I kinda of agree with all arguments for and against this, I know that's a bit lame but it's true... I too am not worried what content comes as long as it can create coherent series and not just one offs . S3 are between a rock and a hard place tbh... The game itself needs nailing down and content development helps pay for that I guess and that in turn could hold it back because there's hardly anyone playing it. Raceroom is my goto, for me it provides the most satisfying experience, even if I'm just cruising or testing. I'm very lucky to have access to all the content, so maybe that's why I found it easy to say yes.
For what it's worth I cannot see the crowdfunding concept being a consideration for Sector3. For a small developer they are exceptionally good at the licensing game and seem to have a solid network of partners and contacts in motorsport. They've done very well with R3E and all the great cars and tracks it has to offer. As @machwebb mentioned, it's the selection of full series that sets this sim apart. Nobody else is really doing this (with the exception of the Brazilian Stock Car V8s in GSC). With this in mind I'm not too bothered that a few manufacturers won't play ball. Their loss.
I voted yes but wasn't thinking of Porsche or Ferrari, the sort of money we'd be able to raise would be nothing to them, I was thinking of classic touring cars which OUGHT to be cheap or free anyway. As someone else said, they should be happy to have their brand represented, but I'm sure they have marketing gurus who'd be able to explain to we simpletons why free exposure is a bad thing.
I prefer tracks over more cars anyway. Thats what they should focus on, even more so since there is no mod community and no range of mod tracks.
I've voted yes on this but have been able to agree with pretty much everyone's view on, there are pros and cons on both sides. I've said yes though because I want to see R3E and the Sector3 team get to where they should be, if I was to put money into crowdfunding, it wouldn't be for the licences, at least not to begin with. It'd be to make sure Sector3 can keep going and get the features in place that are missing, to allow them to get rid of the F2P/Pay2play business model and then, once at the stage I'm sure they themselves want to be at, then help get the big licenses IF the game isn't paying for them by it self by then anyway. I do feel though, that anyone who is putting over a certain amount, should be entitled to some form of "privilege" as a thank you, if nothing else lol.
I would like to clarify, although I don't want to, if there was some crowd funding that was just too good to resist, I could be tempted to support.
Voted yes but only for an Alfa (eg 155 v6 ti, 156 autodelta , 75 turbo evoluzione or gt veloce) , a Jgtc car (especially for the castrol tom's supra or the castrol nsx), a vauxhall monaro or a Marcos...otherwise my answer is no...unfortunately r3e is already expensive the way it is...
I voted no. Like Fairman already wrote, I would not pay for just an avatar of the brand on the hood. I don't care if I'm driving "real" Porsche or Fabcar, former isn't in any way more "real" than the latter. I could even drive "Pherrarei" just like I'm driving "Formula A" instead of Formula 1 in Project CARS. What's the real difference if we all know well to what car it refers? I prefer paying S3S for their work on new cars/tracks, than filling the pockets of giants just to be able to see their brand in computer game (and I'm guesing that for the cost of just a single license on Ferrari we could easily get few other, not so greedy brands). It would be just like paying to be able to watch commercial. It's silly for me.
Very good discussion thanks guys, good points for and against! I agree that its a great shame some prestigious brands appear to be selling to the highest bidder and I personally don't care if the car is called a RUF or Porsche for example. However my thought was for raising R3E's profile with one of these blue chip brands. We might not care but we are the R3E converted anyway! How do we get some much needed attention from the non-converted to this grossly underrated sim? The collapse of SimBin is obviously a big sign that things aren't working as they are and I would hate to see my favorite sim go under completely! Sounds like it was already a very close shave. What about a pledge/voting system? Say if S3 list possible content and a threshold where after x amount of pledges the content is funded and work begins? Voting with our wallets? At least they would know the content is popular? This would surely provide a more reliable income stream than relying on selling existing content? It could even be used for license negotiation, saying we already have x amount of customers willing to purchase this its good exposure for your brand etc.. Anybody else have ideas?
As I said I think most of us here aren't "Brand" oriented however we are unfortunately a minority. You would have to be kidding if you didn't think a big brand wouldn't bring in new customers to R3E. I was never suggesting the WMD style of crowdfunding. I agree that private investors of large amounts would want control over direction and no I dont think it ended well for pCARS. However there are plenty of examples of successful crowdfunding where creative direction hasn't been compromised. The fact that 80 thousand people were willing to fund a racing game based off some vague ideas cant be ignored. I would say S3 stay the hell away from shady investor style schemes but look into pre purchase style crowdfunding for sure
Berno This is what I said earlier in the thread and I think it would work. If S3S were to post a thread saying we're going to speak to Super GT, STCC, Australian V8 Supercars, Indycar, etc and ask us about getting a small downpayment (which would be refundable if the deal falls through) to show to the league that there's interest in a purchase. I also agree that it would work better for whole series instead of individual cars. They'd need to focus on leagues as well where there's little to no official presence from Sim companies. Can you imagine how great S3S would do with Super GT, STCC (heck we know how good they've done with STCC), the V8 Series, and others? I really think this would work and I think S3S would do it correctly. I'd also be up for Ronin GTDave's idea of crowdfunding to help S3S get the stuff done to help make this game more popular (f2p model gone, etc). I think we're all here and we're all posting in this thread for the simple reason that we love this game, want it to succeed, want more folks playing it and most importantly we want S3S to be hugely successful. I may be a bit biased but I don't think anyone does Touring Car racing better. I don't think anyone does GT car racing better. I don't think anyone has better sound or better tracks than S3S and I want the rest of the Sim racing community to realize that too. It irks me to no end that two games that are higher on the Steam ranking list have no season mode, have less than great AI, and very lackluster online play (which I realize the F2P has a lot to do with this). Sorry for the long windedness of this post. I just care about this game and want it to succeed and want to see it above all other sims on Steam where it deserves to be, because I do feel it's the very best racing sim on steam.
