I would love to hear your thoughts on pCARS investment.
This won't just about the investment and lot's of it is about why and how I came to support the project. Keep in mind that a lot of it is my assumptions and what I remember from the posts by the devs (it's been like 1.5 years since S2U and Ian and Griff appeared on noGrip?), but here we go:
It was pretty much the guys at SMS that got me into simulation racers with the GTR2 demo and later on the GT Legends which I think is still amongst the best sims. Even RBR somewhat counts since Eero created the tyre model for Shifts which later translated into BTM for pCARS and is likely to be used for the AI once it's phased out for player cars. I've put hunders of hours even though I was never really serious about them nor raced online apart from some TT competitions on RBR. Eventually though, I lost interest in them because of the content (Back then I didn't appreciate GT Legend's car and track selection as I did for GTR2 even though the physics felt easily superior) or the gameplay (GTR2's physics weren't really good for "drifting" and didn't feel as realistic as GT Legends or RBR) or just played for too long (I put way too much time into single player in RBR and there wasn't much reward or variety in it).
Cue 2010 and I finally upgraded my pc from something that couldn't really run any games from this gen (Apart from Oblivion, which I poured over 150hrs at less than 20fps) and the cashier at JimmsPC got me NFS Shift as a bonus. I'd read about it a lot and was excited that there was finally something that could challenge Forza and GT on PC so it was the first game I installed and it absolutely blew my mind. Even with a keyboard at first it felt closer to anything I'd driven in real life than the games I'd played before and going from Oblivion at low details to maxed out Shift was absolutely crazy. Off course, the more I played it the more frustrating the physics became and I couldn't drive like I wanted. The same pretty much happened with S2U; I'd just gotten the MOMO and FFB was something new and fun and the low-powered cars felt even better than the first Shift, getting very close to what I felt when driving an actual car. But like before, once you started nearing the limit the physics just fell apart; it was either endless and weirdly slidey understeer or nearly uncontrollable oversteer and generally it was just frustrating at times. So yeah, they were good games for what they were, albeit frustrating, and got me again interested in more serious racing games and motorsports in general. It didn't take me long to realize that the Momo was a piece of crap though and I didn't try other games for very long for that reason. Even going back to the games I loved it didn't feel as good as the non FFB Logitech Formula.
It was refreshing to see Griff and Ian come to NoGrip to discuss and aid the community, but it was made me realise how much better the game could have been. Parts of the physics had been compromised by EA (the late decision to soften the tirewall, which I think made it worse even on pad), the online model (Autolog's fine, but dedicated servers are a must for any serious racing), the actual races (3 lap races with various cars isn't very realistic) and the overall approach. Realism is the way forward, but it doesn't mean the game shouldn't be approachable, polished and robust. For example AC is going with a similar approach, but with quality over content due to the budget and potential reach. I want my game to look good, sound good, have a realistic career, robust multiplayer choices, wide variety of content and importantly feel right. These are things that pCars promises to be and what I believe SMS can achieve better than the competition; for me it has the potential to be the racing game of the forever, or when pCars 2 potentially comes. So it's fair to say I was excited when Ian came up with the idea and later on showed what their renderer can do (the pics are still an example of what a potential photo mode could do) and laid down the general direction for the game.
Back then I wasn't really so interested in the financial aspect of the game; I was willing to put down that 100 for a senior pack, mostly because I didn't have money to go further. It didn't take long to strike me how much potential the game had and why SMS and guys like Micas took the risk. A game of this caliber developed for 4 platforms with a budget of 3.75 million euros is absolutely bonkers; games with less potential are developed with a budget in tens of millions.
So when Ian mentioned that it was highly likely that they were going to sign a deal with a publisher to fund the development I really wanted to take that risk and support the development, even with the fact that there was going to be a publisher involved in the development. I had 3k in a savings account that wasn't really making me anything so I took the dive and borrowed the money from my parents until the account unlocked. It's a decision that I've not regretted for a second (not yet, that is). I know that there's a chance I'll not a see dime of it back, I know there's chance I get some of it back, I know I could make a little profit and I know I might get some serious money back. It's a decision that I made for what I think are the right reasons and I can take the consequenses if it all goes to hell.
One of the reasons I feel confident in the project is SMS themselves. As you can probably see, I trust them completely, but more importantly they have so much more at stake yet have much more knowledge and experience. Despite making two huge hits for EA they never got that money; they were just paid for the work.
That brings me to another point, the state of the industry. A game like this wouldn't get picked up a publisher because everything is not done by the lowest common denominator even though it still can appeal to them and it doesn't need to have a huge profit margin to fund the publisher itself. WMD is a much more better solution than Kickstarter for games that don't appeal to the big publisher and developers who don't want to compromise the design. That is something worth supporting, especially as a guy who's going to work in the industry.
I'll get back to the financial aspect in the next post, ran out of time write for now.
