First of all, glad to hear I'm your goat in Trackmania :D Very good video overall, personally I'm not interested in simcade and sim racing for the exact reasons you mentioned. Trackmania has always been an exception, the creativity is limitless in terms of content creation and even after playing the game for 15+ years, you can learn something new every single day and keep improving further and further. Sadly, Trackmania's potential is just not being fully used for multiple reasons which people deep inside of the topic could write an entire thesis on. Right now, Trackmania is in a really weird state due to the official league being dropped, hopefully it will be picked up by a big tournament organizer and finally gets the chance to show what it's capable off.
@@SticksAandstonesBozo Tbh, I don't play trackmania, but they're all games at the end of the day. If it makes you feel grown up, good for you, but no need to project on others. (an iracing fan)
@@SticksAandstonesBozo Grow up. Get a racing car. Stop playing kids games. I love sim racer but it’s a silly game. We are talking about actual real live racing.
racing esports have also a big marketing problem. 90% of events I only learn about them after the broadcast, because there was zero marketing outside of their core audience, thus not inviting new viewers.
Glad to see Trackmania being put as a good example of racing and esports working together. Having spent almost half of my life playing this game and being involved (not as a player) in the Grand League, its really nice to see the simracing community noticing the effort that was put into last year's system and competition
@@don_chanLIVEyeah that's why he said eSports. eSports and sports are entirely different things, eSports isn't considered a sport so eSports is just eSports. People sitting down for hours to perfect something in a game is eSports, not sports.
I love to watch real racing. F1, NASCAR, IMSA, DTM, WEC, Formula E, ... I watch them all. I love to drive in sim racing. I basically live in my rig. I couldn't care less about watching other people play the same game I could play. Yes, seeing a Max Verstappen drive the same cars and tracks I drive is nice.. For about 5 minutes. I can't even tell you why, I simply don't care.
100% exactly the same, no idea why but unless I have a good friend racing in a league race that’s being shown on TH-cam then I literally can’t bring myself to watch and I too can’t properly explain it 🤷♂️
i feel that. its a problem with streaming itself. for me, when i watch someone stream a game, i watch for all of about 20 minutes and by then the itch to play games myself takes over.
Interesting. This makes sense to be, but I’m the opposite. My interest in real life racing is just not very high. I like F1 a lot but this last season has been extremely boring. I stopped watching. Indy is much more interesting, but I rarely watch unless it’s an important race or a track I know well (like Long Beach). When it comes to oval I am immediately turned off by the redneck fans and racist drivers, I have watched way more oval races form Matt Malone and other than I have watched real life NASCAR. I’m an American too fwiw 🤷♂️ To me sim racing is more relatable and feels like rawer talent in a weird way. Watching IRL Ferrari challenger for example, it becomes pretty clear that the drivers are the guys who can afford it and have the time, it’s not exactly a deep pool of talent. I’d rather watch people like DJ than a bunch of retired dentists.
@@Hexadeci yea whole other thing when it comes to real racing, obviously can get properly hurt and cause a large amount of monetary damage. It’s hot, it’s loud, it smells, cars vibrating and banging around and it’s hard work doing laps in real life so can’t really compare the skills vs sitting in a static room, hand motor skills are the same for sure but there’s a whole lot more going on in a real car
Well tbh cheating is inherent to motorsports as a whole, trying to gain any advantage even if it means slightly breaking the rules. Ferrari 2018-2019 engine for example. While they were cheating, you can't say that thw fights with merc and Red Bull weren't entertaining 😂. In sim racing it's worse though. Not a mechanical advantage brought by creativity, but a bought advantage that breaks the gamr.
Well the F1 eSports championship is done on a controlled LAN network so n one is able to cheat at the Pro level. And with F1 ppl can tell easily if someone is cheating. Ppl have watched ppls TT vids and pointed out ppl using Grip Hacks or if no one comes out of nowhere that all of a sudden puts in TT times as fast as the Pro players. When ppl are caught cheating they are banned from everything. They are put on a black list. Ppl have tried to create other accounts and still get caught.
I mean... It goes on in _every_ form of sport. Even real racing. You just only find out when they get caught. But the list of actual cheats is always rising. Same for the list of cars and drivers that skirt the rules so badly, that the body asks them to stop or stop bringing that car. If you don't think it's going on in every sport, you're not being honest with yourself.
Having talked to you on Discord about this before, I already knew I agreed with your opinion on it, but yeah this is a great breakdown of everything wrong with the Racing Esports industry right now. The issue is that the racing in sim is too similar to in real life, but that is also a unique benefit we have that almost no other sport does. You can watch the Daytona 500 and then go race it yourself, or even pick up ACC and start watching real life GT3 racing because of it. You get to experience these sports at home in a way FIFA or 2K players never can. It's not going to have a 'Esports' scene like a shooter or an RTS, but it has something amazing all on its own.
The simple answer is, money or the lack of it in this case. While the player base keeps increasing like crazy compared to couple years ago, it is more of them enjoying it than watching it. And racing isn't nearly as spectacular to watch than other types of games, so it has less "attraction" from viewers. While in many other types of games, esports stars are also among top watched streamers/content creators, in racing it is the guys who do things differently and are having fun which is something that is lacking in esports especially nowadays (go check early SC (pre brood war) vods, and look at the ridiculous getups people had xD) (Comment left before watching the video through.)
simracing is never gonna be mainstream because all the companies who produce the gear are dogshit and operate like dropshippers. for the price of $2500, you may or may not get your gear within the month with no tracking information! as a bonus they may or may not come with missing parts! if they do come with missing parts, enjoy another month of chasing a company's ass for it! exciting! all while they advertise it as 3-7 days "ready to ship" and "available" products. fanatec, ASR, next level racing to name a few literally the only people who have good experience are the ones who order through amazon or microcenter
What also doesn't help Racing eSports is that there is no Arcade Racer besides Trackmania that has any kind of big Competetive scene right now. I can remember that NFS Titles like Underground and Most Wanted had a competetice scene that even made it all the way to the World Cyber Games back in the mid 2000s.
As a person who was working on Trackmania Esports, it was really nice to hear a shoutout to it cause especially on English-speaking TH-cam it hardly ever gets talked about. While yes, nadeo is not planning to organize it themselves, there are still many events going on either for solo or teams, but will have to see how the game's competitive side will evolve during 2024.
Sim racing esports really shine when it's about big events and big personalities. There are a lot of times when some of the more popular streamers draw more viewership than the broadcast streams of their races, and I think events like Mooncar and the Firecracker 400 are two examples of doing it right. Travis' personality and the craziness of his events are compelling, and the format of the Firecracker 400 creates a place where every average Joe who enters has a chance to face off against real life drivers, streamers, and esports pros for cash prizes once a year. The connection and lasting impact on the viewers and participants, and whether they leave wanting more, is what truly matters.
If you need personalities then you're attracting fake fans. Real racers watch x real life racing series because they love that racing series, not because of "personalities". It's not a dating contest or a sitcom.
@@Spinelli__i dont watch alot of racing but ive heard the term bad boy, play boy, camera ready, ladys man more times in old racing videos than anywhere else in my life haha Sometimes it do be like a sitcom or datinf show lol. Some of the biggest racing rivalries of all time had the camera ready, girl crazy guy vs the more collected, sorta nerdy, guy lol
saw this randomly on my home page, this is one of the best videos in overall simracing i've watched, well executed points and smooth transitions through topics👍
Completely agree with the point that the product is too similar with real life. I think it's the same reason why sports games in general like FIFA haven't become major esports games. In addition to them usually being pretty terrible games to play seriously. I really don't see a reason to watch say the iracing Daytona 24h when I know I will soon watch the same thing happen for real. I think there's a fairly obvious solution to differentiate sim racing from real life though and it kind of amazes me why it doesn't happen. I'm talking about doing races and car/track combos that are too dangerous or impractical irl. For example why don't we have a huge endurance race at the nordschleife and put the prototypes on it? That's immidiately something you will never see in real motorsports. I would be a lot more inclined to check that out than the Daytona 24h race just to see the chaos and just generally a highly demanding race with minimal room for error. We could race the f-ing Isle of man TT course with modern F1 cars but we don't do it for some reason and instead race the same cookie cutter tracks that we're already bored of watching irl.
As a regular PSGl watcher the most viewers are not on the brodcast itself, they are instead on the drivers stream watching. This leads to now exactly not knowing the exact viewer numbers. But for example the most famous one jarno oppmer used to have 10-15k viewers when he streamd f1 23 psgl races some months ago. Altough with the lack of updates and esports kind of falling of in f1 this has lead to his viewer count dropping when streaming psgl races. (What im saying is, most of people watch specific drivers stream and therefor the main brodcast dosent get many viewers) But i get what you mean and i 100 percent agree on all you say
The F1 broadcast cameras are very bad in the game. It's just so much easier to understand what's happening when watching onboards. But you can't even watch onboards on the main feed because of the stupid overrevving crap.
even real life motorsport is not about active watching. people show up to roam the track and paddock, party, BBQ. the race is just one short part of a weekend party.
Pretty much what I was expecting to be said, I was a bit surprised about the amount of viewers being higher than I was expecting. I would've liked to see mention about the increase of player base in most of the racing titles, and if there's one type of sim racing esports that could pick up if someone put in the effort to create professional event with good casters, and that is drifting. And preferably not on real roads/tracks, but something that is clearly made for a game but still somewhat grounded in reality.
You almost lost me at the start of the video, but your foreshadowing about all of the top Esports games doing something real life cant made me watch until the end, and Im glad I did. I absolutely adore Trackmania and its competitive scene and I am so relieved to see someone in the sim racing space finally share a similar sentiment about what things racing Esports need to change to fit with the current interests. I still love sim racing and will always be down to watch sim/simcade competitions, but I think more people need to realize that the racing genres best chance at a breakthrough Esports title is going to have to be an arcade racer.
i wish when nascar went to iracing during covid that they did races on tracks you wouldnt normally see nascar at. probably not feasible due to contracts and licensing, but it wouldve been really cool to watch a cup race at a track like Okayama for example. a lot of the oval cars are also a lot of fun to race on road courses, i wish more nascar fans could accept that
Esports lacks danger. No one wants to see a driver get hurt, but the fact that something back COULD happen makes it very tense when a driver is hooning it. Think Verstappen quali lap at Saudi 2021, even before the crash, the build up during the lap was mental.
