rec.autos.simulators

says...

Geoff Schuler

Jim-

The obvious answer is the loss of the CART license to Sony.

I'd like to add my two cents about features and bugs.  I own ICR1, ICR2,
GP2 and NASCAR1, and have played NASCAR2 fairly extensively on my
brother's computers.

The feature I long for is networked play in ICR2.  I'll live with the
bugs.  Just please please please give us IPX networking, so more than
two of us can race at the same time!

ICR2 is still far and away my favorite sim.  GP2 has great graphics and
sound, and very nice menus, and some realism features that go beyond
ICR2.  But I find I just don't like the feel and driving style of the F1
cars as much as Indy Cars.  I don't like to have to jam the car into the
corner, braking at the last millisecond, flicking the wheel precisely
the right amount at exactly the right instant, or else go flying off
into the gravel.  I like the relative tossability of the Indy Cars,
where I can go in a bit deep and save it, or get it sideways under power
and feed in some opposite lock.

Similarly, NASCAR2 has much better menus than ICR2; for example, they've
fixed a lot of the illogical things that forced you to break a modem
connection before changing driving options, and the garage is far, far
nicer to use.  And I *love* being able to do networked play!  Recently,
my brother Nate, his son Cale, and I all raced together on Nate's LAN,
attached via a modem and KProxy on one machine to the internet, with
another person we found on a Kali server racing with us as well.  This
is an awesome capability!

But, again, I just don't like driving NASCAR cars; they're too
ponderous, awkward, and twitchy.  Like trying to button your shirt while
wearing ski mittens.  Ugh.  I love the responsiveness, the aliveness of
the Indy Cars.

Also, compared to GP2, ICR2 is a marvel of flexibility.  I like being
able to adjust parameters (like getting rid of the randomness in my car)
and use programs like Editrpy, Viewstg, NCAR2ICR, Showstg, etc.  For
example, my brother Nate and I export best laps from Editrpy to Excel so
we can graph and compare our driving styles, learning a great deal from
each other this way.

And ICR2 with the Rendition card is awesome.  Incredibly responsive,
realistic, so smooth, which such lovely graphics!  This is simply a
fabulous sim!  I absolutely *love* driving these cars!  Since I got my
Screamin' 3D card, GP2 has been gathering dust.

So in my mind, the ideal game right now would be an ICR2 updated to have
the NASCAR2-style menus, and networked play.  I could even do with the
old menus, if you could just give us networked play!

But alas, Sony has the CART rights, so it's apparently not commercially
viable for Papyrus to work on ICR2 any more.  

Or is it?  Doesn't Sony's license start in 1998?  Could you get out a
new release before the end of '97, if it contained only networked play
and maybe a few bug fixes?

How about it, Jim?

Alison

PS. I am still eagerly awaiting the historical Grand Prix sim!  If it's
networked, and incorporates what you've learned from NASCAR2's menu
system, it could be awesome!  But no matter how good it is, I am afraid
I may always wish for a networked ICR2.

One more thing: I use ICR2 and GP2 to familiarize myself with the tracks
before each race during the real racing season, so I can better relate
to what's happening on the tube when watching the races.  I'm sure a lot
of other people do this, too.  So, if you just had that CART license,
maybe the addition of the new tracks, like Homestead and California,
would help make a new version of ICR2 commercially viable.

--
Alison Hine

After the CART/IRL split, we didn't have a team of people motivated to
work on either product, so licensing was not agressively pursued. (Why
pursue a license which isn't particularly valuable, only to force some
engineers and artists to work on a product they aren't passionate
about?) Papyrus definitely runs on passion for motorsports; if we
tried to force it, it just wouldn't work.

As for releasing an ICR3 which is just an ICR2 with IPX and new menus;
can you imagine how the media, users, and rec.auto.sim would react to
that? I realize that you've indicated that you'd pay for such a
product, but I think you'll also permit me to estimate that you are in
the minority. Witness how many people cried and whined that N2 should
have been a free upgrade to N1...

The other alternative is to release the new executable as a patch (so
I'll discuss that here briefly). I'd guesstimate that it's probably
well over 24 engineer-months, and 60 or so non-engineer (art, test
driving, play balancing) months to do that work. (And that's assuming
you are releasing it as a patch, where user expectations are bound to
be lower...) With overhead, but without any profit concerns, that
amounts to somewhere in the neighborhood of $400,000-$600,000 of
labor. Even if you could convince anyone with an ounce of business
sense to spend half a million on a two year old product for no return,
you'd have to find people in our company who want to do that work and
who are not already comitted to another project.

