Questions from Developer to Players

[0x143]

Hello Everyone!

I'm Daniel, the game director on Railgrade. And more important: I put together the store page. I want to ask you the players: do you feel the store page is accurate to Railgrade itself?

I want to communicate the hectic production chains and addictive fun players have reported, while making sure players have an accurate understanding of what to expect. Aka: I don't want any player feeling tricked that they expected a sandbox game when we are mission based.

Thus my questions to you the players:
1. Did upon reading the store page feel you understood the game is story mission based?
2. Did you feel the missions are large? Giant? Small? Kiddy pool sized?
3. When you first saw the screenshots, what did you think? Feel free to be brutally honest, I can take the heat.

Daniel

[konemaster]

I was on a mail list from you where you said you will go live on Steam somewhen that is why Im here actually. I just thought you should send to the same guys the real date once its clear.

[0x143]

Ah, then you are a true OG fan konemaster. Thanks for joining from that email eh. I was planning to send an email announcing our actual release on the release day. I think most newsletter members already wishlisted so sending a second email might bother them more than it helps.

[konemaster]

Ah got it! Makes sense, thank you.

[Chilltex]

Your game interested me until you decide to bait and switch with Epic exclusivity. After that it is wait for many years until 90% off sale. You shot yourself in the foot with scum bag practices off the bat.

[konemaster]

I don't get all this: "You went to ANOTHER platform, you ruined my life!" - things.
Really - genuinely I don't get it.
A game dev is a very hard job - even more to be a game dev leader and trying to be successful can be very, very hard.
If a platform comes along and offers a good deal for 1 year of exclusetivity (or whatever, I don't know specifics) - why do you care so much? The game has been made, it's in great shape, you will be able to buy it on Steam if you want - or you can buy it right now somewhere else. What is the problem with that?

[Chilltex]

Escrito originalmente por konemaster:

I don't get all this: "You went to ANOTHER platform, you ruined my life!" - things.
Really - genuinely I don't get it.
A game dev is a very hard job - even more to be a game dev leader and trying to be successful can be very, very hard.
If a platform comes along and offers a good deal for 1 year of exclusetivity (or whatever, I don't know specifics) - why do you care so much? The game has been made, it's in great shape, you will be able to buy it on Steam if you want - or you can buy it right now somewhere else. What is the problem with that?

Because exclusivity does not promote better games for consumers. Obviously they had a game plan without Epic exclusivity, to adjust that for more upfront money and tarnish reputation before it is even established. Yes they need money, but threw out the original plan for upfront money. It either speaks of poor management, greed, and/or low confidence in their own game. Either way it says the developer will change all plans and not care about their own reputation for an influx of cash.

Exclusivity is not competition, it is under handed business practices. It says a lot about those who participate in exclusivity, mostly they care about making money. And yes I know they are a business and need money to operate. If they make a good product and care about it, they will succeed. In the gaming industry taking care to polish and properly release your game is noticed, people will buy from dev's who are honest and do not show signs of only doing this for the money.

[konemaster]

Escrito originalmente por Chilltex:

Escrito originalmente por konemaster:

I don't get all this: "You went to ANOTHER platform, you ruined my life!" - things.
Really - genuinely I don't get it.
A game dev is a very hard job - even more to be a game dev leader and trying to be successful can be very, very hard.
If a platform comes along and offers a good deal for 1 year of exclusetivity (or whatever, I don't know specifics) - why do you care so much? The game has been made, it's in great shape, you will be able to buy it on Steam if you want - or you can buy it right now somewhere else. What is the problem with that?

Because exclusivity does not promote better games for consumers. Obviously they had a game plan without Epic exclusivity, to adjust that for more upfront money and tarnish reputation before it is even established. Yes they need money, but threw out the original plan for upfront money. It either speaks of poor management, greed, and/or low confidence in their own game. Either way it says the developer will change all plans and not care about their own reputation for an influx of cash.

Exclusivity is not competition, it is under handed business practices. It says a lot about those who participate in exclusivity, mostly they care about making money. And yes I know they are a business and need money to operate. If they make a good product and care about it, they will succeed. In the gaming industry taking care to polish and properly release your game is noticed, people will buy from dev's who are honest and do not show signs of only doing this for the money.

This is all true and fine if you are an already established game dev / studio. If you are not, you have to literally take every straw you get. Especially if there are things which would push the release date back and will put your business plan in danger. Any technology specifics, game-breaking bugs, ongoing problems in balancing, problems with "having fun" etc. etc. can trigger this.

You cannot plan for any eventuality but you can take some more money to try to have a bit of a buffer.

Yes, exclusivety might not make better games for consumers but it might make sure that more games will see the light of the day.