A good option imo would be to have the IRL series run a winter/summer break championship (depending on which dates the actual series is stretched between) with the IRL teams entering the competition within a simracing team with at least one of their drivers, their teamates would be simracers. And when I mean at least one I think about each sim team having a mandatory IRL driver in one of their cars, whether it is the same for the whole series or several ones alternating or whatever. So we would have partnerships between IRL and gaming teams lasting the championship or several to their likings. That imo would provide spectators something to watch during the off-season with the drivers they love or hate battling with some more or less unknown simracers, helping simracing keep a foot on the front stage, and without having the similarity with actual car racing as an obstacle to gain viewership.
Havent got through this video yet but.. I'm going to be honest, I think 2020 when real drivers were racing these sims REALLY hurt the sim racing esport level. Even in iRacing, drivers sort of treated it like a bit of a joke in a sense, and that was during the height when FOX had sim races on live TV.
All of Justin's points are spot-on, good video. What the COVID years showed is that many people are willing to watch racing eSports if it's the only show available, and that informs me as to where their niche should be - it's something to fill the gap when the real product isn't there. Most real motorsport only runs on weekends, so I used to enjoy watching the F1 eSport highlight reels as a bit of mid-week filler. Indycar has a 5-month winter shutdown (which I find crazy btw) so this would be the ideal time for a virtual series to be running and keep those interested enough engaged with the sport. (I am aware of the Motorsport Games mess regarding that particular series though...)
I'm a sim racer, have been since 2008. I have an oval irating that goes up and down from 3k to 4.5k. I do not give a damn about watching the coke series. Like I couldn't care less about it. I'd rather join a league that has a broadcast, so my friends and family can watch. Those same friends and family would never watch the coke series either.
That is the best fitting game (I assume that is the game he was hinting at the start) for esports, as it is far enough from real life but still grounded somewhat on reality, oh and let's not forget Rocket League.
@@RetroGenetic I've had arguments about this opinion before but I've always maintained that rocket league is not a racing game and instead is a sports game
@@neblolthecarnerd I do not disagree with that, but it falls to same category due to with what you are competing with thus I added it at the end after remembering it and it falls in to the category of "This can't be done in real life." (and don't try to get cute about that statement)
I feel like an underrated problem with esports is that there is just so much practice time that realistically drivers have the track memorized to every little detail. Hurts the product because there is very very little variance. It feels like there is some sort of disconnect between raw talent/skill and pure grinding.
Ha, from early in this, TM came to mind. Watched a bunch of it over the years. Great to see the video close out with it. There are soo many advantages to not having collisions (primarily negates most lag issues) and being far more spectacular than "sim" style games. Just a shame there are still bugs bringing more RNG than I'd like.
You made a fascinating observation about the eSport sim racing world. It seems as it evolves closer and closer to its real life counterpart, it subsequently inherits all the issues that real auto sports have been dealing with for decades such as viewership. Perhaps video games are most entertaining when they allows us to do something that isn't possible in the real world?
I think gran Turismo has something hidden up it’s sleeves coming though. They’re saying it alot on socials, and they really want this movie to mean something. Plus the competition in Gran Turismo is getting truly insane at the top with some absolute aliens which is fun to watch compared to real racing because it’s less about fighting the danger with your car, and more about fighting the danger of a tiny mistake because grids are so tight packed with constant battling and decision making… I might be a little biased as I was able to qualify for a event in California this year and meat Kaz himself (it even timed up to him buying my birthday dinner😆) and I really want another chance at an insanely amazing experience like Porsches Rennsport reunion 7. But seriously Gran Turismo is doing everything to try to make it seem grand and fun, and worth your time in that you might get the early eye on some future talented racers
I love watching real racing, but the one thing it can not provide is why i watch every round of the iRacing Porsche super cup: exactly the same car, no pay drivers and extremely close racing, a great format with sprint and reverse grit feature, a close chamipoinship and the most important thing: great TH-cam coverage that is free. Like you said: at 90% of the broadcast something is happening. But for endurance racing, i agree that real life is 1000x better.
17:15 small update on trackmania - the world tour is back for 2024, but it has dropped the 2v2 format (back to singles). hopefully you are excited to see granady play again :)
I Always loved Trackmania since the Nations/United before forever, i hope the trackmanina competitions continue beacuse they are always fun a lot to watch
Absolute amazing video! Its kinda sad that only "a few" people watch sim racing but we all know its a niche game (kinda) typ and i love to watch eNascar Coca Cola for example and i watch videos from racers on youtube but i am totally on your point! Also, your Gengar was a little intimidating😂
Personally, I think the key to sim racing success is to have the world champs go straight to real racing. The eNASCAR Coke Champ could get x amount of races in the Truck series. Then all it takes is one champ to really kick ass in the real world and everyone will be watching to see who gets the next opportunity.
On top of the very obvious and very massive i can literally just watch racing in real life (which is the main thing why i only really watch clips and highlights of eSports) i would say that pro level play just isn't different enough from regular play to be appealing to most players. If you take rocket league for example there is a massive obvious difference in skill between top players and average players whereas in simracing its much harder to see other than the times being a solid bit slower. I feel like the only racing game that can survive as an esport because of this is trackmania. However i feel like sim racing eSports will still have a part to play as a way of finding good junior drivers in the future, just less so as a spectator thing.
Speaking of Trackmania, I also think it would be fun if a Speed Racer game rebooted or if TM made a similar type of game with the same insane tracks and car control but adding the "Car-Fu" combat elements like the movie. I think that would be seriously entertaining to watch.
TL:DR Less trying to be the real thing, more doong things the real thing cant do. I think the biggest thing is to provide a product you can't get irl. GT does a bit of that with their tracks the f1 games should make a push to have EVERY single f1 track EVER in their games. I wanna race old hockenheim in the woods etc. Nascar iracing should host a multiclass oval race alongside their "normal" series.
Great video as always! What do you think of the idea of featuring NASCAR iRacing events broadcasted as a part of each race weekend? Especially with the fewer practice sessions almost each weekend nowadays, I think it could benefit iRacing and NASCAR as an extra televised event
Yes that would be amazing for Enascar and definitely the best case scenario. I believe this is what Coke series was aiming for a certain point as well. It makes sense to add more racing content to the weekend but maybe the tv networks don’t see the benefit
The main reason for the official PSGL broadcast getting ~1000 views is that a lot of drivesrs livestream their POV (and in the official series they are obv. prohbited from doing that). If you add those up I think it could be around 10k viewers. Not a lot, but a lot better.
Did you take into account the fact that the Coke series is being streamed on 3 different channels simultaneously? The NASCAR Coca Cola iRacing series broadcasts are streamed on iRacings TH-cam Channel, NASCAR's TH-cam Channel, as well as by iRacing on Twitch. So for total viewers you need to add all three together because I doubt there are a lot of people watching the same exact race 3 times across all these platforms.
@@DJYeeJay I took a quick glance at their website but didn't find anything on their methodology. If they are measuring live stream viewers then they could be accurate. It appears to me may be taking all three and averaging them which would be incorrect. If they are using a traditional TV metric like "day of +7" then the iRacing channel gets around 15-20k on its own with NASCAR's channel kicking in another 8k or so. I don't know what Twitch would contribute as I don't spend much time on the platform. I think there was an eNASCAR TH-cam channel as well but I don't think it ever gained traction. If memory serves me the most views any coke series race got there was around 2000 with most in triple digits.
@@AustinOgonoski I guess that depends on your definition of "not very good" is. Remember we are talking about a niche, within a niche, within a niche here. That'd be hard core simulation enthusiasts, racing enthusiasts of the oval variety, and finally NASCAR enthusiasts. So right off the head the TAM (Total Addressable Market) is a subset of males born or raised in N. America. That said if that number is just live viewers on iRacing's channel then that is quite good. Still not terrible if it is live viewers over all channels. If it's single channel (SC) DayOf+3 then that would be poor. If all channels (AC) DayOf+3 then that is disappointing. And if it SC or AC DayOf+7 or more then it's very bad. Let's also not skip over the fact a lot of this is an own goal by iRacing for not sticking the live broadcast in a single place then let everyone else upload it in a few days or so. I could go on a rant about iRacing have always been their own worst enemy when it comes to PR and self promotion but I'll save that for another thread, or blog post, or manifesto or something.
Racing esports have to lean into the ability to have physically impossible camera angles. There's 0 excuse that all of these broadcasts are worse at showing what's actually happening on track. F1 game for example, every camera option available is stupidly zoomed in on each car. You can watch one car take one line, but you can't watch a car overtake because the other car is 70% offscreen the entire battle. Iracing has somehow taken forever to get better about this. Constantly using God awful on car cams that show nothing AND get used during the worst times. The production is so horrible on racing broadcasts when it really shouldn't be considering we aren't physically constrained by ANYTHING they are irl. Every racing game has these like "Artificially Badass" camera angles that try to make what you're doing look cool, instead of showing the racing.
How are these broadcasts done, with multiple angles? Presumably there's not 30 copies of iRacing running into a video switcher each on a different angle. So someone must be hotkeying multiple angles on maybe one or two copies of iRacing, each fed into a mixer?
I’ve always thought this because 2020 nascar being broadcasted on Fox got me into iracing and now I’m a diehard when watching. Since iracing has close relationships with nascar and imsa, do you ever see a scenario where part of a tv deal is playing replays of those either late night on let’s say fs1 and maybe even some live. I get we won’t see chase elliot out there. But casual fans could could become aware of a Casey Kirwan and therefore grow “fans” and not so much just diehard iracers
I do follow a little bit of Esports Racing, but its really really hard to actually focus on it when real life racing offfers already so many races during the year to watch them all. One thing about viewership that actually I think it needs to be address its the POV streams numbers. I rather watch a POV than the broadcast
6:01 I think this sums it up well and I was trying to put my finger on this myself for a while since I love F1 and am seriously geeky with it, but then the esports series just doesn't interest me or keep my attention when I do watch it. The initial viewing experience just doesn't quite have the hype level it needs to keep your interested or invested in drivers, and that's the second half of it too, that if you don't start caring about who is racing then why watch. I would only really care about Jarno, but then his TH-cam content and Iracing content is so much more interesting for me so I just go and watch that instead.
