Cisco
August 28, 2008, 9:17pm
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iRacing goes out of its way to explain that its simulation system is not a game, and isn’t being produced or marketed like one. “I wouldn’t go so far as to say that ‘game’ is a four-letter word to us, but we don’t think of ourselves as a game company,” says McKee. “What we offer is really the world’s most sophisticated commercially available racing simulation, conceived and designed with a very discriminating customer in mind—professional racers. We want to create a software package that will help them learn new tracks, hone their skills, or knock off the rust if they’ve been out of the car for a while. It’s really a driver development tool.”
McKee says he used iRacing to learn his way around Virginia International Raceway—one of two dozen tracks currently available in the simulation—before going there to participate in an amateur race. “I’d never driven the track before,” McKee says. “I spent about half an hour a day for three weeks driving the sim in a comparable car, and when I got there I was immediately up to speed.” So to speak.
To set itself apart from MMOs like World of Warcraft or Schilling’s project at 38 Studios, the company has come up with a new acronym: MMIS, for “massively multiparticipant Internet sport.” And it has even established a sanctioning body akin to NASCAR to organize quarterly simulation tournaments.
In fact, from talking with McKee, I got the sense that the company sees signing up for iRacing.com as the rough equivalent of enrolling in one of those $1,200-a-day high-performance driving schools. “World of Warcraft has a real appeal, and we’re not in any way denigrating it,” McKee says. “But our system is more serious, frankly. A video game might allow you to master a Formula One car in an afternoon. But if you ever got into the car for real, you’d never even be able to start it. If you are serious about racing, our product is for you, because getting on a track with a full field of other drivers and racing against them safely involves as much commitment and time investment as if you went to racing school.”
Looks awesome. Honestly, I doubt my current computer (a 5 year old laptop) would even run this, and I don’t have a wheel/pedal set, or the time and money to play right now BUT I will be keeping my eye on this and I could see myself eventually getting into it.
Has anyone played or is planning to?