Hi!
I’m eiw and I’ve been playing LFS for 8 years so far. Also, I’m racing Rotax kart in real life.
But In the past two years I’m hardly racing because me and my small team are working as full time on a large game project called “TRW”, which means “The Racing World”.

It’s a game primarily for iOS and Android, but we will also provide PC version as a demo. We just got a playable version tested by some testers this month and we believe the game is on the way to finish.

Here are some screenshots:











Now we are trying to get on kickstarter in a few months time and we really wanna ask you guys some questions about kickstarter:

1: At what point do you think a sim (or semi-sim) racing game is attractive to you?

2: Why would you keep playing a game even if you’ve unlocked all the cars and levels?

3: If you are slow and you can’t beat the fast guy, what makes you to enjoy the racing with fast guy as you are always lose, is that the pursuit of “victory”?

Also, 4: what do you want to have in the kickstarter as the return? Except for in-game content? What else u wish have?

5: Will you guys enjoy getting your own designed cars or skins, and level design included in the game?


In the end I need to say that we’re open for any tips and advice on both game-play and the marketing sides.
We’re not some big guy in the industry, we are just so passionate about racing and this project is the result of it.

Thank you very much for giving us any tips on marketing sides!!

I'm excited for this one

1: At what point do you think a sim (or semi-sim) racing game is attractive to you?
When there is a good multi-player and a good physics/tire model.

2: Why would you keep playing a game even if you’ve unlocked all the cars and levels?
Online leagues where the best of the best battle it out

3: If you are slow and you can’t beat the fast guy, what makes you to enjoy the racing with fast guy as you are always lose, is that the pursuit of “victory”?
The effort I put into it is what I enjoy

Also, 4: what do you want to have in the kickstarter as the return? Except for in-game content? What else u wish have?
an official league maybe?

5: Will you guys enjoy getting your own designed cars or skins, and level design included in the game?
I already enjoy my own skins :P but building race tracks would be awesome indeed.

Quote from CodeLyoko1 :

I'm excited for this one

1: At what point do you think a sim (or semi-sim) racing game is attractive to you?
When there is a good multi-player and a good physics/tire model.

2: Why would you keep playing a game even if you’ve unlocked all the cars and levels?
Online leagues where the best of the best battle it out

3: If you are slow and you can’t beat the fast guy, what makes you to enjoy the racing with fast guy as you are always lose, is that the pursuit of “victory”?
The effort I put into it is what I enjoy

Also, 4: what do you want to have in the kickstarter as the return? Except for in-game content? What else u wish have?
an official league maybe?

5: Will you guys enjoy getting your own designed cars or skins, and level design included in the game?
I already enjoy my own skins :P but building race tracks would be awesome indeed.

Thanks for answering, CodeLyoko1
There will be in-game community like racing teams owned by players, and other competitive things which increasing multiplayer fun by the benefit of modern Internet technology XD. Some events are also ready to be challenged

1: At what point do you think a sim (or semi-sim) racing game is attractive to you?

Realistic feeling of the cars handling, e.g. LFS vs Need for Speed
Multiplayer
Real Cars
Real Tracks
Setups

2: Why would you keep playing a game even if you’ve unlocked all the cars and levels?

Tuning
Multiplayer
Hotlap Mode

3: If you are slow and you can’t beat the fast guy, what makes you to enjoy the racing with fast guy as you are always lose, is that the pursuit of “victory”?

Practicing to beat the fast guy

4: What do you want to have in the kickstarter as the return? Except for in-game content? What else u wish have?

Not sure

5: Will you guys enjoy getting your own designed cars or skins, and level design included in the game?

Yes!

This looks really cool for a mobile game, would happily test it on my Android device.

1: At what point do you think a sim (or semi-sim) racing game is attractive to you?

Good enough multiplayer and good physics.

2: Why would you keep playing a game even if you’ve unlocked all the cars and levels?

Multiplayer races.

3: If you are slow and you can’t beat the fast guy, what makes you to enjoy the racing with fast guy as you are always lose, is that the pursuit of “victory”?

I don't really care if Mr.Fast beats me all the time, fun and satisfaction during the races is what I want.

Also, 4: what do you want to have in the kickstarter as the return? Except for in-game content? What else u wish have?

No idea, except an official league.

5: Will you guys enjoy getting your own designed cars or skins, and level design included in the game?

Yes, even though I'm not a good car/level/skin maker.

1: At what point do you think a sim (or semi-sim) racing game is attractive to you?