---Jim Sokoloff, Papyrus

Randy

There could be a number of reasons, (the most obvious one being
positioning themselves in the racing game market)

Of course, the most likely scenario is they grabbed the license to
make a profit on it... Don't get me wrong, Papyus turned profits on
our (combined) IndyCar titles; we judged for a variety of reasons that
there were MORE profitable and MORE interesting things for us to do...

---Jim Sokoloff, Papyrus, probably speaking for myself here.

This I don't quite understand. I even remember reading in the Papyrus
official NASCAR handbook that the engineers originally pursued NASCAR
because they just couldn't raise the funds to pursue to completion
their first love: indycars. I.e., NASCAR would sell, enabling Papy to
make the indy sim of their dreams (Indy500 The simulation wasn't the
indycar sim of their dreams, apparently). I always found it a little
surprising that this was put in the NASCAR book, but considered it an
unusually honest revealing.

Of course, that may have been original guys, and now they've all gone
on. Certainly I've seen some Papyrus people come and go in this
newsgroup.

Anyway, Rick Genter told us Papy's Indycar series was dead almost one
year ago, so I am not surprised. by any of this. I was amazed they
actually lived up to Rick's promise to provide online the Win95
update- after saying they wouldn't. That won me back- pass that on to
sierra. Because I hated Sierra after July last year, and now I am
neutral, even a little impressed.

now, put out ICR for playstation, and ICR3 for PC, and I'll love
Sierra!

ya, auto simmers will pay for any sim; I'd buy ICR3 just as a
repackaged ICR2 with better menus. I bought the playstation for
Psygnosis' F1; and am glad to have your lovely NASCAR. Please, ICR for
playstation now. Please.

Wow. That is a lot of money. But doesn't even cost one CART race car.
So why the hell doesn't CART understand it would make back 20-fold
whatever it gave you guys to make a sim "for the people." ICR2 is an
aesthete's sim; it is hard, it is unforgiving, it is... for simmers.
It is a shell of something that could be spiced up and sold to
millions- add menus, add features like a "take-back" (giving you back
the second before you made an idiot mistake), add infinite grades of
novicity for he novices, etc. Then you'd have something even Doom and
Myst players would want! I mean, racing has potential as a universally
enjoyable thing (like shooting Imps and solving mysteries), evidence
by the dearth of arcade games devoted to, uh, "racing."

Frankly, I think Indycar (the sport) is in real trouble; not just with
the split- that was a nail in it's potential coffin. But it is in
trouble because they don't know what they are doing. It is obviously
one of the best formulas around, easily a more interesting *racing*
formula than F1 (hey, I love F1, own every sim, but it's rules make it
a parade)- but not nearly 1/100th as popular. It just isn't promoted
right. If CART (or IRL) knew what it was doing, it would push it for
new fans in the... (don't hate me!)  MTV/Gen-X generation (it looks,
after all, like a skateboard, and dances with death in a similar way),
and, above all, CART would raise the meager price equivelent of a few
new indy engines, give you and your gang (Papyrus) the $1 meg  you
need for an updated, hot sim, and pass around flashy demos, ala DOOM
or Descent or what have you. I don't mean a crappy, arcade sim- I mean
a complete package, like GP2, which appeals to non-simmers and simmers
alike. Or Psyg's F1, for that matter, but better than that.

Sure, promotion sounds crappy, unpure, tainted, etc. But it is how you
build the audience- look at NASCAR; they don't fool around, they know
their audience, and they shoot for them, and the personalities and
eccentricities of their sportmen are pushed like action figures. CART
presently seems to spend their promo money aimlessly.

CART just sort of sits there; they aren't focused. And yet they'd have
a huge audience of people if they tried half as hard as NASCAR- and
helpfully, a largely different audience from NASCAR. NASCAR ain't (I
think everyone would agree) a "Gen-X" sport- CART could just grab that
niche. I have faith that once they started to *watch* the sport, many
would start to love it. It is an ultimate sport; the problem is
getting new potential fans to watch it.

Anyway, racing has a potential promotional advantage over every other
sport, in that in a computer sim, you can actually recreate exactly
what you if you were the sportsman would see. On top of this,
everybody drives, and everybody has a certain interest in driving
(love it or hate it); people already know the dynamics of the sport.

Can anybody think of another sport with these two plusses? The first
is truly unique- I can't think of another sport where you actually get
to get in the offensive line, or behind the soccer ball, or at the
plate. Racing sims let you really race Atlanta when you watch the real
Atlanta race. This is something I think the sports could take
advantage of.

Thanks, Jim, as always for sticking with us.

