Time For A Next Step, Dtg?

A lot has changed already in the relationship between DTG and the community. We now get at leats some information on what is going on and what will come, so we know when to save on food and beer for a new upcoming DLC, the number of bugs that are fixed is increasing and we now can know that someone is at least seeing the the bug reports, instead of the standard answer, it is sent to dev, we close your ticket.

It is great to have a preserved collection team, bring elder content up to date which is good for us, but I think it will bring revenue from increased sales as well.

yesterday Sam and Adam talked a lot about recent issues and how it possible they occur, without having a complete answer. We should be grateful for this openness, it is a big step forward.

I have a lot of experience in leading software teams. I think DTG might benefit from some ways of working that are becoming more common is say the last ten years. The term to google is either agile development or scrum. Let me give a few suggestions.

1. DTG now has very specialized teams, a core, team, an loco team, asset teams, landscape team, track laying team, a game play team and they are all separate (at least that is my impression).. A better way to organize this is to create a number of multidisciplinary root teams. Each route team is fully responsible for a number of DLC, both existing and new ones. So they upgrade their preserved routes and build new ones. If something is not working they fix it. Teams should have a size of maxi 9 persons. Bigger teams will not work. Each person can be an expert in at leats one are, but should have knowledge on other areas as well. QA is not a separate department, but integrated in the teams. If independent checks are needed, a team can ask another team to do a review (which is good practice anyway). To increase the global level of knowledge, you can appoint people in the tech lead role and create for instance a gameplay chapter where people can exchange ideas or come with innovations. In my company we had innovation days every three months were people could work together on completely free self defined assignments to try something new.

This way of working is great fun and it helps for cohesion in the product and involvement with the whole product. There is much more to say about this, but this should do for the moment.

2. The second point is: get feedback much sooner. The LIRR PIS story is a kind of sad thing of good intentions but not a good result. The key point is that it is extremely dangerous to think that you know the opinions of your customers. So do not try that but ask. This is not easy, because people will only know what they want when they see it. In the PIS example, show a mockup in a very early development stage.. You also may share user story. A user story describe what to expect with a good amount of detail, without saying how to do it. A way to do it is to create short surveys people can use to give feedback, or use the forums to collect opinions. This does not solve all issues, but now with the developments for steam Sam is doing a brave attempt to represent the community. I appreciate Sam and way he works and his understanding of gameplay, but asking things directly to the community is a far better way to get a feeling on what we need.

There are more things DTG can do, but I think, based of the information I have seen and my knowledge on how to developn software, these steps will be very beneficial.

 

My suggestion would be to have roadmap streams one week and dev streams the other, this way we can know what developments and bugs are being fixed on EXISTING issues one week, and then we could see prospective developments, enhancements etc the next. Make a poll on each topic and let the community "guide the development" where possible
It includes people and guides expectations.

 

You can't just say you do Scrum you have to live it.
Such transformations cost money and time and if DTG would benefit from it is vaguely.

I'm sure they have established methods. Are they perfect? Probably not but that's an extreme claim.

 

In my experience: SelfQC/QA + global autonomous QC/QA was the best mix.
Integrated into the teams (if separate persons) relieved too much a healthy pressure on workers

Oh, what a great idea \o/

 

Excellent OP/thread.

DTG certainly need to find some help in this area (organisational management, QA, etc.) , but the first thing that they need to do is recognise that they have a problem that needs to be fixed..... (Rush Hour draft website.....>> HHL PZB & RT S6.... all in two weeks.....).

....and actually DTG should try and not be too hard on themselves when doing so.... because they have grown in size at an extremely rapid pace, and it is very difficult to let go of the informal and more relaxed arrangements that might have worked (or seemed to work) in a smaller team...... like using Post It Notes on fridges, and trying to snatch memories from conversations in pubs and chip shops about "doing some stuff", etc.... or however it is that they manage the workflow now.

And when that team's expansion is driven by cash from a private equity investor demanding rapid RoI, and the customer base suddenly triples to include demanding console players (now making up the vast majority)....... that expect the game to just work and look good only a few seconds after pressing the "on" button (and sometimes before they have even downloaded the software....).... but without waiting a few months/years for DTG to react (or not) to some Steam reviews before they make things right.... well then..... I suspect the culture shock must be quite immense.

