129 replies to this topic

[TheRacingElf]

Does anyone have any sales figures for Codemasters' game before you start accusing people?

 

Just because you're a sim snob doesn't mean their product is "garbage". Though I'll admit that I haven't got anything more recent than 2013, I still play the classic mode on that regularly and it's great fun.

Thing is, I'm as you call me a "sim snob" and I would like to drive F1 cars in a sim, F1 doesn't give me that option so I have to revert to F1 mods. I would not have any problem with Codemasters releasing arcade games if they would just give sim racers the chance to enjoy racing F1 cars too, and by that I don't mean just 1 licenced car.

 

Let them sell the right to produce a arcade to codemasters and sell the rights for a sim to a sim developer, everybody happy.

[Myrvold]

I would not be surprised at all if Codemasters are the ones lodging requests for action. And it would be well within their rights if they think that they could be losing sales due to it.

I risk looking like an *** I end up being wrong. But, it is not Codies.

Edited by Myrvold, 01 April 2016 - 08:58.

[Myrvold]

*doublé*

Edited by Myrvold, 01 April 2016 - 08:57.

[PayasYouRace]

Thing is, I'm as you call me a "sim snob" and I would like to drive F1 cars in a sim, F1 doesn't give me that option so I have to revert to F1 mods. I would not have any problem with Codemasters releasing arcade games if they would just give sim racers the chance to enjoy racing F1 cars too, and by that I don't mean just 1 licenced car.

 

Let them sell the right to produce a arcade to codemasters and sell the rights for a sim to a sim developer, everybody happy.

 

I only call you a sim snob because anything that doesn't reach your standards you consider garbage. Whereas I would classify Codies' efforts far more on the simulation side of things than arcade (which involves tail happy handling, and time limits and that sort of thing).

 

I can actually understand why you'd feel frustrated by not getting full content in a high-end sim, and a decade ago, when I spent hours on GPL and rFactor playing quite seriously, I'd have been more on your side. But nowadays I only have time for something lighter on a console that I can drop in and out of.

 

Yeah, it would be better if FOM would release the rights to someone else for a different level. That doesn't mean they should allow their rights to be used with no licence.

[Frood]

It does strike me as odd that FOM are now going for the generic mods, such as the "Formula Extreme" that seems to have got Reiza Simulations in trouble in Automobilista (a page back). That is a mod based on a generic car with generic liveries. The problem may be that Reiza are charging money for the game, although it has a few other series in the game as well (Rallycross, etc.). Still strikes me as rather petty that they won't allow people to run a generic "fast formula-type" car though.

[Myrvold]

It does strike me as odd that FOM are now going for the generic mods, such as the "Formula Extreme" that seems to have got Reiza Simulations in trouble in Automobilista (a page back). That is a mod based on a generic car with generic liveries. The problem may be that Reiza are charging money for the game, although it has a few other series in the game as well (Rallycross, etc.). Still strikes me as rather petty that they won't allow people to run a generic "fast formula-type" car though.

 

That is if it's FOM. It's hinted to that not being the case.

[Burtros]

Ive got the best sim in the world tomorrow. Castle Combe Spring Action Day, 2x 15 mins sessions booked on track in my car! You wont get close to that sat in front of a screen!!

 

In all seriousness though, I used to play a hell of a lot of computer games and the one thing I concluded long ago was its just another media stream f1 really dont give a **** about. Actions like this (whoever the perpetrator is) are just another example of how the sport sucks when it comes to looking after its fans. When Psygnosis had the licence in the late 90s that was its heyday. Then EA got it and their efforts were probably the worst Ive ever seen. Codemasters do a reasonable job, but the games always had really annoying bugs I couldn't get round. Canned spins, dodgy AI pit strategy. The Classic content in 2013 was a huge highlight. Must dig it out again!

 

I agree with the people here defending codemasters against attacks from flat out sim racer fans. Its not meant to be, extreme sim racers are a very niche thing that the majority of people (myself included) don't enjoy.

Edited by Burtros, 01 April 2016 - 10:04.

[YoungGun]

Maybe a silly question, but do any of these sim games that are in "violation", themselves have patents? If they do what's the difference between having a patent and a copyright to protect you "IP"?

Edited by YoungGun, 01 April 2016 - 10:04.

[YoungGun]

double post

Edited by YoungGun, 01 April 2016 - 10:05.

[Araqiel]

F1 2015 was noticably disliked by PC reviewers. I'm not entirely sure why, but it should be easy enough to find a couple of reviews to find out.

