March 20, 2024 • 53 mins
We’re not sure what’s bigger: iRacing’s 2024 Season 2 build, or the latest iRacing Downshift! We cover all the new content, from making it rain to our new cars and tracks, before catching up with iRacing president and CFO Tony Gardner to talk about our growing membership, how the company has expanded over the past few years, and other games under the iRacing umbrella.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:03):
This week on the I Racing DownShow, Greg has an accident. I
want to know the amount of dieselfumes in my basement right now. Kevin
talks about his favorite track, I'ma lime rock classic kind of guy,
ripped up that he'll launch the carand help you land great. And Chris
is a made man like I alwayshave a guy and they're not wrong.
(00:23):
This is why Emily thinks that I'min the bomb. All that, plus
special guests Tony Gardner and more sostrap In welcome to that raising down ship.
I mean he's Greg West, I'mback with the boys, Kevin,
bob It and Chris Leoni. Guesswhat, We've got a great show for
you as usual, Episode fifteen something. So many of them now I can't
even count, but very excited tobe here doing that in Roman numerals.
(00:47):
That would make it seem more likefancy, don't you think? Well?
I mean, Cisco's here and he'sgonna do the intro video. Don't don't
do that. Trying to figure outwhat's higher our episode count or my incident
point. It's a typical Yes,two races, that's incident points. Yeah,
absolutely, yeah, it's a closerace now, what you boys been
(01:08):
up to, Kevin. It's almostgolf season. It's almost golf season.
It's basketball season though right now,so you know March madness has started or
is starting. Celtics are on aroll. I'm enjoying basketball team. You
filled out a bracket. I haven'tfilled out a bracket. I got a
couple of days, you know,I don't know there's that I never do
well on those, so I mightjust sit back and enjoy the games instead.
(01:30):
I don't know. But yeah,but I'm getting ready for golf.
By getting ready, it means notreally doing anything but anticipating. I'm not
swinging or anything, but I'm readyto play. How about you? Well,
you know PGA two K twenty threewas on the Steam sale. Pick
that up and let me tell youwhat That game might be harder than actual
(01:51):
goal. Yeah. Yeah, puttingis quite challenging. Oh my gosh,
I'm terrible at it, but it'sfun. Yeah. What about you,
Lonie? What's new? How arethe rats? I mean, I've I
have been misusing the wet tires fromthe build that we're going to get into
in a couple of minutes by makingeverything work off road. We noticed,
Yeah, Yeah, that's that's notreally news, is it. No,
(02:13):
No, that's standard operating procedure forI don't know. Other than that playing
in the dirt. You know,got my got my off road stuff that
I go off and do you knowwe just wrapped up the Mint four hundred.
That was a blast. Other thanthat, digging some old guitars out
of the closet and making sure everythingstill works, it's uh yeah, okay,
(02:34):
So in charge of the intro,maybe he could do a new intro
force right, No, No,I'm a rhythm player. I'm not a
lead player. But I know itfine. Chris knows his space. I
know a guy. Everybody. Everybodyalways talks to me like I'm like,
I'm from how I met your mother? Like I'm Barney, Like I always
have a guy and they're not wrong. This is why Emily thinks that I'm
(02:55):
in the mob. I'm not.But okay, what somebody in the mob
would that's what Greg? I havea burning question for you, Greg,
a burning question, burning question.Yeah, that's the temperature in your in
your house today, it's forming up. What happened? Tell I'm an irresponsible
(03:15):
adults and right well over night andhad to go, and I had to
learn some homeowner in New Hampshire.Yeah yeah, so I may or may
not smell like diesel Field at themoment. But no smoking in Greg's house
today because it hasn't burst into flamesyet. But it also just stopped making
(03:37):
noise, so I don't know whatthat means. Anyway, Let's get into
the I Racing. Yeah, seasontwo build. I don't know if anybody
has heard anything about it, butwe literally made it rain. That's the
best I got. That's the reference. That's all right, that's it.
