Motorsport Games Explains Le Mans Ultimate DLC and Cancelled IndyCar Game - CEO interview

what's the future of lemon ultimate Tom hi Welcome to our first pilot episode of a new series of podcast called under the hood with with in this case Steven Hood they won't always be with people whose surnames are are Hood um it would be a short running series um if we if we did that or we'd have to just speak to Steph most weeks which you know the guy the guy is busy but we are bringing back a full series of podcasts on on traction and the working drafts the working assumption here is that we are going to have the the old SIM Sundays podcast that that I used to do where we speak to the characters within Sim racing and we we we learn how they got to to be where they are and and why they're working in Sim racing full-time of all things because let's be honest it's a bit weird and that's going to be punctuated with a a monthly news uh Roundup from from the team the editorial team at attraction GG and then occasionally when we get opportunities like this one um we're going to be speaking to a uh somebody from one of the development Studios of one of much beloved games to get under the hood see of of the game uh and this was our this was our first we we've just recorded it with Steven hood and I mean it's it's a fascinating episode but just firstly what what a lovely guy yes he's a pleasure to spend time with uh he's very uh personable but also very astute so in the discussion that you're about to listen to and watch we cover a wide range of topics so it's hinged around the upcoming updates in DLC for lemon ultimate and we've got community questions that everybody submitted thank you very much that we've put to Stephen as well and then we're also going to dig into a bit of uh Motorsport games as a company right so some indiacast stuff some briti toast stuff even a little bit of ccraft so a lot to dive into isn't there we asked all of the questions that everybody was uh that was asking us uh on on Twitter and and in the Discord and on the YouTube Community Feed uh VR big one co-op mode uh uh you know resuming your progress from a from a save was was another one so um we'll be doing this quite often so make sure that you're following us uh on our social media so on Twitter Facebook Instagram and obviously on YouTube to to get the the video content um but and more importantly make sure to join the Discord traction g/ Discord um where we announce the these guests that coming on and then we have a bit of a chat before the episode to get a flavor for what you guys want to hear and then we make sure we inject that into the convers ation uh with them so kind of get involved with our conversations uh by by by joining in uh on the Discord exactly we can't wait to do more of these in the near future so without further Ado it's Stephen Hood on under the hood yeah stepen H how are you today uh I'm very well I I've got a slight headache but um these interviews with you guys will always clear that I'm sure so um you keep it light-hearted and very favorable for us and um I I'll owe you so what's your favorite color uh blue today there we go it's as hard as the questions we're going to get right Tom oh no journalism here we just want to everything's fantastic so the the reaction to uh Lon ultimate is um is from what I'm seeing great there's there's the odd console when comment but other than that people seem to be really enjoying it and a lot of the comments are about things people want to see which I always think is a is a positive it's less of a we're angry that it's not there it's more of a we're excited to to see all the things that that we might uh expect to see and something I that I saw recently which I don't think we've seen before was was uh you on on screen so what was the what was the thoughts behind that well uh you know to your first comment yes positively received yeah um it could have gone either way right launching um a new titled into Early Access in a competitive market um in early 24 under the company M for gains which has has a certain reputation is always a tricky balance um but the company is predominantly Studio 397 now if anything it's probably 90% g97 and that was one of the key reasons for us saying this team is well regarded it's a great Brand This is where we're going in the future that's our sole remaining development team this is a studio 39 s product and then you had a better idea as to what you were going to receive and um we had we had um optimistic projections and I'm very happy to say we exceeded those and I think it's you not that we did anything particularly special other than cared for the product there was a labor of love like sh 397 and 397 laps at L mon it was their Destiny to make this title and I think um the initial installation of that product in had all of the 23 content um went down so well and Word of Mouth spread a lot of people said for example I expected this to be a nightmare or I had um low hopes for this product and it succeeded them and more and more people are coming to the title so touchwood um we made the right call it's going well and I've completely forgotten the second part of your question well the the second part of the question was about um seeing you on on screen you did a a YouTube video where you were kind of talking to to the the users of the game about this is what we've done and this is what we focused on and and uh this is what we're going to be uh doing next and I wondered if a part of the decision to have you on screen um for the you know for the first time in front of the the the the gamers was to combat the you know as you just said the kind of um the the reputational damage that msgs had in the past was it was it essentially remember remember that we're humans this is this is me this is a passion project and this is what I want to do and remember when you're commenting that we are a bunch of people that are trying to do the best was there an element of that well very good observation it was it was um people much smarter than myself that uh asked me to um you know climb out of the the dusty cupboard and get back in front of the camera it's something I used to do a long time ago because I was always point on um the design and the creation of of a title the company doesn't have a design rout to these days there isn't a creative lead for the project um it's something we tried to address in the past um and we're all wearing multiple hats so um yeah I think I can speak to the vision of the product and I work with a number of very smart people on on trying to figure that out because it's a much smaller team than um you know the company at large mport games used to be back in the day I've done two stints here in my second season I came back a year ago and we set about try to tidy up the business and one of the things in tidying up the business beyond the boring corporate stuff is we're here to make GS and entertainment so let's try to laser focus on this and the decision to focus on the mom was was mine and it was an easy decision to make based on the passion and the experience and the interests of the development team with Studio 397 um so yeah they asked me to go in front of the camera um I wasn't too convinced at the time but it seems to have gone down well um despite me looking you know 800 years old and under the weather um the message is far more kind of personable they can relate to us now yes I'm the CEO of the company called most sport games Studio 297 I don't consider myself the evil Overlord the way that the company is painted it's a very different company than it was even 13 14 months ago like very different and um we're trying to convey that by being in front of the it's interesting I think quite um how much depth people went into uh to to work out what was going on in Motorsport games people were put pulling out shareholders reports and and and looking at filings and and they were doing YouTube videos where they were highlighting bits of text to to work out what Motorsport games was doing and that with all these kind of crazy um you know uh tin foil hat uh theories about about how it was funded and and all the rest of it so were you nervous to kind of put your face uh kind of in front no not at all no no I I'm not because um you while I was outside of the business for a year you know I I was an audience you know sitting down with my popcorn and and watching some of those amazing kind of reports and videos just thinking how the heck did they get to this conclusion because it's very easy to paint the story by picking select pieces out out of you know public filings this is the territory of being a public people can pick through these things so there's not much to to hide behind but you