That would be because it was, to use the technical term, broke to ****. It's their best effort so far though after a few patches, at least on console. The fact that they've recently had some fans (read: Youtubers) in the studio to give feedback on a development version of 2016 can only mean good things for the next one.

[PayasYouRace]

Ive got the best sim in the world tomorrow. Castle Combe Spring Action Day, 2x 15 mins sessions booked on track in my car! You wont get close to that sat in front of a screen!!

 

In all seriousness though, I used to play a hell of a lot of computer games and the one thing I concluded long ago was its just another media stream f1 really dont give a shit about. Actions like this (whoever the perpetrator is) are just another example of how the sport sucks when it comes to looking after its fans. When Psygnosis had the licence in the late 90s that was its heyday. Then EA got it and their efforts were probably the worst Ive ever seen. Codemasters do a reasonable job, but the games always had really annoying bugs I couldn't get round. Canned spins, dodgy AI pit strategy. The Classic content in 2013 was a huge highlight. Must dig it out again!

 

I agree with the people here defending codemasters against attacks from flat out sim racer fans. Its not meant to be, extreme sim racers are a very niche thing that the majority of people (myself included) don't enjoy.

 

Sounds like fun. Don't crash please.

 

Psygnosis was the Sony developer and they held the licence at the same time as EA and of course Microprose (Geoff Crammond's games) for a while. It was after EA's last game that Sony became exclusive. It's been an exclusive licence since then, which isn't as good for us because we don't get the competition.

[noikeee]

It does strike me as odd that FOM are now going for the generic mods, such as the "Formula Extreme" that seems to have got Reiza Simulations in trouble in Automobilista (a page back). That is a mod based on a generic car with generic liveries. The problem may be that Reiza are charging money for the game, although it has a few other series in the game as well (Rallycross, etc.). Still strikes me as rather petty that they won't allow people to run a generic "fast formula-type" car though.

 

Wait, what? It's the Formula Extreme that got them into trouble? How can that violate copyright of any kind? It's already purposefuly ficticious to not break copyright. Bloody hell. 

 

I can understand if they're taking down 2015/2016 mods for older Codemasters games, as that could theoretically prevent people buying new games, but not cars in sims with F1 physics but fake liveries and names. That's just petty (from whoever the hell is filing these copyright complaints).

[Burtros]

Sounds like fun. Don't crash please.

 

Psygnosis was the Sony developer and they held the licence at the same time as EA and of course Microprose (Geoff Crammond's games) for a while. It was after EA's last game that Sony became exclusive. It's been an exclusive licence since then, which isn't as good for us because we don't get the competition.

 

Im yet to make it all the way to the barriers when it goes wrong!!

[Myrvold]

Wait, what? It's the Formula Extreme that got them into trouble? How can that violate copyright of any kind? It's already purposefuly ficticious to not break copyright. Bloody hell. 

 

I can understand if they're taking down 2015/2016 mods for older Codemasters games, as that could theoretically prevent people buying new games, but not cars in sims with F1 physics but fake liveries and names. That's just petty (from whoever the hell is filing these copyright complaints).

The mods were FOM-work. Automobilista is hinted to not being FOM. And it's not Codies either.

[Alexandros]

Personally I don't even understand why those newer games are called simulators.

 

Games such as EA's F1-2000 had like 4 pages of settings in tuning the car, in practically ...infinite combinations of settings. You could actually understand the physics of it... you could see what pressures, cambers, etc did to each segment (interior, center, exterior) of each tire. You could set whatever you wanted with a very high degree of granularity and see on-track correlations of your setups and track performance. You could even make asymmetrical setups, since you were essentially configuring every corner of the car separately. And then you could patch a mod on the replay files and see the telemetry to find out where your laps can be better. This is stuff that could, with some improvement, be used in industrial level simulations.

 

One would expect that today's games would be even better than what was released 16 years ago, but nope... companies have decided that "simulators" need to be glorified dumbed-down arcades.

 

In any case, it's bad for F1 what the management is doing, but that's typically what happens when there is a legal department full of lawyers, having nothing to do all day, chasing trivial things. Yeah, let's cut those videos from youtube, game mods, etc etc and then pretend that we don't understand why F1 is going down by alienating even the hard-core fans.

Edited by Alexandros, 01 April 2016 - 18:25.

[Gorma]

I thought this was an april fools joke.