When it offers diversity, e.g. different car models need different styles of driving, feeling of actually driving a car, instead of having several different sizes of bricks put on 4 wheels. Basically meaning every car is different from each other and they actually have some different charasteristics, which could be adjusted with setups, of course.

Also for the league racing, competitive gameplay is more rewarding and satisfying, but then again pick up racing generally provides more fun factor.

Altough semi-simulator is also a neat idea, it can go wrong easily if you just slack on coding the physics. For example GRID (Well, that might be considered as arcade) has one of the weirdest physics i've seen, and it's nearly unplayable to play with a wheel.

2: Why would you keep playing a game even if you’ve unlocked all the cars and levels?

It depends, mostly if the game has some replay value I can pick it up again after a break and get excited about it again.

Also for the multiplayer option if that is available, and there is a community playing it still. Driving against other people provide closer racing than racing against bots that have a specific line to follow. Altough if there is a possibilty of coding a learning AI that is aware of players (e.g something similar to what Tim Beaudet made: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BuL6oXqFbuU)

3: If you are slow and you can’t beat the fast guy, what makes you to enjoy the racing with fast guy as you are always lose, is that the pursuit of “victory”?

It depends on how big the gap is on the fast guy. If it's more than 1 second per lap it can be rather predictable, but if there is a possibility of keeping up in some places and actually a possibility of battling, then I can try to pursuit him. Otherwise I'll just try to keep on practising and trying to adjust driving lines optimally to catch up.

4: what do you want to have in the kickstarter as the return? Except for in-game content? What else u wish have?

Well, basically what you can imagine. Keychains, miniature models of the cars, or maybe even T-shirts. Maybe even an official league as above mentioned, maybe with a cash prize as well if you can raise enough money from Kickstarter?

5: Will you guys enjoy getting your own designed cars or skins, and level design included in the game?

I kind of find it mandatory to have a possibility of designing your own skin, because it is actually rather fun to design stuff.

Track editor would be awesome, altough the minus side depends on the community itself, there may be more bad tracks than good tracks. But that happens in every thing you have a chance to modify.

I think the car editor would have the same problem, altough if it is possible to have a tool that can adjust engine size, amount of cylinders (similar to LFS's tweak tools, but with the possibility to change the type of suspension, centre of gravity, aerodynamic properties, etc.) meaning that they would be coded in the game but customisable when you are designing a new car.

I could find this working if the game itself had a possibility to import the model in-game and setting the car's properties in-game, as well.

_________

These are my opinions though, I am no coder and lack the knowledge of it completely so I do not know at all how difficult it would be to implement something close to my answers.

1: At what point do you think a sim (or semi-sim) racing game is attractive to you?
Personally, as long as it's consistent, I can enjoy a game that's not a completely accurate simulation - as long as the car's handling is predictable (ie, it reacts to the same input in the same way every time, given the same conditions) it doesn't matter to me that it's accurate.

2: Why would you keep playing a game even if you’ve unlocked all the cars and levels?
Online racing; good, extensive, browsable online stats for each driver; level/car editing tools/plugins

3: If you are slow and you can’t beat the fast guy, what makes you to enjoy the racing with fast guy as you are always lose, is that the pursuit of “victory”?
As long as I'm not last every time, I'll enjoy it. This is one of the things I love about online racing - even if you're not first you can still have a great race battling further down the field with the guys closer to your own skill; essentially you're 'protected' from the best players by being on a completely different part of the track for most of the race. Wheras something like Counterstrike if you're not so good it's just death after death after death as you're constantly the victim of the good players.

4: what do you want to have in the kickstarter as the return? Except for in-game content? What else u wish have?
No idea, sorry. Surprise me Maybe the chance to help develop your own skin to be included in the game (either personally, or with the help of the art guys for people who aren't too hot with Photoshop)

5: Will you guys enjoy getting your own designed cars or skins, and level design included in the game?
Short answer: Yes. Long answer: Yyyyyyeeeeeeesssssssssssssssss.

You sure my iPhone can handle this game?

1: At what point do you think a sim (or semi-sim) racing game is attractive to you?
When it is fun to drive. It either offers nice mix of sim and arcade (gran turismos) or it is proper sim. Good amount of tracks and cars is of course important and for me online racing is essential.

2: Why would you keep playing a game even if you’ve unlocked all the cars and levels?
I'd keep racing ff the online racing is fun. I don't really care about levels. I play to have fun and not to achieve some level or trophy inside the game.

