Firaxis has started a newsletter - nothing on Railroads except an ad to buy ... but there is hope ...
http://www.firaxisgames.com/community/n ... _april.php
Take Two boardroom revolution!
I didn't know whether to start a new thread to announce my return or to tuck it away here... As I am mostly eating humble pie, this should be the best place.
I bought Railroads! before Christmas, had so many problems with the game crashing and eventually found some solutions at this wonderful forum. I was pretty scathing about Firaxis at the time and the way that the game had been released, but this also coincided with my business going belly-up, so I may have been a little bit more 'disappointed' than a silly game deserved.
So for the next month or so I had nothing to do other than bury my company in the grave. I followed the advice to switch to one processor on start up. That and the second patch finally got the game working (not the second patch by itself, mind you) and then I played it obsessively for the next two months. No money to buy any other game, I guess, so I had to get Railroads! working.
I grew to appreciate the differences that I hated before - the simplicity, the shortness of the game, the design of the maps. I'm back playing again now - coinciding with a major decision to have a complete career change and to return to university - and I came back here looking for some new maps. The ones I've been playing with are getting very dog-eared.
If I can comment on a couple of things? When I was here last Firaxis employees made regular contributions to the forum. Considering the incredible amount of work that several of the contributors here have undertaken on new maps, etc. it seems very strange that Firaxis have disappeared. Even if the people here before were getting paid to monitor the forum and they are not now, I would still expect one or two of them to drop in from time to time. I mean, if you had designed the game wouldn't you be a little curious about how it's growing up? And think how much easier the modders would have found it if they had been pointed in the right direction by the people who originally coded the game.
I assume that these people are no longer employed by Firaxis. What other explanation could there be for them abandoning this forum. Even if they were busy on a new game they would surely have time to drop in occasionally. Which leads, of course to Take2, the subject of this thread. We're aware that the computer games industry is as valuable now as the movie industry. Clearly, though, it is not in any kind of mature state and clearly there have been people taking advantage of its immaturity. Of course, the gamers suffer most, with unfinished games and a lack of support. Was the car industry like this in its infancy? Certainly a car manufacturer could not survive with the attitude of a Take2, for example. I still do not understand how such simple business mistakes are made, with the knowledge, the training and the examples to draw upon. Perhaps, as was suggested, we should all buy a couple of shares of Take2 and try to influence the company to be run on a modern, realistic business model.
Part of our collective disappointment with Firaxis is that we want to believe that any group of people that can produce such special games that become so much part of our lives must be special people themselves. That they can tug our heartstrings must mean that they care themselves, right? It's disappointing to find out that they are no different or worse than any other commercial group. We saw the signs. We know that there is no way to contact Firaxis directly. They have no feedback, no suggestion box. For example, I have been trying to find a copy of Aliens Crossfire, the expansion pack to Alpha Centauri. All the examples I've found, at Amazon and on eBay are going for over $100! Now, if I had an asset that is selling for that much on the second-hand market as an expansion pack ten years after it had been released I'd be re-issuing the game pronto. Can anyone else think of a ten year old game that is fetching such a premium?
But there is no way of contacting Firaxis to let them know or point this out - to 'help' grow their company. They have all this goodwill leeching away and it is a shame. Anybody doing a business degree could use them as an example of how not to run a company. Because, in the end, anybody's reputation is a patina of all that has gone before. Look at Microsoft.
So I'm going to download and play with a few of the new maps. Thanks to all for their hard work on the maps and the advice on how to install them. And let's all drink a beer to what might have been!
I bought Railroads! before Christmas, had so many problems with the game crashing and eventually found some solutions at this wonderful forum. I was pretty scathing about Firaxis at the time and the way that the game had been released, but this also coincided with my business going belly-up, so I may have been a little bit more 'disappointed' than a silly game deserved.
So for the next month or so I had nothing to do other than bury my company in the grave. I followed the advice to switch to one processor on start up. That and the second patch finally got the game working (not the second patch by itself, mind you) and then I played it obsessively for the next two months. No money to buy any other game, I guess, so I had to get Railroads! working.
I grew to appreciate the differences that I hated before - the simplicity, the shortness of the game, the design of the maps. I'm back playing again now - coinciding with a major decision to have a complete career change and to return to university - and I came back here looking for some new maps. The ones I've been playing with are getting very dog-eared.
