Content Roadmap Discussion/Speculation (The 'Sherlock' Thread)

Careful what you (dont) wish for

 

here you're right, can't find any

 

Updated the OP with the GTs confirmed for Friday, moved the Mercedes and BMW GT4s to a 'second batch' (the new blog refers to this update as a 'first batch') under known unknowns heading and added a reference to Historic version of the Nurburgring.

 

Really hope that the Endurance Brasil license is in the bag. I really can't wait to race GT4s with the old M3 GT2 from pcars 1. Potential sources of cars.

Império Endurance Brasil: a beginners guide to the Brazilian Endurance Championship - NIVELANDO A ENGENHARIA

 

series license is one thing, cars/tracks from it is another

 

Agreed. Different series own different amounts of the 'content' (IP) in it as per their agreements with entrants and venues, but I'd be pretty certain that Imperio Endurance Brasil's licence wouldn't cover much more than the logo and rules.

Personally, I prefer the semi-fictional approach Reiza seem to have taken to their liveries, with a consistent set that could mimic any regional series around the world.

 

If that is the case, then how they get a number of the prototypes from the series? It opens up more opportunity for them to license cars from the series. As far as I know, some series licenses come with car licenses. The series has a really odd mix of licenses, which I doubt Ferrari, Lamborghini, Maserati or Aston Martin will appear in the game.

It is likely there won't be all the cars from the series but a representative bunch of the cars raced would be enough for me.

 

[somewhere in Brazil someone picks up a phone and calls a number in Yorkshire]
"Hi, is that Ginetta...? Good, can I speak to whoever deals with your licencing please? Thanks... Hi there; so we have this game and we'd like to licence some of your cars to show in it... no, it's much better than those ones... yeah, it's based on that one but we've improved a load of things... anyway, we're wanting to licence the G40, G55 and that old LMP3 of yours, what do you say?...erm, how much? are you certain you didn't accidentally add a '0' there?... oh, right, if you say so... oh yeah, usage, well we'll have 20 fictional liveries, but users will be able to add their own in future and there'll be a full damage mo... really? come on, be fair, no-one loves Ginettas that much... fine, well send over a proposal and we'll see what change we can find down the back of the sofa"

Well, something a bit more formal and with more lawyers and details, but basically they'll have contacted whoever owns the IP for each manufacturer

Very few of them will do. Basically, only the series that force a manufacturer to sign over IP in order to be considered for a manufacturer championship. For instance, F1 has the concord agreement, which gives F1 the right to sell the team's images [in context] in return for guaranteed buckets of cash. F1 aside, only a few, high profile series will cover this; ACC had to go to each GT3 manufacturer separately, Codemasters had to go to each WRX manufacturer. If I were guessing, I'd assume NASCAR, DTM, WRC, Indycar, SuperGT and maybe one or two others do, but very few more.

I really don't care about the Endurance Brasil series, but having a good selection of LMP3 prototypes and GT3/GT4 cars (maybe some TCRs in future?) will allow a good semi-fictional but realistic interpretation of many regional series around the world, anything from VLN, Michelin Challenge in the US, Le Mans Cup in Europe, Britcar in the UK and many others.

 

You are oversimplifying the licensing process. It is not just calling the lawyers and you get those cars. It is by far complicated than that as if that is the case, getting classic BTCC cars, certain cars or some of the F1 cars would be more common than it is.

I would appreciate if there is some respect than thinking that you know it all and other people don't.

I do, because if I want another game filled with European or US content, I have a whole stack of games that has those content. Why I want another game filled with the same GT3, LMP3 and GT4 cars that I can get elsewhere? Especially with Reiza having a unique opportunity to present something unique.

One more thing I will add is that the current P2 or P3 class in the game is roughly equivalent to LMP3.

 

+1

I think it's brilliant!

 

And who stops you from simply ignoring the content you don't like? It's not like someone is taking the more obscure stuff away from you.

If Reiza want's to attract more players and therefore be financially successful in the long run, they need popular content. It's really not hard to understand.

Besides that, there might be other reasons to play the same content in a different sim, be it performance in VR, features like driving with AI and human players or just physics.

 

GTs with the Reiza touch? I will gladly take them any day of the week. You would be a fool not to!

 

I'm listening to the Beyond the Grid podcast with Bernd Maylander. It occurs to me that we could have a single Mercedes GT3 car with a bunch of Formula Reiza and have a safety car.

Not that anyone is asking for this, but it just think it's a fun concept.

 

Sorry, I certainly wasn't meaning it to look that way but you're correct my post is poorly written and looks disrespectful - I was meaning it to show my own ignorance as much as anything but reading back that's not as clear as it was in my head when writing it.

I don't know much about the subject, but it has interested in me for a number of years since being involved in the SMS Project CARS early access; they were fairly open about some of the deals they run into. Basically, it seems like each manufacturer has their own rules about how they do licencing, and some are definitely easier to work with than others; effectively it will come down to a legal agreement with each brand about how their IP is allowed to be used.


