RT2 is one of the coolest "business simulations" of all time - the goal was to make profits. The simplification was the "business" was achieved by setting the game near the dawn of the industrial age - when there was more of a relation between work vs output. The goal was to connect cities/companies so economic activity could take place. The big obstacles were set at random (i.e. train breakdowns) that added the element of fun. The game took the player through "macro" settings like recession and booms.
My deep appreciation of the game also comes from the fact that the settings were largely historically accurate. The big industrial centers (Albany, Denver (for lumber)) were accurately depicted. An extremely engaging way to learn a lot of early U.S. history, regarding how cities came into existence (answer: based on commodities trade). Also fascinating to learn about tech evolution (engines!)
Customary hyperbole: One of the best "business simulations" ever made! :)
RT3 did the series one better IMHO, since its economic model was more comprehensive and calculated the costs of everything based on alternative transport methods - building a line through the mountains could reap big rewards, and buying up the businesses you were going to expand towards even more so.
Same here, RT2 was one of my favorite games as a kid. I would love to see a modern remaster or, better yet, a new Railroad Tycoon game that preserves the simulation aspects of its predecessor.
I played RT2 as a teenager and spent hours playing every scenario. They had a few futuristic ones like colonizing Antarctica. US historical were the best.
Somewhat of a competitor, but any Sim Tower fans here? I was obsessed with everything Sim* but especially loved Sim Tower. Maxis was an amazing gaming company and actually my first entry into Macs. My friends dad had a Macintosh II, then classic, then LC, and I would spend hours playing games on them.
Interestingly, SimTower was published by Maxis but developed by OpenBook (later Vivarium), the Japanese developer that would later make Seaman for the Dreamcast.
/me raises hand :) Maxis games were classic. And quite complementary to Meier's work - the former being very open simulation sandboxes, and the latter more strategic and goal-oriented but with a lot of flex and slack in the rules for the player to experiment with.
But they definitely shared a similar spirit: giving the player a box full of building blocks and see what they do with it! :)
Check out Software, Inc. [0] for a actively-developed interpretation of a similar sim. It includes building and infrastructure elements in addition to markets and resources.
I liked SimTower, but it was very hard to lose. You could have unhappy people, but there was little impact to it. I recall it being described once as the most computationally-intensive screen saver available at the time.
I was even briefly involved with one of the efforts to make a modern clone of it (in particular, I've partially reversed some of the file format in a text document... somewhere).
Railroad Tycoon and SimCity had a huge influence on Factorio, the vast scope of which I can't begin to describe, but its trailer does it justice. [1]
About the game:
Factorio is a game in which you build and maintain factories.
You will be mining resources, researching technologies, building infrastructure, automating production and fighting enemies. Use your imagination to design your factory, combine simple elements into ingenious structures, apply management skills to keep it working and finally protect it from the creatures who don't really like you.
It was crazy to see a Factorio tournament at PAX. I never would have expected that that game would lend itself to a tournament setting, but they did it!
From what I understood, everyone was loaded into identically seeded areas. No combat, basic research already completed, first to a certain late game tech (rocket?) won.
I kept getting a "410 Gone" nginx error when trying to download the latest build's Linux demo. Had to keep refreshing to get the download to initialize - got it now but FYI, maybe it's something you need to check out.
Railroad Tycoon was amazing because as a kid I had access to higher quality, more timely metrics of my simulated company than many real life companies do.
We recently release SimAirport via Steam's Early Access program. The game was initially riddled with bugs, probably released about 2+ weeks or so too early, but after >= daily patching over the last 2 weeks it's finally yielding pretty solid gameplay.
If you enjoyed the old Bullfrog games, the Roller Coaster Tycoon series, or Prison Architect in modern times (huge inspiration), then you'd probably SimAirport too.
We're in Early Access, so go easy on us! You'll still hit bugs for sure, but we [hopefully] don't have any major game stoppers at this point. There's no tutorial, some so experience with similar games is helpful, but we've got a lot of players with 20, 30, and way upwards of 40 hours in just the short <2 weeks since we initially released.