I’ve spent quite a few years sim racing now. I’ve never really been drawn into iRacing esports. The official broadcasts I’ve seen are not good. And the stakes don’t matter to viewers. I couldn’t care less about Team redline or Coanda winning 10k. Say what you want about the mess that is F1 Esports their broadcasts and races are usually exciting to watch. Even Raceroom Esports when the prize was a DTM Trophy ride, those were real stakes, that anyone in sim racing could get excited about. iRacing just doesn’t have that. Not to mention that the sim esports boom of 2020 was never sustainable.
you're right i like the rare racing esports events that are things you can't really do in real life - touge battles, reversed tracks, and bizarre car and track combinations that the drivers don't get to do thousands of hours of practice on! I would watch F3 cars racing on the LA canyons map in AC, or 60s sports cars on a long since abandoned track, or Honda Civics on an F1 track, just as a few examples!
If I ever have a change to organize a racing sim tournament, I'd like to enable damage system to make the race more interesting. I've been seeing racing esports but all I found was these races doesn't have damage system activated, making it a bit boring for me. The goal is by adding drama such as mechanical damages, forcing the player to choose between to stay in pit longer to fix it or ignore the damage and continue racing with high risk of more severe damage that will end their race day. Making these racing esports more entertaining.
I feel like part of the issue is that the Sims / Simcade Titles try to be the same thing as the current real life thing. I mean, why watch GT3 in Gran Turismo if there are plenty of real life GT3 events around? Why watch NASCAR on iRacing when NASCAR has multiple Series in addition to other Series like ARCA offering a similar experience? I don´t know if my theory would hold up, but why not use the benefit of being a Video game? Why not have a NASCAR Race on the Nordschleife or make a Tournament with Street races on the Shutoko Expressway in Asseto Corsa, do a Multi-Class F1 Race on the Daytona Road course with each class being a specific year from the 60´s, 70´s and 80´s, you know, do something with those games that would, or in the case of the 2nd example should, never happen as a big event in real life.
GT World puts the races on TH-cam for free as well. From all over the world too. You have America, Asia, Europe. Plenty of real life GT racing to go around.
A big problem is sponsorships. Real racing sells car parts and other stuff through sponsor decals and paint schemes. In sim racing, all you can sell customers is a wheel and pedals. The money isn't there until more custom parts and accessories are available that affect your actual car in game. If we could switch parts like real cars can, but still keep everyone on the same playing field, then there might be something there for money in the future. You'd need a sim where you can modify your cars and then send in the setup to get verified 24hrs before a big race.
This is a fantastic video. I couldn't have put it better myself. I have booked nearly £250k in sim racing esports sponsorship and events, but the dollars are drying up. There is one other thing that I would throw into the conversation. There is a huge reluctance from participants to engage in anything that is unconventional or designed for the viewer. The best production I have run in my 4 years of running sim racing esports events was the wackiest, but the feedback from the drivers was that they wouldn't participate in something like that again as it was dumb. So my question to participants is do you want an audience to race for in 18 months from now? if the answer is yes then consider the audience. Trying to replicate the real world 1 for 1 is simply boring. Great video once again.
great vid Justin, one thing I would add is the question every person internally asks themselves when watching sports/esports and thats “why should i care + whats in it for me?” I cannot speak of the other esports mentioned but imo nascar/coke series is missing a real opportunity. Right now someone wins the coke series and its like woo but who cares. I think raising the stakes would make viewership for both nascar and enascar better.. winner gets an arca ride sponsored by iracing w heavy subsidies from Nascar. The new console game should help bring in more eyes which in turn should help iracing keep growing. Allowing these people to root for someone on the virtual track and then root for them irl would be crazy cool. The 750k to do it from Nascar is honestly nothing to them and could create some great storylines.
What I actually like about f1 esports is that even though its based on real life it has that extra factor of having equal cars, which helps showcase skill a lot more than in real f1 + strategies become much tighter with a lap difference having huge consequences on race outcome. It's a lot more tense in that aspect and makes it quite unique compared to F1 in real life.
I think one of the issues is a lot of the time companies get you interested in watching something, rather than competitors. I think if there was a more active arms race between simracing equipment companies and sponsored competitors being featured more on the companies social media, that would probably at least get people in, where they can then latch onto someone as their favorite competitor. Ultimately I feel like simracing e-sports has a lot in common with how RC racing is portrayed, kinda niche, pretty expensive, like a compromised version of something bigger.
Totally agree with your points. Trackmania and RocketLeague provide unique competitions that can’t be experienced anywhere else. Sim racing is too close to real-life racing to make it unique, unless there is a differentiator like a career mode or myTeam.
The other day I saw a video from Austin Ogonoski from a few years back basically discussing this topic, it’s sad how there are people who criticize/invalidate him for talking about it but when someone else (like you) talks about it, people agree. I’m glad you aren’t getting invalidated like what happened to Austin but I do wonder if these people agreeing with you once disagreed with Austin.
I agree with a lot of Austins opinions but he has a way of presenting something in a way that challenges people to come up with ways to disagree with him
There's some amazing points here, and a lot of kudos needs to be given to Yee for the details. There's a massive disparity between live and virtual racing. With live racing, though the exposure is higher, they also focus a lot on stories, rivalries and legends being born. We don't get that in Esports sadly, people turn in for a show, however only live has the currently exposure to fill that.
I've been sim racing since 1994; I take it very seriously. I try to use my free time wisely: getting into the rig for practice / racing, taking my car to a track day, watching actual racing and researching historical motorsport. I have nothing against esport racing: personally, I have no vested interest in watching it. Its a waste of time since I don't know the teams / drivers nor do I care to. Esports racing mimics actual racing - without - any consequences.
Moritz Lohner shared similar thoughts, iirc he was in favor of "gamifying" simracing esports by doing formats that real life can't. ESL R1's finalist mode is cool for LAN events but I'm not sold on 12 car GT3 sprint races through the entire online season. eNASCAR Coke having two rounds of sprint races is a step towards gamifying and it looks interesting.
For me the biggest thing that makes racing esports less compellig to watch is that it's almost universally far more fun to participate than watch. Racing has the unique factor of having the ability to have fun and accomplish something even when you are objectively losing. As long as you have somebody you can fight for position, you can race, even if the goal is to just not be last. Compare that to most other game genres where losing pretty much always feels like losing. In racing, you can lose, often very badly, and still feel like you won. Even in dead last you can have great racing if the moment strikes. It's just a format that encourages participation far more than observation given all the real-world barriers to entry are absent
The problem with racing esports is that people don't want to watch someone playing a game for something that they can watch in real life. With the exception of FIFA all of the most popular esports are FPS or fantasy games. Edit: wrote this before you said the same exact thing. Haha
Copying NASCAR format is a bad idea - give me something better (no FCY, less commercials). Also - for the time I watched NASCAR official iRacing series somehow I did not relate to the drivers. I have 0 interest in track mania or similar concepts
3:10 sums it up for me. Something like Rocket League, Fortnight, Trackmania and so on work because that's the only place you can experience it. There isn't a real world event where people shoot each other whilst building towers... There isn't a major "football in cars" league where the cars fly around and juggle the ball mid-air.... These games are the pinnacle of that specific thing so you are watching the best in the world compete. Even something like FIFA - what you're actually doing to play the game is nothing like actually playing football - you don't physically kick the ball or run around! In motorsports games, you are doing exactly what a real racing driver does except you're doing it at a much lower level... I enjoy watching people who play motorsports games and provide entertainment... Jimmy, Super-GT, Jardier, Neilogical, Failrace and so on. They're fun to watch as they provide something I don't get whilst watching actual motorsport but if you remove the entertainment and fun, I'm just left watching someone who never had the talent or drive to make it in motorsports doing the next best thing.
that is why i dont buy a motion system i dont play in leagues anymore ...just zero NORMS for a community that had its peek ..and used it mostly to sell hardware ..shout out to whoever tries or tried to organize sim racing !
I wonder if a live docuseries style esports/live racing league would play out. More so story line oriented and the drivers race in a small live racing series during the season as well like MX5, radical etc. you would need larger and proper sponsors, but I could see more engagement there as the drivers race a Mazda in iRacing and compete with them on track too. I'm sure it would take too much money and coordinating too
Glad to see others talking about this. In my personal opinion, sim racing eSports was aggressively pushed for two reasons: 1. Fleecing venture capitalists and brands out of $$$. 2. Keeping up with the Joneses. Once I saw iRacing mirror the same model as MLS (Major League Soccer), and the very negative things written about MLS online, it was easy to connect the dots. The other half, is that a lot of devs just aren't very creative in this industry and shamelessly copy each other. Once one sim started an eSports championship that was marketed as such, everyone else just sorta followed suit to keep up appearances because "if they do X, we gotta do X too", without stopping to think if it made business sense or people were even watching it in the first place. Which, they weren't. And now everyone just looks really goofy having done it due to the near-nonexistent interest. Millions upon millions spent on Livestreams that struggle to get the viewership of a local high school football game. It's kind of absurd really. What's interesting is that sim racing DOES have incredible viral viewership; our current batch of overlords just haven't found it yet because a lot of them don't play their own products or mingle in the community. But I found it. It's a secret hiding in plain sight.
Wreckfest is another one of those games that's so much fun to watch, especially when several of the drivers are on audio. The issue I have is these games do not have the fidelity when it comes to physics and handling. Once they can get rFactor2's or AC2's physics engine that reward a driver's skills and have the deep strategical aspects of true racing, I'll gladly get that game and also watch! I agree that sim racing needs to provide something we can't ordinarily do in real life. I'm looking forward to Wreckreation.