 

As an active community member, I’m happy to help DTG make the best products available. DTG should use and abuse us. There is a lot of knowledge in the community and a lot of opinion that can surely be made use of. I’m all but certain there’ll be no shortage of those willing to help, in whatever way they can.

 

The agile/ scrum approach only works if everyone involved follows it correctly. At its' purest it can work well with the "what can you deliver in 6 weeks" approach, but too often I have seen senior management interfere and change it to "deliver that and deliver these other items at the same time" to the detriment of an entire programme.

 

Fortunately thee is a lot of freedom in applying scrum. In my experience every team has different needs and may put their own accent on the way of working. I did not (yet) want to stress on the huge change of the role of management. It makes me feel a bit sad to hear about the large meetings and difficult decision on what should be on the roadmap. This is a clear sign that internal co"-operation is not working optimal. Also the long discussions on which route to do and probably getting loads of management opinions is a huge waste of time. If you have route teams, they are responsible to accept doing a route, so they better make sure they can do it. You need less management and will have more time for true leadership.

I agree that in to many companies the management s the biggest obstacle in a change to a better way of working.

 

The pressure will come from the feedback they get from the beta testers and after release form the community. They will need to fix their bugs as well and the competition and healthy pressure will come from the other route teams. No need to worry, nobody wants to deliver a bad route. I think it is a reasonable assumption most people working for DTG have passion and I firmly believe this passion will be fed tremendously if you get a bit more autonomy and in sharing the day to day fun with your colleagues, instead of handing your part over to a far away team that may blow your brilliant ideas and you cannot do anything about it.

I have worked with a number of totally different teams. I had one team that was just horrible, they were not capable to work together, even though each developer was fairly competent. But most teams were growing quite a lot in how they worked together getting fantastic results and taking responsibility.

 

If you really want, it takes say a month to prepare and then just start doing it. You would need some coaching to get it working properly and it definitely helps if some people are passionate about the way of working. I think right now DTG wastes huge amounts of money on co-ordination costs and poor internal communications (disclaimer, I may have misunderstood how things actually work, in part it is educated guessing). The benefits are not so vague. The major thing is a much deeper involvement of the team members for their products. Agile does not solve all issues, but in my experience it is a far better way of working, if you are willing to go for it.

DTG definitely has a way of working. In the company where I used to work, they also had. But by using scrum we gained a huge amount of flexibility and also fun. Developers got the chance to learn a lot of new thing, just outside their core knowledge base and even making decisions became far more easy and fast.

 

If I had to make a guess.... I would guess that the beta testers that DTG use have absolutely no power to apply any pressure at all. I think that you will find that the pressure/incentive flows in the other direction.

I don't actually know this - but I suspect that most of DTG's beta testing is done by unpaid volunteers on PC (via a Steam dev depot), who feel lucky that they are getting an early access version of TSW, and are either:

- extremely reluctant to provide negative feedback that might result in them not being asked to beta test again; or
- reluctant to make detailed reports because they know from previous experience that it will be ignored; or
- just enjoy the early access, and are not equipped/motivated to find and/or document any bugs or broken/missing content; or,
- some combination of the above.

And I say this assuming that there is an actual beta testing programme..... and I say it with some hesitation because it really appears to me that to all intents and purposes that no such beta testing programme exists at all.

 

An excellent thread Rudolf, maybe DtG would consider your proposals?

 

All very interesting, but I'd like to ask: how do you guys know so much about DTG's internal operations and organizational structure? Are you privy to some inside information that the rest of us mere mortals are not? And is it really our place, as players and consumers, to tell a company how to run its business? I think I'll just buy or not buy and enjoy driving the trains. I'm sure they have plenty of competent people running things. Just my take.

 

Are you trying to tell us that people crazy enough to make train games (about trains!) know how to make money?
Are you in league with them? Are they blackmailing you? We can help you, Crosstie

 

All I know about running a successful creative business is that I saw a news report once that claimed productivity and staff morale could be increased massively by having beanbags in the office and possibly a free hummus vending machine. It was probably in California. No follow up reports to how it’s worked out though. DTG do sometimes talk about their development teams in the live streams though so there is some insight into how they organise stuff. I wouldn’t want to tell them how to run their business but I do know cleaning hummus stains off beanbags all the time isn’t the best use of workers time, so maybe cut back on that kind of thing. Of course the whole of the world is working from home at the moment so any kind of organisational structuring is going to be difficult.