The rain is here, So movingon. That's the build. That's the
build. All right, good show. Actually, before we get into that,
(03:59):
we also we have a great guesttoday. To the guest, right,
President CFO of I Racing, TonyGardner, friend of the show,
gracing us with his presidence. We'regoing to talk about everything under the I
Racing umbrella, I mean everything.You want to stay tuned to that,
and you're probably gonna want to recordthat part because you know, Tony Luslip's
Gardner is a thing. You neverknow what he's gonna say. Just go
(04:20):
with the bleep button ready to go. Probably should bleep what I just said
But let's get into the build Seasontwo build uh, completely new I Racing
Advanced weather System. Yes it rains, it does all kinds of good stuff.
The dynamicism of the sim has itidlome. That was a one raising
(04:46):
the level of the discussion. Kevin, all right, the guy that was
looking up for the source the otherday and couldn't You couldn't spell the source
in the web browser. You alsocouldn't remember your name when we tried to
record the intro here. But Iwasn't sposed to bring down you want to
know the amount of diesel fumes inmy basement right now? I mean,
I should not be leading this showright now. I feel like it's for
(05:11):
the two. Oh, but let'stalk about rain. Let's talk about rain.
I think we got fifteen series thatit can possibly rain in and boy
did it rain and ims of thisweek, that's for sure. We uh
we kicked it off right impsa Suzukaand there was a heavy rainstorm. I
really enjoyed watching some of that.Uh. But yeah, a ton of
(05:34):
cars that can be that are rainenabled. All the IMPS of cars,
so all the four GTPs, thel m P two, uh, the
IMSA GT threes with the rest ofthe GT threes, the Ford McLaren coming
very soon, Ray F F sixteenhundred, Toyota GR eighty six F four
and the brand new super Formula lights. And that's the singular and the plural.
(05:55):
By the way, super Formula lightsalways not like lights lights. Good
to know, ye, yeah,I'm here for you, director of marketing
things. You need to know.This has been a very educational podcast for
me. So there's too many dieselfumes in my basement. But yeah,
just super fun. If you haven'tgot out there going to test session,
make it rain, go drive around, grab the GR eighty six and just
(06:19):
go have a boss. Let methat car is super fun in the rain.
It is whatever whatever weather you choose, right, I mean, that's
probably the coolest part. And it'snot just rain. It's full weather,
so it can be dry, itcan be wet, it can be drying,
you know all that stuff. Ifyou haven't played with it, you
have to. It's so fun.What's your track, Kevin? Do you
where do you go? Okay,you're going to try something for the first
(06:42):
time a car. Where on thesim do you go? Well? Often
it's the Lime Rock because That's myhome track. I grew up going there.
Watkins Glenn would be my other goto. So between those two,
that's where I go for for anyroad road going, you know, road
course sort of things. I'm along I'm a long beach guy. Oh
you're braver than I am. Ilove consequences. I think it's fantastic.
(07:06):
I you know, if you messup, you should pay the price.
So I like, when I'm testinga new car or something like that,
I like to go to a trackthat I know so well that that it's
not the track that is catching meout. It's you know, I feel
like I can evaluate the car orthe rain or traction much better if I
met Lime Rockers. It's just it'sjust something I can do. You know,
(07:27):
in the sleep and Chris, youprobably just pick anything with dirt and
jumps, right, I mean yeah, Wild West is usually my installation track
for things. But that's where Iwould roadside Scuba Sicuba's nice is good?
Which one thousand, No two thousand, two thousand, it's great. I
mean I send pro fors to onethousand all the time, but no two
(07:49):
thousand for anything that I'm using properly. Ye. Well, let's let's uh
quickly gloss that we've got a greatinterview with Tony that takes a pretty good
chunk of time here, but wedo want to touch everything on the build,
so obviously obviously super forming the lights. If you haven't gotten into it,
(08:09):
it's a three cylinder. The soundson it are fantastic. The liveries
on Trading Paints are are awesome,and we had some good help developing it.