One thing that I think is going against racing esports, at least from the performer aspect, is that there's a bigger learning curve. A while back, there was an attempt to have a military gaming league race for veterans and currently-serving military members. It was a poopshow, and the few of us who had a fair amount of iRacing experience had a terrible time because people were just driving crazy and wrecking on purpose. One thing that also turns some people away is how the protest system seems to be very inconsistent.
Sim Drifting with ESDA (esports drifting association) and VDC (virtual drift championship) provide the constant action for sure unfortunately drifting as a whole doesn't pull crazy viewership considering the realitivly low viewership of professional real drifting like Formula Drift and Drift masters. 150k-1m viewers irl to 2k-20k viewers of sim I think drifting has the best ratio of viewers in comparison to other forms of motorsports and esports.
I was broadcasting sim racing back in 2006-2007 and these viewing numbers would have disappointed me! I suppose now there is more competition; but on the other hand more acceptance of the format. I did have some broadcasting rules which I feel still haven't full caught on that even today I believe are still very important to any sim broadcaster. Rule 1: Faster is bad, racing is closer with slower vehicles on smaller tracks, it's better to deliver an "exciting" race, than it is to deliver a "pro" race, if you want spectators. Rule 2: Sim Cameras are bad, they follow a car - its more important to follow a battle (pair of cars etc). We achieved this at first by hand by filming entire races from each camera's perspective and then editing the feeds together - but later using custom "camera director" software in realtime. We lacked the tech for realtime replays at the time, but that should be achievable nowadays. Rule 3: Comentary - we never denied it was a simulation, but we never mentioned sim specific things - the "illusion" of reality is important for viewer immersion.
As someone who runs a pro team in iRacing and builds setups for the pro side, I only watch races when someone on my team is in the races (rtp, contender), otherwise I just don't care. The racing isn't good anymore, you can't pass, you finish basically where you qualify.
I think it's a good thing. Everything is made with eSports in mind and singleplayer or other alternatives get forgotten or not polished as much. Everything that eSports touches gets ruined.
Another big problem for racing e-sports is the fragmented nature of motorsports and especially the online racing community. Most professional sports (and e-sports) have one dominate league that pulls in the lions share of the viewers and top talents. These big leagues are then better able to promote and deliver because they have more resources, Motorsports has always struggled with fragmented fan bases but all the companies competing in the same markets (both for players and viewers) creates a problem. In real world racing most people can only travel so far to see a race so smaller leagues can create a niche without threatening the larger series. But even something as diverse in real life as GT3 cars race because significantly more fragmented in online series. Just like in real life there are a plethora of tracks and series to watch but on top of that you have to pick the game you want to watch it played in.
Honestly even the racers dont watch most of their games series just due to marketing being abysmal. Its sometimes hard to find the series as a viewer even if you are looking for them let alone discover them by chance. Plus official f1 game needs a solid sim mode with Fia structure so you can link it to the real sport, without it you dont stand a chance to make it global.
Well, I am 16, I can't afford iracing or a dedicated sim rig, but I watch almost every single video about iracing or simracing, otherwise, great video, as always dude!
All you need is a console, a desk and an inexpensive thrustmaster or logitech wheel to get you started. If you have a will to do something, you’ll find a way to accomplish your goals. Just depends on you and if you’re willing to work for it.
I wish there was a game like trackmania but with more realistic sim style physics, cars like formula e or the dallara ir-01 or vision GT cars racing around loops and high banked turns maybe even jumps would be awesome.
I think another issue is the accessibility of racing games there's so many arcade racing games out there that why watch some one race virtually when you can just do it yourself and you don't have to be super knowledgeable about how to setup a car for most of them as long as you know gas and brakes your going to be able to find yourself running good even on some upper difficulties So why watch virtual racing when you can watch real racing or just do ir yourself
Coming from someone who watches many, more "traditional" esports like VALORANT, Counter-Strike and League of Legends; I feel like F1 esports would benefit from having some legacy esports organisations being involved, such as Fnatic, Team Liquid, TSM etc. Make it so each team runs 1 player each, that makes room for ten additional orgs to take part, and perhaps forcing they IRL teams to invest in their esports divisions. This change would also allow the teams to spend more money and effort developing the drivers since they wouldn't have to spread it across multiple people. It would also allow F1 esports to do something that I think is quite important, distinguish themselves from the real sport. Having new teams, bringing new ideas and making all teams develop unique strategies. Adding the new orgs would also provide new marketing for the esport by introducing the viewers of other games to the F1 esports scene.
I tend to rewatch vods from races I've driven, you know - vanity and useful tidbits and such, along with the races where my teammates are participating. Other than that, it is indeed a struggle to just sit down and watch a race. Commentators have a ways to go, some are making an effort, but a lot tend to just end up on pointless rants, chatting with viewers in favor of watching the deltas to find interesting battles to comment on, or recovery stories to narrate. But hey, for the most part simracing commentators are in their infancy compared to the regime developed over decades in TV broadcasting - and they still just suck a tiny bit less. :)
Man imagine if iRacing or other sims added not real tracks (kinda like Forza or GT, but wilder). Like imagine if we could race Porsche cup cars around something as crazy as rainbow road. F1 cars can drive upside down? Sure let's have them do a loop or a corkscrew and see how well experienced drivers can adapt their skills to suit ridiculous lines. Especially when you mix realistic and fake designs. Like a wacky loop de loop into a tightening snail like on the Shanghai GP circuit or a tight Ascari Chicane complex. That would be so sick. May be cheaper to develop too since you don't have to worry about licensing or getting a laser truck out there to scan.
Yeah I try to watch it sometimes and support dj and kneebon and Gavin lemons but that's about all I have time for lol. I don't really care if people are pushing the boundaries or cheating cause they even do it in real life so that's nothing new
Esports for racing games is failing because racing games themselves are failing. They keep underdelivering in terms of content, visuals and game modes, they're behind the curve in terms of online, there's no golden standard for what one would expect from a modern racer, the most popular titles currently are years and years old, and the newest entries in the ongoing franchises are somehow worse than entries released 20 years ago
I am a simracer (AC, ACC) and I overall agree with you. Here are my thoughts: 1) Sim racing by definition is a lesser version of real racing, so as long as it tries to compete on the same level with real racing it will fail. 2) Only if sim racing differentiates itself from real racing it can get some popularity. Of course one should find a format that is exciting to watch and creates followers. Race on non-existing tracks the drivers have never seen before, special challenges not possible in real life, etc. In the end one can keep the physics of real cars but add things that would be not feasible in real life. It would still be a way for young drivers to showcase their talent, but at the same time provide a distinctive entertainment value. 3) There is another issue: although the player base is ok, sim racing is not a mainstream kind of videogame, as it requires expensive peripherals and more importantly a steep learning curve. This means that no matter the effort it is hard to create the "critical mass' to make these things profitable. In any case, there are youtubers who have hundreds of thousands of follower and can make a living from streaming sim racing, so there is a niche for that.
IRacing broadcasts and esports is a dying art. People want entertainment, not professionalism. There’s a reason that mooncar and bottom split are so popular. It’s about racing entertainment. Idkplayer puts on professionalish streams but they are more entertainment based. Racing esports try so hard to be realistic to real life. At a time when racing viewership is at record lows. This coming from an iRacing broadcaster
IMO part of the problem is, that e-sport is even mocking real racing with their TV-camera footage while I only watch real racing, if they show significant time onboard-action instead. You just can't see if someone has skills or not by watching TV-cams, but as a sim-racer it's kind of educational to me watching onboards from skilled drivers. Problem in sim-racing is, that onboards are usually very reduced in quality for performance-reasons, so not showing the 'real' onboards like in real-racing. That's why e-sports seems to lure more people watching it when popular TH-camrs are streaming and one reason is you see what they are actually doing, usually both for real and in the game. I also don't think that races should last 24 hours, which were invented to challenge the reliability of cars in the first, second and third place. Big part of the reason why soccer or F1 is still popular is, it's about 90 min. long similar to movies, which might be already too much for the attention-capabilities of people today.
First of all, glad to hear I'm your goat in Trackmania :D
Very good video overall, personally I'm not interested in simcade and sim racing for the exact reasons you mentioned. Trackmania has always been an exception, the creativity is limitless in terms of content creation and even after playing the game for 15+ years, you can learn something new every single day and keep improving further and further.
Sadly, Trackmania's potential is just not being fully used for multiple reasons which people deep inside of the topic could write an entire thesis on.
Right now, Trackmania is in a really weird state due to the official league being dropped, hopefully it will be picked up by a big tournament organizer and finally gets the chance to show what it's capable off.
Grow up. Get a sim rig. Stop playing kids games. I love trackmania but it’s a silly game. We are talking about actual 1:1 simulators.
Grow up. Get a sim rig. Stop playing kids games. I love trackmania but it’s a silly game. We are talking about actual 1:1 simulators.
@@SticksAandstonesBozo Tbh, I don't play trackmania, but they're all games at the end of the day. If it makes you feel grown up, good for you, but no need to project on others. (an iracing fan)
@@SticksAandstonesBozo Well done copypasta, thanks!
@@SticksAandstonesBozo Grow up. Get a racing car. Stop playing kids games. I love sim racer but it’s a silly game. We are talking about actual real live racing.
racing esports have also a big marketing problem. 90% of events I only learn about them after the broadcast, because there was zero marketing outside of their core audience, thus not inviting new viewers.
Glad to see Trackmania being put as a good example of racing and esports working together. Having spent almost half of my life playing this game and being involved (not as a player) in the Grand League, its really nice to see the simracing community noticing the effort that was put into last year's system and competition
video games are not a sport btw
@@don_chanLIVEneither are darts, bowling, pool et al.
@@don_chanLIVEyeah that's why he said eSports. eSports and sports are entirely different things, eSports isn't considered a sport so eSports is just eSports. People sitting down for hours to perfect something in a game is eSports, not sports.
I love to watch real racing. F1, NASCAR, IMSA, DTM, WEC, Formula E, ... I watch them all.
