Why couldn't Live For Speed tackle its own official series?

Now before we even try to argue why this is a bad thing, let's stop and think about this. Could it be profitable? Possibly in many ways.

Livestream events on Youtube and post the videos of these livestreams. Even if a high quality broadcast team had to be paid for and an administration team had to be paid for (which wouldn't be required at all as I know this community has capable people who would do it for free such as all of our current series' are) the basically free publicity on the massively popular website could bring in drivers and newly licensed ones, and not only that viewers who may click on adds may also provide profit for LFS.

It would be a win-win situation that may spark life into LFS!

Now you can start making an argument against this.

Not sure if it should be a suggestion or discussion item, so I'm going to leave this here (delete this whole line after moderater review please)

sounds like a great idea

Great idea! I could be safety car

LFS' answer to iRacing's World Driver Championship thing, basically?

Sounds fun on the paper, but the reality is perhaps a bit more complex.

First question: Can LFS afford it? If you wanted to do it properly, you'd have to pay for the broadcast, the officials, the commentators, put some price money on the line, etc. The thing is, even though I might be wrong, LFS' budget allocated to marketing is probably close to 0£ right now. For the last 10+ years they've mostly relied on the members(aswell as gaming critics' reviews) for promotion.

Second question: Is it really worth risking the potential backclashes? Controversies/cheating(yea, it does happen sadly, especially when money's involved. look at iR's DWC, with the "lag switch" thing, for example.)/lack of general interest, you name it.

Third question, perhaps the most important: Are the potential rewards in terms of brand awareness important enough to make it happen? Or, as Becky Rose asks it so well, Is simracing still a spectator sport?


Anyway... Just a gut feeling, but I bet the devs would rather focus on the actual product, rather than worry on new "side projects" like such thing.

This would be a amazing event and as said before can go either way, could bring in new people and get the game more well known and shouldn't cost anything(or atleast be really small amount) but it could also just be another empty event that we don't actually use to the max

Meybe when the new tyre physics are out in few years.
That would mess up everything if Scawen suddenly decides to get said new physics done in middle of season but other hand sounds highly unlikely.

Quote from 'GreyBull [CHA :

perhaps the most important: Are the potential rewards in terms of brand awareness important enough to make it happen? Or, as Becky Rose asks it so well, Is simracing still a spectator sport?

Yes it is. I'm getting a bit tired of reading those -back in the days everything was better- stories. 2006, the Internet had just been invented, everything was on a smaller scale, online racing was not really known.

It's still popular to watch any sim or game, doesn't matter what it is as long as it moves; http://www.own3d.tv/ ... Some game channels have crazy amounts of viewers and when you start watching...You, or at least... I... think... What the hell am I watching.

In my opinion NDR is still the best with livestreams and organizing leagues and yes it gets less viewers and yes it doesn't receive awards but thats because it simply isn't new anymore. You can't compare 2006 with 2012, most people focus on the graphics, the track/car package and the gameplay nowadays. LFS is miles behind instead of ahead and you can throw any market strategy on it but that doesn't help.

If you want to spend money as development team, hire an extra graphical artist like Lynce or anyone who actually does like to improve the looks of this sim and/or release new track environments. Then the community does the promotion.

I remember, there was an official ESL-LFS-Championchip and it was not only streamed, It was shown LIVE on TV (GIGA-TV) in Germany.

But it was the time too, when Open-Wheeler Servers were full of licenced Fo8-Racers and not only overloaded with Demo-Drivers on Blackwood.

And I agree with with Cargame.nl:
U can´t compare 2006 with 2012. LFS isn´t the best RACE-SIM anymore, as it was in 2005-2007.

I don´t know which SIM is the best now, maybe the expensive I-Racing, but i will never pay any money for a time-licence and buy Virtual Cars with REAL money.


On the other side, when im looking forward, I believe in:

S3 as a quantum Jump, like S2 was at its time:
- with a couple of new Real-Tracks
- Cars and other features.
- thousends of I-Racing Drivers who switch their favourite Game to LFS-S3


And then, and not ealier, the time will come, when we can talk about an official LFS-Serie.

Quote from cargame.nl :

If you want to spend money as development team, hire an extra graphical artist like Lynce or anyone who actually does like to improve the looks of this sim and/or release new track environments. Then the community does the promotion.

i agree with cargame.nl in that there are people that are in the community such as lynce who's dedication and a good keen eye for detail can make the game a fresher experience and he should certainly be hired by the dev's. or if they offered him a deal such as upgrading lynces system to something sufficient enough to continue his work at a steady pace

otherwise it would eventually in time lose people willing to contribute time and energy on making big improvements like the graphics.
try a fresh lfs install with default textures then compare to lynces previous and current works then which one would people be more willing to invest in

Quote from GrandlHuber :

I remember, there was an official ESL-LFS-Championchip and it was not only streamed, It was shown LIVE on TV (GIGA-TV) in Germany.

I didn't know. Could this be one of the reason why over the years there have so many players from Germany on LFS?

Do you have any (approximative) idea of the audiences figures?


Later, in 2009, there was also a simracing league broadcasted on the Finnish TV channel MTV3, which also broadcasts the Formula 1 GPs in Finland. Sadly it didn't put LFS in a very positive light, only FBM/BL1 were used, everything was default, there was no custom cameras/graphics, and I belive the textures were all default too. There was even those ugly green names on the top of the players. I belive Jesse Nieminen from F1RST Racing won the competition.

Quote from GrandlHuber :

I don´t know which SIM is the best now

Aah, the good old $1.000 question.

There is probably no definitive answer to this. If anything, the answer depends on what you value the most in a simracing game.

But either way, you can still definitely make a very, very strong case for LFS, even though it has received no big update in almost half a decade.

Despite the improvements made by the other main simracing titles over the last 5 years, LFS is still pretty much ahead of its game on several factors(like physics/consistency in terms of content quality/multiplayer mode). But sadly it seems like it can't capitalise on that, mostly because of a) it still mostly has fictional content, b) it hasn't received big updates for years, c) it is perceived(wrongly, as, in a way, it is also one of the game's stenghts)as a "minor league" project, because of its very small developping team, d) the lack of marketing doesn't help in terms of brand awareness. I don't mean that those factors hurt the game's quality - not at all. It just hurts the game's perception from average Joe player and average Joe critic too used to GT5/iRacing.

a): I guess this is why the devs were so eager to have the VWS/RO in the game. It's too bad that the "fictional cars/tracks" model cannot work - personally I love it. IMO it allows you to be creative on the content, without sticking with real life stuff that were designed with real life concerns, that are completely irrelevant in a virtual environment, in mind. Plus, it doesn't cost you a dime in terms of licenses. And makes the real life vs simracing comparison(in terms of handling or performances) impossible(one of the thing that plague/used to plague iRacing cars is that some of the cars have/used to have very different characteristics and handling from their real life counterparts, and produced very different laptimes too).

d): We're getting back on topic with that one...

Quote from GreyBull [CHA] :

It's too bad that the "fictional cars/tracks" model cannot work - personally I love it. IMO it allows you to be creative on the content, without sticking with real life stuff that were designed with real life concerns, that are completely irrelevant in a virtual environment, in mind. Plus, it doesn't cost you a dime in terms of licenses. And makes the real life vs simracing comparison(in terms of handling or performances) impossible(one of the thing that plague/used to plague iRacing cars is that some of the cars have/used to have very different characteristics and handling from their real life counterparts, and produced very different laptimes too).

This is something that I like about LFS as well, but it doesn't work because people want to feel like what they are driving is a real car as well I guess. Not something fictional.

Same as the tracks