Once again. Max Esterson jumped inhelped us out. He has driven
the car in the real world.He also helped us develop the F four
and the ray f F sixteen hundred. He's been quite the workhorse for us
(08:31):
on helping develop open wheelers, andI think I think it shows so really
happy with the way that car turnedout, But just listen to the sounds.
The sounds are fantastic. Obviously thevisuals and the handling are wonderful as
well, but the sounds really setof the part. We also Dirt micro
Sprint, which is multiple cars inone. We got the wing and winged
in the non winged version, andwe're actually going to be introducing a lower
(08:54):
powered version. I don't know ifit will be out at the time of
the show, but if not verysoon for the rookie level, hashtag soon,
hashtag soon. Also a ball.I've driven the prototype lower powered version
because I'm terrible un dirt, absolutelyterrible. I'm worse than on a road
course with a controller on dirt.I want to be clear that. Come
(09:18):
on, I have two wins indirt three oh fives of the controller when
I used to have to travel aroundwith my crappy little laptop. All right,
so fun facts. Uh, let'ssee what else SRX. This is
cool. We had some of theyou know, the die hard community are
saying this is one of the bestoval cars that we've ever built. Uh.
(09:41):
And this thing, I mean,let's be honest, it's kind of
a boat like you have to reallywheel the car, but it's super rewarding
when you get it right. Butdon't drive it in deep You're you have
to be patient with it. Rollthe center, get get out of the
gas a little sooner. It definitelydoes not eighty right. I mean I
(10:01):
was driving those the other day andI was like, wow, yeah,
I gotta I gotta go back thisup a little bit. It's like watching
the cup Boys at Bristol too soona great race. That's never too soon
to talk about a great race.Although I also got to shout out all
the people putting their paints on TradingPaints for the SRX, because we've seen
some ims of gt O paints.Oh they look they're really good. They're
(10:28):
really good. The Trading Paints community, the community of painters, and I
racing just it hats off I don'thave one on, but hats off that
it's amazing that the work that thesepeople do. All right, let's flip
it over to tracks, because wehad a bunch of those. This is
a huge build. Like, Idon't know if anybody's paying attention or keeping
score at home, but this legitimatelycould be the biggest bill as far as
(10:50):
content and features that I've that I'vebeen around for. Kevin, you're an
O G. I mean, thisis pretty high. It's certainly right up
there. I mean when Dirt cameout that I also had a lot of
content, obviously because we needed tointroduce content and all, but certainly in
recent memory, this has been hugeand incredibly impactful. Right, So you
(11:13):
know what's cool is you know therain impacts even if you're not interested in
any of the new cars and newtracks, right, it's still something that
improves the quality of racing in theoverall experience in I racing. Absolutely to
steal Chris's line. So yeah,talking tracks, let's talk Massano. This
is one of the Italian tracks,five layouts. It's gonna be great for
(11:35):
all kinds of racing. Ten tops. Yeah, like you want to just
go there and and and rip around. And this is Greg Hill and the
entire art team put on a masterclassthis build cycle on tracks Massano. We
also have Portamayo. Uh, superexcited about that. If that's not popular
(11:56):
community, you guys are doing itwrong. It's fun. Yeah, yes
it was open downhills. But don'tlet this truck you call out our membership
ID you guys know wrong. Thisis a great track. It is good
for slow cars, it is goodfor fast cars. It is good for
all cars. It's even good probablyfor Chris's trucks. I'm sure. Yes
two is going to race them atsome point probably tested, I'm sure.
(12:18):
But we can spend a lot oftime on Missano Club with the rally cross
cars. There we go six miles. That isn't RX track. It just
doesn't have dirt. Hey, funfacts. The rally cross car has got
bigger fuel tanks for this build,so you can really go and goof off
a little bit. Maybe it placeslike the Nervous Dring just saying yeah,
no, a little release not inthere ring meister. Maybe coming to a
(12:43):
ring meister near you. Who knows, but yeah, Messano and Port Tamaya
on the roadside. You know,even if road racing is not your thing,
go on YouTube check out, youknow, some of Alex and Cole's
videos that they put up to showthem off. I mean, I think
anybody from you know, any ofour now five license categories on I Racing
can appreciate the amount of work andthe level of detail that went into these
(13:07):
tracks. I mean are speaking ofvideos. Sorry, totally off track.