I love to drive in sim racing. I basically live in my rig.
I couldn't care less about watching other people play the same game I could play. Yes, seeing a Max Verstappen drive the same cars and tracks I drive is nice.. For about 5 minutes. I can't even tell you why, I simply don't care.
100% exactly the same, no idea why but unless I have a good friend racing in a league race that’s being shown on TH-cam then I literally can’t bring myself to watch and I too can’t properly explain it 🤷♂️
i feel that. its a problem with streaming itself. for me, when i watch someone stream a game, i watch for all of about 20 minutes and by then the itch to play games myself takes over.
Interesting. This makes sense to be, but I’m the opposite. My interest in real life racing is just not very high. I like F1 a lot but this last season has been extremely boring. I stopped watching. Indy is much more interesting, but I rarely watch unless it’s an important race or a track I know well (like Long Beach). When it comes to oval I am immediately turned off by the redneck fans and racist drivers, I have watched way more oval races form Matt Malone and other than I have watched real life NASCAR. I’m an American too fwiw 🤷♂️
To me sim racing is more relatable and feels like rawer talent in a weird way. Watching IRL Ferrari challenger for example, it becomes pretty clear that the drivers are the guys who can afford it and have the time, it’s not exactly a deep pool of talent. I’d rather watch people like DJ than a bunch of retired dentists.
@@Hexadeci yea whole other thing when it comes to real racing, obviously can get properly hurt and cause a large amount of monetary damage. It’s hot, it’s loud, it smells, cars vibrating and banging around and it’s hard work doing laps in real life so can’t really compare the skills vs sitting in a static room, hand motor skills are the same for sure but there’s a whole lot more going on in a real car
@@Hexadeci Stay away from "gentleman driver" series like Ferrari Challenge and Super Trofeo and you'll find the talent.
Online racing has been full of cheating, and watching cheaters is not entertaining.
Not Gran Turismo which is why it’s selected.
Well tbh cheating is inherent to motorsports as a whole, trying to gain any advantage even if it means slightly breaking the rules. Ferrari 2018-2019 engine for example. While they were cheating, you can't say that thw fights with merc and Red Bull weren't entertaining 😂.
In sim racing it's worse though. Not a mechanical advantage brought by creativity, but a bought advantage that breaks the gamr.
If watching cheaters isnt entertaining than we shouldnt be watching any motorsports ever
Well the F1 eSports championship is done on a controlled LAN network so n one is able to cheat at the Pro level. And with F1 ppl can tell easily if someone is cheating. Ppl have watched ppls TT vids and pointed out ppl using Grip Hacks or if no one comes out of nowhere that all of a sudden puts in TT times as fast as the Pro players.
When ppl are caught cheating they are banned from everything. They are put on a black list. Ppl have tried to create other accounts and still get caught.
I mean...
It goes on in _every_ form of sport. Even real racing. You just only find out when they get caught. But the list of actual cheats is always rising. Same for the list of cars and drivers that skirt the rules so badly, that the body asks them to stop or stop bringing that car.
If you don't think it's going on in every sport, you're not being honest with yourself.
Having talked to you on Discord about this before, I already knew I agreed with your opinion on it, but yeah this is a great breakdown of everything wrong with the Racing Esports industry right now.
The issue is that the racing in sim is too similar to in real life, but that is also a unique benefit we have that almost no other sport does. You can watch the Daytona 500 and then go race it yourself, or even pick up ACC and start watching real life GT3 racing because of it. You get to experience these sports at home in a way FIFA or 2K players never can. It's not going to have a 'Esports' scene like a shooter or an RTS, but it has something amazing all on its own.
The simple answer is, money or the lack of it in this case. While the player base keeps increasing like crazy compared to couple years ago, it is more of them enjoying it than watching it. And racing isn't nearly as spectacular to watch than other types of games, so it has less "attraction" from viewers. While in many other types of games, esports stars are also among top watched streamers/content creators, in racing it is the guys who do things differently and are having fun which is something that is lacking in esports especially nowadays (go check early SC (pre brood war) vods, and look at the ridiculous getups people had xD) (Comment left before watching the video through.)
simracing is never gonna be mainstream because all the companies who produce the gear are dogshit and operate like dropshippers. for the price of $2500, you may or may not get your gear within the month with no tracking information! as a bonus they may or may not come with missing parts! if they do come with missing parts, enjoy another month of chasing a company's ass for it! exciting!
all while they advertise it as 3-7 days "ready to ship" and "available" products. fanatec, ASR, next level racing to name a few
literally the only people who have good experience are the ones who order through amazon or microcenter
What also doesn't help Racing eSports is that there is no Arcade Racer besides Trackmania that has any kind of big Competetive scene right now.
I can remember that NFS Titles like Underground and Most Wanted had a competetice scene that even made it all the way to the World Cyber Games back in the mid 2000s.
There are a lot of formats arcade racing can do that real life can’t that could be very entertaining
I'd love to see a competitive mario kart eSports league but given how Nintendo treats smash....
Nah both are extremely memorable
As a person who was working on Trackmania Esports, it was really nice to hear a shoutout to it cause especially on English-speaking TH-cam it hardly ever gets talked about.
While yes, nadeo is not planning to organize it themselves, there are still many events going on either for solo or teams, but will have to see how the game's competitive side will evolve during 2024.
Funny enough it was British TH-cam that brought me to that franchise. I have every game lol
Sim racing esports really shine when it's about big events and big personalities. There are a lot of times when some of the more popular streamers draw more viewership than the broadcast streams of their races, and I think events like Mooncar and the Firecracker 400 are two examples of doing it right. Travis' personality and the craziness of his events are compelling, and the format of the Firecracker 400 creates a place where every average Joe who enters has a chance to face off against real life drivers, streamers, and esports pros for cash prizes once a year. The connection and lasting impact on the viewers and participants, and whether they leave wanting more, is what truly matters.
If you need personalities then you're attracting fake fans. Real racers watch x real life racing series because they love that racing series, not because of "personalities". It's not a dating contest or a sitcom.
@@Spinelli__i dont watch alot of racing but ive heard the term bad boy, play boy, camera ready, ladys man more times in old racing videos than anywhere else in my life haha
Sometimes it do be like a sitcom or datinf show lol. Some of the biggest racing rivalries of all time had the camera ready, girl crazy guy vs the more collected, sorta nerdy, guy lol
@@JustMamba Absolutely. Racing, like any sport, or anything with a group of people, is bound to have different personalities.
saw this randomly on my home page, this is one of the best videos in overall simracing i've watched, well executed points and smooth transitions through topics👍
Completely agree with the point that the product is too similar with real life. I think it's the same reason why sports games in general like FIFA haven't become major esports games. In addition to them usually being pretty terrible games to play seriously. I really don't see a reason to watch say the iracing Daytona 24h when I know I will soon watch the same thing happen for real.
I think there's a fairly obvious solution to differentiate sim racing from real life though and it kind of amazes me why it doesn't happen. I'm talking about doing races and car/track combos that are too dangerous or impractical irl. For example why don't we have a huge endurance race at the nordschleife and put the prototypes on it? That's immidiately something you will never see in real motorsports. I would be a lot more inclined to check that out than the Daytona 24h race just to see the chaos and just generally a highly demanding race with minimal room for error. We could race the f-ing Isle of man TT course with modern F1 cars but we don't do it for some reason and instead race the same cookie cutter tracks that we're already bored of watching irl.
Isle of man is helli hard to complete a lap without crashing in a single seater. I’ve mucked that in rFactor 2.
As a regular PSGl watcher the most viewers are not on the brodcast itself, they are instead on the drivers stream watching. This leads to now exactly not knowing the exact viewer numbers. But for example the most famous one jarno oppmer used to have 10-15k viewers when he streamd f1 23 psgl races some months ago. Altough with the lack of updates and esports kind of falling of in f1 this has lead to his viewer count dropping when streaming psgl races. (What im saying is, most of people watch specific drivers stream and therefor the main brodcast dosent get many viewers) But i get what you mean and i 100 percent agree on all you say
Makes complete sense thanks!
The F1 broadcast cameras are very bad in the game. It's just so much easier to understand what's happening when watching onboards. But you can't even watch onboards on the main feed because of the stupid overrevving crap.
even real life motorsport is not about active watching. people show up to roam the track and paddock, party, BBQ. the race is just one short part of a weekend party.
Party starts Thursday and ends on Monday 🤙
i was one of the few people who watched the first season of ESL R1 and the youtube broadcasts would be lucky to reach 30 viewers
Pretty much what I was expecting to be said, I was a bit surprised about the amount of viewers being higher than I was expecting. I would've liked to see mention about the increase of player base in most of the racing titles, and if there's one type of sim racing esports that could pick up if someone put in the effort to create professional event with good casters, and that is drifting. And preferably not on real roads/tracks, but something that is clearly made for a game but still somewhat grounded in reality.
You almost lost me at the start of the video, but your foreshadowing about all of the top Esports games doing something real life cant made me watch until the end, and Im glad I did. I absolutely adore Trackmania and its competitive scene and I am so relieved to see someone in the sim racing space finally share a similar sentiment about what things racing Esports need to change to fit with the current interests. I still love sim racing and will always be down to watch sim/simcade competitions, but I think more people need to realize that the racing genres best chance at a breakthrough Esports title is going to have to be an arcade racer.
i wish when nascar went to iracing during covid that they did races on tracks you wouldnt normally see nascar at. probably not feasible due to contracts and licensing, but it wouldve been really cool to watch a cup race at a track like Okayama for example. a lot of the oval cars are also a lot of fun to race on road courses, i wish more nascar fans could accept that
They did race* at Suzuka back in the day
Esports lacks danger. No one wants to see a driver get hurt, but the fact that something back COULD happen makes it very tense when a driver is hooning it. Think Verstappen quali lap at Saudi 2021, even before the crash, the build up during the lap was mental.
A good option imo would be to have the IRL series run a winter/summer break championship (depending on which dates the actual series is stretched between) with the IRL teams entering the competition within a simracing team with at least one of their drivers, their teamates would be simracers.