3: If you are slow and you can’t beat the fast guy, what makes you to enjoy the racing with fast guy as you are always lose, is that the pursuit of “victory”?
Losing is natural part of racing. I don't see it as a bad thing if there are faster people than me. As long as the racing is fun I can have fun racing the for the last position. Winning of course feels good too.

Also, 4: what do you want to have in the kickstarter as the return? Except for in-game content? What else u wish have?
Future dlc for free is always good idea. Some recognition is always nice. Like having your name in the end credits, special tag on the forums.

5: Will you guys enjoy getting your own designed cars or skins, and level design included in the game?
Yes.

Matt im sure your iphone will handle this, and with pretty much the highest graphic.

and first off I have to say a big THANK YOU for all of you guys we really appreciate all the tips you posted here!

2014 and 2015 would be a big year for racing games, we've already got AC, Racedoom, Project cars, forza 5 , Real Racing 3(4?) , and S3? therefore we're targeting the mobile platform primarily and hope to provide something a bit different

it's not always a painful work to balance "fun" and "realistic", what we really wanted to do, is to provide a "realistic feeling" that you're really in the atmosphere of racing. but anyway we'll never know if it's fun until the beta testing starts.

however, those things you guys mentioned are pretty cool and we'll keep working and upgrading those features.

Our idea regarding the editable content:
we prefer to offer the player chance to take part in the development progress and also upgrading later on, with the professional assist from the developing team we can keep all the contents are at a very high quality.



We will keep you guys posted when we're ready for a proper self-introduction

p.s we have just added the anti-cut penalty system tonight, it will be active in all the game modes so please be aware

Quote from Eiw :

1: At what point do you think a sim (or semi-sim) racing game is attractive to you?

I just like to have quick races on a random combo of car + track. Important to me more than having "real" physics is having consistent physics. One of the the things that always annoyed me with Real Racing is that I would repeat the same thing in a given lap, yet results would be different for no good reason.

Quote from Eiw :

2: Why would you keep playing a game even if you’ve unlocked all the cars and levels?

Yes, because I'd prefer to have everything unlocked to start and have a "random" button to just put me into a short race with any car+track combo

Quote from Eiw :

3: If you are slow and you can’t beat the fast guy, what makes you to enjoy the racing with fast guy as you are always lose, is that the pursuit of “victory”?

The experience of the race itself, be it a nice environment or enjoyable physics.

Quote from Eiw :

Also, 4: what do you want to have in the kickstarter as the return? Except for in-game content? What else u wish have?

Nothing. Maybe a notice in the credits or access to an in-development version of the game.

Quote from Eiw :

5: Will you guys enjoy getting your own designed cars or skins, and level design included in the game?

Yes

Quote from Eiw :

1: At what point do you think a sim (or semi-sim) racing game is attractive to you?

Physics and playstyle can't be too arcade - it's about immersion more than anything else. If I can believe I am racing, if my imagination can fill in the blanks, that's enough. I've said a million times on this forum that environmental simulations are typically compromised in race simulators and that's a real shame.

Quote :

2: Why would you keep playing a game even if you’ve unlocked all the cars and levels?

I don't like games where I have to unlock content, that straight away gets the game filed under arcade.

Quote :

3: If you are slow and you can’t beat the fast guy, what makes you to enjoy the racing with fast guy as you are always lose, is that the pursuit of “victory”?

You should learn about the skinner box and how to use it as part of the gameplay mechanic.

Quote :

Also, 4: what do you want to have in the kickstarter as the return? Except for in-game content? What else u wish have?

It's the same as any other sales channel, if people think they are getting a bargain or something exclusive then they're more likely to bite.

Quote :

5: Will you guys enjoy getting your own designed cars or skins, and level design included in the game?

The number of car skins in LFS is testament to how people like to individualise their player avatar. But that's different to contributing a skin to a game and then having AI or other players drive it. It might work on kickstarter, but it's not satiating the desire people have to customise their virtual presence with their own personality.

Quote :

In the end I need to say that we’re open for any tips and advice on both game-play and the marketing sides.

I'm a marketeer by profession (actually a sort of hybrid programmer-marketeer-leader - I was recently called a Cheif Development Officer - which made me laugh because the initials are OCD alphabetically sorted)... My advise is always: Be honest; be open; be kind. The rest is just details.

Quote :

We’re not some big guy in the industry, we are just so passionate about racing and this project is the result of it.

And that's a good starting point for marketing :P