don't really get the context for example um you know people talk about uh you know our now friends at British tring car or indie car coming to us and just terminating us you know as if it was just suddenly something they woke up and decided because they wanted to get out that wasn't the case it more that um the company and myself decided that actually we're not going to focus on those products and in communication with those Partners we decided that we were going to turn our attention elsewhere and would be unable to deliver for them um so we triggered that many of these things and we're well aware of them and we had to roll with the pain um but even from the very beginning um I I would argue that uh the company had the right intent it just spread itself too thin right and now you're seeing the laser focus that we should have had at the very start being deployed with Studio 397 and Lon ultimate if we could have done for Lon ultimate what we did at the very beginning with NASCAR which was undercooked and served up too soon against my advice um I said if you don't get NASCAR right you'll never recover and we've nearly fallen over several times right it makes for a very interesting story I'll probably write a book one day right but I might be you to it you might beat me to it yes so we can do a chapter each I'm sure sure there be lots to talk about but you know the intent the people that are here really care I really care so I'm more than happy to kind of agree to put myself in front of everybody because I get some of the hate I get some of the you know memes I laugh at them too but we're still focused on trying to make a good game right it begins with mon ultimate it's just later than expected but here we are yeah You' talked there about um there isn't necessarily A Creative lead on the project and the team team is smaller I think D doing part at the start of the year is it is it a case of all hands on deck at the minute uh yeah yeah it's been all hands on deck for the last year everybody playing different roles because look the the the business situation is um most of well go into the fame for spending a lot of cash and we wanted to to simplify that stem that that bleed but give ourselves the runway to focus on delivering a great product like the mon ultimate and continuing to expand upon that with new features fixes and content right nobody here is able to work for free everybody's got to put food on the table it's still a business but it's um it's a creative business I just elevated some of the voices within the team to um work in what we call a Vision Group which sounds far more Grand than it really is to to help us figure out what do we do on the content side what do we do on the gameplay side what is the experience that runs through Lon ultimate what are we trying to convey to people and where do we go over time because An Early Access product isn't just delivered you know in a year dropped into the market and then we walk away we've got to build this into something and there is a vision internally but we also take a steer from the community who are incredibly vocal yes but with some um rightful feedback as well at some at times and we've got some Community questions which will go through Rapid Fire uh at the end of this discussion if that's okay I think some of them we've touched upon before but we it's worth worth repeating um I just wanted to touch upon that you've mentioned earlier that um it sold more than expected and you've said that before um on Ernie's calls um we've seen though that you know if you look at steam charts the player numbers are are tailing off not I think that's natural to an extent um is the push promotional push around the real world 24 hours of Lon event and the upcoming update and DLC sort of the beginning of the fight back if I could phrase it like that the fight back uh I don't see it as as the fight back I I do see it as a natural evolution of the product everybody came to it because it's a shiny new thing especially when word got around that hey wait a minute this is half decent you can have a really good kind of multiclass race over here and the the handling feels good and the AI is good and I wish they would add VR and I wish they would add that to to Tom's point you know a lot of people come to the table enjoying what we're offering and just asking for more which I see as a as a positive um reflection of the product quality we know there's many kind of bits and pieces to fix in there but um if you look at any of the Early Access racing games that have come out over the last you know 5 10 years you can see the numers shoot up then they tail off and then some came back because of covid or things come back because of you know other platforms like SGP or you know singrid and others providing or lfm providing a playground for certain titles and they pick up again that's not the developer of the game working on that so we know we're going to it's going to EV throughout certainly the first year where we expect to be in early access um but lemon is a an amazing opportunity for us to kind of get more awareness more marketing the idea was we push new features in there start providing some content and start hinting out what's coming in in the future uh would I like the you know the user base to be exploding every single day with my CEO hat on absolutely as my gamer with my gamer hat on do I expect that no you know I I dip in and out of a lot of racing games including LMU right now and I still play LMU as a player and as a developer um it's up to us to make the product more engaging for a wider group and more sticky for those you know hardcore users and we know where we need to be we're we're a long way short of it we're our own biggest critics um what really matters is when we start adding new content and features does the user account start ticking up again this is a long-term play for us not not an overnight you know cash grab much sport games EV old does it feel better than the most sport games of old when you in the office and you you you know you're chatting to the the developers does the the positive feedback that you're starting to see and the the kind of uh the more friendly attitude that the Sim racing uh fan base is starting to to develop towards you guys does that make a difference to Outpost and and you know how how motivated the team is I'd say that they've the team have always worked incredibly hard you know despite you know who they were working under and whether or not it was most SP games of old season one or season two um I I would probably say that I and many others have been so busy in season two to really understand what the the key differences are but I was very touched when there was conversation about me coming back and I was resistant to coming back because I'd been here I'd been burned who wants to jump into it again but there were a lot of very good people here many of whom I encouraged to come into the business and I felt compelled to come back when they asked me to come back to try and make a difference I agreed to it and I thought I'd give myself a year and um I've been very pleased with the reception of everybody within the company as it is today to you know turn things around because they deeply care they just didn't get their shot previously I think people are less focused on the politics in M sport games and I'm much more intensely focused on well this is what the community wants this is what we need to do to the game to improve it so the discussion now if there's a big difference is this is what we need to do to improve the game not what we need to do to you know convey something to shareholders which was probably the biggest difference of course as a CEO shareholders are really important to us and the market cap of the company and D all these kind of things are important but I think that all all fixes itself if we can make good products speaking of um products so uh this week is a significant update for the game there's been a month off of updates roughly speaking uh occasional hot fixes and then there's the the free BMW there's Radars and start starting procedure helps uh guides and replay I've got a question about replay later specifically um so we've got these features now they're much uh requested from the community do you have like a a priority list or is it uh yeah just what's the process behind implementing them in which order yeah features we we have a road an internal road map and we basically look for uh major updates to arrive you typically every three months right because there's a lot of time to build the feature Implement test and and release so that's just broadly what we do internally right so broadly speaking going forward every 3 months there should be