If I can comment on a couple of things? When I was here last Firaxis employees made regular contributions to the forum. Considering the incredible amount of work that several of the contributors here have undertaken on new maps, etc. it seems very strange that Firaxis have disappeared. Even if the people here before were getting paid to monitor the forum and they are not now, I would still expect one or two of them to drop in from time to time. I mean, if you had designed the game wouldn't you be a little curious about how it's growing up? And think how much easier the modders would have found it if they had been pointed in the right direction by the people who originally coded the game.
I assume that these people are no longer employed by Firaxis. What other explanation could there be for them abandoning this forum. Even if they were busy on a new game they would surely have time to drop in occasionally. Which leads, of course to Take2, the subject of this thread. We're aware that the computer games industry is as valuable now as the movie industry. Clearly, though, it is not in any kind of mature state and clearly there have been people taking advantage of its immaturity. Of course, the gamers suffer most, with unfinished games and a lack of support. Was the car industry like this in its infancy? Certainly a car manufacturer could not survive with the attitude of a Take2, for example. I still do not understand how such simple business mistakes are made, with the knowledge, the training and the examples to draw upon. Perhaps, as was suggested, we should all buy a couple of shares of Take2 and try to influence the company to be run on a modern, realistic business model.
Part of our collective disappointment with Firaxis is that we want to believe that any group of people that can produce such special games that become so much part of our lives must be special people themselves. That they can tug our heartstrings must mean that they care themselves, right? It's disappointing to find out that they are no different or worse than any other commercial group. We saw the signs. We know that there is no way to contact Firaxis directly. They have no feedback, no suggestion box. For example, I have been trying to find a copy of Aliens Crossfire, the expansion pack to Alpha Centauri. All the examples I've found, at Amazon and on eBay are going for over $100! Now, if I had an asset that is selling for that much on the second-hand market as an expansion pack ten years after it had been released I'd be re-issuing the game pronto. Can anyone else think of a ten year old game that is fetching such a premium?
But there is no way of contacting Firaxis to let them know or point this out - to 'help' grow their company. They have all this goodwill leeching away and it is a shame. Anybody doing a business degree could use them as an example of how not to run a company. Because, in the end, anybody's reputation is a patina of all that has gone before. Look at Microsoft.
So I'm going to download and play with a few of the new maps. Thanks to all for their hard work on the maps and the advice on how to install them. And let's all drink a beer to what might have been!
A couple of points:
You're right that some of the team have moved on. I left back in April and am living in Austin, TX now, working for NCSoft. The game's lead programmer, Casey O'Toole, is now working for Bethesda Softworks on Fallout 3.
The rest of the team, as I understand it, are busy working on a number of other projects, most of which haven't even been announced yet, but that are very important for the studio and for Take Two. Given the publicly available information about the company's financial situation, you can certainly understand why these staffing decisions have been made. This is just the reality of being a part of a large publisher.
Regarding the Alpha Centauri / Alien Crossfire situation -- this is another strange publisher issue, but this one is EA's fault. EA owns the IP to those products, but even when Firaxis was independent and was still doing business with EA, they felt that SMAC (and particularly SMACX) didn't sell well enough to warrant the costs of producing a new run of those games. Every couple of months we'd send them emails and say, "hey, people are paying $100 on Ebay for these things! There's a demand, let's make some new units and get them out there", but they just didn't feel it was worth their time.
You're right that some of the team have moved on. I left back in April and am living in Austin, TX now, working for NCSoft. The game's lead programmer, Casey O'Toole, is now working for Bethesda Softworks on Fallout 3.
The rest of the team, as I understand it, are busy working on a number of other projects, most of which haven't even been announced yet, but that are very important for the studio and for Take Two. Given the publicly available information about the company's financial situation, you can certainly understand why these staffing decisions have been made. This is just the reality of being a part of a large publisher.
Regarding the Alpha Centauri / Alien Crossfire situation -- this is another strange publisher issue, but this one is EA's fault. EA owns the IP to those products, but even when Firaxis was independent and was still doing business with EA, they felt that SMAC (and particularly SMACX) didn't sell well enough to warrant the costs of producing a new run of those games. Every couple of months we'd send them emails and say, "hey, people are paying $100 on Ebay for these things! There's a demand, let's make some new units and get them out there", but they just didn't feel it was worth their time.
