British Touring Car Championship Game and Esport Series Confirmed, Scheduled for 2022

kikie
You can sell a hardcore sim nowadays. To make it accessible they can add a lot of driving aids and the possibility to choose amateur or expert.

BTCC as a hardcore sim will sell better than an arcade game or even a simcade. People are already complaining that pCars 3 is not going to be sim enough.

I think that a hardcore sim with accessibility for people that are less interested in the hardcore part will sell very good nowadays.
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Yeah I'm not talking about making it arcade. BTCC as a hardcore sim will alienate the fanbase, would be a bad move. Like I said, it needs to be balanced, assists etc work fine but they aren't the be all and end all of bridging the gap to hardcore simulations. People are complaining that pcars 3 isn't sim enough because its ditched pitstops and tyre wear.

It has to first and foremost play well on a controller, period. The driving physics have to be convincing at the very least, again like the F1 games, not necessarily absolute hardcore realism, but realistic enough for it to be absolutely believable, complemented with your typical stability, traction and abs assists. The trouble with going for hardcore sim and then adding assists is it just doesn’t give a good enough feel and can be frustrating for people, pCars 2, AC and ACC are absolute prime examples of this. I understand the desires for a hardcore sim but if the racing community had their way, everything would be a hardcore sim and would sell like crap. This simply isn't the target market for a dedicated BTCC game.

Laser scanned tracks are an absolute must when you only have 8 circuits, likewise dynamic weather and at least alternate time of day if not dynamic (BTCC meetings start at 10am and can go on past 6pm). The tyre modelling needs to have a good feeling of difference between the compounds with relevant tyre wear. The AI have to be racers, F1 again is a good example of AI that arent afraid to attack or defend, I feel this is absolutely one of the most important factors, it coukd have everything else going for it but if the AI sucks it'll be pointless.
 
MagpieRacer
It has to first and foremost play well on a controller, period. The driving physics have to be convincing at the very least, again like the F1 games, not necessarily absolute hardcore realism, but realistic enough for it to be absolutely believable, complemented with your typical stability, traction and abs assists. The trouble with going for hardcore sim and then adding assists is it just doesn’t give a good enough feel and can be frustrating for people, pCars 2, AC and ACC are absolute prime examples of this. I understand the desires for a hardcore sim but if the racing community had their way, everything would be a hardcore sim and would sell like crap. This simply isn't the target market for a dedicated BTCC game.
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I'd be fine if the physics and controls end up being something akin to what GT Sport has right now. Motion steering would be a mega plus if that was implemented as well.
 
VulcanSpirit
I'd be fine if the physics and controls end up being something akin to what GT Sport has right now. Motion steering would be a mega plus if that was implemented as well.
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Yeah, GTS but maybe with a bit more suspension and tyre dynamics. They can really hone in on those areas as they don't have to make it work for loads of different types of cars like GT. I wouldn't be unhappy with that.

Motion control i can take or leave playing on Xbox. :D
 
Tbh I don’t get why anyone would want it to be anything other than full on sim, for example acc I find a lot more predictable and easier to play than say gt sport or even pc2.
When I loose grip in acc it’s predictable and makes sense. The closer to real sim the easier it is to play to anyone with drivers license I reckon.
And even for younger folks who maybe don’t yet drive, isn’t it better to teach real car dynamics than have a generation of kids starting to drive their first real car expecting it to feel like an arcade game?

Less deep tyre models as in an arcade leaning title don’t have the same grip loss feedback, weight transfer feedback etc, I don’t know but it baffles me that people find a sim title harder to play than arcade.

And please don’t read this as sim snobbism, arcade games have their place, wipeout etc, but shouldn’t a car game/sim feel like an actual car?
 
FrankieStail
Tbh I don’t get why anyone would want it to be anything other than full on sim, for example acc I find a lot more predictable and easier to play than say gt sport or even pc2.
When I loose grip in acc it’s predictable and makes sense. The closer to real sim the easier it is to play to anyone with drivers license I reckon.
And even for younger folks who maybe don’t yet drive, isn’t it better to teach real car dynamics than have a generation of kids starting to drive their first real car expecting it to feel like an arcade game?

Less deep tyre models as in an arcade leaning title don’t have the same grip loss feedback, weight transfer feedback etc, I don’t know but it baffles me that people find a sim title harder to play than arcade.

