Automobilista 2 October 2022 Development Update

And in another bonehead decision that is the specialty of Indycar, it won't be on Netflix, or Amazon Prime, etc. It's on the... CW channel. Yep. Whatever that channel is.

I live in Canada and would love to watch the Indy docuseries, but it probably won't be available here.

 

I have a question: can Reiza afford an official Indycar license? Sorry to ask this and I don't mean it as a disparaging comment. But I don't know a) Reiza's financial situation and b) how much that license costs.

 

The thing is this stupid decision from IndyCar isn't just another bad decision in US open wheel racing history, it is another terrible decision in how organizations handle their IPs and interact with gaming as a medium. My own company did the same thing for YEARS with a popular SIM despite me presenting to our marketing team that licensing out our stuff is literally having someone pay us for them to advertise our products. Like it is the opposite of how usual advertising works, yet look at how many companies refuse to license out content to keep it exclusive with a certain game. You had EA and Porsche years ago, we have the NFL and EA for the last 15+ years, you have Toyota and Gran Turismo now. Like these suits at these companies are so brain dead they can't even see the printing press of money in front of them if they simply just got their IP out there.

I am sure someone will come by and say "well they have to protect their IP and can't just let anyone have it, or it could damage their brand" and to that I say that is literally suit talk. Nobody is saying Toyota's are bad because they were in PC1 and PC2, no one is saying Porsches are elite because EA had a exclusive deal for years. People get pissed off at the company who holds the IP and at the company that bought the exclusive rights to that IP.

All this fiasco is showing is that suits that "know how to make money" don't actually know their ass from their elbow.

 

My growing conspiracy theory is Rodger Penske is intentionally trying to kill off the Indycar series.

The man has lost most of his equity over his lifetime over this sport, considering he was one of the head figure of CART when it went bankrupt, and the head of IMS and Indycar during the Covid pandemic. Dude has lost so much money trying to do what he think's is best of the sport of Indycar racing over his life, only to get punched in the mounth everytime by happenstance. Now he's just trying to save the cash cow of the Indy 500, and dumping a whole bunch of money into IMS to try and attract WEC, IMSA, and F1, and to hell with the rest of the indycar series...

Look at all the terrible decisions the man has made.

-Schedule stagnation post covid with 3 races happening at the Indy Motor speedway, 2 back to back.
-A lack of Oval racing pre and post covid (One of the core differentiators of Indycar and F1)
-Squandering the opportunity to gain a 3rd manufacture by prioritizing the current manufactures in designing the engine formula instead of considering the wishes and requests of the incoming manufactures.
-Making a new engine formula centered around hybrids, that was almost identical to the current engine formula, but just different enough that Chevy couldn't get their engine working, so the whole formula was scrapped.
-Now they want to use the old engine, with the new hybrid system (why did we need a new engine in the first place if this was a option the whole time?) Except now there are extreme worries over the weight of the cars as well as fitting the powerunit into the current IR18 bodykit. (It likely won't be possable without ruining the appearance of the car.)
-Signing a deal with a then unproven game developer, that has now proven to be a fraud, because one of the higher ups "likes Motorsport" as a brand. Thus ditching Iracing (The Largest sim racing service on the planet) and cucking Reiza Studios (Arguably the most passionate and most promising sim developer of 2015 on.)
-Quadrupling the price of tickets at Iowa out of the blue, with no warning what so ever...

The only 2 good things of the Penske era, the NBC TV deal, and maybe this Vice documetary series? (If it isn't complete woke garbage.) Both TV media deals....

Everything else they've touched, The Cars, The Schedule, The Engine Regulations, The Search for a 3rd Manufacturer, Soical Media, Video Game Media, Hell Even Sponsors for the Cars!? Why is Husky Chocolate Milk one the most reconizable sponsors of Indycar, yet you can't buy it in the US legally?

WHAT THE HELL IS INDYCAR DOING, IF THIS ISN'T AN ATTEMPTED INTENTIONAL SINKING OF THE SERIES? Nothing they have done for the past 5 years, has made any sense what so ever... it's almost as bad as modern politics.

This is either 100% Intentional so they can focus on IMS, or Indycar has really shat the bed this badly, to the point every single thing they've tried to do has ended in failure or fraud... And we fans are just here, watching the plane burn as the mountains approach at a uncomfortably fast rate...

