PC2 Project CARS 2 announced with crowdfunding options

[Alex Franchini]

Slightly Mad Studios has officially announced a sequel to Project Cars today as Project Cars 2 is now official, and the WMD crowdfunding campaign has gone live.

Apparently the first big difference with the first title is that PCars 2 will feature off-road racing, along with Touge and Hillclimb events.

The crowdfunding tool-packs, which you can see on the WMD page, start from 50 British pounds and go all the way to 10,000 pounds.

Here's the shortlist of the PCars 2 features:

• THE LARGEST TRACK ROSTER EVER – 50 unique locations and 200+ courses including ‘loose surface racing’ on dirt, gravel, mud, and snow. All will have dynamic time of day and weather allowing you to play anytime, anywhere

• THE WIDEST VARIETY OF MOTORSPORTS with 8 different disciplines now including Rallycross, Hillclimbs, and Touge. 200+ cars from over 40 different vehicle classes including never-before-seen Concepts and Banned Race Cars

• CO-OP CAREER – Play as the Teammate Driver, Spotter, Driver Swap, or Co-Pilot. More choices, more opportunities, more strategy, greater risks and greater rewards

• SEAMLESSLY CONNECTED – Socialize and compete via Online Track Days, have players from around the world take the place of AI-controlled drivers in your solo play, and get news updates on the Driver Network around you

• PRO ESPORTS RACING – Skill & Behavioural-based matchmaking, create your own Online Racing Leagues, and Live Broadcast and Spectator functionality

• YOUR HOME FOR RACING – Your own personal, customisable Test Track to tune and test your cars. Invite others to showcase your passion for racing and learn race craft and engineering with the Project CARS Academy

Update: First videos already out on YouTube
Update 2: Videos have been removed from YouTube

 

[Frank]

The FSA didn't rule on the last complaint - this is pretty common, they simply didn't see any wrongdoing/no-one lost out, however they didn't close the case either because these things can change/develop and - indeed - they may decide to look again at this.

Some places on the WMD site make it clear it is NOT an investment (selling investment requires a licence in the UK) but then they talk about 'investors' all over the rest of the site...

It's a Kickstarter with built-in pre-order - why they don't just call it that.

Also - why would I want to pay MORE for a game YEARS ahead of release when I know post-release they'll tell me the things I wanted won't be done and that's that??

How about the return of investment, don't you think this is going to cause issues?

 

[Frank]

Because people are not investing in pcars2, they are buying the 'experience' of seeing how a game is made. No profits, or any monies for that matter, will be paid back.

That is my point, meaning they might run in trouble with the original ROI?

 

[Andrew Holmes]

I'm sorry SMS, but the original Project CARS was a let down, and it's only been out a matter of weeks. Why don't you just patch in all the other features or put them in as DLC into the original? They need to sort out the first damn game before bringing out a new one!

 

[Msportdan]

SPREAD THE WORD
Before voting with your money for Project CARS 2 think of how bad Wii U owners were treated and Remember they also had contribted their money on their version but look what happened.

Lets look back at the history of statements made by Slightly Mad Studio towards Wii U and the lies told. How great it all started to how bad it ended.

April 2013:

"What we´re going to make sure is that the Wii U version is not the worst
one, it won´t be a crappy version. We want people to get the game and
say `Holy s***, that looks amazing"

http://www.nintendolife.com/ne......

December 2013:

"The Wii U is more than capable of providing the core Project CARS
experience. Sure, some super-high-level graphical effects may not be
possible but in comparison it also offers a unique interaction
experience via the GamePad controller, with the second screen
potentially becoming your track map overview, rear-view mirror,
telemetry, or simply mimicking a real race car steering wheel whilst you
use the gyroscope to drive."

http://www.nintendolife.com/ne......

September 2014 :

" I've seen the Wii U version, I've seen it quite regularly. It's got dynamic time of day, weather - it looks phenomenal. And the actual console itself is quite good."

""It's not our job to disappoint those guys, So when we say the Wii U version is delayed in 2015 because we need a little more time, that's all it is. We just want to make sure it's of the same standard of all the other games. To do that, we just need a little more time."

"There is no conspiracy"

http://www.nintendolife.com/ne......

And comes...

May 2015 :

" OK I'll come clean. At the moment we're running at about 23FPS on the WiiU"

"We're awaiting/hoping for more of a hardware announcement at E3..."

(When it was made clear the by Iwata that a New hardware was not coming anytime soon or years for that matter)

Replies made to fans showing dissappointment on the situation.

"Oh please do. We really don't want people like you buying our games."

"You won't hear this elsewhere, but in the industry we call you 'The 2%'. You represent 2% of the purchases but create 98% of the hassle for developers by well, just what you've stated above. Going on channels to tell everyone 'don't buy this game!!' because you have some personal grief."

"Honestly, if your followers are like minded people we could chop a good chunk off of that 2% in one fell swoop. You'd be doing us a great favour.
Bye."

"Yup, and if you need to pass this on, we really dislike Nintendo fans"

http://forum.projectcarsgame.c......