something but obviously things might might change yeah this this is what we aim for but um you know a great example is you might have heard of us talking about the The Cooperative mode in lar ultimate yes I was G to ask y I thought I'd get there before you did so there inevitably going to come um that is something that we're intending to launch for June it would have been wonderful to launch it for June because you know it's celebration of Lon all these teates come out during Lon and we kind of um double down with all the visibility and the marketing around it however we deemed it not quite ready for release even for an early access product because one of the things we were quite adamant about and we don't always get this right is anything that we are injecting to the product needs to meet a certain standard this isn't we just throw it out see what the community think and see if we can get away with it if we ourselves are not happy and we don't sign off on it then we go away and we spend longer refining things and the co-op mode um which was going be a big hitter release didn't quite make it so that probably doesn't fall into the next 3 month release because we're already significantly way through the development it might come sooner and then it's just really down to the marketing team to understand when they would like to inject that into the product and make it available for the community but it's difficult to keep a live product like this going as it is anyway especially if you take the pros from one fact to2 and you try to detach yourself from the negatives Tiding that product are was incredibly important for us and we've gone a long way down that road to make it better that premium feel is nearly there but there's much more to do so um Long Way Around answering your your question about is there a feature road map there is um and it only goes on three Monon Cadence yeah because uh I sort of fumbled the question in a way but that yeah there isn't a features road map available publicly which ising some conventions but I suppose also there's been uh history before with some of the motot GES timelines that were published right and you might want to be avoided some of that just to just answer the thing about the the road map yeah we personally don't show that because like I said one it's very different for Studio 397 now to launch a product like this and keep updating it from what had gone previously and two I I hate to not follow normal conventions I I question everything and we need to do things our own way and if over time we think it's better for the community CU we'll make a better product and The Narrative and the messaging around the product will be cleaner would take that approach I don't really want to put a flag in the sand and say on such and such date this is definitely going to be available and then we miss it by a couple of weeks because it wasn't quite ready and to get caned for that you've announced uh paid DLC plans for some if not all of the 2024 content so there's going to be two free GT3 cars free deliveries and the BMW um and I believe it starts with IMA next month currently scheduled July is the first piece of of DLC what's the reaction been to uh launching paid DLC within the early taxis period better than I expected no if you're in my chair um trying to run a business and we still have you know upwards of 70 people in your organization who are you know highly skilled they don't work for free so I have to manage the kind of business expense of wanting to expand a game and don't forget we launched a game in the Early Access price in UK for like £25 and it had all of the 23 content in there it's not like we just launched one track and one car and then started to monetize it we put everything in in part because that 23 title was originally scheduled to land at the end of the year slightly awkward timing which we changed anyway and wanted to give it more room to breathe so we launched it in 24 unfortunately at the start of the next season that's just where we were but we gave every thing for that price in my mind we probably could have charged £35 for it if we were super cheeky as we were maybe back in the day it would have been 40 or 45 and we would see what we can get away with we went this is 25 because um there's a relationship to be improved with the community Studio 37's first new title for a very long time we're doing things differently here and we want to bring people into the experience not put them off with a very expensive price point so that early price I would expect to scale up over time um and we're launching a bunch of new free content that will come with the product to keep the ethos of it being Early Access and we're very very thankful for the people that have bought into it contined to buy into it today but also there's a lot of Premium content coming to the title for example the tracks we don't buy the tracks we model them from another game as many companies do and just throw them to LMU we have a standard where we say everything has to be laser scanned it's very tricky to to keep true to that promise when you're up against deadlines and costs and oral it's very expensive to buy some of these Lo scans but we think the quality of that approach will pay dividends over time because I see Studio 397 as that kind of Boutique software developer they're not just going after the biggest audience to begin with they're saying we're trying to deliver you know this labor of love is high quality wherever we can maintain that quality we keep true to it and it's expensive maybe gain ones will say we don't care we want everything to be cheaper I don't meant to take that approach um so it's a difficult balance and I would I would suggest that probably I know good 80% of people are um on board with that they understand the business realities and but inevitably you get people going will Ali is how they charge for it and I can understand that point of view as well totally again it's it's a marathon not Sprint it's not just about this one particular argument about paid DLC for an EA game I should say Early Access somebody thinks getting into bettered with Electronic Arts that would be the new News slash there's your exclusive Tom y your exclus yeah um electronic ass gets big into leemon that would be interesting wouldn't it maybe tomorrow um it it's it's our business approach lemon does not keep this company a float you know there's lots of different things that we need to do and I would like to keep the entry point entry price point for the core product as low as possible and you know bring some paid DLC into the product for people who want to have that injected into the title and drive with it like all of the cars you the 24 cars and subsequent years of 24 you'll be have to drive against all of them even if you buy into the core product you know 2 years from now but if you want to drive them all and you want that full fat experience then we're going to ask you to pay for some of that content so it's a tricky balance but hopefully it'll work out two quick follow-ups on that I suppose that's maybe one of the reasons why uh there's going to be two free GT3 cars because if you're doing the beginner race control races which currently GTS and LP 2s if they were paid all of them you wouldn't be able to do those entry races is that is that fair to say yes yeah absolutely yeah and as as I thank you for the people that have bought into it yeah we're not trying to make everything paid and then the other thing is um any sort of uh what roughly what sort of price could people price window could people expect to pay for like the season pass or the packs any ideas on that at this minute yeah and I've got many ideas we're baiting that internally it's been a long running conversation because um if you look at some of the content for for our hats too it bugs the hell out of me and the guys won't mind me saying this but if you look on like the the steam store for you know UK British pounds um purchase price some of the TR you get things like it's £4.53 exactly £766 I think it was done in currency first wasn't it and then transferred across just it it is but I like to manually adjust those things and I also think it looks like it's a um you know car boot Fair where everything looks like you know it's just random pieces it bugs me I'm the guy at home who kind of lines the towels up otherwise I can't sleep at night you know and I leave the bathroom those things bother me I'm a real pain to the team but I think what we're we're trying to do here is you know we're not trying to squeeze and bleed people of the money but when we're paying for high quality content and the data to build what we consider to be the best most um you know in-depth