 

Yes - you are absolutely right with most of this. We do not know (or at least, I don't know) exactly how DTG''s internal management structure is organised.

What we are doing (at least what I am doing) is trying to hold up a mirror and say "This is what it looks like to us - are you sure that you can/will keep on delivering this wonderful game that we really love to play....?", because it really really doesn't look good from the outside, and it isn't clear just how much insight DTG have into that.

The extent of the amazing talent within DTG (and their partners) is beyond question. The TSW 2 game (and DLC content) is so good right now, and TS2012 has been so ropey in the near past (the incomplete Class 89 audio, for example).... that the worry is that they might quickly fall back down the slope that they have so successfully climbed. That's my take. I want to buy DTG's stuff for the long term.

 

Theorising from the many many roadmap streams where they have given quite detailed accounts of the various teams and the interactions between them

We know there is a beta testing team and a QA team, various dev teams, a preserved collection team, a distribution (release) team, a couple of producers and at least one director
We know that things have been held up at each point and some of the "why" of this

So it's not so much a case of "how do we know", but it is a case of "how would WE organise such things", not that it remotely matters unless we want to stump up the money to buy the company and then run it ourselves, but hey this is the internet after all. Land of the broken dreams

 

You never know...

 

An important source is the end-of year Q&A stream, where Matt and Sam were discussing DTG organization extensively.. In other streams you see for instance Adam Lucas talk about how things seem to work. His team delvers something and then it is out of their hands, he literally says. The QA team does some work and then a lot of magic happens in a release team ... It looks like Adam does not have any clue upfront when his stuff will be released eventually. It's a sign of poor communication. Also a small detail, in Clinchfield it he start screen you see someone happily calling the engine name SD40-2 This is a sign of lack of knowledge and involvement in the whole process. Similar the statement there were no testers in the QA team with adequate PZB knowledge. Also lack of communication. First of all, it is not that hard and you can at least ask some intelligent questions before you take the role to test this. It also means the the supposed working is not properly documented, testing should always be done with specifications that say how something is supposed to work.

So, i do not have inside information you could have discovered all this by yourself as well. The interpretation is a bit harder and may be risky of course.

 

I can't see the problem with giving suggestions to DTG about how to manage the development. They can just read it, see if anything looks like it can help them, and if so they can try it. If they think that none of it will work for them they can just keep doing what they are doing.

 

I often find myself reading one of your posts, then glancing to the left at your profile picture, and then hearing a voice in my head that says:

"I love it when a plan comes together".

This is one of those occasions - and it always make me chuckle... ;--)

(I think that DTG will probably go for your last option..... and use the next opportunity that comes along as an opportunity to say that they will use the opportunity after that as an opportunity to think about learning some lessons, and then maybe do the "quality circle improvement thingy" - but you never know).

 

Maybe I could have if I was really that interested. When I buy a car, a can of beans, a CD or a route/ loco, I'm not spending time thinking about the internal organization of the company that makes the product. I'm concerned only with the product itself, its quality, value for money, whether any problems are fixed in a timely manner, the standard of customer service etc.. In these forums, I, for one, have both applauded and complained, sometimes loudly, about these aspects of the game. The only times that I would care about internal structure would be if it were a government operation, supported by my taxes. I can't control how my taxes are spent, but, as a consumer, I can choose what to buy. That decision has nothing to do with how many managers, accountants or janitors the company employs, how many meetings they hold etc.. I'm going on a bit here, but let me just say that I have a life outside of TSW2 (sometimes I wonder) and I just want to buy trains from whoever makes them well, and right now that's DTG. I don't care if that company is run by a clowder of cats or a coven of witches. Just give me trains!!

 

In this case you should hear: "I love it when a DLC comes together".

 

All these experts pontificating about something they do not have full knowledge of such as the internal structure and processes currently used.

Well ===> https://dovetailgames.com/vacancies

You have the option to be part of the solution.

 

3200 miles would be rather a long commute to work for me.

 

Everyone is still working remotely. You would have no problem.

 

Not interested, I do no longer work for money and rather like to stay independent. I still think DTG could benefit a lot from some advice if they are interested. It also would benefit me a lot, I love this game and really wish it to be improved. I see DTG struggling with these matters, why not spend a little amount of time in sharing my observations and ideas?

 

Absolutely, no reason not to.

 

I quite agree. I've suggested this before - just one example - beta testers - I'm sure there would be many who would make excellent ones; who play all the time on their favourite routes/locos etc and would give excellent feedback.