And when I mean at least one I think about each sim team having a mandatory IRL driver in one of their cars, whether it is the same for the whole series or several ones alternating or whatever. So we would have partnerships between IRL and gaming teams lasting the championship or several to their likings.
That imo would provide spectators something to watch during the off-season with the drivers they love or hate battling with some more or less unknown simracers, helping simracing keep a foot on the front stage, and without having the similarity with actual car racing as an obstacle to gain viewership.
Yh but getting the drivers on board...
Havent got through this video yet but.. I'm going to be honest, I think 2020 when real drivers were racing these sims REALLY hurt the sim racing esport level.
Even in iRacing, drivers sort of treated it like a bit of a joke in a sense, and that was during the height when FOX had sim races on live TV.
You know I probably agree with that
All of Justin's points are spot-on, good video.
What the COVID years showed is that many people are willing to watch racing eSports if it's the only show available, and that informs me as to where their niche should be - it's something to fill the gap when the real product isn't there. Most real motorsport only runs on weekends, so I used to enjoy watching the F1 eSport highlight reels as a bit of mid-week filler. Indycar has a 5-month winter shutdown (which I find crazy btw) so this would be the ideal time for a virtual series to be running and keep those interested enough engaged with the sport. (I am aware of the Motorsport Games mess regarding that particular series though...)
I'm a sim racer, have been since 2008. I have an oval irating that goes up and down from 3k to 4.5k. I do not give a damn about watching the coke series. Like I couldn't care less about it. I'd rather join a league that has a broadcast, so my friends and family can watch. Those same friends and family would never watch the coke series either.
Cheating. I saved you all 18 minutes.
Fuck
Trackmania also has Cup of the Day.
TrackMania looks cool and I should check it out. Thanks for bringing it up.
Those are some interesting statistics. I also never knew about the trackmania esports
That is the best fitting game (I assume that is the game he was hinting at the start) for esports, as it is far enough from real life but still grounded somewhat on reality, oh and let's not forget Rocket League.
@@RetroGenetic I've had arguments about this opinion before but I've always maintained that rocket league is not a racing game and instead is a sports game
@@neblolthecarnerd I do not disagree with that, but it falls to same category due to with what you are competing with thus I added it at the end after remembering it and it falls in to the category of "This can't be done in real life." (and don't try to get cute about that statement)
I feel like an underrated problem with esports is that there is just so much practice time that realistically drivers have the track memorized to every little detail. Hurts the product because there is very very little variance.
It feels like there is some sort of disconnect between raw talent/skill and pure grinding.
Ha, from early in this, TM came to mind. Watched a bunch of it over the years. Great to see the video close out with it.
There are soo many advantages to not having collisions (primarily negates most lag issues) and being far more spectacular than "sim" style games. Just a shame there are still bugs bringing more RNG than I'd like.
You made a fascinating observation about the eSport sim racing world. It seems as it evolves closer and closer to its real life counterpart, it subsequently inherits all the issues that real auto sports have been dealing with for decades such as viewership. Perhaps video games are most entertaining when they allows us to do something that isn't possible in the real world?
Trackmania eSport is better than F1, changew my mind
I think gran Turismo has something hidden up it’s sleeves coming though. They’re saying it alot on socials, and they really want this movie to mean something. Plus the competition in Gran Turismo is getting truly insane at the top with some absolute aliens which is fun to watch compared to real racing because it’s less about fighting the danger with your car, and more about fighting the danger of a tiny mistake because grids are so tight packed with constant battling and decision making…
I might be a little biased as I was able to qualify for a event in California this year and meat Kaz himself (it even timed up to him buying my birthday dinner😆) and I really want another chance at an insanely amazing experience like Porsches Rennsport reunion 7. But seriously Gran Turismo is doing everything to try to make it seem grand and fun, and worth your time in that you might get the early eye on some future talented racers
I love watching real racing, but the one thing it can not provide is why i watch every round of the iRacing Porsche super cup: exactly the same car, no pay drivers and extremely close racing, a great format with sprint and reverse grit feature, a close chamipoinship and the most important thing: great TH-cam coverage that is free.
Like you said: at 90% of the broadcast something is happening.
But for endurance racing, i agree that real life is 1000x better.
17:15 small update on trackmania - the world tour is back for 2024, but it has dropped the 2v2 format (back to singles). hopefully you are excited to see granady play again :)
I Always loved Trackmania since the Nations/United before forever, i hope the trackmanina competitions continue beacuse they are always fun a lot to watch
Absolute amazing video! Its kinda sad that only "a few" people watch sim racing but we all know its a niche game (kinda) typ and i love to watch eNascar Coca Cola for example and i watch videos from racers on youtube but i am totally on your point!
Also, your Gengar was a little intimidating😂
That Gengar deals with all the haters 😎
Personally, I think the key to sim racing success is to have the world champs go straight to real racing. The eNASCAR Coke Champ could get x amount of races in the Truck series. Then all it takes is one champ to really kick ass in the real world and everyone will be watching to see who gets the next opportunity.
On top of the very obvious and very massive i can literally just watch racing in real life (which is the main thing why i only really watch clips and highlights of eSports) i would say that pro level play just isn't different enough from regular play to be appealing to most players.
If you take rocket league for example there is a massive obvious difference in skill between top players and average players whereas in simracing its much harder to see other than the times being a solid bit slower.
I feel like the only racing game that can survive as an esport because of this is trackmania.
However i feel like sim racing eSports will still have a part to play as a way of finding good junior drivers in the future, just less so as a spectator thing.
Speaking of Trackmania, I also think it would be fun if a Speed Racer game rebooted or if TM made a similar type of game with the same insane tracks and car control but adding the "Car-Fu" combat elements like the movie. I think that would be seriously entertaining to watch.
TL:DR Less trying to be the real thing, more doong things the real thing cant do.
I think the biggest thing is to provide a product you can't get irl.
GT does a bit of that with their tracks the f1 games should make a push to have EVERY single f1 track EVER in their games. I wanna race old hockenheim in the woods etc.
Nascar iracing should host a multiclass oval race alongside their "normal" series.
Great video as always! What do you think of the idea of featuring NASCAR iRacing events broadcasted as a part of each race weekend? Especially with the fewer practice sessions almost each weekend nowadays, I think it could benefit iRacing and NASCAR as an extra televised event
Yes that would be amazing for Enascar and definitely the best case scenario. I believe this is what Coke series was aiming for a certain point as well. It makes sense to add more racing content to the weekend but maybe the tv networks don’t see the benefit
I don’t think advertisers would be willing to let it happen.
The main reason for the official PSGL broadcast getting ~1000 views is that a lot of drivesrs livestream their POV (and in the official series they are obv. prohbited from doing that). If you add those up I think it could be around 10k viewers. Not a lot, but a lot better.
Makes sense thank you!
Excellent points. It's very difficult to watch racing online whether it's a tournament or someone streaming a race.
Man, i’ve found myself genuinely interested in your opinion, thats a great achievement as a youtuber. Great job!
Did you take into account the fact that the Coke series is being streamed on 3 different channels simultaneously?
The NASCAR Coca Cola iRacing series broadcasts are streamed on iRacings TH-cam Channel, NASCAR's TH-cam Channel, as well as by iRacing on Twitch. So for total viewers you need to add all three together because I doubt there are a lot of people watching the same exact race 3 times across all these platforms.
I used esports charts website which took into account all of that
@@DJYeeJay I took a quick glance at their website but didn't find anything on their methodology. If they are measuring live stream viewers then they could be accurate.
It appears to me may be taking all three and averaging them which would be incorrect. If they are using a traditional TV metric like "day of +7" then the iRacing channel gets around 15-20k on its own with NASCAR's channel kicking in another 8k or so. I don't know what Twitch would contribute as I don't spend much time on the platform. I think there was an eNASCAR TH-cam channel as well but I don't think it ever gained traction. If memory serves me the most views any coke series race got there was around 2000 with most in triple digits.
Bud, I can promise you it's still not very good numbers at all. Women crying about their divorce on TH-cam get more views.
@@AustinOgonoski I guess that depends on your definition of "not very good" is. Remember we are talking about a niche, within a niche, within a niche here.
That'd be hard core simulation enthusiasts, racing enthusiasts of the oval variety, and finally NASCAR enthusiasts. So right off the head the TAM (Total Addressable Market) is a subset of males born or raised in N. America.
That said if that number is just live viewers on iRacing's channel then that is quite good.
Still not terrible if it is live viewers over all channels.
If it's single channel (SC) DayOf+3 then that would be poor.
If all channels (AC) DayOf+3 then that is disappointing.
And if it SC or AC DayOf+7 or more then it's very bad.
Let's also not skip over the fact a lot of this is an own goal by iRacing for not sticking the live broadcast in a single place then let everyone else upload it in a few days or so. I could go on a rant about iRacing have always been their own worst enemy when it comes to PR and self promotion but I'll save that for another thread, or blog post, or manifesto or something.
Racing esports have to lean into the ability to have physically impossible camera angles. There's 0 excuse that all of these broadcasts are worse at showing what's actually happening on track. F1 game for example, every camera option available is stupidly zoomed in on each car. You can watch one car take one line, but you can't watch a car overtake because the other car is 70% offscreen the entire battle. Iracing has somehow taken forever to get better about this. Constantly using God awful on car cams that show nothing AND get used during the worst times. The production is so horrible on racing broadcasts when it really shouldn't be considering we aren't physically constrained by ANYTHING they are irl. Every racing game has these like "Artificially Badass" camera angles that try to make what you're doing look cool, instead of showing the racing.
How are these broadcasts done, with multiple angles? Presumably there's not 30 copies of iRacing running into a video switcher each on a different angle. So someone must be hotkeying multiple angles on maybe one or two copies of iRacing, each fed into a mixer?
