When you look back over the last 15 years, what are the standout milestones? There have been so many standout moments that have helped shape our story. Probably the most important decision we made was back in 2015 when we stepped away from being solely reliant on our own proprietary technology and began working in the Unreal 4 engine. That enabled us to move onto the key console platforms and deliver our simulators to a far wider range of gamers. Technically that posed some development challenges, and we weren’t sure that console players would take to our collectible DLC model with the same level of enthusiasm as PC players, but those fears proved unfounded, and that put the business onto a much more stable footing.


Dovetail was conceived to support the Rail Sim brand and it certainly has done that, with hundreds of DLCs made available over the years. What’s the secret to finding success with DLC? The key for us is that we have created a content and publishing pipeline that can develop, test and release a high volume of content simultaneously across multiple platforms. We are very methodical in selecting the content that we develop. Firstly, it needs to be something that we think will appeal to the enthusiast audience, and we use player survey data and community insight to help with that. Then we need to make sure that we can acquire the appropriate licences and gain access to accurate reference materials that enable us to recreate locations and locomotives in as much detail as possible.


Finally, we have a detailed lifecycle management plan for each release, which enables us to keep serving up promotions that keep individual DLC ‘live’ for our players. Sometimes it feels a little like spinning plates. The key is to quickly spot if a plate is slowing down and then give it a few turns! This becomes trickier as the back catalogue grows so vast, but as a company we have never really been about day one sales. We take a long- term view of things.


When Railsimulator.com became Dovetail, the plan was to broaden your focus to include flight sims and fishing. Would you say you have been successful given that trains are still the main focus for the company? When I joined the company in 2012, I knew that it was very important to become known for more than one


June/July 2024 MCV/DEVELOP | 43


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52