Interesting story - love reading more of the stories behind some of the games I loved growing up, especially the people behind them.
Railroad Tycoon II is still one of my favorite games - the economic simulation side of it was a lot of fun, and you could sort of decide how much of it you wanted to bite off. I haven't really found anything quite like it since.
In some ways, it is kind of a shame - tablets/phones would make great platforms for economic sim games, but every single one I've tried has been disappointing for the same reason - the mechanism they use to funnel you into buying things makes the game really un-fun and repetitive very quickly. I wouldn't mind paying $10-$20 for a good economic sim that didn't act like this, but I guess not enough other people would.
Soren Johnson's Designer Notes podcast[1] mentioned in the article is excellent and I've learned quite a lot from the long interviews, especially Bruce Shelley's, Louis Castle's and Amy Hennig's. Currently he's releasing his interview with Sid Meier, which looks like it'll end up being 5-6 hours in length and is great so far. I really enjoy when in-depth discussions of niche topics give me ideas about other things and that's happened many times while listening to this show.
Those interested in the market/economic simulations in Railroad Tycoon might enjoy playing Soren's game, Offworld Trading Company[2]. I'll just mention that entire games rarely take more than 30 minutes, they are almost always interesting ones, and it is fun without triggering compulsive play (for me.)
My favourite Sid's game of all time is still the original Colonization. So much depth, replayability, and overall fun. To me it's always been superior to Civ because it's a clear road to independence.
By the way, filfre is probably the highest quality VG and possibly computer history writer I've read. His archives are gold. He mostly focuses on interactive storytelling, but that was most of gaming in the early days of computing, so his histories amount to histories of computing.
If you're looking to learn the basics of the stock market, play Railroad Tycoon 2 -- I can't speak for the original (didn't play it), but the sequel at least can teach you quite a bit.
The stock market aspects of the Railroad Tycoon franchise were what set it apart from all the other "Tycoon" games to follow. It allowed you to play the game on a variety of different levels. You could just focus on building a railroad network. You could focus on building a successful business. Or my person favorite, you could focus on building a personal fortune without any regard for the other two objectives. I spent many an hour as a kid trying to build a fortune be strategically destroying my virtual businesses.
Railroad Tycoon 2 had an interesting story by itself: It was originally not named Railroad Tycoon at all, as it was built by a very different company, PopTop Software, based in a St Louis suburb. Close to release they managed to get the license, and IMO the name recognition really helped a very good game.
The same team moved on to make Tropico and Railroad Tycoon 3, both of which made plenty of money. They didn't do quite so well after that, and what was left of the studio was relocated and eaten by Firaxis.
Good game :) I played this about a year ago. Brought back good memories. I remember thinking sod it and laid a track straight across the map. The huge risk paid off. I love these types of games.
Capitalism II is also an interesting one with a stock market component.
Having played both Railroad Tycoon II and OpenTTD, I must say that I prefer RT2 immensely more. (I've not played the original, so I can't comment on its quality).
Some of the advantages of RT2:
- Less tedious micromanagement without need for signals (although it does mean there's no way to build a 4-track mainline in RT2 that works like you can in OpenTTD).
- The stock market and competitive play is more fun. I never found the AI of OpenTTD fun, except when I was bored and wanted to watch their cars get plowed by my trains.
- The economic aspects of RT2 were more enjoyable. You can buy industries, for example. It's also laid out more clearly how the economy works (you can turn off these features to make the game easier, but it's much less fun). There's also lots more type of cargo (ship iron and coal to a steel mill to make steel, rubber to a tire factory for tires, the steel and the tires to an auto plant to make cars which go to the cities).
- Also, all the locomotives! Just so much more in depth.
It's a different game than RT, but if you play OpenTTD there's a community on Reddit at https://www.reddit.com/r/openttd/ with a couple of dedicated servers.
Server 1 is a vanilla multiplayer, games last ~2 real days.