W and leemon experience we're trying to get the best data we're trying to have the best people on to deliver the best experience and the investment today will help you get there tomorrow so pricing is hotly debated internally I think it's going to be more than reasonable in keeping with with um okay the enemy launch for us right so no pricing estimates right now but it's more than reasonable and it's going to be 99 our round number so we know we know that at least okay one man's reasonable is another man's expensive so is let's see yeah let's 15th of June 3M lights out at lemon previously I think there were plans to maybe announce the the um lemon virtual series there wondering if if that or any other announcements are still still uh planned for for for next week uh I think there will be some pieces of information that we launch next week lemon virtual in particular is a hotly debated one I don't think we're going to reveal necessarily any detail plans around Lon virtual during you know that Leon week or during the race itself it's still a a hotly debated subject internally and you all have noticed one of the updates that we didn't reference so far is it doesn't sound terribly exciting but it's steing sign of what we are doing the net code improvements oh yes you know cuz it's but not shiny if that makes sense yeah yeah yeah because people people will probably um you know get the update and start looking for where is this net code Improvement what is it it's the you know less exciting stuff um that's in the background but um the challenges with Lon vertual have been well documented in the past and the last one I watched from afar going oh dear um uh but also very interesting got lot of publicity in order to fix those kind of things there needed to be an overhaul the tech inside the product that doesn't mean rewriting all of the multiplayer component it meant reworking many elements of it so that we could better debug it like finding the needle and the Hy stack was a real problem and that came up again and again and again with on Virtual using our Factor 2 so when we transferred to building the fresh project of L you and bringing across particular elements from RF Factor 2 a reworking of that Tech to enable better debugging to support the plans that we have for the product because LMU is laser focused on that multiclass work LMU right so it doesn't have to be the biggest sandbox in the world it means you can get more specific about the requirements for the product and for us building a much bigger online community I try to not use too many B buzzword but getting more people into the title um is really important to us and the whole ethos of you know multiple drivers per car is really interesting because that's just not really done in the racing space right everybody goes to the train they're all enemies even friends and it's very difficult to build this concept of car clubs Community we want to do League racing online championships and all sorts which is in the Sim racing space today but incredibly franked so we wanted to provide the infrastructure for that which is why we own the tech built the game um provided race control you know late last year which got over 100,000 people in there now we've got plans for that ecosystem so it's cleaner from beginning to end and um a lot of that was built with a view to how do we make Lon virtual bigger uh more accessible and have many versions of that running throughout the year so yeah it's not particularly attractive to say net code improvements but that is a a key area of focus for us and until that is better Sol ified we're not going to say this is exactly when long long virtual starts you're taking a lot of the the great things from our Factor 2 the you know that the the feel of the game the feel of the driving and and poring across to to to leemon as a fresh project as you said how many of the improvements that you make on leemon on things like the net code will make their way back to r factor 2 for the for the user base that's still there I don't think they will uh it's very difficult to do that without breaking the product which is you know are other titles out there that you know maybe offer um seasons and lots of content and DLC and Sim racing space who have got what we consider to be a legacy product like r factor 2 The Challenge is you can be really successful with that product but because it's live a live product is very consome and technically challenging to change you know swap the arm out change the heart you know put a new leg on without disrupting the entire experience or having downt for a long time and the company isn't huge now it's scaled down massively because we've changed completely from what multiple games used to be in the past to what it is today it's really Studio 397 today and uh I'm not going to make any commitments about putting those things back into rfactor 2 that there is a desire internally within the studio and there was very early on when I came back to produce an rfactor three which would tidy up what RF Factor 2 was and I think it's much more likely that we would head in that direction using the underpinnings of LMU to make a much more um fitting product for the future of sim racing um under the brand of r factor 3 then is trying to inject things back into a legacy product of R fact 2 we would love to do it of course I would love to sit here and say yes everything will go back into our fact 2 it's just not feasible right now we have to say no to some things in order to provide for LMU and it's very difficult to say no in business everybody always wants to say yes because it seems like you're turning down an opportunity but delivering one thing is really important and if if mport games need to do something it's deliver a reasonable game presumably the existence of an r factor three depends almost entirely on the success of lemon ultimate yeah normal course of business yes but but I would say given the success of lemon ultimate given what's happened to the company over the last 12 years 12 years it feels like 12 months 12 months a lot has changed in the business right so we're exploring many different opportunities as to what the future of the company is and and so I can't even predict where it will be all I know is the team that we have got are very talented we would like to bring more people into that group to expand our operation to really drive home the advantage that we have with LMU we're very passionate about it and then deliver on other things like an our factor three in the future that would be amazing in my mind we're we're you know ciling those opportunities right now to just focus on LMU but um let's see what happen just to really quickly dive into there and interrupt um you mentioned that the what formly was a upon far Factor 3 is that something that you decided to pause and focus on the lon project or was it decided before you returned yeah no I mean um very early on it was an an r factor 3 or a leon project and um I thought we had to scale back in order to focus so even though we're very excited about doing all of those things and I actually see the next opportunity being using our amazing physics engine from the lights of rf2 and LMU in a driving experience which we already started looking at um and having LMU as the racing experience and alongside that Driving Experience um and I'm very excited about that and I bore people to tears internally about it but we must first get things in place for LMU and have that you know process working cleanly a Driving Experience okay the grand toour game 2 you heard it here first no that for reference I think that used to r factor 2 r factor technology underneath that's the only reason that it did yes cool um well one of the other things uh that was extremely enlightening thank you one of the other developing things that sits alongside Lon ultimate is race control. which recently launched in the recent video um you had the first screenshot let's say of the Coach Dave setups Connection in game in Sim and uh also you've talked on some ear calls uh recently about supplementary subscription services and uh one of one of the uh Community questions which I'll just dive into now because it's all linked together was they wanted extreme details on that I don't think no the community want extreme DET yes the community wanted extreme details on the subscriptions so let's just quickly uh break that down I suppose that's almost three questions once but first of all um the subscription service you mentioned aren't necessarily turning the whole platform into an iRacing like service is that fair or please add some yeah yeah that's fair I mean um I'm not looking to go Toe to Toe with iRacing I mean last time I checked they've