Barry Caudill on Sid Meier's Railroads!

Barry Caudill on Sid Meier's Railroads!

Feature

We sit down with Barry Caudill to discuss Firaxis' upcoming game Sid Meier's Railroads!

Hooked Gamers:Hi, thanks for participating in this interview. Could you please introduce yourself to our readers? What is your job at Firaxis and your relationship to the game?

Barry: My name is Barry Caudill, I am the Executive producer at Firaxis Games and all design and production at Firaxis comes across my desk, so I am involved in every project here on at least a high level. I am as involved in this game as I can be without stepping on Dan Magaha’s toes as he is the producer for the game.

Barry Caudill on Sid Meier's Railroads!
Hooked Gamers: Firaxis has a history of 'springing' games on us. Sid Meier's Railroads! was announced in May and currently has a shipping date of October 2006. How -and why- do you do that? Most other games are known a year or longer in advance.

Barry: I’m not convinced that having a really long lead time in the marketplace is necessarily a good thing. There are so many games out there now and it’s too easy to get lost in the shuffle over a long period of time. I would rather see focused marketing and information that builds up interest right to the release. For the record, Railroads was in development for quite a while before it was announced.

Hooked Gamers: After Railroads! was announced, most people wondered what happened with the Railroad Tycoon name. Why this change of name?

Barry: We felt the Tycoon name had been overused in the marketplace and didn’t carry the same meaning it did when Sid first invented the genre. For every solid game like Roller Coaster Tycoon or Monopoly Tycoon (a vastly underrated game), there are numerous stinkers like Mall Tycoon or heaven forbid, Prison and Hell Tycoons. Also, we didn’t want people to assume this was RRT4 because it is much more of a return to the train-focused gameplay of Sid’s original title... and Sid is designing this one.

Hooked Gamers: Should we consider Railroads! a totally new game, or more like a remake of Railroad Tycoon, like Sid Meier's Pirates! has been updated some time ago?

Barry: It’s a little of both. It is definitely a spiritual successor to the original game, but it’s built around a new prototype from Sid which makes it a totally new game as well. It’s a return to what we thought was fun about the original title but there are also lots of new things like the introduction of great multiplayer.

Hooked Gamers: Can you explain a bit how the supply lines work? Do you need more than one item to produce a good and will the game make use half-fabricates that are needed to produce the eventual end-good?

Barry Caudill on Sid Meier's Railroads!
Barry: Supply chains can be very simple such as delivering mail or passengers from one city to another. A more complex chain might involve delivering wood to a paper mill and then taking that paper to a city with a newspaper. Even more complex is the supply chain for automobiles. Here, you would have to take coal to the town with a steel mill, take steel to the town with the automobile factory, and then deliver the cars to the town that demands them. Delivering coal to the town with the Steel Mill would satisfy that demand and you technically wouldn’t have to finish the connection if it seemed to be unfeasible.

Hooked Gamers: We understand that corporate warfare against rivals is a viable option. Will this be similar to Railroad Tycoon and how will this work with online rivals? Will for instance hostile takeovers be possible and will the AI try to attempt this with you as well?

Barry: Every player in the game has some of their own stock when the game starts. You can freely buy and sell shares of your own stock or that of your opponent. When all of the stock for a given player is owned, there is a buyout price that is determined from the current stock price and how many shares you own of that company. If you pay that amount, you have completed a hostile takeover and you will now control all of that player’s assets. The AI will attempt to buy you out as well but that is currently the default option and can be turned off as players wish.