Server 2 is a custom client with a lot of community patches, games last ~5 real days (IIRC):
It has transport load overlays, a city building challenge mode, way more types of transport and types of trains, much lower margins on routes meaning compound routes are more necessary, easier UI tools for laying and routing track, heaps more trains and buildings.
And the in-game chat from both servers merges with their IRC channel.
If there was ever a game that encouraged me to become a developer during my youth it was definitely Railroad Tycoon. I remember being so curious how everything might have worked within the game with out knowing a thing about programming and it was definitely an inspiration to me in so many aspects. Games were my avenue for learning DOS and later my learning to write Software. I can't imagine what my life would have been like with out so many great early game developers.
We build planning and scheduling software for railroads and I continually think back to playing this game as a kid. The concerns are unsurprisingly similar but the level of detail you go to in managing a real railroad is obviously far greater.
For example we delivered a piece of software to manage where to park trains during storms so they don't blow over.
A really sweet one is Transport Fever. It is however more like of an electronic model railway and less of a game - there is no competition, scenarios (pretty much a tutorial actually) are very straight forward and it is difficult to go under.
However, the beautiful part is modelling the transport network and the detail of it, however I was mostly fascinated by the city growth and development.
A great board game with a train theme is Steam, it's available for iOS and Android and next week for OSX, Windows and Linux as well. The good thing is that you can play it as a boardgame as we, competing with others face to face as to who can lay the tracks and transport goods most efficiently.
http://store.steampowered.com/app/595930/
If you find this interesting, the interview with him at idlethumbs is really good: https://www.idlethumbs.net/designernotes/episodes/sid-meier-... (looks like its one of the sources for this post). I think the portion related to railroad tycoon is in the second part but its worth listening to all of it.
Oh, Railroad Tycoon! The first game that really hooked me. I still remember the feeling of utter betrayal when I first tried cutthroat competition and lost a station in a rate war. Then the absolute glee of stealing a valuable station from another line on my next play through. I could go on for hours, but instead I'm going to fire up DosBox now.
[+] [-] a_d|9 years ago|reply
My deep appreciation of the game also comes from the fact that the settings were largely historically accurate. The big industrial centers (Albany, Denver (for lumber)) were accurately depicted. An extremely engaging way to learn a lot of early U.S. history, regarding how cities came into existence (answer: based on commodities trade). Also fascinating to learn about tech evolution (engines!)
Customary hyperbole: One of the best "business simulations" ever made! :)
[+] [-] buzzybee|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] whitehat2k9|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] theparanoid|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nodesocket|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] xxr|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pavel_lishin|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ObligatoryRef|9 years ago|reply
(Also, tip for those starting a new game: 2x3 grid of fast food in the basement at the start of the game. You're welcome.)
[+] [-] nerfhammer|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] brownbat|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 60654|9 years ago|reply
But they definitely shared a similar spirit: giving the player a box full of building blocks and see what they do with it! :)
[+] [-] tcdent|9 years ago|reply
[0] http://store.steampowered.com/app/362620/
[+] [-] LandoCalrissian|9 years ago|reply
You should also give Project Highrise a shot, very similar to Sim Tower and I have found it to be enjoyable.
[+] [-] etimberg|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rilut|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] secabeen|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jcranmer|9 years ago|reply
I was even briefly involved with one of the efforts to make a modern clone of it (in particular, I've partially reversed some of the file format in a text document... somewhere).
[+] [-] pmarreck|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dagurp|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] DonHopkins|9 years ago|reply
About the game: Factorio is a game in which you build and maintain factories.
You will be mining resources, researching technologies, building infrastructure, automating production and fighting enemies. Use your imagination to design your factory, combine simple elements into ingenious structures, apply management skills to keep it working and finally protect it from the creatures who don't really like you.
[1] https://www.factorio.com/
"This game is like crack for programmers." -kentonv [2]
[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11266471
[+] [-] topher200|9 years ago|reply
From what I understood, everyone was loaded into identically seeded areas. No combat, basic research already completed, first to a certain late game tech (rocket?) won.