And please don’t read this as sim snobbism, arcade games have their place, wipeout etc, but shouldn’t a car game/sim feel like an actual car?
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It can. But why does it have to be hardcore or nothing? Yeah ACC is cool and all but its not gonna set the world on fire. Its a pretty OK game with good physics, probably beyond most average players thresholds and will never get the sales or recognition the comparatively small sim community tjink it deserves. There is such thing called a middle ground. Its not all or nothing. The world has waited so long for a BTCC game, it has to be appealing for the mass market or its just gonna be another oo game with good physics that the majority player base pass on.

I also wouldn't use games like ACC to teach kids about driving but that's just me. Everyone will have a differing opinion of course, I dont think ACC is easier to play than GTS by any stretch of the imagination, same with Forza. ACC is by design much more challenging than both those, much trickier to play on a controller, which immediately kills a bigger player base.
 
MagpieRacer
It can. But why does it have to be hardcore or nothing? Yeah ACC is cool and all but its not gonna set the world on fire. Its a pretty OK game with good physics, probably beyond most average players thresholds and will never get the sales or recognition the comparatively small sim community tjink it deserves. There is such thing called a middle ground. Its not all or nothing. The world has waited so long for a BTCC game, it has to be appealing for the mass market or its just gonna be another oo game with good physics that the majority player base pass on.

I also wouldn't use games like ACC to teach kids about driving but that's just me. Everyone will have a differing opinion of course, I dont think ACC is easier to play than GTS by any stretch of the imagination, same with Forza. ACC is by design much more challenging than both those, much trickier to play on a controller, which immediately kills a bigger player base.
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Trying to go for a middle ground brings too many compromises and nobody is pleased in the end. It might have worked in the early-mid 2000's but not now.
 
AudiMan2011
Trying to go for a middle ground brings too many compromises and nobody is pleased in the end. It might have worked in the early-mid 2000's but not now.
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It can work now but unfortunately the toxic nature of social media the sim racing community make it harder. The majority of players who buy games don't frequent sim racing oriented forums.

Again, I'm not saying don't make it a sim, I'm saying make it a game first and foremost. It can still gave realistic driving physics, tyre wear and compound simulation, pitstops, dynamic weather and tracks, good damage modelling etc. But it needs to be enjoyable to the masses.

Building a game thats sim first game second, is a sure fire way of making a niche game even more niche and scupper any realistic chance of a sequel or follow up without having to make changes that then upset that tiny community you’ve just appeased.

The original Toca games nailed this, eveyone wants those to come back, well they weren't hardcore and still stand today as some of the best racers ever.
 
A game that aims to recreate the btcc would be aimed at fans of what already is a niche subset of motorsport.
Those fans are generally very knowledgeable of the sport and 99 times out of 100 would expect a game of their sport to be faithful to the intricacies of the sport and not have any unnecessary fluff added on to appeal to the so called masses.

The largest market for a game as specific of such a title would be fans of the sport itself rather than general gamers.
My own path into sim racers was via real life motorsport with the first project cars with a pad, which I followed about a year later with wheels and all the rest of the tomfoolery that we love to sink our money into.
I happened to try gt sport and when I found all the credit buying car stuff it put me clean off the title and that’s kinda my point over gamification of racing games.
Any flavour of arcade/gamification is as likely to turn off fans of motorsport.

Regarding assessablity of sim/racing games, my 12 and 14 year old daughters learned to drive with ac and had no problems whatsoever with it.
Its going to at least be a better grounding for when they eventually take to the road in real life and they’ll not have any unrealistic expectations that an arcade handling hand of God is going to keep them in check.

Mind you the way cars are going the inverse could end up being true!
 
FrankieStail
A game that aims to recreate the btcc would be aimed at fans of what already is a niche subset of motorsport.
Those fans are generally very knowledgeable of the sport and 99 times out of 100 would expect a game of their sport to be faithful to the intricacies of the sport and not have any unnecessary fluff added on to appeal to the so called masses.

The largest market for a game as specific of such a title would be fans of the sport itself rather than general gamers.
My own path into sim racers was via real life motorsport with the first project cars with a pad, which I followed about a year later with wheels and all the rest of the tomfoolery that we love to sink our money into.
I happened to try gt sport and when I found all the credit buying car stuff it put me clean off the title and that’s kinda my point over gamification of racing games.
Any flavour of arcade/gamification is as likely to turn off fans of motorsport.