That's what we do here on theDownship podcast. But you made me think
of it. We did so.Greg Hill did a dev blog a few
weeks ago. We just made thevideo version of it, so check that
out if you haven't already. Soif you prefer watch videos versus listen reading
(13:28):
that sort of thing, it's available. Check it out on our YouTube channel.
Yeah, check out the YouTube channelwhich if you're watching this you're probably
on so not sure on twitch,but ma' sure on Twitch. That's a
good point. I heard an echofor a moment, so I got really
distracted. Maybe it's the diesel,the diesel fuels. Why is Kevin look
like a dragon? I don't evenknow. And then if road course racing
(13:54):
is not your thing, uh,Millbridge came out, which is a home
of the dirt micros. It's almostlike we plan that and once again,
not your even if it's not yourcup of tea, go check out the
videos. Just like the amount ofwork that went into these tracks and just
they're beautiful. They're absolutely beautiful.If it is your cup of tea,
go rip around on them. They'rean absolute blast. Uh Nobridg's pretty small,
(14:18):
but good, good fun entertainment,entertainment and uh yeah, looking forward
to seeing uh you know, thehighlights the next top ten and not top
ten video gonna be pretty good,I think. And while we're on tracks,
we also we added four of ourexisting tracks to the base package.
The Rookie series have become significantly morediverse with Leidon on Osha, Slaban,
(14:41):
Sneedtderton and Winton becoming part of thebass package. So if you didn't own
them, you do now congratulations,You're welcome. And that's a win win,
win win. Everybody wins. Everybodywins. We add a little more
geographic diversity to the base package,and that's always a good thing. Yeah,
(15:03):
So he's super excited to also nothave when doing rookie schedules, not
having to repeat tracks multiple times.Right, it makes all the options,
It makes series options much better forour rookie series. Sure. Yeah.
For those of you that do notlike Limerock chicanes, we can we can
probably come up with it. I'ma Limerock classic kind of guy. Launch
(15:24):
the car and hope you land straight. See, I'm in the minority.
I like the west Ben Chicane.I know at me in the comments please
go oh man, I think no. It changes the entire dynamic of the
track. It certainly does. Andanother missing zone, you know, Limerock
Daga gets a little bit more complicated. You got to use that pedal that's
(15:46):
in the middle a little bit.What's that? Hey? Yeah, the
coward pedal? Kevin what we callit? Now? Oh? Good times?
All right, and then let's goand I touched on in the moment
ago other you know big quality oflife and this actually is not on there,
(16:07):
but I'm gonna mention it. Newuser experience. This is really cool
for new users. If if you'relistening to this podcast, you probably doesn't
apply to you, but I thinkthis is really cool. Not true.
I've met people who don't have membershipyet who listen to our podcast who remember
that, right, well, heythe oil companies here, they're filling my
tank. That's good news. Butyeah, so new user experience. Uh,
(16:30):
you know, I racing can bea little difficult and a little overwhelming
to get started. We can admitthat probably not our strong point, but
uh, for new users, theywill be presented with a dialogue box where
you just pick oval or road andthen you just click that and you're immediately
put in to an on track sessionwhere you get to practice a little bit,
(16:52):
and then we put you in ashort AI race. AI is turned
down pretty low, and you havea spot that's going to help you calibrate
your controls. They're going to walkyou through just a few basic aspects of
I racing. You know how toexit the pits, safety exactly. Even
getting on track can be challenging ifyou don't know the I rasing rules because
they might be different than what youused to they're certainly different than any other
(17:15):
game. They make sense once youunderstand them. But to your point,
we didn't maybe do a good jobexplaining them to new people on day one,
So we're really focused on trying toget people to have a great experience
when they join and not get toofrustrated. Yep. And that's so that's
really important and I think it's gonnahelp a lot. There is a way
in the settings menu to actually gothrough it if you'd like to go down
(17:40):
to settings. I'm sure you cannavigate to it. I don't have my
notes off the top of my head, but it's a lot of fun.