<snip>

<snip>

<snip>

Boy, what a can of worms I opened here.  I think that if you read the
newsrelease from the CART page that I posted earlier, you could deduce
that there is a real push happening in the marketing arena by the
folks at CART.  An ICR3 for Playstation is EXACTLY what they're hoping
to achieve (whether they will or not will be shown in the future, no
speculative flames here please.)  Sierra should not be blamed for not
ponying up more money for the CART license.  As Sokoloff has patiently
explained no fewer than three times in this string, the license was
not as valuable to them.  In addition, remember that CART has the
right to sell the license to whomever they want, which may not
necessarily be the highest bidder.  Let me explain.

CART is facing the huge pressure of competition with the IRL, as we
all know.  In keeping with your suggestion of focusing, they decided
to pursue a *** system with a large installation base, and get fans
that will be around for a while (vis-a-vis, YOUNG.)  I am performing
in a play right now, and one of the cast members is about 13 years
old.  We have become friends, and we talk quite a bit about sports.
The sports his friends watch, in order, are 1)Basketball, 2)Hockey, 3)
Baseball/Football (tie).  NONE OF THEM WATCH ANY MOTORSPORTS AT ALL.
However, they are all car freaks, and this is the market that CART is
probably going for.  As far as your MTV/GEN-X comment, CART had a
great promotional piece on MTV last season that was a refreshing take
on the series.  Although CART's new marketing efforts are not
necessarily positive for us hard-core simmers, it is a definite move
at becoming more focused, like you recommend.

All of the above is strictly IMHO.

Cheers,

Pooch

                                          O-iiiii-O

I am in no way affiliated, attached, or "in-the-know" with official
policy at Sierra/Papyrus.  However, in order to ease your mind, I am
100% certain based on dialogues in newsgroups and off-line that
Sierra/Papyrus will not be making any CART nor IRL sims in the near
future (at least two years, possibly many more.)

I can understand if you choose to not believe this statement based on
my dubious credentials, but as a fellow simmer who cares about the
genre I do not engage in the dissemination of inuendo.

Cheers,

Pooch

                                          O-iiiii-O

   Ironic.  Due to my interest in racing sims I have bought ICR1, the
7 Track Pack, the IMS/Paintkit Pack, GP1, NASCAR1, the Track Pack,
ICR2, GP2, NASCAR2, and a Reactor video card (ICR2-3D) (around $300
investment, excluding hardware).  I like them all, but to varying
degrees.  If I looked at how much I use them, I'd come up with the
following ratings (*really* rough numbers, mostly to make a point)...

ICR1/2/3D   1000 hours
NASCAR1/2    500 hours (mostly N1)
GP1/2         50 hours

   Unfortunately, its not feasible for me to buy 20 copies of ICR to
match my copy of GP.  When I buy one copy of each, the publisher is
not getting the right message.  I see my mistake.  I guess from now on
I should only buy the sims that I *really* want, and not bother buying
NASCAR3 or GP3.  Maybe the publishers will get the right message...

   I've seen published reports that ICR1 & 2 sold a combined 420,000
copies.  Not too shabby.  It may be half the market of NASCAR1 (or 1/3
that of GP1/GP2), but that still looks like very respectable numbers
to this uneducated CART fan (particularly when a fair amount of the
development cost is shared with its sister sim, NASCAR).

   Sorry to hear your engineers have lost their fire for IndyCars.
Although I guess that's old news, looking back on the ICR2 8-month
patch debacle.  I'm starting to wonder about their fire for NASCAR;
what's it been, three months and counting?...  :(

Before you send me UCE, I know what you're thinking...  Did he complain
to five or six postmasters last month?  Now, you must ask yourself one
question: "Do I feel lucky?"  Well, do you, punk?

Dave Sparks
IWCCCARS Project: http://www.theuspits.com/iwcccars
Late Night League: http://www.sequoia-dev.com/Hawaii/latenite.html
Hawaii Handle: davids

   Now we're getting down to brass tacks.  Papyrus used to be the
company that made the sims it loved and made a profit from it along
the way.  Now its the company that goes for the biggest profit and
struggles to maintain its interest in the job at hand.

   No, that doesn't sound like the Papyrus I knew.  It sure does sound
like Sierra, though, doesn't it?  :(

Before you send me UCE, I know what you're thinking...  Did he complain
to five or six postmasters last month?  Now, you must ask yourself one
question: "Do I feel lucky?"  Well, do you, punk?

And that's still what we're doing, making sims we love, making sims WE
want to play, helping others to share in the enjoyment of our sims,
and making money long the way.

