This Genre Used to Be Ahead

Everyone has that sensation of wishing they had said something, but it's too late.

That's the nice thing about writing, you get to do that all the time, and it comes across as if you've always planned to say something when you've said it. Truth be told however, I'm not sure the following is something I could've squeezed into my video about Racing Games, though, it is related…

Reading this title, most would probably be thinking about how Racing Games used to be unique graphical showcases for each console generation.

3D0 - The Need For Speed
SATURN - Daytona USA
PS2 - Ridge Racer V
XBOX - Project Gotham Racing
XBOX 360 - Project Gotham Racing 3
PS3 - Ridge Racer 7

Cars being so much easier to convincingly render than people made them perfect for making your console look like it came from several years in the future, and they really kinda did, even Daytona USA still looks fantastic.

Yet, I'm not talking about that.

What's one of the most common business models for big budget games these days?

Live services.

What's a Live Service?

Usually, a game requiring an online connection, one updated frequently and significantly with subscriptions, micro-transactions, or both, building an experience that's more akin to a routine like visiting a bar than watching a movie, reading a book, or anything that can be "finished."

That is most racing games these days.

Gran Turismo and Forza have scheduled races every few minutes that rotate with driver and safety ratings to pair people together with practice and qualifying sessions, on top of everything already mentioned…

iRacing did this in 2008.

Y'all know, this isn't a defense. I've made my share of jabs at iRacing, but that doesn't stop this from being as true as it is significant.

The people behind Papyrus designed a core-experience and business model that took twelve years for a single company, Polyphony Digital, to even slightly emulate, and another 6-8 years for everybody else to catch up to Polyphony let alone Papyrus.

That's as ahead of the curve as Halo Combat Evolved's console FPS controls. It's as forward thinking as DOOM's multiplayer death-matches. It remained unchallenged longer than Nintendo's groundbreaking side-scrolling on the NES.

Project Gotham Racing 3 didn't just have gorgeous looking car models, environments, and interiors for 2005, it had livestreaming top-level events from "Gotham TV" in an era when Youtube was a start-up.

Forza Motorsport at the same time let you sell cars online, as well as build entirely custom liveries leading to some people even starting a side hustle building virtual cars for clients.

Even the Ridge Racer series were experimenting with 60fps builds of the original game on the PS1, to raise a standard previously only reserved for Arcade Games.

I'm not saying it's easy.

I'm not even saying it's possible.

I'm only saying that this genre, regardless of what anyone thought of it, used to be moving the needle forward for gaming as a whole. Going back to old 360 games, the ones that almost always hold up? They aren't the shooters, action-adventures, or even sports games, but racing games…

Not anymore.