[Dolph]

Personally I don't even understand why those newer games are called simulators.

 

Games such as EA's F1-2000 had like 4 pages of settings in tuning the car, in practically ...infinite combinations of settings. You could actually understand the physics of it... you could see what pressures, cambers, etc did to each segment (interior, center, exterior) of each tire. You could set whatever you wanted with a very high degree of granularity and see on-track correlations of your setups and track performance. You could even make asymmetrical setups, since you were essentially configuring every corner of the car separately. And then you could patch a mod on the replay files and see the telemetry to find out where your laps can be better. This is stuff that could, with some improvement, be used in industrial level simulations.

 

 

So it was an F1 car engineering simulator then with an option to drive the car as well.

[EightGear]

The mods were FOM-work. Automobilista is hinted to not being FOM. And it's not Codies either.

Do you know more? If so, do you mind sharing that info?

[Alexandros]

So it was an F1 car engineering simulator then with an option to drive the car as well.

 

Let's just say games were far less dumbed down back then. Even ...Need For Speed (eg Porsche) had more settings and adjusting-driving realism than some modern F1 games I tried. This is not really nostalgia of older games, just my honest opinion of how dumbed down the newer games are. Perhaps, from what I read about the sales upthread, it's a result of the games primarily being designed for the console market and secondarily for the PC market. And the console market was always more "arcad-ish".

 

In a complex game, for the player who isn't interested in setting up the fine details there is always a way to have pre-set formats, defaults, etc, so he doesn't need to be an "engineer". But for the one who wants to tamper with all the stuff, well, in that case you can't make a simple game "accommodate" his needs. 

 

You can make an advanced game playable by a guy that just wants to drive, but you can't make a dumbed-down game to be properly configured by an expert as there are no options to do so. 

 

There is plenty of gaming satisfaction, not only on the driving aspect, but on the "I'm actively working to make my car faster, by tweaking the heck out of it". There is a special type of gaming joy and pride in discovering better setups that deliver more on-track performance.

[pRy]

I would not be surprised at all if Codemasters are the ones lodging requests for action.  And it would be well within their rights if they think that they could be losing sales due to it. 

 

Yes. If they are paying a fair sum of money to FOM for the rights to use the current liveries, tracks etc.. then I agree they are probably within their rights to take a dim view of other simulators on the market offering the same content but without having to pay for the licence. I mean it's a no brainer really. If they're paying.. so should everyone else.

 

Of course the inevitable boot being put into FOM has already started in here. But this sort of thing is standard in sports. NFL.. football.. basketball... golf. Those games are all licensed and I would be very surprised if there are non licensed versions able to use the names of the teams, players, kits etc. If anything F1 was slow to the party. Codemasters is the first long term deal they agreed for an official F1 sim. They're going to protect those rights. 

[chrisPB15]

 

One would expect that today's games would be even better than what was released 16 years ago, but nope... companies have decided that "simulators" need to be glorified dumbed-down arcades.

 

 

Slightly snobby attitude there. The best 'simulations' of driving fast, actually started out in the arcades and had dumbed down physics by default. These created the industry, that's where the money was. I'm not surprised they consider that's where the money still is.

 

I don't see the problem with these games not being accurate,  as long as the end product is exhilarating. Sega could have been the world leader in racing sims if they wanted, they built the first dedicated 3D hardware, they had to go to the company NASA used for simulators   before there was a market on the PC,  Force feedback wheels, surround screens, all started in the 'dumb' arcades  it took a long long time for home computers to come anywhere near proving the same experience.  

Compare the experience of Sega's Daytona USA in 1994 to the PCs of the time, with their 14" screens, peep peep speakers and the space bar as a brake pedal. Or Virtua Racing in 92 when PCs were still moving up from green screens.

 

Regarding the original topic, I always liked the made-up team and driver names that were close to the original, yet were often comical. Never had the urge to patch them and pretend to be a real life character or drive for real life team. 

Proper simulations are used to gain a competitive edge, then the ego takes over the fun.   

Edited by chrisPB15, 01 April 2016 - 19:35.

[Alexandros]

Slightly snobby attitude there. The best 'simulations' of driving fast, actually started out in the arcades and had dumbed down physics by default. These created the industry, that's where the money was. I'm not surprised they consider that's where the money still is.