I do like the oval version streetStock at USA. For you advanced guys,
the challenge is not to complete thenew user experience, is to see
if you can lap the field.If you can lap the field, you're
gonna you're gonna have to get afterit. But that is an interesting challenge
for all kill levels. So uh, it's a it's a good Maybe we
(18:03):
should do that for the and thenreport back on the next podcast. See
we can do it, Chris,Yeah, actually no, Chris needs to
do new user experience since he didn'tget his license up. Chris has to
do your experience. Okay, domework, Chris, somebody make a note.
We expect a ten page written reportedproperly eight points brevity. That's impossible.
(18:34):
Uh. See other quality of lifeimprovements. So the road license split also
really important. I'm gonna call this. I'm gonna shout somebody out on staff
that I think was instrumental in thedesign of this. Brian Simpson, who
is you know, one of ourI forget his job title off the top
of my head, senior art somethingvery senior, embarrassing that I don't know
(18:56):
is title off the top of myhead? But is a Formula v fanatic?
Did he Wins actually discussed changing thename of that series to the Brian
Simpsons say it. I don't knowBrian listens to this, but he loves
the Formula Vie and he's very goodat the Formula Vie. I think he's
up to like a three thousand hihrating just off the Formula v But if
(19:18):
he goes into something maybe he's notas comfortable in he's he just gets destroyed
because his irating is not really consistentwith another car like you go to three
thousand, exactly, and that isjust one of probably thousands of people that
are in the exact same boat,and is they don't want to take a
(19:38):
chance on losing I rating and actuallyleads to people not racing as much and
by splitting a little bit. AndI know there's a lot of opinions on
the forums on how we did thisright or wrong or whatever, But at
least it gives you the ability tosay, hey, if I'm a GT
three, you know, hardcore GTthree driver, but you know what,
me and my buddies on Friday night, when of go and go race an
(20:00):
f F sixteen hundred or Formula vieer go rip around in Formula four and
have fun, you know that thatword You can do so without risking your
you know what you've worked really hardfor so you can remain getting in top
split of your whatever. It isa series that's super important to you,
exactly. And no, this isnot saying oh you can go and just
(20:22):
screw around and mess out people's racesup. The majority of people come on
the service, they want to havea good time, but they want they
want to race clean. I mean, there's always going to be exceptions the
rules whatnot. We just want peopleparticipating. We want more engagement. We
want people to to do that andget more value out of your subscription.
Right, So, and it's andit helps the I rating system work the
(20:45):
way it was designed, which isreally about putting you in a competitive split.
It's not a in my mind,it's not a badge of honor.
I mean, it's amazing if youhave a ten thousand I rating, but
that's not the point of it.The point of it is so that whatever
the number is that yours is,is that it's accurate and that you're put
into a race with people of similarskill. And this helps us do that
(21:07):
a bit more across multiple disciplines.But that's Kevin. That's not all when
it comes to quality of life improvementsfor this build. One of the things
I don't know how we haven't mentionedit yet. Between the major update to
the UI and also the homepage ofI Racing in general, why don't you
tell us about that? Yeah,yeah, well I'll speak to the homepage.
(21:29):
So we've done a complete revamp ofthe homepage of I racing dot com.
So check it out if you haven't, I know, not all members
go there every day because you probablyknow most of that stuff, but it's
the it's kind of the window intoI Racing, right, So if you
hear about I Racing from your buddy, or you see one of the logos
on the NASCAR broadcast on Fox orwhatever, however you hear about I Racing
to do a Google, that's whereyou land and we just wanted to make
(21:52):
it a bit more inviting. Imean, from a technical standpoint, it
loads I don't know how many thousandsof times faster. Our technical guys were
blown away when they were looking atstats. So that makes it the experience
better page loading, but it reallyshow tells the story of I Racing briefly
but more completely, all on onepage. You can still dive into things
(22:17):
if you really want to know moreabout I don't know, AI or dirt
racing, or every car that weoffer, every track that's all available.
