I recently met up with game designer Diego Sartori of the SimBin Development Team and had a chance to ask him some questions about their new racing game, RACE 07.
The game is based upon the World Touring Car Championship. What I found out about the development team is that practically all of them have been involved professionally in racing events. Obviously, their goal is to make the game as realistic as possible.
SimBin has taken on the hard task of trying to please purists who want real world realism in their racing games as well as providing a friendly arena for those who want a fun racer but may be challenged by all the bells and whistles of configuring drivers and cars.
But is this game so realistic that newcomers will get lost in the entire minutia that is normally associated with these types of racing titles? Sartori responded with a resounding “No.”
“Our goal was to make a hardcore simulation strong enough to [also] work on a beginner’s level. This game should be a hardcore simulation when you want it to be. But when you need the game just to be there for you to enjoy, [as a casual game] it can do that too…
“We use the rules of the championship, the right [racing] calendar, the correct tracks…and race cars are recreated true-to-life. It’s as close you can get to a real simulator. The trick is to select the best components to simulate.”
No one should have any problems adapting to the control scheme in Race 07. Sartori showed me an expansive list of hardware configurations from joysticks to mouse and keyboard setups to popular racing wheel controllers. If you’ve got a particular interface you like, odds are, it’s supported by the game.
Sartori emphasized the ease of getting into RACE 07. “Whatever you know [as a driver] already, you can put into this game and make use of it. It’s very intuitive. Whatever your gut tells you to do in a given situation, should work.
“RACE 07 offers you complete flexibility and customization. If you want a hardcore racing sim, you can configure to your hearts delight. If you are a casual gamer, R07 can get you up and running in less than 30 seconds. He said, “We leave it up to you to decide what you want. We prefer it this way. It should be up to the player to decide.
“We are reaching out to the new guys. We want as many people to see how cool it is. We have a large hardcore fan base, but we need to accept the new blood that’s coming in as well. We want…more people interested in this genre.”
While most major game companies seem to be distancing themselves more and more from the rank and file of the gaming community, SimBin has decided to rely heavily on user feedback and suggestions on developing their games.
They constantly monitor their large community of users to sense what they are feeling and what they want in their games. Their users are so loyal that SimBin has had a few of them helping out on the production of RACE 07.
To make the users feel more a part of RACE 07, in addition to the large world community that any fan can access, SimBin decided to put the real names of users into the roster of drivers.
Sartori remarked, “We went to the community and asked, ‘If you want to be in [the game] talk to your teams and join.’ The names are real users from our community. It’s an awesome way for us to reach out and say thank you…”
I asked if there were any plans to possibly port this racer over to the Xbox 360 or other platforms. He smiled, laughed and said he couldn’t really say but that they were working on “plans.” While this isn’t a yes or no, it’s at least a maybe.
Sartori summed up his vision of RACE 07 by saying, “If you want to experience racing, this is the way to do it. You can experience racing on your own terms [and] you’re going to be presented with the ‘real thing’…that’s the concept of the game.”
RACE 07 is developed by SimBin and is published by Viva Media in the United States. It is scheduled for release in October 2007; be on the lookout for our review soon.
I’d like to thank Diego Sartori for taking the time to meet with me, and to Nina Ronstadt of Ronstadt & Associates for arranging our meeting with SimBin.
