Is Sim Racing Still a Spectator Sport?

I've been watching some of my old sim race broadcasts lately on You Tube. Being 30+ minutes long the 100mb filesize limit of You Tube which was in effect back in '06 and '07 does impede the quality somewhat, but it did get me thinking about the sport and where it has gone over the last few years.

When the STCC started it's race broadcasts in 2006 only the very top sim racing leagues had any kind of broadcasts, and they where strictly amateur affairs created by the people involved for the people involved.

The STCC aimed to change all that by being aimed squarely at the spectator and adopting a style similar to real motor racing broadcasts such as Formula 1. All the racing regulations and the design of the event format was geared to creating exciting racing for spectators to watch it.

At one point the series went viral and achieved 120000 viewers for 3 consecutive race broadcasts. By all accounts it was a huge success and brought more people in to the sport of Sim Racing, and it spawned the massively popular CTRA public server system - the equivellent of a motor racing MMO.

For my part I have not done badly out of it, the CTRA project in particular enabled me to switch to a more profitable career by demonstrating what my programming skills could do - combined with my first commercial application release I was able to get a job programming for a living.

But where is sim racing now?

The STCC & CTRA was too much work, the two key players were myself and Sam Hopkinson and we both had burn outs from the workload involved. Since they have gone nobody else has stepped up to the plate to replace them in quite the same way.

As broadcasts go STCC was unique but I think it has had an overall positive effect on the expected standards of a sim race broadcasts. Personally I don't think anyone has yet rivalled what the STCC did - but perhaps i'm biased but remember that in it's day the STCC won all the applicable awards it could have, and watching them today they're still exciting races to watch.

The CTRA - which didn't just win awards but spawned special categories such as "best ... that isn't CTRA" has spawned similar systems - but nobody has tried to enforce the core ethics of the CTRA system, the report/review/licence endorcement approach to driver education to improve standards.

Like the STCC the ripple effects of the CTRA can still be felt in sim racing today. Drivers think twice about rejoining the track after a spin, drivers who join a public server event midway through a race understand that they are just practicing and stay out of the way. Driving standards improved a lot when the CTRA was around and the effect of that can still be felt in the higher ethics that competitors today have learned from the drivers who were around at that time.

What could be achieved if these systems came back to sim racing today?

I think there is still life in the STCC concept. Race broadcasts today are a much higher standard than they used to be, but a new STCC could re-establish the standards that viewers expect to see. Audience sizes are larger than before - but it's still very niche interest.

However there wouldn't be life in a CTRA model. The core ethics require too much administration and the new driver throughput meens that it is a never ending task - which by it's very nature is thankless.

It's for this reason i've been giving very serious consideration to a new STCC project. I've wanted to do it for years, but lately i've started putting bits together. The car skins published in my recent tech blog postings relate to it, and i've started working on some code to run the thing.

I'm not ready to make promises regarding it appearing on your screens in 2011. It's a low priority in my life still - but as a creative outlet i'm enjoying doing things for it and for as long as that remains true then progress will be being made.

As for the specifics and details behind the project, i'll speak more of them in time but suffice to say that nothing about the league will be conventional. Expect something radically different and in a class of it's own. It will be less of a race and more of an event, something special, and one that I hope will be a happy memories for competitors and spectators alike, just like the original STCC was in it's day without question the premier broadcasted league and completely unique, the new project certainly wont be anything less.

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