All the depth of the website isstill there, but the initial landing page
much more modern, clean design,and hopefully it gets the message points across
to potential new people who are joiningI Racing. We're going to continue to
(22:40):
iterate on that and work on theother pages as well. But that's a
longer term project, but super excitedto roll that out and hopefully you guys
enjoy that well. And those themesalso carry over to the UI updates as
well. You know, we've gottena lot of feedback from the community.
The UI has definitely been a workin progress for a long time as we've
shifted away from the classic site forfor technical reasons that you know, there's
(23:03):
we had to do that, anduh, but where we where we are
now is I think, once again, like you said, a much more
modern and streamlined approach. Yes,change is different. It is gonna some
buttons have moved around a little bit, but I think overall people are are
are seeing there's a method to themadness. Yeah, and that's that's worth
(23:23):
noting. I mean it's obvious,but like if things are in different spots,
it doesn't mean they're in the wrongspot. They're just in different spots.
So you may be you have musclememory of clicking on things for years
and years and years. Give ita chance. Right, We've spent a
lot of time. We didn't justkind of randomly do things. There's been
a lot of thought, a lotof a lot of minds behind this.
There's some technical reasons to change thingsas well, but I think once you
(23:48):
give it a shot and get usedto it, you'll find navigation much much
better. Yeah, and I thinkthat, you know, you hit the
nail on the head. There's alot of thought. There's not just one
person in the background saying hey,let's put this here. We've done there's
been we've brought on u i UXexperts, we have got brought They've done
some you know, some some interviews, some customer focus, product testing,
(24:11):
a lot of back end work toreally define what the objective is for each
task that you're trying to accomplish andtrying to streamline it as much as possible.
And you know they'll be they'll continueto be to work to work on
this moving forward as well. Sowe're excited to see where it goes.
There's still some work to be done. But I'm gonna tell you what,
(24:33):
I personally enjoy the fact that they'resignificant less modals. It's just as for
me, it just it just worksin my head a little bit more.
Uh So, Yeah, pretty excitedabout that. On that note, Kevin
Chris, what do you say webring on our guest sounds good. All
right, Yeah, once again Friendof the Show President's CFO of IRA saying,
(24:57):
Tony GOTDNA is going to say downwith Kevin and I. Kevin's a
really integral part of this interview.He really takes the lead in most of
it, and UH pretty excited.I think you guys will enjoy the banter
back and forth between him and Tonyand without further ado, Tony guy.
(25:18):
All right, Kevin and I areback with Friend of the Show, multiple
time guests of our pop guests,I think top guest if you look at
the spreaker statistics, very popular man. President and CFO Tony Gardner taking time
out of this incredibly busy week tosit down with us. Thanks for coming
on, Tony, Well, thanksfor having me on the pod. I'm
(25:41):
a big fan. I listened toevery one of them. Yeah, Tony's
Tony likes seems to like coming onthe podcast, and we kept saying we
were going to bring him on,and then we didn't, and so he
just went and did another interview withoutus, just went around us. He
has, so we've got to getthe messaging out there. Thanks, all
right, with some many advice Iusually show up definitely invite me. Well,
(26:07):
let's get into it. A biglast few weeks for I Race.