A few details of brand specific items in games:

• - Project CARS wasn't allowed to add fictional liveries to McLarens (note all the other GT3s do have them)
• - Kunos aren't allowed to give the Lexus in ACC any non-real liveries, even with their very controlled livery designer
• - Codemasters/AC/Raceroom were only allowed to use real liveries on Audi's historic cars, but they're less strict with 'customer cars'; see the Audi Sport Quattro S1 and the Audi 90 IMSA only having a single livery for each - Raceroom asked us to look for pics of Audi 90s with alternate numbers, they weren't even allowed to use an official livery with a 'wrong' number on the door
• - Porsche could only licence cars built by the factory to Kunos/SMS, hence some oddballs like the 924 GTS and 961 GTO instead of cars built in collaboration with tuners like Kremer
• - Every individual sponsor needs to give approval to appear - there's a good interview here with Codemasters' licencing administrator about that: Celebrating the women behind our games for #IWD2019 | Meet Mandy | Codemasters Blog
• - Codemasters struggled to track down licence holders to some content. They have the sound of a Saab in game, but it was recorded for the real car but couldn't find who had the legal ownership of the IP - someone at SMS previously mentioned the difficulty in tracking down IP holders for some 'defunct' brands too
• - Reiza have Brabhams in this game; David Brabham recently acquired the naming rights to his own dad's company to be able to use the Brabham name again (BRABHAM BRANDING LIMITED - Leasing of intellectual property and similar products, except copyright works - A business based in United Kingdom registered with Companies House)
• - Some companies have different licencing deals even within them. Note that Reiza had a deal with McLaren's F1 team for those cars, but the latest blog mentions their agreement with McLaren Automotive, a separate company who licence the 'road'/GT cars
• - I think it's typical when doing these deals to agree a list / 'batch' of licenced cars at a time. When SMS did deals with Aston and Kunos did a deal with Porsche, they had a fixed number of cars agreed between them when making the announcement - sometimes people think "they have a BMW licence", but I don't think that's often the case; it's for specific cars
• - Licencing can come down to more than what the developer wants. Part of Kunos' deals with Porsche and later Maserati included various road cars the manufacturer wanted to promote. At some point they admitted that the deals wouldn't have been possible unless they included certain cars (Porsche Macan and Maserati Levante come to mind)

That Codemasters interview also points out the amount of approval they need to get and Paul from Codemasters has previously mentioned that every promo pic of a car and the one on the box art needed approval and sign off.

Interview with Porsche head of branding, but has some interesting details of Kunos' deal with Sparco: Assetto Corsa und Porsche: Zu Gast bei Kunos Simulazioni - News - SPEEDMANIACS.COM


Sorry, bit of a brain dump there, just in case you find any of it interesting. Maybe in a quiet month next year Renato can spread some more light on it in a blog.

 

Yet, you are doing it again. Are you assuming that I have no idea what am I talking about?

It is partly because they had been extremely conservatives with what is allowed and not after the issues they ran into with Audi. And not all GT3s have custom liveries because Bentley, Nissan also did not have. Some manufacturers like Nissan are quite picky on the exact model of the cars with liveries, there is a handful of really great liveries that was removed in the final game. Still have the screenshots of those cars. Some of the manufacturer's own factory race cars with no customer teams like the LMP1s does not have custom liveries in Pcars games.

R3E had 2 extra 90 GTO liveries that was adapted from the hillclimb and rally cars from that era. What I understand is that you can do that if you want to but that will make it harder to relicense for the future which R3E retracted those liveries from sale. This is one mine field that I am concern that Reiza is stepping on.

That is because non Porsche factory cars would mean they need to look for the additional license holder of the customer designed car. And Porsche is happy to give them as much access as they need to the data and reference so they went with the factory cars in general. Why would one need fabcar or kremer when Porsche has 2-3 different version of 935 in house?

Not only Codemasters, it is happening to everyone. SMS tried to obtain some rare and interesting cars from the past and they never happened because of that. It is also why Forza Horizon 4 patches will come with various Formula D cars, custom variants of certain cars or even whole brands like Citreon or Toyota because licenses are not completed in one go. Or why the NFS Hot Pursuit Remastered will not have as SLRs as the SLR license somehow is difficult to obtain with no game managed to get SLR in recent years. If I am not wrong, it is a combination of Mclaren, Mercedes and another party.

That is the same with Lotus classic and Lotus road cars. There is a reason why first 2 Pcars never have any Lotus roads cars until Pcars 3. And what I understand, having Mclaren is a big milestone in terms of licensing as they are one of the harder to license manufacturer where from that point on, it will be easier to get more cars after having Mclarens.

