Rascal & Cottonwood RailWorks Expansion Pack Online

[m5abv]

I have just been reading a post by Richard Garber the author of R&C. Amazingly he has been neither credited nor paid for his work. He says he is ok with it, which is even more amazing. You can see his post on railworks america.


Regards

William

[CaptScarlet]

I have just been reading a post by Richard Garber the author of R&C. Amazingly he has been neither credited nor paid for his work. He says he is ok with it, which is even more amazing. You can see his post on railworks america.


Regards

William

Just a note not to jump to conclusions based on a joke by Rich Garber re being paid, and the crediting "issue" is only on the steam page for the product where it says RSC is the developer but in the product description its says "from All Aboard Rails". On the RSC site it is clearly credited to him as it is in the manual for the product.

John

[3DTrains]

Amazingly he has been neither credited nor paid for his work.

I believe you misinterpreted his comments. Add-ons developed for RS.com are usually royalty-based and usually take longer due to RS.com getting paid first, and then paying the developer on a pre-agreed upon basis. Having dealt with RS.com myself, they've always come through as promised.

[m5abv]

HI, well yes I must have mis-understood his comments. I am glad to hear he is getting his reward for his efforts. His sales from his allaboard page must have risen a lot since the publication on steam. The folks on the steam forum have either purchased it now directly from him, and one or two are demanding a refund from steam. I quite like the service steam offers, but these mark-ups are hard to swallow and now the cats out of the bag so to speak, I think offering third party stuff through steam will just result in people shopping around. I know that most of the steam folks are not enthusiasts but gamers but they are on the ball with pricing. The most popular thread on there is complaining at the price of the addons and has something of the order of 4500 views whereas other more positive threads have but a handful.


Regards

William

[Wikkus]

Okay, lots of discussion -- always good to see

Having only very recently dusted-off my R&C (thanks Rich and Marc ), I'd like to point out that -- exchange-rate notwithstanding -- for the route itself I paid about £11.00, the high-res 3DTrains Rural Landscapes pack was about £8.00 and the RSDL Foliage Pack, £4.00. This totals £23.00.

£19.99 via Steam seems like a fair price, really...

Rik.

[m5abv]

I believe you can knock £8 off that 23 Rik, as I have read that it does not include the 3DT hi res pack but the low res free one. The thread I mentioned in the previous post has got up to 5400 views since yesterday so it's causing quite a stir on steam. You know I don't much about business but if I was RSC I would be releasing lots of free scenarios for those models to encourage sales. I haven't done a scenario myself so I don't really know whats involved, but i don't think they can rely on the community to produce them quickly enough and as we are witnessing, releasing old third party add ons is a bit risky.

Regards

William

[Wikkus]

I believe you can knock £8 off that 23 Rik, as I have read that it does not include the 3DT hi res pack but the low res free one.

Apologies, William, you're absolutely right. The unique selling point for the Steam DLC version would then boil down to the 'hands off' installation and "management", i.e. you buy it on Steam, it installs, it works (hopefully!) and if there are any additions or changes, they happen without any user intervention.

Of course, as has already been established, this is a double-edged sword and it's not going to be enough for a great many of the residents of this and other similar forums who are, by and large, more than 'novice' computer users.

Rgds, Rik.

[alanch]

Posted by Richard Garber on Railworks America:

'Here's my take on the whole Steam thing. First, I don't understand why the add-ons through Steam. I did talk to Tim about the Steam issue recently with the R&C and now I have a little of understanding why that happened. The thing is why not sell the add-ons through another vendor or themselves. What purpose does Steam serve for these add-ons beyond the pricey tag? Marc says Steam takes off 1/3rd right off the top so that is going to jack the price of everything up. To me it makes better sense and better PR to keep the savings in the customer's pocket. These are hard times. And if Railworks has one superb advantage is that we developers can produce good stuff for less money/labor than we could with MSTS. So pass the savings onto the customer! To me it makes little sense to say to the new guys (potential buyers of Ralworks), "hey! here's a new game with lots of add-ons and oh, by the way, to get into this be ready to fork over a couple of hundred dollars!" It's great that they give this appearance of content on Steam but one look at the totals and the prices add up to something huge. Now one more thing... I'm a model railroader and the thing with model railroading is you ask where does the new blood come from? They're not going to get the kiddies involved at those prices. The one thing I hate about cereals is they get your kids to nag you for the toys inside. I wouldn't want my kid coming to me 'hey Dad! Got a couple of hundred bucks to spend on the latest Railworks offerings?" Trust me that I know as a payware guy I want to make money doing this stuff. But at the same time if I'm choking the customer for funds over everything I put out, the longevity of my company isn't gong to be long. So my suggestion is to find another outlet where the cost to put up the wares isn't so expensive that it necessitates inflating the price of everything. I can imagine in regards to the R&C that whoever put the Steam price tag on that said to themselves, "we got engines for $20, we can't sell a whole route for the same amount, we need to raise that price." Providing Railworks via Steam kinda makes sense to me. But the add-ons?'

[Wikkus]

Posted by Richard Garber on Railworks America:
<snip>
Marc says Steam takes off 1/3rd right off the top so that is going to jack the price of everything up.

Good find, Al.

The above quote explains (almost to the penny) the mathematical curio that we were discussing earlier, too.

Rik.

[m5abv]

Well whatever the figures I think that the situation regarding steam can be turned around if some free scenarios for those addons started turning up. If each of these addons offered a few hours of out of the box activity I don't think the price would be perceived badly at all. Theres quite a lot that RSC could be doing with steam I'm sure. I think engaging with the community on the forums there would help. Just telling the steam community they are going to do that (release more free content for purchased addons) would start to disperse the negativity found on those steam forums. It's pages and pages of RW wont start, this doesn't work and that doesn't work, and moan after moan of outrageous pricing. The very worse thing that could happen is if these are sold steam as a weekend deal. If that happens without this negative perception being addressed it really will be the nail in the coffin for a market that involves a wider audience imo.

Regards

William

[dansawyer]

The odd free loco or other random item of rolling stock possibly would be good too, nothing huge or complicated but something that could be used to dress yards and add variety to AI traffic.

Another idea would be to have scenario bundles that require a combination of packs, for example the 8F and the Jubilee or Rascal & Cottonwood and the forthcoming Consolidation loco, this could reward people that buy multiple products and again give more interesting activities. I have a sneaking suspicion that this would be difficult to implement on Steam though, unless it is possible to detect these combinations and assign these extras.