[Chilltex]

Escrito originalmente por konemaster:

Escrito originalmente por Chilltex:

Because exclusivity does not promote better games for consumers. Obviously they had a game plan without Epic exclusivity, to adjust that for more upfront money and tarnish reputation before it is even established. Yes they need money, but threw out the original plan for upfront money. It either speaks of poor management, greed, and/or low confidence in their own game. Either way it says the developer will change all plans and not care about their own reputation for an influx of cash.

Exclusivity is not competition, it is under handed business practices. It says a lot about those who participate in exclusivity, mostly they care about making money. And yes I know they are a business and need money to operate. If they make a good product and care about it, they will succeed. In the gaming industry taking care to polish and properly release your game is noticed, people will buy from dev's who are honest and do not show signs of only doing this for the money.

This is all true and fine if you are an already established game dev / studio. If you are not, you have to literally take every straw you get. Especially if there are things which would push the release date back and will put your business plan in danger. Any technology specifics, game-breaking bugs, ongoing problems in balancing, problems with "having fun" etc. etc. can trigger this.

You cannot plan for any eventuality but you can take some more money to try to have a bit of a buffer.

Yes, exclusivety might not make better games for consumers but it might make sure that more games will see the light of the day.

I could understand that, and even maybe give them a bit of leeway, if they didn't have a publisher! A publisher provides monetary support, for issues such as those things you explain. If they were standing completely alone and no help what so ever, then what you say makes sense. But doing so with a publisher also, screams greed and oh I cannot wait to actually publish a game and get paid for the work I do, rather get prepaid. If a company makes money off a product before it is ready, they will then feel more pressure to get it done. Overall leading to less quality of a product, at this point it will be rushed. Simply due to the more time spent on it at this point, is less money they will make off the game.

Taking time to develop and interact/build a community around a game would almost guarantee success. As you are making a game with the community, so you know it will be one they want to play. But seeing as this takes time and dedication most do not do it, as they mainly want money for little work as possible. And this Epic exclusive move screams that from my perspective. So I ask why should I even take a chance on a developer who has shown they are only in it for the money?

This is not one of the first games to do Epic exclusivity, they were well aware of the sort of backlash game get for doing this, but yet still chose to do so. This speaks volumes that they are out for their own ends and not craft a game that they put their heart and soul into.

In the end everyone is free to choose why or why not to purchase a game, speak out against practices that will only hurt consumers/gamers. If you do not agree then that is your own prerogative, and right to do so.

[power man]

Escrito originalmente por konemaster:

I don't get all this: "You went to ANOTHER platform, you ruined my life!" - things.
Really - genuinely I don't get it.
A game dev is a very hard job - even more to be a game dev leader and trying to be successful can be very, very hard.
If a platform comes along and offers a good deal for 1 year of exclusetivity (or whatever, I don't know specifics) - why do you care so much? The game has been made, it's in great shape, you will be able to buy it on Steam if you want - or you can buy it right now somewhere else. What is the problem with that?

because they're entitled that's why, i've lost count of how many times i tried to explain to those sorts of ppl how game development works, like it isn't instant and that it takes a long time for bugfixes etc....

and do you know what i got in response?, immature name calling like "your a paid shill!, the f*cking devs are criminals and idiots like you should shut the f*ck up!" etc.

recently, there is a trend on gmod where ppl inject malware into mods and trick kids into destroying their PCs, i tried to explain what malware is and why its incredibly dangerous and possibly illegal to do that and you know what i got in response?

floods of comments defending malware for some strange ass reason and i even got reported for even trying to educate and help ppl

steam has literally become a toxic cesspool in some places and its really sad how its gotten to this state

[0x143]

Hey Guys, I'm going to step in here and hopefully calm things down.

1. IMHO if a player is angry at us for the period of EGS exclusivity I think that is fair. I would not argue against their high level points about theoretical competiton. All I can say is that thanks to the support in development we were able to make a better game. That's the ground truth, the version of Railgrade coming to Steam is vastly superior to the version we'd have been able to bring to Steam without the EGS period. Yes we had a publisher, but the budget I had negotiated was small. You can call that a business mistake on my part, and yeah it was a mistake lol. I'm a programmer, but clearly not a brilliant businessman.

2. Please don't fight. It is fine if someone is angry at me, but fighting among players feels wrong. You came here to enjoy yourselves and play with trains. Fighting will leave everyone sadder and that's the opposite of what games should be doing.

3. We do have a community. And it is a wonderful community both here on the forum and on the Discord. I am excited for more players to join it. What I love about our community is how peaceful and gameplay focused everyone is.

4. If you want to wait until a deep sale, by all means. It means the world that you even consider playing our creation. We're just a bunch of programmers trying to make a game in a genre we love. The worst case for us is that no one wants to play what we've made, that you might want it cheap is perfectly reasonable. Hopefully one of the sales we run in the next few years is the magic price point for you.

5. We're bringing Railgrade not just to Steam, but even much smaller platforms like GoG and Stove. Soon Railgrade should be available on more platforms than most games. We can do that thanks to being self-published and me having final say on what platforms we go on. That was not possible during the published era.

