk

Clicking it goes straight to Marketing → Ad Desk (not Overview).

Click path: Newsstand → Industry Gazette or Game Pulse → scroll to bottom → click the classified box

Unlock Timing

In-world advertising unlocks at week 12. Before that, Ad Desk and the newspaper CTA stay hidden.

Tips

• Advance a week after placing or updating a bid to run the next auction

• If results look stale, Ad Desk will say when the last auction resolved

• Bid above the era minimum if rivals keep winning; check This week's hero / slot panels for their top bids

• You do not need a marketing campaign running on a venture to bid it on Ad Desk anymore

Finally, a small update on the Wrestling Federation.

Wrestling Federation: Ratings War (first V2 slice)

The territory war is now a real layer of the sim, not just a number on Overview.

• Two rival promotions — an established national incumbent and an edgy upstart, each with a shadow roster of named stars driving weekly headlines.

• New Ratings War tab — wire reports, strength trends, territory scoreboard, and read-only rival rosters.

• War objectives — when rivals counter-program your PPV build (or share your TV night), you get a weekly mission: answer on the card or take buzz and heat penalties.

• Answer rival beat — tag a segment on Show & book to fight back; auto-book will try to satisfy active objectives.

• Existing saves migrate automatically (legacy single rival becomes the incumbent; a second rival is added).

Empire Command Centre and owner goals still track the primary rival; the full war lives on the new tab.

More coming

This is part 1 of a multi-part V2 overhaul. Still on the roadmap:

• Talent Wars — bidding, poach negotiations, developmental territory

• Story & Factions — Writers’ Room, faction management, scandal arcs

• Empire & Legacy — full P&L, TV deals, Media Layer spin wars, Hall of Fame

End of Update.

Thank you for playing everyone :)

The ConsoleMe team