Managing Director Marcel Offermans Leaves Studio 397

gianlucaP said:

You mean racesimcentral? Didn't know it, but seems very well done. So thanks for the tip.

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Racesimcentral before it collapsed under its own weight was very similar to racedepartment. In its day I believe it was the single biggest racing sim hub/community.

It had its share of drama and community **** fighting, and it was a great shame when it broke, and then broke again, and then again, and then disappeared for a number of years, and then came back a few times in different formats.

There was talk about archiving all the info that was stored on the forums but I don't know what came of it.

pitkin said:

They surely read any article on PC2 before it was published and that wasn't fair on other sim makers and the readership who were expecting unbiased honesty.

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The funny part is that they just... didn't. SMS was based in Europe, I'm over in N/A. I was writing stuff off work hours in the evenings, which meant all the Euros were asleep. Not sure how they would be proofreading things when the entire staff was asleep.

This was iRacing's belief however and I would have loved for them to follow through with suing SMS over a blog I ran in my spare time. iRacing believed I was under instruction from SMS to smear other game devs while being kind to SMS products. This was not true at all.

We would have gladly turned over any/all communications showcasing that no, this really was just me running a blog in my spare time. iRacing would have been humiliated, having drummed up a fantasy scenario as to why people don't like their game, only to be BTFO and potentially counter-sued.

With the Scott Dixon thing a few years back it demonstrates they will stop at nothing to squash bad press and now it's just a funny anecdote that what's supposed to be the biggest player in the game is instead massively insecure.

pCars 2 was a genuine improvement over the first game and you can see I'm not the only one who feels that way based on how sim racers have responded to Automobilista 2, which is fundamentally the same game with the exact same warts. It has not deterred people from loving and enjoying AMS 2. It is a genuine shame that pCars 2 didn't get a second season of patches and DLC.

pCars 1 was a mess. pCars 3 didn't need to be made. Crossroads deserves a YouTube documentary. pCars 2 is pretty much a must-buy for people getting into sim racing.

Isi is the worst that could happen to rf2. They almost killed the game once. Without s397 rf2 would be dead. Fact. And even then s397 had a mountain of things to fix, some unfixable. And isi deserved it too. Rf2 could have been an improvement over rf1. Rf1 was widely popular. Rf2 could have been very big. Yet with rf2 isi made all mistakes possible and then some. However making mistakes at launch is one thing. Refusing to fix mistakes or even admit you were wrong is even worse.

Rf2 could have rebound under isi. It wasn't all lost. But they prefered to kill rf2 the way it was instead of fixing the issues that were constantly pointed out to them. Another developer was required to step in and take over to make those blatantly obvious changes everybody except the core fanboys wanted. And once those changes were made the fanboys defended them regardless. Whatever rf2 has is the best it seems. Whatever it had, don't talk about it.

I don't see how in any way isi would be good for rf2. It wasn't good the last time around. Isi bit the hand the that fed them. They ignored 95% of their customer base and were left with the 5% who were happy with anything isi gave them. While telling others to go away if they didn't like it. Now there are people like Durge driven with their gaslighting telling us it wasn't isi's fault. It wasn't even the game that was bad. Rf2 was fine. "Stupid players" killed rf2 by not liking it. It is so funny it is sad. People killed rf2 by not pouring money into something they didn't like. It is sad because rf2 really could have been great. But not under isi and not under s397 because of what isi left tot hem.

Back in the day I hoped s397 would kill rf2 and make rf3 instead. I still think that would have been the best way. I think even now it would be the best way forward. A hard reset to make rf3 into what rf2 could have been.

Austin Ogonoski said:

The funny part is that they just... didn't. SMS was based in Europe, I'm over in N/A. I was writing stuff off work hours in the evenings, which meant all the Euros were asleep. Not sure how they would be proofreading things when the entire staff was asleep.

This was iRacing's belief however and I would have loved for them to follow through with suing SMS over a blog I ran in my spare time. iRacing believed I was under instruction from SMS to smear other game devs while being kind to SMS products. This was not true at all.

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I hope you can see why we'd think that would happen though. I remember reading articles in a (non related) magazine about the pressure companies would put on them to give positive reviews, down to legal action and withdrawing advertising. They also explained how those very same companies where quite happy to quote out of context or use a sentence that was meant sarcastically as a positive in their advertising. As a result, I'm quite cynical when it comes to the written word which is why I liked your blog at the time.

I know the comments sections here and other places always become a cesspit, but perhaps if we had more honesty in articles about games failings on sites such as RD, we wouldn't have to keep saying it ourselves and winding each other up.

pitkin said:

I hope you can see why we'd think that would happen though. I remember reading articles in a (non related) magazine about the pressure companies would put on them to give positive reviews, down to legal action and withdrawing advertising. They also explained how those very same companies where quite happy to quote out of context or use a sentence that was meant sarcastically as a positive in their advertising. As a result, I'm quite cynical when it comes to the written word which is why I liked your blog at the time.

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Yes yes yes 100%. Things are quite messy because of this.

It's happening right now with Motorsport Games. There's a fellow who runs a NASCAR gaming channel and got to meet Dmitry Kozko at a NASCAR race last season. It has resulted in an insane amount of backlash against him because everyone assumes he's secretly on the payroll for MSGM and is paid to put out NASCAR 21 Ignition videos, even though nobody is interested in them.

In reality he's just a guy trying to put out as much content as possible and make money from YouTube ad revenue.

Austin Ogonoski said:

In reality he's just a guy trying to put out as much content as possible and make money from YouTube ad revenue.

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What to say...
He's not the only one doing that imho.