I’ve always thought this because 2020 nascar being broadcasted on Fox got me into iracing and now I’m a diehard when watching. Since iracing has close relationships with nascar and imsa, do you ever see a scenario where part of a tv deal is playing replays of those either late night on let’s say fs1 and maybe even some live. I get we won’t see chase elliot out there. But casual fans could could become aware of a Casey Kirwan and therefore grow “fans” and not so much just diehard iracers
Iracing needs to make more coke series content focused on driver personality and not just driver skill
Is there a Mario Kart Esports scene? I feel like that would be catchy to watch if there was a way to broadcast it well
32 years ago I was hooked on Mario Kart for SNES. Been sim racing for as long as I can remember. 🤙
I do follow a little bit of Esports Racing, but its really really hard to actually focus on it when real life racing offfers already so many races during the year to watch them all.
One thing about viewership that actually I think it needs to be address its the POV streams numbers. I rather watch a POV than the broadcast
6:01 I think this sums it up well and I was trying to put my finger on this myself for a while since I love F1 and am seriously geeky with it, but then the esports series just doesn't interest me or keep my attention when I do watch it. The initial viewing experience just doesn't quite have the hype level it needs to keep your interested or invested in drivers, and that's the second half of it too, that if you don't start caring about who is racing then why watch. I would only really care about Jarno, but then his TH-cam content and Iracing content is so much more interesting for me so I just go and watch that instead.
I’ve spent quite a few years sim racing now. I’ve never really been drawn into iRacing esports. The official broadcasts I’ve seen are not good. And the stakes don’t matter to viewers. I couldn’t care less about Team redline or Coanda winning 10k. Say what you want about the mess that is F1 Esports their broadcasts and races are usually exciting to watch. Even Raceroom Esports when the prize was a DTM Trophy ride, those were real stakes, that anyone in sim racing could get excited about. iRacing just doesn’t have that.
Not to mention that the sim esports boom of 2020 was never sustainable.
you're right i like the rare racing esports events that are things you can't really do in real life - touge battles, reversed tracks, and bizarre car and track combinations that the drivers don't get to do thousands of hours of practice on!
I would watch F3 cars racing on the LA canyons map in AC, or 60s sports cars on a long since abandoned track, or Honda Civics on an F1 track, just as a few examples!
If I ever have a change to organize a racing sim tournament, I'd like to enable damage system to make the race more interesting. I've been seeing racing esports but all I found was these races doesn't have damage system activated, making it a bit boring for me. The goal is by adding drama such as mechanical damages, forcing the player to choose between to stay in pit longer to fix it or ignore the damage and continue racing with high risk of more severe damage that will end their race day. Making these racing esports more entertaining.
I feel like part of the issue is that the Sims / Simcade Titles try to be the same thing as the current real life thing. I mean, why watch GT3 in Gran Turismo if there are plenty of real life GT3 events around? Why watch NASCAR on iRacing when NASCAR has multiple Series in addition to other Series like ARCA offering a similar experience?
I don´t know if my theory would hold up, but why not use the benefit of being a Video game? Why not have a NASCAR Race on the Nordschleife or make a Tournament with Street races on the Shutoko Expressway in Asseto Corsa, do a Multi-Class F1 Race on the Daytona Road course with each class being a specific year from the 60´s, 70´s and 80´s, you know, do something with those games that would, or in the case of the 2nd example should, never happen as a big event in real life.
GT World puts the races on TH-cam for free as well. From all over the world too. You have America, Asia, Europe. Plenty of real life GT racing to go around.
1:34 90% chance that they will actually say Need for Speed
A big problem is sponsorships. Real racing sells car parts and other stuff through sponsor decals and paint schemes.
In sim racing, all you can sell customers is a wheel and pedals. The money isn't there until more custom parts and accessories are available that affect your actual car in game.
If we could switch parts like real cars can, but still keep everyone on the same playing field, then there might be something there for money in the future.
You'd need a sim where you can modify your cars and then send in the setup to get verified 24hrs before a big race.
This is a fantastic video. I couldn't have put it better myself. I have booked nearly £250k in sim racing esports sponsorship and events, but the dollars are drying up. There is one other thing that I would throw into the conversation. There is a huge reluctance from participants to engage in anything that is unconventional or designed for the viewer. The best production I have run in my 4 years of running sim racing esports events was the wackiest, but the feedback from the drivers was that they wouldn't participate in something like that again as it was dumb. So my question to participants is do you want an audience to race for in 18 months from now? if the answer is yes then consider the audience. Trying to replicate the real world 1 for 1 is simply boring.
Great video once again.
great vid Justin, one thing I would add is the question every person internally asks themselves when watching sports/esports and thats “why should i care + whats in it for me?”
I cannot speak of the other esports mentioned but imo nascar/coke series is missing a real opportunity.
Right now someone wins the coke series and its like woo but who cares. I think raising the stakes would make viewership for both nascar and enascar better.. winner gets an arca ride sponsored by iracing w heavy subsidies from Nascar.
The new console game should help bring in more eyes which in turn should help iracing keep growing. Allowing these people to root for someone on the virtual track and then root for them irl would be crazy cool. The 750k to do it from Nascar is honestly nothing to them and could create some great storylines.
What I actually like about f1 esports is that even though its based on real life it has that extra factor of having equal cars, which helps showcase skill a lot more than in real f1 + strategies become much tighter with a lap difference having huge consequences on race outcome. It's a lot more tense in that aspect and makes it quite unique compared to F1 in real life.
I think one of the issues is a lot of the time companies get you interested in watching something, rather than competitors. I think if there was a more active arms race between simracing equipment companies and sponsored competitors being featured more on the companies social media, that would probably at least get people in, where they can then latch onto someone as their favorite competitor. Ultimately I feel like simracing e-sports has a lot in common with how RC racing is portrayed, kinda niche, pretty expensive, like a compromised version of something bigger.
Totally agree with your points. Trackmania and RocketLeague provide unique competitions that can’t be experienced anywhere else. Sim racing is too close to real-life racing to make it unique, unless there is a differentiator like a career mode or myTeam.
Even with real motorsports no watches apart from F1 and a little NASCAR
Nascar is big it will. Get even bigger in 2025
The other day I saw a video from Austin Ogonoski from a few years back basically discussing this topic, it’s sad how there are people who criticize/invalidate him for talking about it but when someone else (like you) talks about it, people agree. I’m glad you aren’t getting invalidated like what happened to Austin but I do wonder if these people agreeing with you once disagreed with Austin.
I agree with a lot of Austins opinions but he has a way of presenting something in a way that challenges people to come up with ways to disagree with him
@@DJYeeJay if that’s the case, I haven’t really found the “challenge” yet. Fair enough tho
Yeah but Austin works in the industry and tells it how it is and doesn’t sugar coat anything. Which can rub viewers the wrong way.
@@SimRacingVeteran definitely, also the money people put into it and not wanting to give that up doesn’t help, which goes for any sim
There's some amazing points here, and a lot of kudos needs to be given to Yee for the details. There's a massive disparity between live and virtual racing. With live racing, though the exposure is higher, they also focus a lot on stories, rivalries and legends being born. We don't get that in Esports sadly, people turn in for a show, however only live has the currently exposure to fill that.
I've been sim racing since 1994; I take it very seriously.
I try to use my free time wisely: getting into the rig for practice / racing, taking my car to a track day, watching actual racing and researching historical motorsport.
I have nothing against esport racing: personally, I have no vested interest in watching it. Its a waste of time since I don't know the teams / drivers nor do I care to.
Esports racing mimics actual racing - without - any consequences.
Moritz Lohner shared similar thoughts, iirc he was in favor of "gamifying" simracing esports by doing formats that real life can't.
ESL R1's finalist mode is cool for LAN events but I'm not sold on 12 car GT3 sprint races through the entire online season.
eNASCAR Coke having two rounds of sprint races is a step towards gamifying and it looks interesting.
As a Gran Turismo fanboy I liked your video
The question is always "Why not just watch the real thing?" Remember Blur? That would've made an amazing esport that I would definitely watch.
For me the biggest thing that makes racing esports less compellig to watch is that it's almost universally far more fun to participate than watch. Racing has the unique factor of having the ability to have fun and accomplish something even when you are objectively losing. As long as you have somebody you can fight for position, you can race, even if the goal is to just not be last. Compare that to most other game genres where losing pretty much always feels like losing. In racing, you can lose, often very badly, and still feel like you won. Even in dead last you can have great racing if the moment strikes. It's just a format that encourages participation far more than observation given all the real-world barriers to entry are absent
The problem with racing esports is that people don't want to watch someone playing a game for something that they can watch in real life.
With the exception of FIFA all of the most popular esports are FPS or fantasy games.
Edit: wrote this before you said the same exact thing. Haha
Copying NASCAR format is a bad idea - give me something better (no FCY, less commercials). Also - for the time I watched NASCAR official iRacing series somehow I did not relate to the drivers. I have 0 interest in track mania or similar concepts
Virtual could theoretically be as good as IRL but the inherent jankyness from lag will always make it look off.
3:10 sums it up for me. Something like Rocket League, Fortnight, Trackmania and so on work because that's the only place you can experience it. There isn't a real world event where people shoot each other whilst building towers... There isn't a major "football in cars" league where the cars fly around and juggle the ball mid-air.... These games are the pinnacle of that specific thing so you are watching the best in the world compete. Even something like FIFA - what you're actually doing to play the game is nothing like actually playing football - you don't physically kick the ball or run around! In motorsports games, you are doing exactly what a real racing driver does except you're doing it at a much lower level...
I enjoy watching people who play motorsports games and provide entertainment... Jimmy, Super-GT, Jardier, Neilogical, Failrace and so on. They're fun to watch as they provide something I don't get whilst watching actual motorsport but if you remove the entertainment and fun, I'm just left watching someone who never had the talent or drive to make it in motorsports doing the next best thing.
that is why i dont buy a motion system i dont play in leagues anymore ...just zero NORMS for a community that had its peek ..and used it mostly to sell hardware ..shout out to whoever tries or tried to organize sim racing !
I wonder if a live docuseries style esports/live racing league would play out. More so story line oriented and the drivers race in a small live racing series during the season as well like MX5, radical etc. you would need larger and proper sponsors, but I could see more engagement there as the drivers race a Mazda in iRacing and compete with them on track too. I'm sure it would take too much money and coordinating too
I've gotten back into granturismo due to cheating on asseto corsa and f1 on pc .I deff wanna go to the finals to see how. I do
Glad to see others talking about this.
