Since a few months we, simracers, are having a tough time on track. Maybe it is not an average feeling but some of my closest friends and I are seeing very childish behaviors with catastrophic effects. Maybe we are confronting an strong blossoming/spring with testosterone freely riding around, maybe we are just handling a new wave of console players joining the service or maybe we are losing our respect to the game and its policies. Who knows, but thing is something is changing.
Millenials and other young players are jumping from console arcade games to the sim, I don’t know how, because it is a big entry barrier not only for working people here in Europe also in US. Anyway, not only new simracers are dragging their rude manners, the current average middle age driver is loosing his/her calm too. Practices are a good example with people ramming out rivals in the pit lane exit, ruining others simracer fastest laps even racing an out lap or screaming and insulting using voice and text chat.
Races are slightly better but revenge is coming lately as a very different and masked element. Taking some advantage of the general labelling of race incident, some people tries to push rivals out of the track or keep trying unsafe movements along the whole race. These fellas are the same who ask for responsibilities to the bodies which they left on track. As always all incidents can be analyzed from different points of view and almost all of them could be judged again and again, so there is not an easy solution but to understand we are always the only one responsible in everything that happens to us.
- When you screwed qualification round and you get a hard position in the mid pack, your fault.
- When you try to scare a challenger with a dangerous or unforeseen move, your fault.
- When you are not aware of the traffic situation ahead (or behind) and you hit them, your fault.
- When you don’t give enough room to your rival to make a clean pass and one (maybe both) ends the race earlier, your fault.
- When you’re crashed because you drove wrecklessly trying to intimidate, your fault.
I could continue endlessly but you already got the message. Every situation can be turn around and draw a completely different scenario where the blame is a relative fact and the only real value is where you finished; out of the race. Be respectful with the rest, but be respectful with yourself first, knowing you are not as talented as Alonso, or as fastest and luckier as Hamilton. You are not even managing half of the inputs real race drivers have. So, when you made an stupid movement, it is possible you’re left an stupid face too. Learn from your mistakes, grow up, bow your head and offer a sincere apology, it’s free for now.
This website uses affiliate links which may earn a commission at no additional cost to you.
What an insightful post.
I too have become less enthused about my SIM racing hobby of late, I mainly only bother with iRacing as it (at least until recently) was the best place for avoiding the types you speak of.
I think it’s great that the iRacing community is growing, but surely not at the expense of losing its sense of class and etiquette?
But I feel that it is, I can find many ways to blame myself for all the incidents I’ve encountered, but the reality is that it’s just not the truth in a lot of cases and despite protesting to iRacing, they are always extremely apprehensive about actually doing anything. They are quick to serve communications suspensions/bans for using what busy adults would consider pretty tame words in email (crap, shit etc), yet they fail to address the meat of the matter, always taking the middle ground even when video evidence is overwhelmingly compelling to even the most neutral personality.
Personally, I lost over 25% of my irating in as little as a couple of weeks, 90+% of the time absolutely not my fault. Yet the same guys are still racing so I can only assume nothing has been done.
It’s a fine line between maintaining their integrity as a service and filling their wallet. I feel the latter is the focus, I just hope they start to think more long term quite soon before they find themselves in a position that may be difficult to recover from.
There’s new titles and existing ones working on some pretty exciting updates and the way I look at my investment in content is that it’s just that. Content that has been used and isn’t somehow going to cement me to one SIM or another. It’s been fun and all, but when the fun stops it’s time to move on. Just the cost of having fun!
In fact, I’d be open to jumping ship for a better policed system that had great content that is a fraction of the price of iRacing, a healthy community/rating system and a team that walked their talk. I think their competition is already working on creating multiplayer systems and some have far more resources to implement these.
The cost savings from significant lower price content/subscription (or lack thereof) would result in a cash positive outcome for the racer, and that iracing content will always be there if I ever wanted to revisit it.
Now, I’m nowhere near making such decisions, but I’m also not the only member thinking like this.
I guess Mr iRacing….. Be careful. It’s a great service but complacency/greed is a recipe for disaster and when it starts to break, it may not be possible to salvage it.
PS – in a perfect world out would be nice if some of the offenders were mature enough to listen to your suggestions, but sadly I think you’re words are wasted. These drivers have a very different mindset and such sensible advice will simply be seen as a whiny guy who didn’t finish the race.
Welcome to the generation of entitlement….. It’s a society thing that is a cancer.
I know my words are going to be wasted, but somehow its also a reminder for myself, staying away from potential incidents and having most fun I could.
Agree with entitlement generation… but world will put everyone in place sooner or later.
Yes indeed….the universe has a way of resetting things when the species refuses to listen. As a species I think that reset may be sooner than we think – of course not my lifetime, but in terms of the age of the earth (assuming you don’t fall into the creationism idea of a 12,000 year old earth because you added up all the ages of the people in the bible) it’s but a blink away……
iRacing needs a driver based rating system. We need to be able to “Thumb Up” or Thumb Down” drivers after every race. Sometimes a protest is not warranted but they are just someone who needs to be avoided. For example, yesterday I had someone come out of the pits and block me on Lap 7 of a 10 lap sprint race. They split between myself, in second, and the race leader. On new rubber the driver decided to “race me” for the last three laps killing any chance I had of pressing on the race leader. I’m only 1 week into my iRacing career and this was a B class racer with 230 starts. My first though is where are the blue flags? But then it seems they are not able to create flag stands which are a critical hallmark of all real racing and they somehow not included in the “most realistic driving simulator.” Transitioning from real racing to iRacing has been and will be challenging but creating an environment that has the camaraderie and professionalism of real racing seems like it will be impossible.
I feel your pain.
I don’t think the “thumb” rule would be effective as it would create too many false/dubious opinions and be open to abuse.
I agree that something needs to be done though with regards to some of the racing ‘styles’ I’ve seen.
It becomes difficult I’d imagine to balance money (iRacing wants to keep as many people racing add possible) with appropriate consequences for repeat offenders.
A tough one indeed….