Later the developer went on to clearify how the Wii U version of the game was always a "Maybe"

"It was always 'maybe' as we had no knowledge of the system."

"It (The Game) was changed, by vote of the members, to a PC/Xbox One/PS4 next gen game with still 'maybe Wii U' and Steam OS. The funding, as I said above, was closed long before this.

http://www.nintendolife.com/ne......

To be honest I question if there ever was a Wii U version of Project CARS. All these while the developer didn't show a "single" screenshot of the game, forget about gameplay footages and that they were hoping for a new hardware to be announced at this E3 was the worst posssible idea to play dumb. I think it's safe to assume that the Wii U version of Project CARS is all but cancelled.

How the hell is that thug still in business, looks like one acts like one!

 

[John Peat]

How about the return of investment, don't you think this is going to cause issues?

On paper, offering people ANY return for money requires a licence in the UK - whether it be gambling or formal investment.

Whether any action will be taken comes down to the FSA - my guess is they're busy people and aren't too worried about gamers throwing money at a game UNLESS the game never appears perhaps?

In theory, UK law offers protection to investors (licensed or not) who give money and don't get what was promised - whether not getting a Wii-U version of PCars is covered I've no idea but a question to the FSA wouldn't do any harm.

 

[Rob Miliczky]

Its a shame, loved him in little Britain.
mod-edit: stay within the forum rules

 

[Nox]

I just took PCars 1 off my Steam Wishlist.

 

[Ghepa888]

Well I do not see why the improvements one can not then be embedded on the other. And why not make PC1 for racing on the track in all categories and PC2 for off-road type rally, hill climbs rallycross etc.etc

 

[Ben Lee]

It wouldn't surprise me if the turnaround for pCARS2 is a lot quicker than the first one. I would guess it will be an 18 month development, with a release for Xmas 2016.

 

[Rob Miliczky]

I don't understand why they had to crowd fund this. If they wanted to work with the community, they could have just approached select few thousand of WMD members with free access to the builds.

Ian Bell himself said they don't need the money to make pCARS2. Why on earth do they have a £10,000 tier then? Even £1,000 tier. Hell, even £50? If they don't need the money to make the game, where is this money going? Where?

Only an idiot would pay £10,000 to have a dinner with Ian Bell. You can go stay in a nice 5* hotel in London for 2 nights, £600. Michelin starred dinner... £250. Couple of track days, driving supercars round a race track, £500. Spending money for a weekend in London for 3 days, £600.

You will still have thousands left in the pocket. I just don't understand where the money will be going, if it's not going into making pCARS2.

 

[Pedro K]

They didn't make enough money to fund their own game?

 

[Nox]

Only an idiot would pay £10,000 to have a dinner with Ian Bell. You can go stay in a nice 5* hotel in London for 2 nights, £600. Michelin starred dinner... £250. Couple of track days, driving supercars round a race track, £500. Spending money for a weekend in London for 3 days, £600.

For everything else, there's Mastercard.

 

[Quas]

10.000 £ for a dinner with Prince Charming?

Putting my sympathy for Mr. Nice Guy aside, i'm not surprised at all and totally understand why they went that way. Pcars has got nothing for purists, youngsters & casuals will get bored and scream for the next sequel quickly.
Sure, why not go "crowdfunding" again if the first time it gave them TONS of defenders infesting every last corner of simracing, trying to shove this crap down our throats.
Instead of paying people for advertising or ideas to improve the game, SMS actually extracts money from them. They might not be likable but those guys sure now how to get those 14 year old's lunch money.
Kids will be driving "Pcars 12 - Hot Pursuit" by the time i get bored with a 7 year old rF1 mod .

 

[Rob Every]

Best post I have read in ages fella, I too am still playing F1 and enjoying all the mods there.

Just wish there was a better "free" online community too, charging for that games races is a little harsh I feel.

You are right though, the people who are playing this game and enjoying it, are not us. Most of us were cleverly conned a few years ago and are now rightly trepidant about this company after being stung in various ways.

The game always has been and always be based around consoles, they are the market leader and being utterly brutal the people buying games there are less discerning and perhaps less intelligent overall, so you can dumb down this sort of thing to appeal to them. The issue was we thought it would be a great PC sim and it clearly isn't. That is why those of you that bought it feel conned.

It's what Codemasters did, what Milestone have always done and what SMS used to do, the difference this time is they conned the sim community at the same time. They will not be trusted again as you can see.

THAT is why there is a massive backlash, that is why even on thier home turf at VR most of the comments are negative apart from the usual 5 or 6 fanboys and that is why the vitroil is so spectacular.

But I get the feeling the guy won't give a hoot, will bitch and moan about just trying to help us all out, will say he is going to remove forums, stop progress on the game, probably even say he won't release any patches! Nothing would surprise me.

 

[Paolo9876]

I swear all this **** storm would be avoided if they just named it properly, we don't complain about how Codemasters have F1, DiRT and GRID at the same time.

 

[jimortality]

Paying £1000 to have dinner with Ian Bell? Really should be paying me £1000 to sit through that...