got a significant Advantage they've been in the space for a long time they're very good at what they do um we're on great terms with those guys obviously we sold them on NASCAR not so long ago but you know they're a competitor it's business but actually it's very easy to work with good people who've got their right kind of focus which is you know why we ended up you know doing the traction deal with grid finder and some things fit and it works for for everybody the same for us the NASCAR and and iRacing and we approached iRacing about the purchase and it was a long kind of term negotiation um and what can I say I mean trying to Toe to Toe with iRacing is there's no interest for us right now what we look at is how do we provide a you know Forward Thinking experience for our consumer our player inside our ecosystem the reason why we have this endtoend experience of coming on a race control playing the game and all the technology that we own is not you know some kind of corporate land grab for for users but it's more about hey it's such a messy environment as it is right now maybe we can clean some of this up and if we provide the shopping mall and we can ensure that that works you know seamlessly we can start bringing people into this space to provide services that we ourselves have no intention uh today to get into providing setups with um you know coach save guyses I know them very well and I was you know working with those guys for for some time between my season one and season two in my sport games understand what they're trying to do and what they're trying to deliver we're not building cell UPS other than the defaults for the game so we bring people into that environment in order to make it much easier for the end user instead of installing 15 different apps or going to 15 different websites which we all do because we're passionate about this maybe we can simplify some of it so we're just trying to do things that we consider to be um better for the end user and monetizing the whole thing via subscriptions uh where people want extreme details is we have got some in my mind outlandish ideas for what we want to do for the for the experience including it's a buzz word at the moment so I hate it but you know lots of people talk about ai ai exists in you know all racing games um we've had this for many many years but we're trying to use AI to do things like um you know write articles on your participation in your you know League race from last night this kind of stuff where we've got all of the data and we want everybody to feel like a hero or a contributor to a race you do not need to be you know in Lon virtual at the very top competing into the ls of Max mappen um you can be competing against people who are also 5 Seconds off the pace but they're in your skill level and you can have the most amazing experience and that's all you want to do you're not looking to kind of gravitate towards the top you don't want to put the work in that's your standard and you enjoy that and it's close racing we want those um events to feel as powerful as you participating in mon virtual under those you know uh Global broadcast lights so we're looking at doing very different things but it costs money I we don't have the ability to just funnel you know 10 million into some of these ideas so we want to bring more content we want to expand an experience we want to do things differently in racing and subscription is a stepping stone towards that I want the entry point to be cheap and then if you want to up scale some of your experiences you pay a sub but we will never stop people coming in and playing on Race control they'll still be have to do that on in the free tier okay so so yeah just to be very Crystal Clear um these are like additional things which will be announced at a later date and if you buy the game you're still going to be able to race against the ey race online and you have the option of buying some DLC these are things to do with AI and race reports and supplementary things correct yeah yes absolutely and it's our job to make those attractive otherwise it doesn't justify the sub but it doesn't stop you from participating and playing as you can today okay that's good to know recently coming away from leemon Ultimate another thing that recently happened was the a new deal with the British Touring C Championship something both close to both our hearts and just to get this confirmed there will be some new content for our Factor 2 in the form of 2024 season 2025 26 liveries at least for the btcc is that correct correct yes and if there are any kind of um new additions to the grid car changes model changes you know near entrance um we to reflect those as well yeah and um you know that that was a deal that we cut with um Allan at British Tran car um as a way to kind of Forge a a working relationship for the future I I was incredibly disappointed about the British tring car you know situation I used used to sit in the um uh office in London with Allan and convince him that it was time to bring you know British tring cars back to gaming and he had the same passion and I said let's do this together and to not deliver on that or to have gone away come back and realize it's never going to happen you know that crushed me in the same way that indicard did as well I grew up as a kid England somehow playing the Indie Car Game Indie 500 on my mega back in the day and I always wanted to make that game so not doing indie car not doing British TR car as a killer but I'm I'm looking for a way to kind of resolve that because the intent is still there they're just very cautious around us but for a very good reason and I don't want to commit to anything because we're just so focused on doing one thing right with LMU so no that makes sense and just to tie on to that I'm correct in thinking that's the only sort of content that will be worked on for our to you know there's nothing else in the in the pipeline that's the only thing that we uh have agreed to in the contract to work on it doesn't mean that we won't bring more to the to the um I was going to say to the track doesn't mean that we won't bring more things to the games yeah um but but watch this space okay okay interesting so another thing that's not LMU or BCC or 2 is the uh recent SC filing that a deal has been struck with indical right so mudspot games is going to pay some money and the assets goes to indicar and they can find another developer I just wanted to touch upon the process from your side first of all I I guess that would have been a long and arduous project uh but also a relief to to sort of underline it uh and the second thing is um you know if someone else manages to take that project and finish it what what would that mean to you and the company oh um big question um when I came back in year ago and indicar was in development alongside the beginnings of what became LMU um you know there were a few calls from within the company to you know maybe just spend all of our resources remaining resources on LMU rather than than Indie Car however when when we actually started this company my vision for it originally was to take Unreal Engine which has got its pros and cons and combine that with what I considered the best elements of our factor to at the time and produce an askcar ignition that turned out to be you know somewhat undercooked and wasn't the best meal and has caused a catalog of of problems but the theory still worked right connecting and intertwining that physics Engine with UI does work and indie car was taking that to another level and you probably would have seen the Traders and some of the screenshots well never officially never officially right never officially I some stuff was leaked I'm sure I saw a trailer I forget the internet is full of so much stuff yeah um but it looked amazing right it looked amazing but there's a big difference between you know making components of a game look really good and then shipping the final products really really difficult and uh I spent some time in Australia with the development team at the time who were the core components of that were the ccraft team um from Black Delta but I encouraged to come into the business when we were looking at The Melting Pot I used to call it the witch's cauldron of let's put all these Technologies together and make something really great I still believe in the vision but the delivery was um uh troubled and um maybe um far from being on course and it's very difficult to to keep extending timelines and keep fun funneling cash into a project like that because it's a small operation here we're not Electronic Arts you know or take two and we needed to call time on something and focus elsewhere if somebody else picks up the