Direction of simracing development

[Terry Rock]

Who else here loves the current direction of simracing title development?
I'd been advocating for it for some time and it sure is welcomed.
The idea of every year buying a new release based on the same title was just plain wasteful and quite annoying.
You'd put away the DVD or Steam key...never to use it again.
Developers can now concentrate on putting out a good base title and then optimizing it over larger periods of time.
It simply makes sense to do it this way.
They're free to modify car behavior through things like tire dynamics, chassis flex, etc...
The reasonably-priced DLC route just makes sense.
I absolutely like that titles like ACC, Rf2, RRE, etc...have chosen this path.
Do you like this way of doing things?
Thoughts.....

 

[AccAkut]

Honestly I didn't notice any change in direction, and no "every year" releases. To me there was like one big "family" of sims starting from around ~2005 (RFactor, Live For Speed, GTL, GTR2), at some point iRacing joint the scene and ran alongside it, but than it was only like in 2012 that the next gen slowly arrived, without the old gen really disappearing.

 

[Bram Hengeveld]

As an old skooler I obviously miss buying a DVD / CD - Rom but totally understand the new "new". But nothing beats jumping in your car, having to drive to another city because a local store there did have that rare copy of GTR1, GTR2, GTL or Race 07.

On more than one occassion I was as happy as a little kid when I got my hands on "my own copy" and then spend a lot of time reading the .... manual

 

[Jan Larsen]

I read the GPL manual from end to end

 

[Ole Marius Myrvold]

I read the GPL manual from end to end

Hearts of Iron 1 had a massive manual, not just game-related but with loads of WW2 history as well.
The Grand Prix 3 manual was awesome as well!

 

[MJQT]

Only just found this thread now!

IMO it's a better model. Only challenge is that it creates an incentive for developers to put out cruddy initial versions with the promise of improvement over time (which may or may not ever come to the point we'd hope) – whereas the other model incentivized developers to have a complete, ready-to-go, consumer-ready product.

 

[wide2tele]

HATE HATE HATE it! lol

Today's platform sells you betas. You wait years for the game to become acceptable. Once it is, to then get any new features they release another game you have to buy again. It's no different to the past except you don't get a game every year or two, you get a game every several years and spend the majority of your time playing betas rather than finished products.

Downloading games over buying DVD's, don't like that either. Nothing beat the excitement of going to a store to buy the game you've been waiting for and laying eyes on the game box for the very first time.

 

[Leemstradamus]

Great positions laid out. I'm not sure where I'm at. I like the new model, but I am over unfinished products being released. With that said it's nice to see improvements being made over time.

I still have a ton of boxed copies of games lying around, and they are kind of just taking up space.
But I would have loved to have a collector's edition of assetto corsa!

 

[Terry Rock]

I view what some call the unfinished release in a different light.
It gives the developer the ability to get the title into many different user's hands early.
They can then use the feedback and updated information to continuously improve it over time.
In past years, sometimes a developers full game would be released and not be as good as some of today's betas.
They would also use the 'new' replacement release as the fix to that initial game.
You'd then buy that 'new' game at full price all over again with just a few fixes.
They were indeed some studios you could rely on for a proper title but it took quite a bit of time between releases.
Geoff Crammond and the Grand Prix series was a good example of a studio who gave good titles from the start.