SimHQ.com - Motorsports Zone - Editorial: Unification Theory: Part One

You have probably heard the term Unification Theory in connection with the world of physics and how the greatest minds on this planet strive to find a single congruent theory that will combine Newtonian physics with the odd worlds of Quantum physics.

Now, I have absolutely no idea what the sentence above actually means, but it is such a blockbuster way of opening this editorial, that I just could not resist the temptation!

We can however think and talk about a Unification Theory for simmers, in particular the racing variety of the breed.

For some years now we have heard talk of how the community is becoming fragmented by the sheer number of options available to us. If the community is becoming fragmented, how does it manifest itself, and will a unified community ever return?

Back in the old days things were not quite so complicated. Although there is a tendency in humans to look back in time and agreeing that everything was better back then.

The choice of sims was rather limited as you had the Grand Prix series and the offerings from Papyrus in the form of NASCAR Racing and Indy Car Racing. And that was about it for racing sims, wasn't it? The Internet was in its infancy, and if you had a dial-up modem capable of 56 kbps you belonged to the technological elite. Remember the term "Hayes Compatible"? Seeing that term mentioned in connection with a modem that was about the size of a hard-bound novel was almost like owning special access and drawing rights to the National Treasury.

The sim racing community was rather small — even smaller than today — and if you had those special editing skills and were able to skin cars or edit models, you wanted to share the results of your work with all your online friends. This was the spirit that led to "What the modders didn't receive in economical gain they received in appreciation from the community..." The Pits laboring for 10 years on modding various Papyrus titles with very little to show for it in terms of financial gain. This is what led to the racing sim Grand Prix 2 achieving notoriety by providing the most user add-ons ever created. This is what led to SCGT — ISI's first racing sim — becoming a very popular modding platform. This is what led to Grand Prix Legends boasting an impressive number of add-ons, tracks and utilities.

What the modders didn't receive in economical gain they received in appreciation from the community, and the gratification in sharing their work with a larger audience. At the same time, they had to shell out some of their hard-earned cash for a place to store their mods and more importantly, to pay the phone-bills for connecting their servers to the Internet. As mods grew in physical size, the complexity of the mods and the cost of making those mods available for downloading became more and more of an issue. The cost of providing bandwidth is a point that I think is often overlooked. In December 2005, a site like Blackhole Motorsports transferred over 1.3TBs (that's 1300GBs!) of data.

More racing sims came along. Among them, NASCAR Heat and EA's line of Formula 1 sims, culminating with the coveted F1 Challenge '99-'02. All the sims boasted quality mods... en masse. Still, you had a natural segmentation in the sense that there was one, or in exceptional instances, two sims for sim racers with specific interests: The NASCAR fans tended to gravitate towards Papyrus' latest NASCAR title or the Hasbro / MGI's NASCAR Heat. The Formula 1 pilots had their Grand Prix or F1 200x series. The sports cars aficionados raced SCGT, and the nostalgic racers ran Grand Prix Legends.

With a growing number of high quality add-ons, it becomes more and more difficult to agree with your friends which sim to use, which mod to run, which track to race on, etc. Sometimes I have difficulty deciding which sim to load up since there are so many to choose. It's a true "wealth of riches".

Last year the sim racer was spoiled with so many new racing sims. The fun started with the release late in 2004 in Europe, of Richard Burns Rally. 2005 saw the release of Live for Speed S2, GTR, GTL, rFactor, and netKar Pro almost made it to release status in 2005 as well. Interestingly, LFS, rFactor and nK Pro are all purchased online.

Until very recently, almost all add-ons and mods were free to download, the terrific Noonan Converter for converting tracks between different Papyrus sims being the one exception.

The "Exclusivity" Trend Arrives

We are now seeing a trend develop which I think will become more distinct in the time ahead. I will call that trend "exclusivity" because the mods coming out of this trend are defined by their exclusivity. You will either need to enlist with the community that made the mod and enter a relationship not very different to what in marketing terms is known as "brand loyalty", where the brand entices you to use their product by offering added value. Or you will be charged for a certain mod.

Brand Loyalty

First, lets discuss the brand loyalty exclusivity. I do not mean that by "enlisting", you have to register with the mod site in order to download the mod. We have already been doing that for some time now, and the more sites I register to, the harder it becomes to maintain the password and log-on identity for each site. No, I'm talking about parts of the community taking this option further down the road into professionalism. The basic mechanism employed here is the same that is used when a corporation entices you to buy their product instead of their competitor's product by attempting to create "special" benefits. For example, think "Frequent Flyer Miles" where there are special discounts on certain related or non-related products, collecting stamps or coupons which you can then use as trade-in for a particular product.

In some sim racing communities you get special benefits if you enlist for a specific league. In this case it doesn't cost you anything and you get a free front-end for a well known rally simulation, which works nicely offline, but if you want to go online against other players, it will only be functional when you register as an online player within that specific community. You can only race with other league members.