project because yes um indie car have uh the tech any the assets because ultimately indicard just really want a video game with indicar and I don't blame them the trouble was people are not really knocking on the door because for as a business opportunity there isn't a a history of revenues there there isn't a franchise that you're buying into if somebody chases Formula 1 now like EA did with you know acquiring code Masters know what they're getting there's a start point it's incredibly profitable and they can build from there how do you argue the case for Indie Car how do you argue the case of British tring car so we saw that as our opportunity because we believed in those things I've always thought that indicar was the if I can say it the sexy version of Formula 1 and it was going to be an amazing opportunity and indicar were very supportive of that and we've got still got a very good relationship with them and I I will give a big shout out to Mark miles who's been an enormous help so there is always the business narrative in the conversation sometimes they can be very drawn out and tricky and involve many many parties not at least with NASCAR um but the everybody wants the right result uh so I would love to see an indicar game as a player somebody coming into the space right now picking up that technology and trying to make it is challenging but you know who knows I think indicar could go toe-to-toe with formula one with with with a great game and people would also play that and you'd probably get more Indie Car followers with a with a great video game that was always the plan Marathon not a Sprint so um we shall see and I suppose then based on on those comments there was a what reasonable amount of work left to do on the title so it wasn't like um it was closed off when it was nearly ready to ship is that correct no no I mean if if it had been a lot closer to ship then we probably would have stayed the course and got product live um because it would have generated Revenue you saw revenue for the company but um that last 10% is always the hardest you hear that all walks of of life and business and um I I didn't get the right feeling that uh they were experienced enough in maybe closing that project out into a releasable state and I gave him a further six months um I didn't see it coming together that there wasn't a delivery date that was set with any confidence so I I made The Reluctant choice to uh close that operation and put everything into LMU it's a gamble that maybe has paid off so far but we shall see for the future yeah absolutely thank you very much yeah always because obviously there's been leaked assets no an SEC filing and no no real comments anywhere so it leads to some speculation right and one element before we get on community questions that that has been speculated on in the uh provision or the deal with car recently the other week uh there is a backup for a second payment that potentially iRacing could uh fund some of the required deal which some people have taken to oh that definitely means that iris is going to complete it now that's up for them to comment right but my understanding and correct me if from I'm wrong is would that be because I think there's a deal with the NASCAR license they still owe half a million to mot spot games is that basically just using the part of that as back this is this is the thing I'm saying there are pros and cons to be a public because everything's out there right well some of it without context yeah yeah especially with your um investigation hat on and your skills Tom there there's no avoiding it we're jumping around here you can hide behind the community but I know you've been digging as well I'm sure um yeah I iRacing are you know it's all public but iRacing are due to make um another payment to Motorsport games for conclusion of the NASCAR deal and that was stretched out because most sport games still have sub license for um the Legacy NASCAR Cycles some of which we created which will remove from sale at the end of the year cor as they get removed from sale at the end of the year that's the the final trigger so if if I remove them for sale tomorrow then the um final payment from our friends at iRacing is Che um but I left it well I intend to leave until the end of the year so it's just a safety net for those guys it's just a normal course of business and IND car um asked whether or not because iRacing have got longer history than M SCH games um today uh Indie Car asked whether or not they could be a third party to this and they would get that final payment from them what actually transpired is um we made all of those payments anyway so there's nothing due the appeal was completely sealed good to know fine so that's not even a relevant thing anymore oh fantastic no no no yeah good good good that one put and I racing don't want to be involved in that anyway then they've got their own exactly so unsurprisingly when we told the traction GG community that uh we were speaking to you uh and asked them for questions we got absolutely inundated with questions which as we said right at the beginning of um of this of this discussion is really good news because people people care right so some of these questions you've heard before some of these questions you may have even answered before but it's kind of telling that people are still asking either it's through persistence or or through the fact that maybe they haven't they haven't seen these answers so we're going to just fire through a couple of them and the first one is the most obvious One console what's the plan for console and and maybe more interestingly how do you a CEO of Motorsport games decide on the if and when and how of that of that not not as simple as people think process well the the simple answer on consoles is we would love to I think the business case for that is incredibly strong um especially is we think the the reach for I I know it's a very you know Sim oriented product and we go to the en deg and everything that's why it's on PC and the underpinning so about M Factor too but but I don't buy that you know the stereotypical conso audience doesn't want this kind of experience as well in actual fact when we started the business and we had the idea of throwing all these things into the witches cauldron and saying uh bar Factor 2 physics and AI with unre engine the stepping stones for us for the user experience was get a console play the meest kind of experience that you can on Console in your living room or your bedroom hooked up to a big ass TV with a controller and then if you really got into it and you wanted to progress you pick up that console you take it to another room where you managed to find space for a Sim rig and you plunk it next to the Sim rig you plug it in and the way you go that for us would be amazing so you don't have this is only on PC because PCS are so powerful but the technology is there now for consoles we know we can already run it and consoles are getting ever more powerful will in the next Generation so um for us we want to do it it's more of a focus consideration again because you know I don't want to take too many things on and lose that that focus and it's also a financial one because there's a big upfront investment and trying to bring what we'd most likely do is bring a partner in to assist us to convert so that we didn't just dominate internal team with uh navigating to console um and it it's one that I I bring in front of the investment Community all the time as a way to you know substantially increase the LMU revenues bring a larger player base into it and bring this technology console the final point is um rf2 and LMU were never built for console um so bringing the entire project across including the render and everything else that makes the game um there's a lot of work that needs to be done in order to make it Ship Shape for console a lot of that takes place currently so when you get updates like the boring net code um you know what we're doing with race starts what we're doing with trying to improve performance of the game and performance in the UI menus that can be very laggy for some people we understand a lot of the reasonings behind those deficiencies in the PC Product and we're ripping out some of that Legacy code and replacing it with view to not only making the game more performant today on PCS but making it fit for console in the future when we start the transfer process so that's a very long way of saying I'd love to do it tomorrow we're going about it sensibly and I'll also need to make sure that lmu's ship shape and making money before I can push it to console it's not it's far from definite that it will appear on Console though is that fair oh yeah it's far from