Regarding assessablity of sim/racing games, my 12 and 14 year old daughters learned to drive with ac and had no problems whatsoever with it.
Its going to at least be a better grounding for when they eventually take to the road in real life and they’ll not have any unrealistic expectations that an arcade handling hand of God is going to keep them in check.

Mind you the way cars are going the inverse could end up being true!
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Couldn't disagree more. Go back and reread my posts. Unnecessary fluff? What like? Playable on a controller? Accessible for everyone? Hardly unnecessary fluff is it, its stuff that should be a basic requirement for a racing game. I've suggested it be a faithful recreation of the sport. It is a sport with a very limited ruleset, small calendar and a good field of cars, its not difficult to be faithful.

My request is that is actually enjoyable for the majority of fans by being playable on gamepads and have scalable level of simulation, not much to ask for. AC is a unbelievably niche game, and I personally would never use it as a learning tool versus a real car and certainly wouldn't aim to use a BTCC game so I dont buy that argument for wanting it to have limited appeal.

Furthermore, if you've been to BTCC events you'll know what incredibly broad demographic of people who go to them is. Which would likely work against your initial statement.
 
FrankieStail
I happened to try gt sport and when I found all the credit buying car stuff it put me clean off the title and that’s kinda my point over gamification of racing games.
Any flavour of arcade/gamification is as likely to turn off fans of motorsport.
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Strongly disagree. I'm a massive fan of motorsport, with a strong bias towards being trackside as much as possible. I'm also a massive fan of Gran Turismo, and a player since the first game. I don't play games expecting them to be joyless super srs bsnss sim racing titles, I play them for fun and entertainment, and I'd agree with @MagpieRacer that there's a sufficiently wide demographic that turns up to BTCC races for your generalisation to be inaccurate, at best.
 
I stand corrected, it must just be me then!

I guess I’m hoping they don’t go the direction of pc3 really.
Good pad support and assists should be a given in all titles these days anyway, by all accounts acc and f1 games have both these ticked off well.
 
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FrankieStail
I stand corrected, it must just be me then!
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It's probably not just you, but at the same time, it's not likely to be all the same as you either.

I'd wager the 'average' fan wants something that replicates what they see happening on track and how they perceive that to feel to do -- and that probably isn't totally realistic.
 
MatskiMonk
Strongly disagree. I'm a massive fan of motorsport, with a strong bias towards being trackside as much as possible. I'm also a massive fan of Gran Turismo, and a player since the first game. I don't play games expecting them to be joyless super srs bsnss sim racing titles, I play them for fun and entertainment, and I'd agree with @MagpieRacer that there's a sufficiently wide demographic that turns up to BTCC races for your generalisation to be inaccurate, at best.
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This is what's odd though, I find GTS incredibly joyless. Not a good sim, not a good arcade game. The most important thing is that this game is competent at whatever it aims to be. I suspect it's going to be no different to Truck racing physics.
 
A btcc game without classics like the Volvo; Laguna; 406; Opel; Mercedes etc etc?, did I hear well?, at the very least the '96-'98 line of cars is absolutely mandatory if you're making a touring car game, not to mention that another good portion of potential sales will ask you for the late eighties line of cars. It is absolutely obvious to include classics in a touring game, because the bulk of the market for a btcc game is precisely the older folks, not the young audience.
 
fernandito
A btcc game without classics like the Volvo; Laguna; 406; Opel; Mercedes etc etc?, did I hear well?, at the very least the '96-'98 line of cars is absolutely mandatory if you're making a touring car game, not to mention that another good portion of potential sales will ask you for the late eighties line of cars. It is absolutely obvious to include classics in a touring game, because the bulk of the market for a btcc game is precisely the older folks, not the young audience.
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I disagree. The market for BTCC is as big now as its ever been. Some classics might be co but the focus needs to be on the here and now. I'd rather they put more effort into other aspects and bring in the support races and stuff before worrying about classics.
 