Daniel
Lead Programmer on Railgrade

[Chilltex]

Escrito originalmente por 0x143:

Hey Guys, I'm going to step in here and hopefully calm things down.

1. IMHO if a player is angry at us for the period of EGS exclusivity I think that is fair. I would not argue against their high level points about theoretical competiton. All I can say is that thanks to the support in development we were able to make a better game. That's the ground truth, the version of Railgrade coming to Steam is vastly superior to the version we'd have been able to bring to Steam without the EGS period. Yes we had a publisher, but the budget I had negotiated was small. You can call that a business mistake on my part, and yeah it was a mistake lol. I'm a programmer, but clearly not a brilliant businessman.

2. Please don't fight. It is fine if someone is angry at me, but fighting among players feels wrong. You came here to enjoy yourselves and play with trains. Fighting will leave everyone sadder and that's the opposite of what games should be doing.

3. We do have a community. And it is a wonderful community both here on the forum and on the Discord. I am excited for more players to join it. What I love about our community is how peaceful and gameplay focused everyone is.

4. If you want to wait until a deep sale, by all means. It means the world that you even consider playing our creation. We're just a bunch of programmers trying to make a game in a genre we love. The worst case for us is that no one wants to play what we've made, that you might want it cheap is perfectly reasonable. Hopefully one of the sales we run in the next few years is the magic price point for you.

5. We're bringing Railgrade not just to Steam, but even much smaller platforms like GoG and Stove. Soon Railgrade should be available on more platforms than most games. We can do that thanks to being self-published and me having final say on what platforms we go on. That was not possible during the published era.

Daniel
Lead Programmer on Railgrade

Thank you for a response, was not really expecting a dev to jump in. The explanation was nice to read, you did gain a few points with me for that. I will still be waiting a bit to see what develops. One of the reasons I even started PC gaming back in the late 80's/early 90's was due to the console war exclusivity. So yes I do tend to speak out against that practice. Multiple store fronts means more customers exposed to your game. I use one store front, I do not need anymore usernames, accounts to worry about being hacked, etc. And seeing as Epic is trying to bring exclusivity to the PC gaming market, they are hurting the entire market by doing so, if they want to stand out offer the damn incentives and avoid exclusivity.

Sorry for the rant, I have been gaming since coleco vision/pong games. This is a hobby I am passionate about, and want to see it thrive with great games, not petty greedy companies like Epic.

Anyways I wish you the best of luck Ox143, and truly do hope you succeed. Again interacting with your community and not taking offense to all I have said, gained points in my book.

[Blud]

Demo??? I just tried the Station to Station demo. I found it is not the type of railway game that I enjoyed in the past (Tycoon, Railway Empire for example) and was glad to have a demo so that I didn't have to buy only to discover that type of puzzle game wasn't for me.

[0x143]

Thank you for understanding Chilltex, certainly I cannot complain about your passion. We're just programmers trying to make a good game using the tools and chances we have available.

Now Blud, this conversation sort of relates to your question. I saw Station to Station and it is certainly a pretty game, but reminds me of the gameplay we had super early in development. Since that point, we've spent 4+ years making a complex economic simulation tycoon. We have branching, vertical complex track building, train routing. City growing. Industry building, 5 tier deep and broad production chains. You go from mining coal, to launching 3 different types of rockets in our 60+ mission campaign. If you speed run things, you should be able to complete the campaign in 50 hours. At regular pacing expect 60 to 100 hours.

If anything I am thankful that Station to Station it releasing before us, as I feel now players will realize Railgrade is not a puzzle game. We are a mission based train automation game with a tight economic balance.

The biggest reason we are not releasing a demo is so we can put that development time into the update. Instead my best suggestion is for you to watch this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fNqkS7N8m6E He does a wonderful job of demonstrating what Railgrade's gameplay is like, especially late video where you can see his lines of thinking about optimization and the earn & build gameplay loop.

Daniel

[Tweakee]

1) Yes.

2) Umm... average? It sounds like there are a lot of missions, so my assumption is that they're not super-long, but train games can't really have short missions.

3) "It looks like a train game". The visuals are fine, but not eye-catching. They don't look like an alien world, for one thing. I like some personality in my tycoon games, and the visuals didn't really show a lot of that.

Overall, the game looks interesting, and it is in a favorite genre of mine, so I'll keep an eye on it. Good luck!

[Giangi7723]

in short, looking at the store page I was excited about the imminent launch, finding myself here by chance in this discussion and not even reading it all given my lack of English (Google translator) I think I understood that it's not the kind of game I thought of, that is, missions and a campaign are ok, but then I would have liked an infinite mode, but above all timeless, I already have a stressful and hectic life, with video games I want to relax, the challenge is ok but I hate time and haste, then it goes to end up getting angry because I got something wrong in my haste and have to redo a map? well I'll wait for some videos in Italian... thanks for your effort.