definite because there isn't a release date for it yeah I know these are meant to be quickfire questions and I'm giving you the stuck quick sand answer but that one's a big one it's all good one that you we've talked about already you've talked about it on the video but we still keep getting it uh a lot so let's let's double down on it so virtual reality sport is in development correct and it will be coming at some point but why is it not here now I I will be off screen for one second you can still view all right yeah would you know why is it not here because I can't do everything on day one um well we are going there we are going there right and and it's very important and there are lots of big um big fans of V internally as well so I hear about it regularly I'm quite conservative about you know um the process of bringing VR in primarily because lots of people say well you used to kind of support it in Alat 2 why didn't you switch it on for L control C control V right yeah we we might as well have just made you know some people go well you could have done an LMU DLC fire facts 2o yeah we could have done um you know for for a very small audience but we've got grander Ambitions for this and um I'm a big fan of VR I've been in the flight Sim Space before racing a long time VR always comes up and I don't think the way that it operates right now in rf2 is appropriate for LMU so we want to do some performance improvements to the product um you will have noticed we completely overhauled the UI and the experience between r factor 2 and LMU and there's got to be a smarter more elegant way of integrating VR into the LMU experience so it doesn't feel like it's just been tacked on but it runs through the entire product and I'm very excited about doing that properly um and that that's where you have to say no to things because doing the quick fix bodge to get that tick boox and go yeah don't worry Community we've got vring I think we'd trip over I honestly do so we're taking our time with it but it's going to come to El given the Cadence that you spoke about the kind of three months for for um new new features and and the ambition that you stated for this project so you know VR C modes uh single player campaigns uh the the addition the uh improvements to Ai and the use of AI etc etc is it safe to assume that we're likely to see um LMU in Early Access into 2025 is it is it is it the case that it's like we we're not going to release this until we're releasing a full game with all of these fleshed out features that that that you would want or or or or could it be earlier not to avoid the question but I'm kind of not putting a day on on coming out of Early Access I tell you why because it's not particularly meaningful for us us like there's there's no big trigger point we decided to make the product Early Access because it wasn't going to be launched as Early Access originally um sure that a lot of people were aware of that um if they're not they are now um we deemed it more suitable for Early Access because some of the things just weren't quite in the in the expected State there were still some problems on select machines but we didn't want to continually delay the product not only to to generate Revenue but more to understand what's the reception to the product because for the future of of the company in sh 397 having the positivity around LMU as a look there's an opportunity here we could grow this and bring it to other platforms is really important more so than you know the numbers so to speak in terms of financials and we thought it's time to launch the product and get it into the real world because you can go so far internally with all the machines and configurations and setups we've got and you you hear this stereotypical engineer well it works on my machine as soon as you put it on to the real world where somebody's got some hand bodge you know GPU configuration with some random Ram they found in a Cupboard and all sorts you you get all sorts of feedback that we've gone a long ways to trying to improve those things with systems like bug spat that capture issues and send it back to the studio and that helps us enormously um but but what can I really say I I think uh Early Access for us is when we feel the product is in a more stable polished state that we can stand behind the product and say it's 1.0 today I don't think we can so I I was going to ask that because I feel like in gaming generally the the concept of Early Access and the concept of a of a of an initial Game launch seems to have changed hugely in the last 5 10 years like what when I was a kid you'd buy a game and it was on a it was on a CD and then it was never going to be updated again so the game was the game and it was never going to to change and and now you see games that that that release and 5 years later they're still still evolving and still bringing in new fan bases and and so Early Access is is not really about waiting for it to be complete because nowadays games are never complete there's always some new features some new some new content so with with that in mind do do you have a a checklist of I know you've said about being in a polished and stable state but do you have a check list of features functions that it that the game should be able to perform before it comes out of Early Access so for example is is VR a trigger point for we're not going to do a full launch until we have VR or we're not going to do a full launch until we've got a campaign mode do do you have a list of things that you need to have in it before you do your 1.0 release yeah yeah we have U you know a minimum requirements list and VR is in that right and so is the the 24 content because I think we need to get you know the product operating with all of that content first of all and the additional at least the beginnings of the services that we want to bring in I I know I used the word subscriptions it sounds very ugly because it feels like in Modern Life you subscriptions are falling out the sky everywhere and everybody's always asking for your money and then LMU comes along and says what about us too I appreciate it it's kind of painful um but cancel your Netflix subscriptions And subscribe to LMU you'll get more value from it right there's these choices to be made the at least getting the underpinnings of those things in even though the first installment of VR and LMU will be the first installment and it will grow from there I want those things in as a baseline before we can say do you know what that that's a 1.0 that you could probably sell for you know 50 Quid if it was a a street product that you bought off the the Shelf today um we're not there there's some way to go I don't get myself distracted by it and a lot of people say why are you doing you know why do you want to sell some pretty new content while you're in Early Access perfectly you reasonable question um I don't want to follow the norm and the conventions I'm saying that product is not perfect for everybody right now and there are some configurations and machines that will struggle with it even though you know there's tens and tens of thousands of users now already using LMU and very happy with it there's lots of people that say I'm not playing into like get VR I'm not getting it until you've got all the 24 cars in there how come you haven't got gt3s I can play them in ACC yeah sure okay we will get there it's just not today um I don't lose any sleep over when we're going to come out of Early Access I lose a lot of sleep about um the game not quite being as good as we know it can be but we can't put everything in our night I see uh speaking of putting things in there a quick one what's the status on the garage 56 nazcar would that ever be a thing uh yeah quite a few people asked about it I mean they asked a lot about that a lot last year it's fading a little now um I I was reluctant to go straight to getting back into NASCAR content after selling the product I wanted a brief break from the the NASCAR World although they you know they're super helpful there there's a lot of um people involved in that and a lot of politics I've got enough of that mball games right now garage 56 you know the NASCAR in none leemon is something the licensing team keep asking for and a used to be on a daily basis then I kept ignoring them now is probably on a monthly basis I think we will get there it's not a priority for us right now although it would be very cool just because of the historical issues and there's so many other things that we have to focus on right now just getting out the 24 content is Big so the answer to the next question might be the same but have you considered uh classic content what cars from the past Group C etc etc when will the saber