3. Track Type

The last, but secondary differentiator in modern racing games that often leads to ambiguity from a design standpoint is the track type / environment style.

While many games do communicate this through box print or art and marketing materials, it is not uniformly communicated. The game's external messaging can often indicate numbers of tracks -- but not style and experience.

Environment descriptions are usually reasonably well handled, but we need to think about what users might be looking for. Are the environments real-world, fantasy or hyper-real in art style? Are the roads open or closed to traffic? Are the roads forgiving with large run-off areas or punishing with lots of hairpins and choke points?

Track types would include circuit (Gran Turismo , PGR, ATV: ORF), point-to-point (Road Rash 1-3, Test Drive 2-6), circuit open world (Baja) and point-to-point open world (Road Rash: Jailbreak; Test Drive: Unlimited, Burnout: Paradise, and NFS: Most Wanted).

Track types can also be mixed (i.e. MX vs. ATV with circuit tracks and point-to-point) and they should always be called out as such.

While recent NFS games struggled with their identity NFS: Most Wanted was a monster success with an accessible, but deep control model, focused vehicle competition and interaction and open world, point-to-point races.

The Debate About What is "Hardcore"

[Surely this section opens up a huge can of worms that I expect to be rehashed in the comments, as it has in countless other articles across the web. So I might as well embrace the expected.]

Another area of unnecessary confusion in the industry is what type of gameplay is considered "hardcore". Often a racing game is considered "hardcore" if it is very difficult and punishing, which is often the case in normally categorized simulation titles like Gran Turismo and Project Gotham Racing.

Since those games are highly technical driving sims "hardcore" is often loosely attributed to all simulations. But I believe that to be only a large sub-set.

Let us examine a textbook definition:

hard core

--noun

1. the permanent, dedicated, and completely faithful nucleus of a group or movement, as of a political party.

2. an unyielding or intransigent element in a social or organizational structure, as that part of a group consisting of longtime adherents or those resistant to change.

[Dictionary.com Unabridged; Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2006.]

The key relevant synonyms of that definition for me as a 17-year industry veteran and racing expert are "permanent" and "dedicated". In a gaming context, this would clearly indicate a heavy level of gamer experience.

Certainly, not all experienced racing fans are technical simulation fans and so it is obvious to me that not all hardcore racing fans are sim fans either.

I submit that hardcore racing fans are the larger and more general segment of very dedicated and experienced racing fans. Technical driving, track mastery and racing simulation fans are merely a subset of this larger group. That fact was reinforced in racing usability testing of the type pioneered by Microsoft.

While there is clearly a correlation between hardcore and technical racing fans, they are not equal. In screening, organizing and moderating multiple usability and playability testing sessions on Baja: Edge of Reality, the last racing game I worked on, I experienced a mix of preferences in highly dedicated and experienced racing fans.

Although the preferences of these fans were weighted a bit towards the technical driving simulations, there were a reasonable amount of these racing fans who play racing games 15-30 hours per week and had mastered 4-10 racing games over the previous year or two -- but who preferred Need For Speed and Burnout hands down to Gran Turismo and Project Gotham Racing.

These players rarely cited the technical simulations as positive examples of gameplay in the discussions. They tended to thrive more on the competition of opponents in both single player and multiplayer modes than the technical sim fans -- who thrive on achieving perfect track mastery and lap times.

To help us evolve the genre I feel we should stop making gameplay generalizations about what a vague, ill-defined group of hardcore fans would like. We can focus on the specific variations of gameplay defined above, and from those determine which type of player each variation appeals to.

Conclusion

Often there is a large correlation between Technical Driving Races, Deep Control Mechanics and Circuit Tracks. But this is not always the case -- and certainly the opposite mix of Non-Technical, Point-to-Point racing is a lot fuzzier and less connected.

I strongly believe as an industry we can and should do better to think carefully while developing gaming and then set player expectations accordingly, and the racing genre is the place where the most confusion lies. 

Once the modern differences in racing games are more clearly communicated throughout the industry, developers can set more conscious, up-front goals on where they wish to fall in each of these categories, and then work towards these development targets.

When a game is ready to ship, the marketing team can clearly communicate the experience of gameplay and best manage the expectations of the consumer.

In the end we want consumers to be able to find and buy the best type of racing games they enjoy. We want to be able to develop games that serve both under-crowded and high demand sectors of the racing genre.

The genre and the industry as a whole will be better off once we treat racing games as the more interesting and unique entities that they have evolved into -- and once we become better at educating the market about how each is unique.