The thing is, however, you can lead a horse to water but will it drink? ie will DTG ever agree it's a good idea and say thank you, here's what we'd like you to do ... I suspect not.

 

SO long as what YOU think of as "beta testers" and what DTG wants in it's beta testers are similar...

 

With some routes (like Oakville), it isn't clear that they have managed to get the product out of the alpha testing stage.

 

Interesting thread. But I have to say that DTG's problems are not going to be fixed by these. Clearly, they are now in a money crunch. That would explain why they had to release HHL even when they knew it was bad. Obviously, we don't have the financials because it is not a public company, but I am speculating. Matt could have run the route just once to know that the PZB magnets were not good. They could have moved the date a back a bit to fix these problems. But clearly they didn't and they have lost a lot of credibility with the community. The pandemic has been really bad for most companies and its clearly hurting DTG as well. I hope they can get out of it soon and focus on building good routes like HMA again.

 

They mentioned in a recent stream that platform PIS was created by a passionate employee in their free time, and that someone was currently working on catenary and 3rd rail effects as a pet project in their free time. Such an innovation day could be a great moment to share views on such projects, ans help eacother out on them (and honestly it wouldn't surprise me if DTG already had something like this).

DTG has grown a lot, and is doing impressive things, but they might be suffering some growth pains, and your proposed changes might be a solution that works for them.

I don't know if DTG is in a money crunch, they have been hiring more people recently and have seen increased sales during Covid (like most other games), so I dont think so (and I don't get what you're basing your assumptions on).

In streams they pointed at tight time frames being an issue, and the fact that they have to research what went wrong with QA (did QA not find it, not communicate it or did the devs not see QA feedback where the mentioned options for being the cause), points towards a communication/company structure issue, and not a towards financial one. In a stream it was also mentioned moving releases back wasn't an issue for DTG, but the issues were detected too late for the updates and releases to be rescheduled (as consoles require them to be queued and submitted, for testing by microsoft/sony themselves I believe, a while in advance).


All in all, DTG can learn from this thread what appears to go wrong to the playerbase (though we are obviously just speculating, which we should be careful with), and they might even see some interesting suggestions to consider when restructuring.

 

That is an amazing and quite extraordinary piece of speculation. Unless you work for the company in a management capacity or have inside information, I know of no basis for your post. The last few days have seen a remarkable display of chutzpah in the forums regarding so-called "knowledge" of DTG's organization and internal affairs. A little humility and good manners would not go amiss.

 

Make trains, not war.

 

Sometimes I forgot that I came to TSW to make trains go Choo Choo, Vroom or Bzzzz, and not to make a company structure analysis or 4000 million route suggestions .

 

You'd certainly think so, wouldn't you? That being the case, why don't they try it?

 

Hey now. Everyone was speculating on the thread. so I tried my hands on it as well. But seriously, the way they have treated the community criticisms for the past 2 releases has been less than ideal. First it was SEHS, but they at least tried to fix some stuff but they just straight up said they won't do anything about the Dostos in HHL. And it really does look stupid in HHL. Everytime I stop at the platform and open the door that's all I can think of.

 

This is a very useful observation. Whey Kuju started a long time ago with Railsimulator, there were 6 employees as far as I know. Now I think over 100 people are working there. This growth creates a lot of co-ordination issues and it takes time to learn how to deal with them. You can either add huge loads of management roles, which not necessarily makes the new managers very happy or you can give people responsibilities and autonomy. I have seen both in the companies where I worked and also in some fascinating companies I visited or read about. The choice depends a lot on general cultural aspects in a country and fundamental beliefs of the key players in an organization.

 

Probably this is not very relevant for the point I like to make. There is no absolute guarantee that a better way to organize the company will help. Making products below standard definitely does not.

If you want to make this claim, please give some background why you think so. In my post, I am not speculating and I try to avoid making any assumptions. I only have some ideas that may be helpful. The people at DTG definitely are capable to think about it and use it or not.

In fact, I believe financially DTG is doing rather well. They are investing in the game and not with little money and it even may be that TSW2 is becoming a better cash cow than TS gradually.

See my other post as well, the problems may occur from rapid growth as a company as well. I am not 100% sure, because the issues are not new, but more visible because the communication with the community is improved a lot. We are no longer talking to a wall but to people that actually listen. and sometimes even answer to our concerns and questions.