The last few months of I Racinghave been huge, but culminating with the
release a couple of weeks ago.Obviously, rain was the big item,
the big feature development that we finallywere able to put out to the membership
and Tony that has had a significantimpact on the business of I Racing,
(26:29):
specifically the membership. Right. Yeah, we're really excited about that released and
proud of it. You know,we worked for years on it, some
engineers Marana for years, other people, uh just a few months, but
it was a huge effort and uhand uh the reception has been Uh we
knew it would be good, butit's been overwhelming. How positive the reception
(26:52):
to the future asthmen, So thewe've really seen a spike and growth,
uh, customer growth, and soit's been really exciting. So a lot
of people, we know, it'sa lot of people that were members coming
back to try it and really enjoyingit. And it really really I think
demonstrates the I Rasing brand, youknow, how realistic and how much we
(27:12):
put into it different from other games. So you know where we modeled all
the physical elements of rain and etcetera, etcetera. So it's really exciting and
and you know, we've got alittle bit of tweaking to do now,
but we're really happy how it allwent. Yeah, the reception from the
(27:33):
community has been great, and themembership numbers have shown it. This was
this week we eclipsed over two hundredand fifty thousand active accounts in I Racing
and I believe what was that overnightlast night eclipsed a million total accounts,
right, Yeah, now we're over. We picked up another five thousand,
so we're over two hundred and fiftyfive thousand members already. You know,
(27:55):
we just went over to fifty overthe weekend. And yeah, we we
passed on one million accounts. Overthe history of erasing, it took us
nine and a half year, No, it took us. It took us
twelve and a half years. Youget the first five hundred thousand accounts and
then it's taken us three and ahalf years to get the second five hundred
(28:18):
thousand accounts, So you can seethat we're growing a lot more in the
last three years. So pretty amazing. Yeah, it's nice to see,
you know, especially in this niche, you know, to be able to
have continued success and really growing,you know after what we were, you
know, thought was the COVID boom, and we didn't know on the backside
of that whether we would have adip, and we were able to accelerate
(28:40):
and continue growing after that as atestament to the amount of work that was
put in by all the developers becausewe never rested on our laurels. We
just doubled down on everything, putit back into the product, and tried
to continually improve the products and evenraise the bar rather than being complacent.
So that's been really cool to seeand how that was organized. We've I
(29:03):
think we've finished unterrupted. I thinkwe've finished covid, you know kind of
times we define as with one hundredand eighty thousand members and now we're up
over two hundred and fifty five thousandmembers, so you know, a lot
of game companies went backwards a littlebit even strong, so we've continued to
grow. So really excited about it. And it's it's really about making the
product better and listening to customers.That's that's what it's all about. It's
(29:26):
not any fancy marketing messages or anything. You have to make a good product
and keep improving it, and that'show you grow this business. Yeah,
I think it's worth noting that thatgrowth isn't just in terms of customers and
users. But the company has beengrowing huge right So to Greg's point and
your point, we've been reinvesting.There's been you know, lots of additions
(29:47):
to staff across the board in alldifferent areas, things like that. So
it's nice to see that. Yeah, we've taken that growth and we've put
it right back into the product byyou know, doubling our staff and left
you know, two or three years. So really, uh, it's all
about talent and creating a culture.And uh, we've hired really talented people
(30:07):
in the last you know, threeor four years, and I think people
are starting to see it. Infact, I don't think Rain Rain.
I know, Rain wouldn't have beenas good without some of the new people.
Not to discount some of the peopleI've been here forever. There we
have really smart people who have beenhere for so long. Uh they're critical
as well, but it's it's nightto have more bodies, smart people working
on the product. Well let's let'sstay on this for a second. Uh,
(30:32):
you know, from your perspective,with everything that's happened since COVID,
so you know, we go toa more remote workforce rather than than just
everybody being in the office. Plusas you said, you know, basically
doubling the size of the staff.You know, how do you approach the
culture with all of those those uh, those changes, Like how do you
maintain that? Well? I thinkyou really need a good you know,
(30:55):
you know, culture is a broadword, but you know, a culture
that where everyone's you know, feelinglike they're part of it and they're heard
and and uh and they're accountable.You have to create that type of culture.
But I think it's really important tohave a really good structure, a
management structor, a leadership structure.And you know, I think we have
that, and I think, youknow, just a culture where people want
(31:19):
to come to work every day andwant to make the product better. You
know, just you know, wehave a very pathnic group and we really
encourage that. And I think it'sdisinfect us. You know, we have
a lot of you know type agethat are just so passionate about this.