Anyway, for any aspiring game developers out there, here is how to commit game marketing suicide...by announcing a sequel a month after release of a game that still requires a multitude of bug fixes. Promise patches and content updates all you like, but you don't convince anyone until said updates are released and are proven to fix the things that need fixing. Development on new games directly after releases of old ones is commonplace, but don't announce that fact to a community that is still hoping for things with the game they just purchased. It is completely silly.

Also I don't really get why this is being crowdfunded? They require nearly 3 times the amount of pCARS 1's investment total to develop a game that will likely have a significant portion of content from the original game, not to mention that there is publisher backing involved this time as well...

Plus there's the small fact the original game is a million-plus seller. No added income from that, not at all.

Yes Ian, because setting an entry investor level at £50 (4x the entry level of the original game) is really going to allow a lot of people inside the development process...which going by the first game's development cycle wasn't anything exciting anyway. And this is coming from a WMD member as well.

Oh well, a few more years of pCARS shill hype should be fun to deal with.

I really want to like pCARS right now, as there is plenty to like about it at a core level. But the issues, the community and stuff like this just makes me think its a waste of time. There's so much potential going to waste.

You forgot a zero, its 10,000

£10,000.
A meager £1000 only gets you dinner with the development team.
But don't worry, your £10,000 will be well worth it as your handy get around car will be a Ferrari 458, which is perfectly suited to the famously wide open and congestion-free roads of the inner CBD of London.

I think it's dinner with Andy Tudor, Head of Development and not Ian Bell.

 

[Dyrgl]

I think from a business perspective the dinner should be with Bell. I´m sure there are plenty of people that would pay to be able to punch him in the face, the pack would be a sales success, no doubt.

 

[Chris]

The £10,000 donation grants you a dinner with Ian Bell.
The £1000 donation grants you a dinner with the development team.

 

[LacSlyer]

Very interesting. I might not agree with them pulling this out so early, but I can see what they're doing. The development process including the alpha tests and such for PCars took several years; so I can see why they want to get started early by offering crowdfunding options.

I don't understand why people are so keen to knock on it on this forum. You don't have to crowdfund the game. If you're skeptical or don't wish to pay that much to get base-level testing gameplay, then don't. There were loads of people that funded PCars and tested it for SMS, and its not really arguable that the base game itself (ignore multiplayer for a moment here) isn't fantastic, all the cars, tracks, tyre model/weather, etc. A more open look and a foray into stuff like rallycross would definitely be interesting.

That being said, I would've liked for SMS to have waited at least 6 months to a year before they announced this, and even then maybe only on a small-scale on the WMD forums rather than a big official post on the PCars website. It does seem like they're detracting from PCars development, which is really disappointing. It feels like they saw the sales numbers, got a little too big for their boots, and decided to start work on their next 'big one' already. Confidence can be good, but overconfidence can be killer in the game industry.

I guess we'll see what will come of it, hopefully we will see more work on PCars rather than PCars 2 right now.

Edit: I also feel the need to mention that in AAA games, developers that are looking to continue IPs or other projects start work almost immediately after their game has been released, be it with the same team, a new team, or a mix of both. Again, I feel like some more time could have passed before they 'officially' announced it; but a company is a company, they can't make all their money via DLC purchases, they have to think about their next game, which I can see is fair.

Whether or not this move will kind of screw the PCars playerbase in terms of bugfixes and et cetera remains to be seen, but I would hope that SMS have the sense to put PCars 2 on the backburner for the next few months until PCars is fully up to the multiplayer standard that a lot of us were expecting.

I think what you're overlooking here, when it comes to people being upset with this move by SMS, is that they foresee SMS pumping out titles more often to make money rather than develop what they currently have. This is valid reasoning to dislike the announcement of a second game so soon because as someone stated earlier in the thread, the more popular sim titles haven't really gone with this method of development for their games, excluding the F1 series. So to them, and myself included, it sends a dangerous message that SMS would rather provide additional features in a game by producing sequels rather than use any of the methods some popular sim titles use (i.e. subscription, paid DLC, purchasable content) and it's a very foreign concept. It can be a good thing, but it can also be very bad for us as well.

Whether it works or not will have to be seen. For one, it may very well be just as much or even less cost to the consumer in the long run, but it also presents problems to the community. Such as requiring everyone to purchase the new game in order to play together, something a lot of sim racers find to be a significant aspect of being able to play with friends.

However, all of this is disregarding the absolutely terrible PR they have in not only dealing with how they announced this, but also in how they deal with peoples' reactions. If they had simply dealt with it in a more professional manner they'd reduce the backlash significantly. Ian Bell in particular has been a terrible spokesman for the game and that could very well hurt them more and more as this goes on.

My opinion is we'll see the pCARS2 community become an even worse version of the previous game. Because even more people are now focusing on what SMS is doing and will be more critical of the second game. Which in turn will lead to their community being even more defensive about the game, which at this point would be very hard to do, but it'll happen. They'll become even more divided from the rest of the sim racing community and will be lucky to meet the expectations of pCARS1, let alone surpass it.

 

[AndrewBo]