I will think twice before I buy any of there games again. 
Thank you Gackbeard for replying. Maybe all is not lost!
My point remains, though, that the small amount of effort that Firaxis should be expending on helping the modders on this forum would be more than repaid by ensuring the longevity of their title and the value of their property. It's not only Firaxis, of course. The gaming magazines are full of examples of games that are purely kept alive by the modding community.
As for the companies' reputation, I believe that it is a topic seriously underestimated by many of these publishers. I can't think of a Firaxis, and before them Microprose, game that I did not end up buying at least five copies of. It was a point of honour not to copy a Microprose game because one felt one was making a contribution to the next amazing title. Other games from other companies were played once and discarded; Sid Meier games are still played, well ten years on.
I have a feeling that there must be an answer to this and it seems increasingly clear that the game designer/producer and the publisher set up that exists today is not the right vehicle. Take Railroads! for example. It has turned out to be a highly, perhaps overly complex game that answers a question that I'm not sure we were asking. I personally would have been happy with a refresh of the original RRT. I never played RRT2 & RRT3 as they seemed to me to be 'dry' after the original. I'd still like a revamp or 're-imagining' of RRT but Railroads! isn't it. Take SMAC. Would it really be so hard to refresh that game. that great game? We never bought it for the graphics excellence or the slick way the pieces moved over the board. But, wow, somebody had really taken the trouble to imagine what the future techs would really consist of, and that impressed us. Did we need Civ IV? All I really wanted was for Civ III to be tidied up at the endgame stage, when each turn took too long to play. I didn't need or want multiplayer, fancy graphics, etc. I wanted what defined the Sid Meier phenomenon: "just one more turn".
What I can't answer, and Gackbeard may be able to put me right, is whether that ephemeral quality of 'just one more turn' really demands a huge studio and a care-nothing publisher? Can't we harness the power of the web and the power of forums like this to produce new classics?
Good luck to gackbeard, btw, in his new role, and thanks for the contributions made while still a Firaxian. Keep us in touch with what you're doing next!
My point remains, though, that the small amount of effort that Firaxis should be expending on helping the modders on this forum would be more than repaid by ensuring the longevity of their title and the value of their property. It's not only Firaxis, of course. The gaming magazines are full of examples of games that are purely kept alive by the modding community.
As for the companies' reputation, I believe that it is a topic seriously underestimated by many of these publishers. I can't think of a Firaxis, and before them Microprose, game that I did not end up buying at least five copies of. It was a point of honour not to copy a Microprose game because one felt one was making a contribution to the next amazing title. Other games from other companies were played once and discarded; Sid Meier games are still played, well ten years on.
I have a feeling that there must be an answer to this and it seems increasingly clear that the game designer/producer and the publisher set up that exists today is not the right vehicle. Take Railroads! for example. It has turned out to be a highly, perhaps overly complex game that answers a question that I'm not sure we were asking. I personally would have been happy with a refresh of the original RRT. I never played RRT2 & RRT3 as they seemed to me to be 'dry' after the original. I'd still like a revamp or 're-imagining' of RRT but Railroads! isn't it. Take SMAC. Would it really be so hard to refresh that game. that great game? We never bought it for the graphics excellence or the slick way the pieces moved over the board. But, wow, somebody had really taken the trouble to imagine what the future techs would really consist of, and that impressed us. Did we need Civ IV? All I really wanted was for Civ III to be tidied up at the endgame stage, when each turn took too long to play. I didn't need or want multiplayer, fancy graphics, etc. I wanted what defined the Sid Meier phenomenon: "just one more turn".
What I can't answer, and Gackbeard may be able to put me right, is whether that ephemeral quality of 'just one more turn' really demands a huge studio and a care-nothing publisher? Can't we harness the power of the web and the power of forums like this to produce new classics?
Good luck to gackbeard, btw, in his new role, and thanks for the contributions made while still a Firaxian. Keep us in touch with what you're doing next!
Lets look at the facts.
1. The likely hood of us getting a new patch is zero.
2. While Firaxis's help with modding would have allowed us to get where we are sooner let us be thankful for what little help they did end up giving us.
