Paul Jackson explains Dovetail Games

[yerkes]

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[DavidVI]

Ah this looks very interesting!!

[EngineerKenny123]

This is an AMAZING video, IMO. Suffice it to say, my loyalty just increased 100%.

[ttjph]

Would someone mind summarising the main points from the 50 minutes?

Much appreciated!

[jp4712]

Well, you can view the slides at http://media.steampowered.com/apps/stea ... ercent.pdf

1. The business model is built around DLC - it builds a world that encourages the customer to pick and choose what interests them, and doesn't force the 'buy all DLC' button. He was very strong that TS is not a 'fire and forget' proposition.

2. Steam is the trusted platform to deliver consistency of the technology to customers so that everyone has a consistent platform; and by managing the servers, collecting income etc enables a small independent producer to focus on their core activities.

3. The 'long tail' model of gaming applies, in fact there's a virtuous circle. The customer buys a route; as they upskill, they add train DLC to that route; they then start to explore the workshop; which opens up the willingness to buy further routes and DLC.

4. He showed a cumulative sales graph of sales of IOW that was virtually a straight line since launch - sales of DLC behave like this.

5. The average user spends maybe $60-70 a year, and he's very comfortable with that - there are many customers who have been in since the very start.

6. The Workshop was highlighted as a key growth platform. At the time of his talk, there were 3,700 scenarios on Workshop delivering 4,000 hours of 'free' gameplay; and 50 routes.

7. The future is about DLC but it's also about expanding the customer base; he said that he thought that there are maybe 120 million rail fans around the world, and his challenge is to find the ones that have a PC and give them reasons to try TS.

8. Yes, he has known people press the 'buy all DLC' button!

There was much more, it's worth the time to watch, but those were some of the snippets that interested me.

Paul

[DaveDewhurst]

Would someone mind summarising the main points from the 50 minutes?

Much appreciated!

• Steam (The Distribution System) is great
• Hints of releases of products on other platforms (Steam Box was mentioned though TS not specified as a candidate)
• They don't have any issues with piracy
• Steam is great
• IOW has continued selling consistently since release on Steam,
  with my cynical cap on the graph they showed wouldn't have looked as impressive if they had shown it as units sold over time rather than cumulative sales over time
  (which although would have shown the same info, it wouldn't have been the rising line over time they used)
• They're not prepared to say how many customers they have.
• and Steam is great

Dave

All in all not bad, not great as an end user but it wasn't about conveying info about the game, but rather highlighting what selling exclusively through Steam could do.

[jp4712]

Yes, after all it was a presentation intended for Steam Devs and not customers.

[andynwt]

if the workshop is such a big deal they should make the interface for using it in game something other than dreadful. i can't believe that it has to reload the list of scenarios (which takes ages) so often, and that it has no method of sorting by author / route / traction is ludicrous. so inept.

[USRailFan]

[*]They don't have any issues with piracy

Strange, considering the amount of RSC stuff you find on various torrent sites...

[ttjph]

Cool, many thanks for the summaries!

if the workshop is such a big deal they should make the interface for using it in game something other than dreadful. i can't believe that it has to reload the list of scenarios (which takes ages) so often, and that it has no method of sorting by author / route / traction is ludicrous. so inept.

Indeed! Some time pre-TG2014 I submitted a suggestion re the in-game Workshop interface (specifically, to mark completed scenarios so that players can easily spot the ones they haven't yet finished) and I got a response along the lines of "good idea, we'll consider it".

Instead they broke it further with 2014...

[jp4712]

Well, it wasn't a presentation for us end users. People asked for a summary of the 50 minutes and got two; I think it's strange that the debate then focuses on not liking the Workshop interface (and on that point, the Workshop interface is driven by Steam, not Dovetail, and he gave an oblique hint that he's not 100% happy with it either). As I said before, people should really watch the whole video rather than focus on something that was mentioned by Paul only in passing. It was a presentation about Dovetail's Steam-only business model, not a presentation on trains and the game.

Paul

PS I have met PJ when a small group of UKTS moderators/users were invited to a preview of TS2012 and feed back their thoughts. He is totally passionate about TS, and he acknowledges that not everything they do is right first time; but he fervently believes that he's doing the right thing by his shareholders, employees and customers.

PPS a couple of things I forgot to put in my first summary:

9. He talked about working in the background to bring older DLC up to date and mentioned specifically that IOW is being worked on in this regard right now.

10. He hinted that we can expect trains from countries other than UK, USA and Germany to appear in the not-too-distant future.

11. He didn't say that piracy has been eliminated, he said that he simply doesn't have to worry about it in the way he might have done ten years ago.

12. They set out to create a simulator game; in practice they've created a hobby

13. They would be very interested in talking to people who currently develop maps or DLC for other games to think about developing for TS and bring their skills

14. Their customers are knowledgable and demand authenticity. This leads to complexity (I think he meant in-cab functionality of course, but also in the way people bring together lots of DLCs to create the most realistic experience); this makes it vital to have that consistent technology through the core upgrades via Steam. He mentioned that it's likely that no two TS installations are exactly the, so it's important to manage that complexity.

[theorganist]

That all sounds very positive to me, thanks for the summary.

I will watch the video when I have time.

Peter