be in the game we said one comment yeah um yes we do we the car team are always posting pictures of historic content why can't we build all these things because we're busy building the 24 cars and and making everything everything work so what would would you choose to have the classic content and wait for 24 because it becomes that kind of choice you've got to be able to say no again but absolutely we want to been classic content I hope it will be really popular I mean back in my black and white days we do classic content for Formula One games it seem be really really popular at the time like you know you sent a picture of my man and sent a picture you know um you're much younger than me Tom very annoyingly but you can still look at these cars even if you watch them in the day and say that looked cool I want to drive this sarette sounds amazing imagine bringing that stuff to LMU it would be awesome I'm just trying to temper that right now so don't don't um get me excited about it again it will come to the product in time first of all let's get 24 done single player championship mode so a lot of people asking about you know when and uh what that might look like and I I wonder you know I expect it probably is something that you're going to be doing but I wonder if if you have any kind of um creative ideas on how you could make a championship mode more interesting than a championship mode oh because I would like it to be a career mode you know a championship mode where you just create um just chain the events together is one thing and that will probably come to the tackle at some point because I think people have been asking that since the RF 2 days um but actually we're really interested in the kind of the human element and the connection and things that go on behind the front cover of of a sport so for Lon for us it's about you know similar to Formula One in the Rivalry between you know different teams um the status within a team your experience what you're working towards right now LMU is a very interesting simulation that really focuses on individual races we could do so much more with that by um putting these events together and having them as a stepping stone towards some kind of user defined Journey you know that kind of career mode concept we really want to do that and funny enough there was a roadmap meeting yesterday where that was discussed and we're all very excited about it but we're busy working on today's things but it but it is a factor and I would like to kind of blow the lines between a career mode of old that you play Just offline with your results online and there's some interesting things that we can do there I I hate just replicating things that have gone before because it's an awful lot of work to catch up with what games were doing 25 years ago you've got to think about how people will play them going forwards but yeah it's a very exciting concept but we we haven't got that locked and loaded in okay well we'll see how that develops uh one small question is um mids session saves in development I see that replays are now here does it have resume from replay like an rfactor 2 for example which could operate like a mids session save um look I'll give you another exclusive as well the team will kill me for this but it will be recording probably be live by the time that they get to hear about it so I can go on holiday and hide um one of the things that we do the replays replays is really cool I consider the replay functionality to be something that must be in a product before you can even call it one 0 out of Early Access right so it's a little embarrassing for us to not even have it in there but we're bringing it into the product now sometimes we lose track of the fact we only launched it at the end of February it's only been five minutes for us really but replays are there and I genuinely like using replays because I totally geek out on wow I drove those cou Corners really well I want to see my car kind of navigating over the bumps emo and all this kind of stuff and um that for me is really interesting so it's great to have that in there we OB to investigate things like getting highlights out of the replay system as well because eventually we want to take highlights out of the replay system and Dove tell this with this AI story concept so that you for example if we three were playing Co-op at some stage you know um you could drive your stint and then the other drivers that are waiting to come in might get your story oh this was what happened and it was navigated this way and then we had a puncture on this lap and here's the highlights I want to bring you into chapters of those stories which will be really interesting so Kudos the engineering team they started offering these things up we've got early prototypes of that working the saving resume stuff is in the road map um is being tackled at the moment we have this saving resume Concept in Co already where you're saving the pits and it's sent up to the cloud and another driver can kind of take that Coop save and continue with it so the underpinnings of that Co-op system which is hopefully launching in not too distant future forms the basis for what we would do for race weekend right but but still we're tempering that because aund things you know done poorly is going to sink us and um it's not that we're not appreciative of its importance we want to make that happen so that more users can enjoy the endurance aspect of other given everything you said during this uh discussion I feel like focus is is the key the key tenant that's that's um that's existed throughout everything we've discussed and and every decision you have to make is about does it mean we're going to be distracted and we're going to put out something that's that's suboptimal so with that in mind when are we updating ccraft um I'm I'm not intending to update ccraft I'm I'm not because the the team that were well first of all when we acquired cart graft and we acquired the technology we really only took two people from the C crafting because that's all that was left PE people forget that back in the day kcraft was all but gone and Motorsport games myself and um the team at the time had a few conversations because I really like what they were able to do they're punching above their weight and it looked like a really smart title sorry to S it's a game it's a simulation title it's a product words are interchangeable it doesn't have any meaning for me um so we brought that team in kind of build that opportunity up again but it was never really to build carcraft into something huge it had a limited audience at the time and I find carting for the vast majority of people less aspirational because you can go and do it in the real world it's attainable rather than you know Drive the ve on around the Swift Mountain Road or whatever people gravitate oh that's the driving experience you're working on brilliant confirm a damn I gave it away yeah driving the bagetti Von from Ima to wherever in Italy on the um we will get there eventually with the with the being data I'm sure um but kcraft was we we took the technology and the underpinnings of the team and we grew that team over time to deploy that into a much larger title and the Australian team wanted to work on endicar there there's a bit of history there as well um but ccraft is not something that we're focusing on right now A lot of people are knocking on the door asking to acquire carcraft because they would like to resume from that point forward instead of starting something from scratch so we're in some of those discussions but um it's on the back burner at and it has to be it's another thing where you in order to provide Focus you have to go you know what not today that's great thank you well I think that wraps up the community questions and the majority of the oh and the grilling of Steven Hood thank you very much for your time oh right yeah yeah no no you're more than welcome you were very uh polite and I feel as though the grill was on low heat so yeah I survived this one [Music] [Music]

Channel: TraxionGG

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Keywords: traxion, traxiongg, traxion gg, traxion.gg, sim racing, racing games, motorsport games, nascar, le mans ultimate, le mans, le mans 24 hour, indycar, racing game, le mans ultimate dlc, btcc, rfactor, rfactor2, rf2, motorsport games ceo, stephen hood, racing game le mans, lmvs, le mans games, f1, f1 games, formula 1, formula 1 games, video games, video game, racing, kartkraft, karting games, le mans game, le man game, le man, idycar, formulaone, formula one, lmu, lmultimate, leman ultimate

Id: dWhtAyEYL1A

Length: 71min 15sec (4275 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 08 2024