3. Dispite the lack of guidance from Firaxis we have still managed to create great maps.
4. Gackbeard is no longer with Firaxis so lets not drive him alway with to much "Firaxis made a bad move rushing SMR"
5. SMR is to Railroad Tycoon as Civ 4 is to Civ 1 in that they are both the 4th game in the series. If you do not see the point of that statement here is a simple question to ask your self: What is more popular, Railroads or Civilization?
5. We should be thankful that SMR was even made in the first place after all I don't think any one expected it to sell as well as Civ 4.
1. The likely hood of us getting a new patch is zero.
2. While Firaxis's help with modding would have allowed us to get where we are sooner let us be thankful for what little help they did end up giving us.
3. Dispite the lack of guidance from Firaxis we have still managed to create great maps.
4. Gackbeard is no longer with Firaxis so lets not drive him alway with to much "Firaxis made a bad move rushing SMR"
5. SMR is to Railroad Tycoon as Civ 4 is to Civ 1 in that they are both the 4th game in the series. If you do not see the point of that statement here is a simple question to ask your self: What is more popular, Railroads or Civilization?
5. We should be thankful that SMR was even made in the first place after all I don't think any one expected it to sell as well as Civ 4.
I think what would be nice, but won't happen for a long time, if ever, is for Take Two to release the code for this game. Maybe not to the full public, but to a small group attached to this forum, who would be able to look into it and take care of some of the problems we have. And I'm not talking "Make it like RR1 or RRII or RRIII" but things like making all the different RRT XML files to be map specific. Bring the map Editor to generate larger sizes IF it is no more than number changes in the Editor. (wouldn't want someone trying to rewrite the whole editor) This forum has a nice 'Next Version' section that could be addressed. 
I'm correct 97% of the time..... who cares about the other 4%....
Yes, it is giving away something, but with a very small group having it and making 'patches', the people that have it would increase their interest and those who thought of buying it before all the dismay of what it turned out to be would have a better outlook at it, and it would find interest in a lot more eyes. Also, since Take Two owns it, they can do anything they want with it, including putting out the code with certain stipulations.
A second possibility would be like what was done with "Transport Tycoon Deluxe", which had a GNU created for it which required the original to be owned in order to use it.
As to the double post, hey, we all make mistakes
As to the double post, hey, we all make mistakes
A second possibility would be like what was done with "Transport Tycoon Deluxe", which had a GNU created for it which required the original to be owned in order to use it.
As to the double post, hey, we all make mistakes
As to the double post, hey, we all make mistakes
I'm correct 97% of the time..... who cares about the other 4%....
Hey, that's a really neat idea. A win-win, so to speak. Take2 get their game updated, corrected, expanded, all for free. We get to prolong and expand our enjoyment. I, for one, would be happy to throw some money in the direction of the workers. Take2 benefit by selling further copies of the game to the likes of me, when I inevitably lose or scratch the disc and to many others who discover the game down the track.snoopy55 wrote:I think what would be nice, but won't happen for a long time, if ever, is for Take Two to release the code for this game. Maybe not to the full public, but to a small group attached to this forum, who would be able to look into it and take care of some of the problems we have. And I'm not talking "Make it like RR1 or RRII or RRIII" but things like making all the different RRT XML files to be map specific. Bring the map Editor to generate larger sizes IF it is no more than number changes in the Editor. (wouldn't want someone trying to rewrite the whole editor) This forum has a nice 'Next Version' section that could be addressed.
This is the kind of thing I was thinking about as an alternative to the existing and traditional publishing role that Take2 are labouring with.
Btw, Warll, I take your point, well made. I was ranting. But I was talking not about what has to happen but what could have happened. If we don't discuss this, perhaps we are destined to repeat this again and again?
Take-Two Unloads Manufacture of video game peripherals
Take-Two said the sale for $3.7 million is part of its plan to focus only on core businesses going forward... such as a patch for SMR?? 
Then again, Take-Two stock has fallen almost 32 percent in the three months up to October, so I guess non-essentials such as a patch are a remote bet currently.
Then again, Take-Two stock has fallen almost 32 percent in the three months up to October, so I guess non-essentials such as a patch are a remote bet currently.