I can understand and sympathize with the reasoning behind this. Surely, this is one way to attract players in a fragmented community. If you've been in the community for some time, you will have noticed that there are many leagues. But having many leagues also creates problems concerning attracting players. It is also very reasonable that the people who work creatively and diligently get something in return for their efforts, apart from the everlasting appreciation from the users. It really is a classical win-win situation. Join my league, they say, and get tools, web, site and forum access. Be a part of this community and enjoy all these benefits. Finally, it also benefits the player in the sense that you will be spared situations sometimes encountered in "pick up" races; i.e. people driving you off-course intentionally or just because they haven't yet learned about driving online properly. I'll grant you that this particular problem is not really an issue in online rallying as you are the only car — or should be — on the stage of the course.

"One organization that has been around for some time is FILSCA..." You can also say that this is a way of trying to stop the fragmentation between leagues. Players will in theory join the biggest and best leagues — the leagues that offer the best special benefits.

Several examples of attempts to organize the sim racers into online leagues either have been in existence for years, or are emerging. One organization that has been around for some time is FILSCA (Fedération Internationale des Ligues de Simulateurs Courses Automobile, International Association of Autoracing Simulation Leagues).

The object of this editorial is not to introduce, or explain the details about how FILSCA works, but rather to take a broad, sweeping look at the sim racing community. For this purpose we only need to know at this point in time that FILSCA describes itself as a club. Founded by its member leagues and run by its member leagues for its member drivers. It is a non-profit club with the goal of unifying sim racing. Look for more on FILSCA here at SimHQ in the future.

Charging

The other form of "exclusivity" is now emerging and that is the scheme involving "charging for content" as the business world would probably call it. A modder will offer textures, tracks, cars or a complete racing series for a popular racing sim (e.g. rFactor) and this is clearly the first steps taken by the racing sim community on the road towards what has been in exsistence for years in the case of flight sims: Add-on payware.

Once again it is completely reasonable for a modder to expect more than the occasional "thank you" for their work. After all, making any mod takes a lot of time and often requires investments in software and hardware. So a charge for a given mod would not in itself present a problem as long as the potential customers find that price reasonable and an attractive package.

Consider this: You have bought one track and one car. I have bought another track and another car. Neither of us plan on buying the track and car that the other owns. So we will have to race the default cars on the default tracks, or find a set that both of us do own. The software might be smart enough to substitute non-owned cars with generic ones, but there is just no way it can substitute a non-owned track with a generic one. The potential for further fragmentation and "exclusivity" is certainly a consideration.

I think that in the future we are going to see quite a few payware options turning up for racing sims.

Will the long term successful ones offer add-ons that are equal in quality, scope and fidelity to products like the flight sim genre's Shockwave Productions or JustFlight?

Will individual modders be able to go it alone or will they have to join mod groups and establish what is in effect a "company" in order to be able to offer a comprehensive product that will actually sell more than a handful of copies?

Is the sim racing community big enough to cover this business approach?

Compared to flight sims — which is the "big one" in terms of people playing them — the racing sim community is small. Flight sims are sold in small numbers compared to shooters and purely arcade games. So sim drivers are a minority within a minority.

But some modders might be very content with selling "just a handful of copies" of their mod. If modding is primarily a hobby, why should you not charge an amount for the the time you spend modding? And how about this idea — If I am looking for a specific mod but unable to make the mod myself, I could pay a modder to make the mod for me. Bespoke Mods™, Mods Bespoke™ (I reserve all rights to those names henceforth!).

Licensing and authorization to use the "names and likenesses" belonging to organizations and persons is a factor not to be underestimated, especially when considering a payware add-on. If a Grand Prix Legends mod for rFactor was ever to come about, how would you handle using names and logos for the constructors and cars? Names of the drivers? Papyrus never did succeed in acquiring a license to use the names and likenesses of Cooper, Honda and Jackie Stewart.

Conclusion

"The racing sim community seems to be at one or several major turning points..." The subjects and questions raised here beg to be explored in further detail. But this time it should be the players, the modders and the clubs that do the talking. For example FILSCA. Hopefully this feature sets the stage, and further features and interviews will add more detail and texture to the questions. Perhaps, some questions might even be answered.

The racing sim community seems to be at one or several major turning points. Driving professionalism is coming towards us and commercialism is in sight. It will bring new opportunities, new demands as well as new issues. Those are already being hotly debated in some forums. What would you be enthusiastic about to pay for in an add-on? And how much would you pay? Is the sim racing community big enough to establish itself in the realm of payware, which has proven to be successful in the flight sim genre?

Like it or not, you got to move with the times and I think this probably means that there will never be a Grand Unification in the world of racing sims, unless someone codes and successfully markets a truly revolutionary sim that in one grand sweep will render all previous sims obsolete over night.

That seems doubtful.

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