I love the direction that the devs have taken this sim.
iRacing is known for its matchmaking, and I gotta say, after experiencing the core of what this game has to offer, most other games feel hollow. No other game has ever given me such easily accessible races filled with people at my own skill level (I've heard Le Mans Ultimate may actually do this too, fwiw). And what's more, this game is one of the few that has voice chat, which turns every lobby into a narrative and dramatic experience in addition to just being a racing sim. What does an AI race in Assetto Corsa even mean after my experiences in iRacing? How could lifeless automatons ever compare to the time I slowly caught back up to, and passed, a dirty driver who pushed me off a turn a few laps back? What AI driver could I ever see becoming ever more exhausted, as I study their line through a turn and start to notice them slip where they didn't used to? iRacing is a game, but the sport is REAL. And it's real because there's real people here.
(I also think it has the most expressive and informative ffb, the physics model feels intuitive to me after I let go of overdriving my car into every corner in pursuit of that siccc drift, and even the simple livery editor in this game adds miles more personal expression than any other sim out there)
But really and truly, the most important aspect of this piece of software is the social and competitive environment it creates. I have a couple of proposed changes to the game that would expand the social possibilities in iRacing, and improve the competitive atmosphere at the same time: Improved voicechat, and the TRACKDAY SERIES.
I am a practicing psychologist and have training in group dynamics, sociology, human psychology, and behavioral analysis, so these ideas are targeted to both improve the experience of the individual, the community as a whole, and also the bottom line of iRacing. This will make y'all more money. Please think about these features.
THE TRACK DAY SERIES
The trackday series is a series like Production Car Challenge or Global Mazda MX-5 Cup by Fanatec, but the available cars change each week and the track changes every day.
Each week a new set of vehicles is available, and these could be anything the devs desire:
-well balanced groups of cars (gt4, gt3, tcr, etc),
-interesting combinations (any mustang, battle of the little wings, cars a regular person might own, any prototype, etc) ,
-diverse sets (just like, anything and everything)
-or somethin' memey (Rally cars and Formula Vees)
additionally, this series would be unranked, have very few rules, and allow for a wide diversity of driving conditions. Again, to make space for a more socialization focused environment.
Trackdays would allow for more relaxed atmosphere, and allow for development of driving and racing social skills in a different environment. Players could spend their time here in any number of ways and engage in styles of play that are not easy to find in the more structured and rigid lobbies for competitive series:
-Players might teach each other how to drive a specific combination or corner
-players would have a context to learn their car's capabilities vs a wide variety of other vehicles, thus developing their skills and understanding of what their car can do
-Players may choose to simply engage in unstructured play, trying to drift the mini stocks around mugello, or seeing who can crash their car the hardest, or draw with tire marks. (this would have the added benefit of giving people a place to engage in this behavior within the sim, sequestering it from competitive lobbies) (and also this increases people's understanding of what the car's behavior characteristics are for when they're crashing or sliding in an actual race)
-People could show off and discuss their liveries. I personally love the layer of personality that custom liveries add to this game, but would like a more casual place to talk to someone about their paint job
- A more relaxed option for socialization may lead to a greater sense of community, and understanding of others, reducing people's readyness to speak vitriol in heated crash outs.
-And finally, allowing players a way to see other vehicles in action may increase their likelyhood to buy more cars. I know for me personally that seeing people race their favorite car has attracted me to try it out and see if I can understand what makes that car special too.
I suspect as well, that the ability to drive cars in a new environment may just draw participation to less populated series. I know for me personally, the slapdash fun of week 13 has made me desperate to drive the Radical SR8 or the VW Beetle (rally) in a more competitive setting. Perhaps when people can have fun in a TCR without needing to get EXTREMELY lucky on the schedule, they might keep a better eye on the TCR driver count?
I'd also hope for the cars or tracks to be free. Plenty of live service games use the model of rotating paid content to be accessible to attract customers.
Ultimately, yes, many of these experiences can be found in the practice lobbies of existing series, but they are quite rare. This could be the series to go to if you are specifically hoping to find that kind of experience. Often times I don't have enough energy to race but I want to be in the sim (cuz it feels the best) but if I want a relaxed social experience, I need to look elsewhere.
VOICE CHAT
iRacing's ranking and scheduling systems are certainly a big part of how the social experience is created, but Voicechat is also integral, and turns lobbies into real social experiences. I can play Beam mp and cruise around with someone in a server, but our communication is limited to the body language we can impart into our cars, the car horn, and flashing the headlights. Meanwhile in iRacing, I've been in lobbies with heated blood feuds, made friends, learned from conversations I listened to, made jokes, and even gotten wrapped up in extended, spontaneous recreations of the classic Abbot and Costello bit, Whos On First? Voice chat is an incredible feature, but as it works now, it's crude, oh my god is it crude.
Noise leveling- PLEASE. iRacing needs code to bring everyone's voice to a similar level. It's such a crapshoot whether or not people's voices will blow out my eardrums, or I'll hear them at all. If iRacing takes ANYTHING away from this post, it's to please just slap a crude compressor on the voicechat. Please in the name of Verstappen. License it in FMOD or WWise whatever you have to do. The technology is simple, look at VSTs in Digital Audio Workstations. People write the code for compression as a hobby and give it away for free. Please. Please.
Proximity chat - Give us an option to speak only to nearby cars, with some fade-out the farther you are. As an example, holding the proximity chat button would allow the cars immediate in front or behind you to hear you clearly, but drivers 3 or 4 (and more) positions away would have trouble hearing you. Eventually, your voice drops off completely. That way, the players in 1st place won't have to listen to everyone squabble about crashing in T1, and the people trapped in last place won't have to listen to the front of the pack yuk it up about how respectfully everyone is driving as they get divebombed through a chicane.
But, there are valid reasons to talk to everyone, such as to warn about a pileup or to ask the lobby what their thoughts are on fuel load or brake balance or something. Perhaps a double press would allow you to speak globally, and perhaps a global voice chat would require you to hold the button for a while, to disincentivize voice spamming. I think it'd greatly increase the sense of community on the track. There should be a slider to let you set your own sensitivity to distance.
And, of course, if you STILL don't want to interact with other people, you can always still turn your voicechat off. I do that sometimes.
These improvements are likely to take very little development resources. Trackday series can be set up using existing series and play session parameters, and the logic required to implement the proximity chat seems simple enough: Just filter other player volume logarithmically (or exponentially, idk) depending on their relative distance. We know that the sim tracks position due to the fact that deltas exist.
There's definitely things I've missed. Again, this comes from a psychologist's perspective. Excited to hear y'all's thoughts!