 

I don't see the problem with these games not being accurate,  as long as the end product is exhilarating. Sega could have been the world leader in racing sims if they wanted, they built the first dedicated 3D hardware, they had to go to the company NASA used for simulators   before there was a market on the PC,  Force feedback wheels, surround screens, all started in the 'dumb' arcades  it took a long long time for home computers to come anywhere near proving the same experience.  

Compare the experience of Sega's Daytona USA in 1994 to the PCs of the time, with their 14" screens, peep peep speakers and the space bar as a brake pedal. Or Virtua Racing in 92 when PCs were still moving up from green screens.

 

Regarding the original topic, I always liked the made-up team and driver names that were close to the original, yet were often comical. Never had the urge to patch them and pretend to be a real life character or drive for real life team. 

Proper simulations are used to gain a competitive edge, then the ego takes over the fun.   

 

Well, regarding "sims" I tend to have higher expectations than being type of arcade and pretending to be simulators. It's due to the sequence I started playing these. I first played flying simulators like microprose's f117, gunship 2000, then falcon 3.0 etc, and several years afterwards got to the car "simulators". The pc-game magazines would be full of praise for games that had increased realism, even if it added so much complexity that you run out of keys and key combinations. Some games came with ...key-maps    But the flying genre evolved further in terms of "simulation", becoming better at it, while driving "sims" regressed to more simple driving. I'm not really following the game industry so there could be exceptions in racing sims that I'm unaware of.

[noikeee]

Well, regarding "sims" I tend to have higher expectations than being type of arcade and pretending to be simulators. It's due to the sequence I started playing these. I first played flying simulators like microprose's f117, gunship 2000, then falcon 3.0 etc, and several years afterwards got to the car "simulators". The pc-game magazines would be full of praise for games that had increased realism, even if it added so much complexity that you run out of keys and key combinations. Some games came with ...key-maps    But the flying genre evolved further in terms of "simulation", becoming better at it, while driving "sims" regressed to more simple driving. I'm not really following the game industry so there could be exceptions in racing sims that I'm unaware of.

 

Take your pick:

 

iRacing

Assetto Corsa

Automobilista

rFactor 2

 

And Empty Box's introduction to simracing youtube playlist, which can give people a decent starting point although this is now 3 years old and a bit dated.

[Myrvold]

Do you know more? If so, do you mind sharing that info?

I know some - off the record - but from all that I can gather Codemasters don't bother with mods, rFactor 1/2, AMS, Stock Car Extreme, pCars and all those games efforts to have F1-style cars.
Also, there have been extreme anger towards FOM for this - and Reiza have said that the "anger is misplaced" - which strongly indicates that FOM is not the ones behind this.
Further to this. Stock Car Extreme is not taken down by anyone, and Automobilista i Stock Car Extreme Remastered, with the exact same formula cars etc. And I don't think Robby Gordon have taken the game down due to including SuperTrucks, fictional ones, in the game.

 

There are however certain individuals in the simracing "world" that one might believe could be able to do this. And that's what it is increasingly looking like have happened here at the moment.

Edited by Myrvold, 01 April 2016 - 20:30.

[DrProzac]

Formula one managment is quite like communism. They are masters at finding non-existent problems and victoriously solving them. They are also masters of ignoring the really important ones (or pretending to try to solve them).

 

Do they really think that sim racers will buy their more or less arcade games (form sim racer's point of view) because they banned F1 mods? It won't do them any good.

Edited by DrProzac, 02 April 2016 - 09:37.

[chunder27]

Like my Norwegian non friend , I do not think this is likely to be anything to do with FOM.

Far more likely to be a rival publisher or company within sim racing.

My initial thought would be WMD as they have a track record of trying to annoy people and licencing issues themselves, but I don't think many of their mods are that F1 centric.

 

More likely to be someone either wanting to get in on Codies act and take away their licence, or another firm who wants to publish a licenced F1 mod for their game like RRE, or RF2 and maybe have an agreement from FOM but cant do much without doing this.

Stupidly there are countless F1 mods out there for a few games that accurately depict even the sponsors, win settings and helmets of every race of a certain season.

 

So this is all very weird when it has existed for over a decade in some cases, even more.

[Marklar]

Now let's see what the FOM will do now....  

 

Edited by Marklar, 21 April 2016 - 13:06.

[chunder27]

Well done for publicising this and probably spoiling a lot of peoples fun.

 

Think ahead fella eh?

[EightGear]

As if this wasn't all over the web already.

[RainyAfterlifeDaylight]

Now let's see what the FOM will do now....  

 

Now I can do missions in one third of the allocated time easily.