What I understand is: you name what you want, then manufacturers will name the price. I know that it is also possible to change after the deal is done, there is a reason why Pcars 2 has Nissan R89C and IMSA ZTP. It was supposed to be a really interesting car that never manifested. The Renault BTCC that was agreed upon was also swapped to something else in Pcars. Series licensing does help in bypassing the manufacturer, like how WRC managed to get Toyota when GT Sport had a 2 years exclusivity. And I remember that R3E wanted to use ADAC license to get the Huracan GT3 as it will be cheaper or easier.

What I understand is it depends on pricing, if you want cheaper licensing, manufacturers may ask you to take cars that they want to sell. I do not remember seeing advertisement cars in games like Pcars or even R3E as generally manufacturers want you to get the roadcars.

 

Ah, the Renault Laguna touring car! That's the one - I was trying to remember some examples of 'switched' cars or ones that never materialised (see also Raceroom and the Volvo [or was it Nissan?] V8 Supercar).

No, I'm really not trying to pick a fight; I'm not sure from my last post what is insulting about it but happy to edit/remove bits if you let me know - I found your post really interesting with many details and examples I've missed (and will use for future posts when someone asks) - I just put down some examples of things that came to mind that I thought people might find interesting. Your post has loads of good examples, so I'm glad we're having the conversation.

Ooh, do tell!

Yeah, Lotus, with the 'Classic Team Lotus' brand owned by a separate entity, is the other example I was thinking of. Although at least it's less messy than the recent F1 instance with two different owners of the 'Lotus' name owning teams. Just out of interest, I've been trying to find out which models are CTL ones and which are the factory - do you know which entity would have the late 90s Elise GT1 IP?

Absolutely, it can help if you go to a manufacturer and ask to licence a specific car from a specific series that you are partners with, definitely. As above, I would guess that WRC Manufacturer Championship requires the brand to give IP permission for the car they enter, but obviously that's not the case for all. Lambos in Raceroom and Hyundais in Dirt Rally 2 being obvious examples.

 

Unfortunately, I think it was switched for Megane Trophy R that is an upgraded version of the road car that is in the game.

What I know about supercars is that it is difficult to license the championship but I do not know how iracing did it.

Raceroom with those supercars at that time would be great. I would love to have the Nissan, Volvo, Mercedes, Holdan and Ford.

Lets leave it the way it is. Things has been going to well for me which I may have misread something. Damn this beer virus.

I am not sure if I can spill it even after all these years but you cna guess it. It is related to that manufacturer's factory race car. Barely raced at all in an endurance championship and disappeared half way through the season a few years ago. Very interesting engine layout compared to the competitors.

Everyone was really excited about this car becuase it will be the first game that got it in a simulation. However, it never really got to race at its full potential, ie: the combustion engine with all the hybrid motors so it was swapped.

I probably put the 90s Elise GT1 with Lotus cars. Classic team Lotus seemed to only license much older cars.

Still, I am not surprised to see the Elise GT1 is tied up in some licensing nightmare but I know Forza got the road version of it. Forza has such a well resourced and connected contacts yet all they license is the road versions of the GT1s. Maybe I should not go into my own disappointment with Forza, it is a great game but I feel like it is such as wasted potential.

I will be really happy if Reiza could get Elise GT1 as a surprise or even the Exige Cup car which I managed to see one in rally. The sound of that Camry powered car is so good.

I am not sure if DR2 had any Hyundai at all. Codemaster is an odd company as they seemed like they had ceased to license a number of manufacturers such as Mercedes Benz, Hyundai and particularly Toyota. It was rumored that Toyota wasn't happy with them after them coming out with funky liveries on their priced rally cars in Dirt 3. I will still pay a lot of money for Toyota rally cars in DR2.

Still, I remembered same happened with Audi and Forza as Audi was really not happy with people drawing male genitals, nazi logo and so on on their LMP1s back in FM4. I guess the 10 years old would find it really tempting to draw male genitals on the barge board of the car. Yet Forza still have some sort of continued licensing with Audi. At that point of time, there were rumours going around that Forza might remove custom painters because of that. I believe that they replaced it with really strict moderation that is extending day by day to the point even General Lee's charger, free candy vans, and so on are banned these days.

 

Updated the OP to remove some of the released content.

@2ndLastJedi what do you reckon the chances of that 70s Porsche is now? I'm thinking more and more the reply you got was referring to the Porsche brand rather than a specific car (although fingers crossed).

Come on Reiza, must be worth dropping a hint about numbers for Group Cs and GT1s so we can get some speculation going?

 

I don't think Reiza can leave the biggest brands they have at only a couple of cars! I believe they have to release something more from Porsche but I do think that tweet was in relation to the brand rather than the car itself

 

Plenty of opportunity there; GT1 and Group C are also fairly Porsche-y domains. Fingers crossed it comes off one day though, I'd prefer something from their older back catalogue too.