Ghoults said:

Isi is the worst that could happen to rf2. They almost killed the game once. Without s397 rf2 would be dead. Fact. And even then s397 had a mountain of things to fix, some unfixable. And isi deserved it too. Rf2 could have been an improvement over rf1. Rf1 was widely popular. Rf2 could have been very big. Yet with rf2 isi made all mistakes possible and then some. However making mistakes at launch is one thing. Refusing to fix mistakes or even admit you were wrong is even worse.

Rf2 could have rebound under isi. It wasn't all lost. But they prefered to kill rf2 the way it was instead of fixing the issues that were constantly pointed out to them. Another developer was required to step in and take over to make those blatantly obvious changes everybody except the core fanboys wanted. And once those changes were made the fanboys defended them regardless. Whatever rf2 has is the best it seems. Whatever it had, don't talk about it.

I don't see how in any way isi would be good for rf2. It wasn't good the last time around. Isi bit the hand the that fed them. They ignored 95% of their customer base and were left with the 5% who were happy with anything isi gave them. While telling others to go away if they didn't like it. Now there are people like Durge driven with their gaslighting telling us it wasn't isi's fault. It wasn't even the game that was bad. Rf2 was fine. "Stupid players" killed rf2 by not liking it. It is so funny it is sad. People killed rf2 by not pouring money into something they didn't like. It is sad because rf2 really could have been great. But not under isi and not under s397 because of what isi left tot hem.

Back in the day I hoped s397 would kill rf2 and make rf3 instead. I still think that would have been the best way. I think even now it would be the best way forward. A hard reset to make rf3 into what rf2 could have been.

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ISI not good for rF2? I don't know how you come to that black&white conclusion after they basicly layed the foundation for everything and a big part of the stuff that we still use right now. They established alof of stuff that is kind of genre standard by now. Their mistake was to try to work with a business strategy that worked with a zero depth approach with a too complex product while S397 and especialy MSG seems to be a bit more generously when it comes to investments, wich are a hot topic right now. Two other important mistakes from my POV were the lisence system coupled with joining Steam much too late, when most other products - even AMS1 - were allready available on that platform. That cost them dearly.

Another thing that kind of killed rF2 was the constant obsession in sim racing with graphics. You can have a solid physics engine and very good FFB, great AI and a huge amount of options to tweak your game, but it won't help you if you don't have shiny graphics. I will damit that there needs to be a certain standard and rF2 had issues especialy at the beginning of it's life cycle but there comes a point when the graphics do their job. iRacing, Raceroom and rF2 are great examples for this.

And on the topic of backwards compatibility I think that you make it a bit too easy if you think that rF3 would have been the best way. rF as a franchize was (and still is to some extend) branded as the ugly duckling and I am not sure if simply selling rF3 would have solved that issue. I also question that it is a mistake to keep older mods playable. I think it extended rF2's lifetime tremendously. We are in the 11th year now wich as a user is simply great. But I can also see how this might look a bit different for people who aren't that much into rF2. It's a wierd sim and I actually like that. The moment I saw that beta footage of the -not-Matra being on razors edge at historic Spa I was sold. And that combo is still great, after 11 years.

tr1v1um said:

ISI not good for rF2? I don't know how you come to that black&white conclusion after they basicly layed the foundation for everything and a big part of the stuff that we still use right now.

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The way I see it there are two views why rf2 is what it is. The rf2 fanboys think that the game is fine but failed because people are just too stupid to appreciate the incredible perfection that has landed upon our existence in the form of rf2. What I think is that isi was too incompetent and made a bad product that was far less than the sum of its parts. Some of those parts being really really good. Worst thing that could happen to modern day rf2 is be put back into the hands of those people who killed it already once.

it is not dying, gonna be under huge change around mid july, maybe even interface and gameplay can be change too,it will gonna be under growing procces for sure.
We may like the results or maybe not, time will tell but definetely it is not going anyware, at least not this year.

Richard Wilks said:

I am not invested in any "fanboy war", but it's funny that the AMS2 fanboys are out in force proclaiming RF2 as a failure, and yet, more people play RF2 than they play AMS2...

Comparison - Steam Charts

An ongoing analysis of Steam's player numbers, seeing what's been played the most.

steamcharts.com

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Ams2 Physics and FFB is a joke when its compared to RF2, thats a very simple fact, that are most of fankids does not know anything about it yet.

Ghoults said:

The way I see it there are two views why rf2 is what it is. The rf2 fanboys think that the game is fine but failed because people are just too stupid to appreciate the incredible perfection that has landed upon our existence in the form of rf2. What I think is that isi was too incompetent and made a bad product that was far less than the sum of its parts. Some of those parts being really really good. Worst thing that could happen to modern day rf2 is be put back into the hands of those people who killed it already once.

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ISI wrote gMotor 2.5 , an engine which is the best rf2 asset. S397 didn’t improve it much. They improved graphics part at a significant performance cost and that’s OK. Tire model was improved a bit too, but other than that no significant changes to the engine. Of course S397 mostly introduced a lot of new content but that’s another thing.

Haven't been on this site in so long forgot my password, damn you Farming simulator.
Sad to hear Marcel is leaving but wish him happiness and good vibes. I remember racing him at Bathurst quite awhile back man he was fast!

trichens said:

People may not like rF2 and that's their choice but I'm guessing that anyone leaving a firm would be pretty diappointed to get a card from co-workers and customers whinging about the products their company created.

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Unfortunately always been part of sims.
rF2 for whatever reason just stuck in people craws, I mean like 10 ten years, behave ! They are the ones won't let it go so took it to a new level, like nothing I had seen period. It made rFactor vs F1Challenge wars look like kids party.
They should try to imagine in their place, their family, their bread and butter, their pride in what they accomplish. I can't even imagine what ISI thought about it after decade + of developer and community support.

We lost, not ISI, not S397, we lost