This one’s on me for missing this little tidbit, but thankfully PRC.net reader Darren O. has sent in a Reader Submission to close out the weekend regarded a bit of information on the highly anticipated 2017 title by Reiza Studios. According to an interview conducted by Race Department earlier this year, the South American sim racing developer team plans to expand on their work with the isiMotor engine for the title planned after the recently-released Automobilista has run its course, contrary to the popular belief that the 2017 title will thrust Reiza into the spotlight alongside Project CARS and Assetto Corsa with an massive overhaul to the game engine’s underlying framework.
Hey James. I thought you might be interested in this article from Race Department a few months ago. It’s the second part of a lengthy interview with Reiza Studios, where Renato has mentioned that Reiza 2017 – the working title for their next game, will not be of rFactor 2 origins, but a continuation of the current engine. You have to wonder how many times people will continue to buy rFactor over and over again.
So to me, this means that if Reiza’s sim racing products are designed to not encourage any kind of modding scene, Reiza themselves are going to introduce downloadable content packs for a game that’s fundamentally now twelve years old?
Wow. Reiza 2017 will be just another version of rFactor – again, but without mod support – and then on top of that they’d like to charge for premium DLC packs on a platform that’s twelve years old? I don’t know about you, but Stock Car Extreme was enough for me. The graphics are tired, there’s a bunch of infighting between testers and the developers themselves, plus the rehashed content… It’s all a bit much.
I think it’s pretty hilarious, actually. The sim racing community has done a complete 180 degree turn from where we used to be at.
I’ve mentioned this several times throughout articles on here, but I’ve been around the sim racing scene for far too long. And while I wasn’t an active member contributing to discussions when rFactor was the new kid on the block, I do recall how the community surrounding isiMotor titles operated on a daily basis. In short, Payware mods were a no-no, and tons of modding teams were releasing massive packages of highly realistic cars practically every other month. This isn’t a knock at Reiza, but they’ve got one historic Formula One car from the 1970’s, whereas rFactor was blessed with the entire 1979 Formula One season – complete with all variations of every car that competed – a year or two after the game launched, and you could download it for free. Yeah, a few teams did like we do now and had a Paypal button somewhere on their page, but there was never a real push to make any of this content a premium purchase. It was sort of frowned upon, and the only people who tried in the first place were the Russian kids trying to make a quick buck.
An entire decade later, Reiza sells rFactor without modding capabilities and their own set of content for $40. Now, I’m not gonna lie, I’ve felt that their games are worth the price of admission. Objectively though, whether we’re talking about Stock Car Extreme or Automobilista, both titles could be considered stand-alone payware mods. And again, I don’t mind paying for them if they’re good – I’m no longer fifteen and need to beg mommy for her credit card number. But to display how far backwards we’ve gone, in 2005, the guys over at iDT Simulations released a stand-alone Champcar game for free. They basically built a North American version of Stock Car Extreme or Automobilista, and just sort of uploaded it one day. That was how different the sim racing community used to be.
And this content list is truly impressive.
So I think your feelings of discouragement over a company being praised for re-selling rFactor again and again can be objectively validated. It’s okay to feel that way. Ten years ago, modding teams were literally giving away an American version of Stock Car Extreme for free. Now? Reiza removes modding support, plans for post-release DLC, and charges $40 for the package. It feels a bit like the people involved in producing content for sim racing titles aren’t really in it for the love of the game anymore.