As the original discussion pertained to how we somehow "screwed up" by
not renewing the license which allowed us (in the past) to do
ICR/ICR2. Personally, I've lost all interest in the CART/IRL
clusterf&*%. I couldn't care less what Mr George does with his race
track (though I'd like to see it made available for licensing for
NASCAR sims), and I couldn't care less where the open wheel racing is
on Memorial day. (I've got barbeques and random outdoor-type
socializing to do that day anyhow...) While I was never a huge IndyCar
fan, I feel the IRL has done a great deal to "soil" Indy-type car
competition for me. And therefore, I've got no interest in working on
an Indy-type car sim. (in fact, I'd probably leave Papyrus rather than
work on a product that I didn't believe in, and didn't WANT to do)

I working on a NASCAR product; NASCAR is the sim I MOST want to work
on, and therefore will be the sim to which I bring the most passion
and quality of work to. I'm not aware of so much as single engineer at
Papyrus who MOST wants to work on an Indy-type car sim, and therefore,
I don't think we pursued that license at all. You don't get product
without engineers, and buying a license, only to have no product to
show for it is a fairly ass backwards way to run a company.

You speak negatively about Papyrus as a profit-seeking business, as if
we should all be some FSF*-esque monks who strive to provide products
without any concern for profitability. I've got news for you; Papyrus
is in business to make a profit. By making a profit, we have money
available to buy machines, rent buildings, hire engineers, artists,
producers, designers, and testers. Without those people, who don't
come for free by any means, there are no more Papyrus products of any
motorsports genre. I'm not independently wealthy, and if Papyrus
became unable to pay me a decent salary, I'd be forced to resign and
provide for my family elsewhere. Most of my fellow employees are in
the same situation.

As an employee and stockholder, I hope like hell that Papyrus works
for the biggest profit over the long run, as that's the only thing
that will keep its employees employed, happy and well-paid, as well as
ensuring that motorsports-sim fans will be able to continue to enjoy
our products.

I've sent a courtesy copy of this by e-mail, but I'm perfectly content
to have this discussion "in public" if you like...

---Jim Sokoloff, totally speaking for myself...

Footnote(*): I have nothing against the FSF, and they have some
interesting goals and positions. I don't agree with all of them by any
means, but I do use (and benefit from) a good deal of GPL'd software

   Me too.  I cope by mostly ignoring the IRL and enjoying CART.  The
hot war is pretty much over, in case you haven't been watching.
IndyCars are still running races, and in some ways (if you want to be
optimistic) the genre has been enhanced by the split.  Competition is
good and it can lead to a better CART.  At this point, IMHO, if Tony
George is still ruining your enjoyment of IndyCar, you need to get
over it (or question how much of a fan you were in the first place,
which you did admit up-front).

   Not any concern for profitability, but profitablity as the first
criterion is my contention.  I've spent about $250 on Papyrus
software, so I'd think its obvious that I don't have any problems with
you earning a profit for your efforts.  I just want you to A) finish
your existing product (I haven't seen you address the problems of game
saves and modem racing on ICR2-3D) and B) possibly create ICR3, and
continue to produce the best IndyCar sims on the market.

   Papyrus is free to do whatever it wants.  We, the purchasers and
users of racing sims can do the same.  It would be nice if we both
wanted the same thing.  :)

<doing the email thing as well, 'cause you never can trust all the
news, all the time>

Before you send me UCE, I know what you're thinking...  Did he complain
to five or six postmasters last month?  Now, you must ask yourself one
question: "Do I feel lucky?"  Well, do you, punk?

This seems to be the crux of the matter.  I've read your other postings
in the newsgroup subsequent to others' replies.  If people at Papyrus
aren't passionate about Indy cars, then clearly there's no point in
trying to do another Indy car sim.

It's too bad the IRL/CART split has dampened your enthusiasm (although,
as you say, your own passion has always been for NASCAR anyway).  I
agree it's been a pain to go through this split, and I had a lot of
anger toward Tony George for a long time.  But now I feel that the IRL
is shaping up to be another good minor league feeder series for CART,
like Atlantics and Indy Lights, and despite the loss of Indianapolis,
CART's racing is even better and more competitive, with new interest
from the multiplicity of engines, chassis, and tires.

I don't think those whiners are programmers.  As a software engineer
myself, I can appreciate how much effort goes into each new release, and
the reasons why it takes months to come out with a patch.  

Many years ago, I wrote a crude racing sim myself, and marketed it
briefly with some small success.  I learned a lot doing it, but the
difficulties of going to a 3D representation of the track view (mine had
an overhead, 2D view) defeated me, and I never went beyond that simple
original effort.

In the ensuing years, I've worked on a number of large projects, with
teams of programmers and millions of lines of code.  The headaches
involved in quashing bugs, testing, putting together a definitive
release, not to mention the design problems, controlling the scope,
integration of modules, etc., are something that no one that hasn't been
through it can appreciate.

My hat's off to Papyrus for doing what you've done to advance the state
of the art of racing sims.  I'm glad you are driven by passion!

Alison

--
Alison Hine

David Otterness - the starter if this wonderful thread..