[+] [-] JumpCrisscross|9 years ago|reply
Is there a good* technological civilization bootstrapping handbook? (For a real person stranded on some random Earth-like planet.)
*intentionally ambiguous
[+] [-] kissickas|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Spooky23|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hamandcheese|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] adanto6840|9 years ago|reply
We recently release SimAirport via Steam's Early Access program. The game was initially riddled with bugs, probably released about 2+ weeks or so too early, but after >= daily patching over the last 2 weeks it's finally yielding pretty solid gameplay.
If you enjoyed the old Bullfrog games, the Roller Coaster Tycoon series, or Prison Architect in modern times (huge inspiration), then you'd probably SimAirport too.
We're in Early Access, so go easy on us! You'll still hit bugs for sure, but we [hopefully] don't have any major game stoppers at this point. There's no tutorial, some so experience with similar games is helpful, but we've got a lot of players with 20, 30, and way upwards of 40 hours in just the short <2 weeks since we initially released.
http://store.steampowered.com/app/598330
[+] [-] suresk|9 years ago|reply
Railroad Tycoon II is still one of my favorite games - the economic simulation side of it was a lot of fun, and you could sort of decide how much of it you wanted to bite off. I haven't really found anything quite like it since.
In some ways, it is kind of a shame - tablets/phones would make great platforms for economic sim games, but every single one I've tried has been disappointing for the same reason - the mechanism they use to funnel you into buying things makes the game really un-fun and repetitive very quickly. I wouldn't mind paying $10-$20 for a good economic sim that didn't act like this, but I guess not enough other people would.
[+] [-] 1123581321|9 years ago|reply
Those interested in the market/economic simulations in Railroad Tycoon might enjoy playing Soren's game, Offworld Trading Company[2]. I'll just mention that entire games rarely take more than 30 minutes, they are almost always interesting ones, and it is fun without triggering compulsive play (for me.)
[1] https://www.idlethumbs.net/designernotes
[2] http://www.offworldgame.com
[+] [-] keyle|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dmazin|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Curnee|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] clock_tower|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] slg|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hibikir|9 years ago|reply
The same team moved on to make Tropico and Railroad Tycoon 3, both of which made plenty of money. They didn't do quite so well after that, and what was left of the studio was relocated and eaten by Firaxis.
[+] [-] jwdunne|9 years ago|reply
Capitalism II is also an interesting one with a stock market component.
[+] [-] forgotpwtomain|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dddw|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jcranmer|9 years ago|reply
Some of the advantages of RT2:
- Less tedious micromanagement without need for signals (although it does mean there's no way to build a 4-track mainline in RT2 that works like you can in OpenTTD).
- The stock market and competitive play is more fun. I never found the AI of OpenTTD fun, except when I was bored and wanted to watch their cars get plowed by my trains.
- The economic aspects of RT2 were more enjoyable. You can buy industries, for example. It's also laid out more clearly how the economy works (you can turn off these features to make the game easier, but it's much less fun). There's also lots more type of cargo (ship iron and coal to a steel mill to make steel, rubber to a tire factory for tires, the steel and the tires to an auto plant to make cars which go to the cities).
- Also, all the locomotives! Just so much more in depth.
[+] [-] dragonwriter|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jodrellblank|9 years ago|reply
Server 1 is a vanilla multiplayer, games last ~2 real days.
Server 2 is a custom client with a lot of community patches, games last ~5 real days (IIRC):
- https://www.reddit.com/r/openttd/wiki/server2#wiki_joining_i...
It has transport load overlays, a city building challenge mode, way more types of transport and types of trains, much lower margins on routes meaning compound routes are more necessary, easier UI tools for laying and routing track, heaps more trains and buildings.
And the in-game chat from both servers merges with their IRC channel.
[+] [-] Spakman|9 years ago|reply
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A-Train
[+] [-] flippmoke|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hartror|9 years ago|reply
For example we delivered a piece of software to manage where to park trains during storms so they don't blow over.
http://biarrirail.com/ btw.
[+] [-] llcoolv|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fsiefken|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|9 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] falsedan|9 years ago|reply
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