I would suggest that step 1 in any licensing negotiations is "don't tell anyone the extortionate rate we charge for advertising our brand", so I highly doubt this approach would be feasible.
not for licensing.... not for Porsche or Ferrari or other Tracks but for DX12, Day and Night, Rain, Pitstops, save and share Setups and much more
Very good points indeed - and just add that for certain features (apart form brand licences) IF the crowd would like to fund - I don't care (or even might welcome it-depends) but remember S3 was (almost) bankrupt and they could have start a crowdfunding project - well they didn't.....
Engrossing discussion gentlemen! Tad confused with the entire business model, S3 either have to gain a constant supply of new buyers for the game and supply new content (at a price) to sell to existing owners. Most game sales peak, level off, then drop to zero. S3 seem to be relying on the opposite happening. Now having a great product is fine but unless people know it's a great product or have tried an earlier beta and pushed it aside, this title will fizzle out as the norm. S3 are asking people to invest in an idea with no endgame in an arena full of sims with promise and pipe dreams! The early bad press and slagging on the forums would have hit sales hard. In this social media crazy world, companies live and die by word of mouth/fingers, so if we believe in S3 and the great job they're doing then for all our sakes, get promoting, costs nothing but a bit of time. It's been mentioned how all car manufacturers have marketing departments that demand this, that and plenty of tother, well perhaps it's time to use them to our advantage. If the manufacturers were bombarded with people asking why their vehicles aren't available on the best sim, ears may prick and enquiries may be made! I have no idea how many units S3 have sold (apart from 6 to one chap in Aus, lucky bugger!) but if I were to go off the servers in the morning I'd estimate half a dozen more, tops. No one is driving online this needs to change quickly. In theory there should be full servers 24/7 yet rarely get any. As for crowd funding I believe this to be the wrong path, S3 have a quality base product and have proved (with the odd glitch) that they are on the right path, with the forth coming Nordschleife, Spa, Paul Ricard not to mention new cars, I think it's up to us and them to make some noise and change the environment forcing the greedy car manufacturers to come cap in hand! Power to the people!
I don't find crowd funding that feasible either for R3E. My opinion would perhaps change depeding on where it would be targeted. Preferably not to the overproced licences or features that IMO should be in the finalized game, like flags, night racing and such. Perhaps some big addon or experience would be something to pursue through crowd funding to ensure proper sales, but that needs to be some sort of niche endeavor, like late 60's to early 70's Can Am series with all the historic tracks. I'd like to see more crowd involvment, though, like voting for upcoming addons and why not even pre-sales, where you would get addons for discounted price: earlier you buy, bigger the discount. Online is only part of the equation and not all are interested in it. Also, what matters more than some peak sale is how R3E manages to keep players in and of course how much they spend money on the addons, which is of course something that only RR and S3 know. Still, according to Steam Charts R3E has had quite a steady average player count lately. Of course AC an pC draw bigger audiences, at least at the moment, but to me the situation doesn't seem that bleak. http://steamcharts.com/app/211500
Couldn't agree more. We have enough cars and tracks for an amazing simulator. NO ONE can compete with R3E in this regard. But this is a bless and a curse, at the same time. We have: - Untouched cars/classes - Cars/classes with updated physics (just WTCC/ADAC...GT2??) - Some classes with updated AI (3 as far as I know) -The updated AI must be updated I'm not sure if the transmission model was applied for every car in game. But, the basic features are still MIA... I would gladly help with that.
I'm not so sure there are many companies out there prepared to give their competition the heads up on what content may or may not be added, so a voting system will probably never see the light of day. That's not to say that if enough people ask for something it won't be added. I would also be interested to know how licensing works on historical cars, can a manufacturer hold a license for a car they don't make anymore or a company that doesn't exist today, same with tracks, can Assen demand money for a reconstruction of the old 11 mile track? Actually have another query, in race 07 there were loads of cars/tracks supplied by many different sources how does licensing work for these?
GooseCreature, if you're talking about the loads of cars and tracks that were mods then mods are for the most part unlicensed. If mods had to be licensed, no mods would ever get made. Luckily for mod makers, many of the car manufacturers and game dev are pretty lenient about not checking each and every mod and letting some stuff slide. The only time I can think of a developer putting their foot down as far as mod content goes was when Redline released the first GTP mod for NR2003. Illegal mods (content ripped from one game for another is a different story). Papyrus/iRacing is notorious for protecting their intellectual property. On a side note, Reiza begins doing some crowdfunding today for SCE/FT2013. I'm curious to see how it goes and how folks respond to it.