 

No, I wouldn't think so. I don't presume that others think the way I do

 

When you use words like "clearly" - then you really should have clear evidence to back it up (that said, I am often guilty of using the word "apparently" when I use it in the non-literal sense). There is no money crunch at DTG at this time - they are overflowing with surplus cash, for such a small company.

They (presumably) didn't know that a core function like PZB wasn't working on HHL until it was too late (if at all), prior to release. If you take DTG's word for it, as published as their reaction to it in the online stream, live on the internet, then they only found out about the PZB magnets in that launch stream, which is presumably the first time that some fairly senior people were able to find ten minutes to have a look at the shipping build of one of their major releases.

This is nothing to do with money, or time... because they will fix it. It's just poor project planning and non-existence of QA. They might well have done some testing "without appropriate PZB expertise", but the process DTG has used is demonstrably not contained within a structure that assures quality.

No need to speculate. You can inspect the Company returns submitted to Companies House. This indicates that the train simulation and fishing game business is now turning a massive profit, out of the Chatham-based office.

Agreed.

Hopefully DTG will now hard-wire in a suitable QA process, and not lurch from release to release, um...... "apparently not knowing" what the shipping build looks like until they demonstrate it live on the internet.

Personally, I agree with some of things that Crosstie is saying in this thread - there isn't any evidence that any of us are the people that can/should help DTG understand how they structure their organisation. But viewed from the outside it is clear that something is wrong with the released product, and you can infer that this results from lack of QA.

The alternative reality is one where their QA system is absolutely fine, but where arbitrary decisions are made to release broken content, and then they attempt to cover up their knowledge of the defects in the live launch stream. And I can't imagine anyone wanting to accuse DTG of doing something as dishonest as that, even if the recent TS2012 Birmingham Cross City train was viciously over-driven very strangely on the stream, but sounded wonderful... but when everyone else drove the purchased product normally (as you would expect), the audio broke down making it a deeply unpleasant experience.....

I also agree with Rudolf that it is clear from many of the "Roadmap" streams that there is unclear communication and ownership on projects. Apart from anything else (from my perspective), I find it wholly absurd that this pseudo technical/strategy "Roadmap" document is owned and managed by the marketing/communitying team....

How DTG intend to address their internal problems is for them. They could get a quality consultant in (......for clarity, that is certainly not me), or the new Executive Producer (EP) could hire in the relevant management skills and implement a QA process with the new QA people. But, I suspect that this new EP role is primarily expected to merely be a "go-between" to connect the current production "management" to the Board. And yes - that is speculation on my part - and, I am biased, as this is what I would want from the new EP..... because I would want to retain the fantastic (but mis-directed) talent of the current production team, but have a more reliable comms channel to the Board, so that I could get a quick reliable routine appraisal of exactly What the Facebooking Huawei is going on during the product development cycle.

 

This is what I mean: "as far as I know" and "I think". These are not facts. In fact, this whole thread is pure speculation and therefore basically of no real value. Why didn't you call them up and ask them how many employees they had and have? Or check the public record? Then, perhaps you could have written some useful analysis, though whether that belongs in a forum about trains is open to debate. Speculating about what loco will come with which route is fine, fun and interesting, we all do that. But guessing and trying to analyze the internal structure and financial status of a company you and the other posters seem to know very little about is rather presumptuous in my view. At least you should have put this thread in " Off Topic". Let's talk about trains, railroads and TSW2, Rudolf, at least in this part of the forums.

 

Might this whole Pzb issue just be that Matt and others were demoing the DLC from Dev versions and had alerted the Pzb issue and assumed a fix was made before release - in other words a lack of follow-up or communication between teams until it was too late? In these cases the differentiator is not the error, but the recovery - patience guys!

 

Having watched the stream, and knowing that they didn't just leave the magnets out, but put the wrongs ones in, I would say not

 

This piqued my interest. Is there a place online I can look at the returns? I am just generally interested and have a couple more companies I want to look up. Thanks.

 

Yes there is - companies in the UK submit their annual returns to Companies House.

 

I only found a Dovetail Games Limited that is registered in Scotland and they don't seem to be filing their accounts either. I wonder if they have a different name in the registry.

 

In 2019 , the company reported an annual profit of £646k. In 2020 they reported a profit of £1.995 million. The next report is due around the end of September (for 2020/21).