Sorry but the glory days of btcc where those from late '80s to '00. To think on touring races is to think on those years of, let's be honest pure magic. If you think on btcc you think on the classics. What is btcc now?, nothing compared to that, just as happened with Rally too after '05, hence the classics are a must if you want to pander to the true potential sales of a touring car brand.., in other words the "elder" boys.
 
fernandito
Sorry but the glory days of btcc where those from late '80s to '00. To think on touring races is to think on those years of, let's be honest pure magic. If you think on btcc you think on the classics. What is btcc now?, nothing compared to that, just as happened with Rally too after '05, hence the classics are a must if you want to pander to the true potential sales of a touring car brand.., in other words the "elder" boys.
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I can tell you can't follow BTCC. BTCC is immensely competitve and diverse nowadays, immensely popular thanks to its huge grids which had to be capped to 32. Massively diverse range of cars, a LOT of which are manufacturer backed. The elder boys as you put them, still follow it religiously now and the fanbase is far, far bigger than that. As I and several others have said in this thread already, as there are many of us here who are regulars to the races. I live 20 minutes away from Snetterton.

Yes the old cars are cool, but you kinda sound like someone who hasn't followed it for a long time and is out of touch with how good the championship is, and has been for the past 8-10 years.
 
fernandito
Sorry but the glory days of btcc where those from late '80s to '00. To think on touring races is to think on those years of, let's be honest pure magic. If you think on btcc you think on the classics. What is btcc now?, nothing compared to that, just as happened with Rally too after '05, hence the classics are a must if you want to pander to the true potential sales of a touring car brand.., in other words the "elder" boys.
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????

WRC and BTCC are currently both at all-time highs in terms of audiences, its totally inaccurate to say, for either, series that the glory days are behind them.

The BTCC was hitting up to 35,000 attendance and 3 million TV audience back in the '90s (and was only shown in the UK), that point was reached for attendance back in '09. In 2018 that had reached an average of 42,000 attendance and a TV audience of over 26 million (in ten countries). It's also a mainly ABC1 audience profile, which means disposable income to spend on video games.

In the 90's you got race highlights on Grandstand, now we get the entire day, with every race and every support race shown.

As one of the 'elder' boys (and at close to 50 I can remember group B and Super Touring very, very well) I could not agree with you less. I would love the old stuff to be in, but its absence certainly would not put me off at all (and didn't with the WRC series at all when it was absent).
 
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It's fair to say there was a lull in the early '00s after the end of the SuperTouring era, and if that was the last time you saw it I can understand being less than overwhelmed by it. But as has already been said right now it's bigger than it's ever been (well, until COVID - though we've only had one team pull out so far IIRC). It's probably among the most competitive championships in the world in terms of how closely matched the field is.

The current generation of cars/teams/drivers plus the support package have to be the number one priority, that's what the current fanbase will want.

Classic content would be most welcome (I'm of a similar vintage to @Scaff so I remember them very fondly) but it's absence would not make any difference to me buying the game. That being said, there are 4 obvious DLC packs that could nicely fill out the car roster - Group A, SuperTouring, BTC-T (in all honesty, just to get the Integra!) and Super2000...
 
gregc
It's fair to say there was a lull in the early '00s after the end of the SuperTouring era, and if that was the last time you saw it I can understand being less than overwhelmed by it. But as has already been said right now it's bigger than it's ever been (well, until COVID - though we've only had one team pull out so far IIRC). It's probably among the most competitive championships in the world in terms of how closely matched the field is.

The current generation of cars/teams/drivers plus the support package have to be the number one priority, that's what the current fanbase will want.

Classic content would be most welcome (I'm of a similar vintage to @Scaff so I remember them very fondly) but it's absence would not make any difference to me buying the game. That being said, there are 4 obvious DLC packs that could nicely fill out the car roster - Group A, SuperTouring, BTC-T (in all honesty, just to get the Integra!) and Super2000...
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Those packs would be great. I'm a different vintage (31, first time watching BTCC was 1996) so would swap Group A for NGTC personally :D.

Super touring:
Ford Mondeo
062f5e67b85a72c03c25512593f10666.jpg

Renault Laguna
Renault-Laguna-ST-50609.jpg

Nissan Primera
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Volvo 850
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BTC-T
Peugeot 406 coupe
e59670ad81aa09e230cf7a38202673c0.jpg

Honda Integra Type-R
Matt_Neal_2006_BTCC_Brands_Hatch.jpg

Vauxhall Astra Coupe
VauxhallAstraCoupe-2001-Plato.jpg

MG ZS
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For example.
 
Scaff
I normally go for Truxton and/or Silverstone, as I’m about halfway between the two.

Donington on occasions as well.
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Nice. Snetterton is 20 minutes from where I currently live. Used to be 40 minutes from Brands and went to a few meets there (BTCC and DTM), bout an hour from Thruxton at that time as well. Never did Silverstone for BTCC, really do need to.
 

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