In my personal opinion, sim racing eSports was aggressively pushed for two reasons:
1. Fleecing venture capitalists and brands out of $$$.
2. Keeping up with the Joneses.
Once I saw iRacing mirror the same model as MLS (Major League Soccer), and the very negative things written about MLS online, it was easy to connect the dots.
The other half, is that a lot of devs just aren't very creative in this industry and shamelessly copy each other. Once one sim started an eSports championship that was marketed as such, everyone else just sorta followed suit to keep up appearances because "if they do X, we gotta do X too", without stopping to think if it made business sense or people were even watching it in the first place. Which, they weren't. And now everyone just looks really goofy having done it due to the near-nonexistent interest. Millions upon millions spent on Livestreams that struggle to get the viewership of a local high school football game. It's kind of absurd really.
What's interesting is that sim racing DOES have incredible viral viewership; our current batch of overlords just haven't found it yet because a lot of them don't play their own products or mingle in the community. But I found it. It's a secret hiding in plain sight.
It isn’t just racing, esports as a whole has been in decline. Ownership is now finding out there’s not money in it
Wreckfest is another one of those games that's so much fun to watch, especially when several of the drivers are on audio. The issue I have is these games do not have the fidelity when it comes to physics and handling. Once they can get rFactor2's or AC2's physics engine that reward a driver's skills and have the deep strategical aspects of true racing, I'll gladly get that game and also watch! I agree that sim racing needs to provide something we can't ordinarily do in real life. I'm looking forward to Wreckreation.
One thing that I think is going against racing esports, at least from the performer aspect, is that there's a bigger learning curve. A while back, there was an attempt to have a military gaming league race for veterans and currently-serving military members. It was a poopshow, and the few of us who had a fair amount of iRacing experience had a terrible time because people were just driving crazy and wrecking on purpose. One thing that also turns some people away is how the protest system seems to be very inconsistent.
Sim Drifting with ESDA (esports drifting association) and VDC (virtual drift championship) provide the constant action for sure unfortunately drifting as a whole doesn't pull crazy viewership considering the realitivly low viewership of professional real drifting like Formula Drift and Drift masters. 150k-1m viewers irl to 2k-20k viewers of sim I think drifting has the best ratio of viewers in comparison to other forms of motorsports and esports.
I was broadcasting sim racing back in 2006-2007 and these viewing numbers would have disappointed me! I suppose now there is more competition; but on the other hand more acceptance of the format.
I did have some broadcasting rules which I feel still haven't full caught on that even today I believe are still very important to any sim broadcaster.
Rule 1: Faster is bad, racing is closer with slower vehicles on smaller tracks, it's better to deliver an "exciting" race, than it is to deliver a "pro" race, if you want spectators.
Rule 2: Sim Cameras are bad, they follow a car - its more important to follow a battle (pair of cars etc). We achieved this at first by hand by filming entire races from each camera's perspective and then editing the feeds together - but later using custom "camera director" software in realtime. We lacked the tech for realtime replays at the time, but that should be achievable nowadays.
Rule 3: Comentary - we never denied it was a simulation, but we never mentioned sim specific things - the "illusion" of reality is important for viewer immersion.
As someone who runs a pro team in iRacing and builds setups for the pro side, I only watch races when someone on my team is in the races (rtp, contender), otherwise I just don't care. The racing isn't good anymore, you can't pass, you finish basically where you qualify.
I think it's a good thing. Everything is made with eSports in mind and singleplayer or other alternatives get forgotten or not polished as much. Everything that eSports touches gets ruined.
Another big problem for racing e-sports is the fragmented nature of motorsports and especially the online racing community. Most professional sports (and e-sports) have one dominate league that pulls in the lions share of the viewers and top talents. These big leagues are then better able to promote and deliver because they have more resources, Motorsports has always struggled with fragmented fan bases but all the companies competing in the same markets (both for players and viewers) creates a problem. In real world racing most people can only travel so far to see a race so smaller leagues can create a niche without threatening the larger series. But even something as diverse in real life as GT3 cars race because significantly more fragmented in online series. Just like in real life there are a plethora of tracks and series to watch but on top of that you have to pick the game you want to watch it played in.
Honestly even the racers dont watch most of their games series just due to marketing being abysmal. Its sometimes hard to find the series as a viewer even if you are looking for them let alone discover them by chance. Plus official f1 game needs a solid sim mode with Fia structure so you can link it to the real sport, without it you dont stand a chance to make it global.
The fact Need for speed never figured out a way is shambolic. 5 rounds of maps, custom cars, cops, drift, then the sprint finale. Like come on
Well, I am 16, I can't afford iracing or a dedicated sim rig, but I watch almost every single video about iracing or simracing, otherwise, great video, as always dude!
All you need is a console, a desk and an inexpensive thrustmaster or logitech wheel to get you started. If you have a will to do something, you’ll find a way to accomplish your goals. Just depends on you and if you’re willing to work for it.
When it comes to Gran Turismo 7 physics vs Iracing physics, how far off is Gran Turismo?
I wish there was a game like trackmania but with more realistic sim style physics, cars like formula e or the dallara ir-01 or vision GT cars racing around loops and high banked turns maybe even jumps would be awesome.
I think another issue is the accessibility of racing games there's so many arcade racing games out there that why watch some one race virtually when you can just do it yourself and you don't have to be super knowledgeable about how to setup a car for most of them as long as you know gas and brakes your going to be able to find yourself running good even on some upper difficulties
So why watch virtual racing when you can watch real racing or just do ir yourself
Coming from someone who watches many, more "traditional" esports like VALORANT, Counter-Strike and League of Legends; I feel like F1 esports would benefit from having some legacy esports organisations being involved, such as Fnatic, Team Liquid, TSM etc. Make it so each team runs 1 player each, that makes room for ten additional orgs to take part, and perhaps forcing they IRL teams to invest in their esports divisions. This change would also allow the teams to spend more money and effort developing the drivers since they wouldn't have to spread it across multiple people. It would also allow F1 esports to do something that I think is quite important, distinguish themselves from the real sport. Having new teams, bringing new ideas and making all teams develop unique strategies. Adding the new orgs would also provide new marketing for the esport by introducing the viewers of other games to the F1 esports scene.
I tend to rewatch vods from races I've driven, you know - vanity and useful tidbits and such, along with the races where my teammates are participating. Other than that, it is indeed a struggle to just sit down and watch a race. Commentators have a ways to go, some are making an effort, but a lot tend to just end up on pointless rants, chatting with viewers in favor of watching the deltas to find interesting battles to comment on, or recovery stories to narrate. But hey, for the most part simracing commentators are in their infancy compared to the regime developed over decades in TV broadcasting - and they still just suck a tiny bit less. :)
What we need is hunger games - but with cars. I bet people would watch this and donate gifts to participants.
Man imagine if iRacing or other sims added not real tracks (kinda like Forza or GT, but wilder). Like imagine if we could race Porsche cup cars around something as crazy as rainbow road. F1 cars can drive upside down? Sure let's have them do a loop or a corkscrew and see how well experienced drivers can adapt their skills to suit ridiculous lines. Especially when you mix realistic and fake designs. Like a wacky loop de loop into a tightening snail like on the Shanghai GP circuit or a tight Ascari Chicane complex. That would be so sick. May be cheaper to develop too since you don't have to worry about licensing or getting a laser truck out there to scan.
Yeah I try to watch it sometimes and support dj and kneebon and Gavin lemons but that's about all I have time for lol.
I don't really care if people are pushing the boundaries or cheating cause they even do it in real life so that's nothing new
Esports for racing games is failing because racing games themselves are failing. They keep underdelivering in terms of content, visuals and game modes, they're behind the curve in terms of online, there's no golden standard for what one would expect from a modern racer, the most popular titles currently are years and years old, and the newest entries in the ongoing franchises are somehow worse than entries released 20 years ago
I am a simracer (AC, ACC) and I overall agree with you. Here are my thoughts:
1) Sim racing by definition is a lesser version of real racing, so as long as it tries to compete on the same level with real racing it will fail.
2) Only if sim racing differentiates itself from real racing it can get some popularity. Of course one should find a format that is exciting to watch and creates followers. Race on non-existing tracks the drivers have never seen before, special challenges not possible in real life, etc. In the end one can keep the physics of real cars but add things that would be not feasible in real life. It would still be a way for young drivers to showcase their talent, but at the same time provide a distinctive entertainment value.
3) There is another issue: although the player base is ok, sim racing is not a mainstream kind of videogame, as it requires expensive peripherals and more importantly a steep learning curve. This means that no matter the effort it is hard to create the "critical mass' to make these things profitable. In any case, there are youtubers who have hundreds of thousands of follower and can make a living from streaming sim racing, so there is a niche for that.
IRacing broadcasts and esports is a dying art. People want entertainment, not professionalism. There’s a reason that mooncar and bottom split are so popular. It’s about racing entertainment. Idkplayer puts on professionalish streams but they are more entertainment based.
Racing esports try so hard to be realistic to real life. At a time when racing viewership is at record lows.
This coming from an iRacing broadcaster
I get what you're saying brother
Thumbnail: Thanos fades away a Ferrari regular or test driver.
IMO part of the problem is, that e-sport is even mocking real racing with their TV-camera footage while I only watch real racing, if they show significant time onboard-action instead. You just can't see if someone has skills or not by watching TV-cams, but as a sim-racer it's kind of educational to me watching onboards from skilled drivers. Problem in sim-racing is, that onboards are usually very reduced in quality for performance-reasons, so not showing the 'real' onboards like in real-racing. That's why e-sports seems to lure more people watching it when popular TH-camrs are streaming and one reason is you see what they are actually doing, usually both for real and in the game. I also don't think that races should last 24 hours, which were invented to challenge the reliability of cars in the first, second and third place. Big part of the reason why soccer or F1 is still popular is, it's about 90 min. long similar to movies, which might be already too much for the attention-capabilities of people today.