 

You're giving Penske far too much of an out. Dude is just a rich out of touch moron. If recent history has shown us anything it's that just because you're rich and successful doesn't mean you're smart or understand how to do business successfully. I absolutely attribute these brain dead decisions to Penske and IndyCar decision makers being out of touch suits that have zero competency in understanding how to license their IP successfully in video the games medium.

 

Monaco is F1's Indy... The cars outgrew it long ago...

Qualy laps at Monaco are always a joy to watch because of how close they have to get to do something...

Even though there's barely any overtaking I can watch a full Monaco race... But races at other street circuits like Jeddah, Baku, Albert Park, and Singapore bore me with the DRS overtakes... And Miami needs some major revisions because that was terrible... At least at Monaco the DRS does bugger all down the front straight so overtakes are still based more on forcing the driver in front into a mistake on the corner leading onto the straight...

 

This can be said about many team owners... Teams as a group still make terrible decisions... It's better when an entity outside of the teams has the managing hand and the teams can make suggestions to them...

 

It's MSGS... Give it until June for Penske to find out what Alan Gow did... That MSGS only wants content drops for rF2...

 

It's not even that. This is just another example that companies that deal with licensing their IPs don't know how to do it effectively at all. The decision makers at all these companies are literally incapable of even recognizing the potential printing press of money they are sitting on. They cannot comprehend the gaming medium, despite it being around for 30+ years. They are incapable of realizing they could license past and present IP and set up license agreements with multiple publishers to get a steady stream of income for these publishers to advertise their products. They cannot fathom that instead of paying a network or broadcaster money for the opportunity to show a 30 second ad on the products, they could have a publisher of a game pay THEM to advertise their products. IMSA and DPi manufacturers squandered an opportunity to get their cars out there when they were racing. Ligier, Cadillac, and Dallara all dragged their feet to get their modern prototypes in games.

Look at Mazda, Nissan, IMSA, Toyota, WEC, Peugeot, Ford, Glickenhause, Ferrari, Lamborghini, Audi, Porsche, Acura, Honda, McLaren, BMW, whoever. All of these companies aren't even getting fraction of the potential income they could get. Think of all the cars and series not widely represented in games. Think of all the tracks not widely in games. All of that is potential revenue that these IP holders are completely missing. They are quite literally fumbling the bag all because their suits cannot for the life of them understand the popularity and potential of the gaming medium.

 

Just to inform you. The CW is literally like the bargain bin channel of the US. It's the channel that had when I was younger had dumb teen drama shows, and currently runs some DC shows that have special effects equivalent to like the early 90s. It was the channel people watched for Jerry Springer or what kids relied on if their house didn't have cable.

For IndyCar to choose The CW as their home for their docuseries is hilarious because it just makes IndyCar appear even more like the bargain bin version of F1.

 

THIS...

A lot of these big business heads think they know the best for everything because they were once successful. I've seen similar things in my own industry where just because somebody was massively successful before they get a free pass on whatever current project they're working on, often ignoring solid advice from those under them.

The same problem existed with F1 pre-Liberty media days. For all of the complaints people have about current F1, at least the new owners understand social media, streaming, marketing toward a younger audience, and helping the sport go viral. Bernie banned social media in the paddock and openly stated his target demographic was "75 with expendable income to spend on races." Now the joke is your average F1 fan is 25 and started watching because of Netflix. DTS may have over exaggerated or got facts wrong, but look at race attendance compared to years prior.

I don't think he'd intentionally ruin something he spent huge amounts of his own fortune. My guess is more of an outdated view of the sport and thinking like a team owner and not a series owner.

• Schedule stagnation: I agree with you there. IndyCar could do a lot more to fix this.
• Ovals were already trending out because of several factors: safety concerns, low turnout at some venues, many "cookie cutter" ovals falling out of favor with fans, etc. Not all of that is specifically RP's fault.
• I believe the engine formula was in the works pre-RP takeover. The problems were conflicting demands from manufacturers. I doubt Ferrari was legitimately interested, more or less using the situation to leverage F1.
• Abandoning the new engine was the right call even if it was uncomfortable. It would've cut the field even without the Chevy issues and might have completely pushed Chevy out if not fixed. We get to keep a large grid, but at the cost of souring the relationship with Honda.
• The MSG debacle is inexcusable. I know they didn't have enough details about MSG at the time, but signing away ALL THEIR RIGHTS was completely idiotic.
• Ticket price hikes are inexcusable as well. Some of the prices for the Nashville GP were getting ridiculous. I was debating on going last year until I saw the price and decided against it. I'll be there this year, but only because I'll be working for one of the other series. (It'll be our team's "home race" somewhat)

My guess is incompetence is the key, not intentional sabotage.

I still feel that DRS gets a bit too much of a bad rep. I would prefer racing without it, but a huge tow is effectively the same thing. If you've ever raced Spa, Daytona, Monza, etc. with slower, less aero cars, you know how massive a good draft can be. In those instances, people praise the track for producing good racing, even though the car behind is getting a blatantly unfair advantage. It's partly why I love rovals, the long straights after tight, infield sections make for constant battles.

 

Here is a perfect example. I posted a comment on an IMSA YouTube video from a GTP race not long ago saying something like wish you guys had a proper simulation of this series in its entirety. The channel responded with some brain dead answer like we have lots of our content in iRacing and other simulations. Like no you have a couple cars here and there. There is no GTP lights anywhere, I can't go and actual recreate the season I'm watching anywhere, but again these companies don't understand and at this rate never will.

Even F1 can't figure out they could make more money by not just isolating their entire series to one single developer. They could do that AND license out their stuff to over companies to make even more money, but that concept seems to be too impractical to them.

 

DRS gets a bad rep because it was a decision to keep going down the aero over the car route philosophically rather than under it approach... And after 4 decades they had to admit they were wrong and allowed ground effects again but not doing enough about the aero over the car wash effect... A lot of tin top series also suffer from this philosophy because of the wash, even MotoGP has started having issues with front tyre heating when following in another bikes aero wake...

But the main reason it gets a bad rap is because it often looks to like the driver in front can't be 0.1 slower than the driver behind as as soon as they get within 1 second the driver behind gets an auto pass down the next long straight... It's far less of a battle than using a slipstream outside of the draft on a Super Speedway... And even now when it's been "tuned" on a lot of circuits it's 2 laps of getting a 0.3s gain each lap and then an easy pass...

Just image what F1 would be now if that if at any point during those 4 decades the FIA decided to go ground effect cars with a gurney flap and low wing angles, instead of allowing bigger and bigger wings that cause more and more wash whilst reducing drag and the slip stream effect... Suits making decisions about those big sponsorship banners on the rear of the car rather than on the action on track...

 

Teams having too big of a say in Indycar/CART has always been a big problem. When a firm hand CEO was put in place, it was ousted in what? 3 years? Teams lobbied the Hulman Family and they acted swiftly to have Randy Bernhardt removed from the chairman seat. The teams had a good argument regarding the DW12 spare parts costs, but was it that bad to justify ousting Randy? I don't think so.

And now one of them is running the show. I don't think Roger fits the adjectives used in the last posts, but managing this series seems to require different qualities to the ones Penske possesses.

This agreement with MSG was signed in 2021, but this year Indycar seemed to be looking for a way out, otherwise why would have they entered into talks with Reiza? Seems like they found out too late what MSG truly was. I wonder if the agreement signed had so bad economical consequences in terms of one side termination that they did not want to go that way? Or maybe they are just playing a waiting game because they know it won't be fulfilled? Game has to come out in 2023.

Trying to keep a cool head (it has not been easy, I am angry with this) I guess there are still too many questions to be answered. Reiza staying silent gives me hope that this is not done and dusted. Yet.

 

Thanks for that! I have everything for rF2 but currently I don't see it that good. Reiza looks like much better partner for the future to me. They have roadmaps, plans and they love making games. And like I always said, season pass is very cheap!

 

A deal to have a couple of 2023 cars from IMSA GTP would make me much happier than any Indy deal to be honest. Indy is a dead man walking while IMSA and WEC are going back to the good days.

 

The Ferrari would be a DREAM! I would also like the Peugeot and glickenhaus

 

I imagine the LMH, specially the Ferrari would be a very hard license to come by, but a Acura or Cadillac GTP/LMDH might be possible, since we already have the Cadillac DPi, but I'm just wildly guessing.

 

This might be slightly controversial, but if Reiza can’t get the Ferrari license, I would like the Peugeot. I love the livery and the design of the car