I think it's infectious and it reallycreates this great culture. We try to
support that with really strong communication anduh, but it is difficult. You
(31:42):
know, we're you know, somany people. I think we have employees
in about eight different countries now andyou know in about thirty states, So
it is difficult, uh, sortof keeping keeping communication. But we we
have we have a lot of meetings, but they're fishing meetings. We do
a lot on a lot online anduh, and so it's it's it's been
(32:05):
a challenge, but I think it'sit's worked out really well for us.
It's also been a nice, nicetempo change in the last I guess probably
a year. You know, anybodyin the area going in on Thursdays and
so we go into the office oncea week and actually get to see people
and sometimes I feel like you don'tget as maybe as much done off your
regular checklist. But the collaboration,at least to the discussions that happened around
(32:28):
the cafeteria or just walking over tosomebody and chatting about it, that's uh,
that helps a lot too. Andwe're finding a little bit of that
balance where you do get that inperson collaboration. So that's been really nice.
Let's pin it over, Oh,go ahead, I was going to
say, Yeah, the collaboration isreally important and that's how we work.
(32:49):
And you know, but you gotto be careful of committees too, you
know, because the old thing isnobody ever built a statue of a committee.
So at the end of the day, you need some you know,
you got to get feedback from everybody. But then you have to, you
know, make a decision, andthat has to be a leader, and
you know you can't sometimes when youstart bothering, you start negotiating what's to
(33:14):
be done, then you end upwith something less. So you know,
you know, I have to walkout for that to Collaboration is great,
but at the end of the day, you have to empower certain people to
you know, to make good,good decisions, and I think we have
a lot of those good people inplace. Sorry interrupting, No, all
good. So let's let's pivot alittle bit. We're gonna go over and
(33:34):
we're going to talk about you know, one of the big acquisitions was bringing
Monster Games on with I Rasing andmerging those two U two studios really together
under the I Rasing brand. Andnow with the announcement of the NASCAR twenty
five project for consoles obviously is bignews within the same racing community, a
(33:55):
lot of excitement of irasing getting backto its roots. Let's talk about how
did this come about, because thiswas a long time in the works.
Yeah, I could probably talk foran hour about it. But you know,
I Racing. I Racing has hada license with NASCAR for I don't
(34:15):
know, fifteen years, Kevin,Yeah, I would guess, But we're
on our fourth renewal of the licensewith them, and our license is exclusive
for for what we firs assimilated racinggame on PC and we never took an
interest in the console space because wedidn't really have the capacity to build console
(34:38):
games, so but it was alwaysin the back of our mind. We
always wish we could, but weyou know, we didn't want to restrict
the license because it was important toNASCAR obviously have console games and the licenses
expensive, but it was always inthe back of our mind. So,
you know, we were starting totalk about possibly creating building up our own
(34:59):
cons full shop. But when theyou know, when the mg I studio
became available, we we we jumpedon that it's a great studio. They've
built NASCAR games, and well thatwas going on. We always kept in
touch with with NASCAR and motorsport gamessaying, hey, we would we would
like to get you know, possiblya car bout or or get the license,
(35:22):
and just kept talking to them overthe years, and you know,
finally with Motipot Games it became available. NASCAR felt we were and the teams,
the RKA felt we were the rightpartner. So it all just worked
out in the end. And butit was years of discussion. It was
really the dream, our dream licenseto get or console products. So we're
(35:46):
just really thrilled that came together.And uh, you know, it was
quite a bit of negotiation, youknow with all these different parties involved more
sport games, NASCAR and all theteams or all different entities that we had
to figure this all out with.So it took a while, but it
all worked out the end and we'rereally excited about it. Let's let's talk
(36:06):
about the development structure there. Youknow, so many people have so many
questions about, you know, whatwe're gonna do. There's such a responsibility
to the community to to really bringa quality product to the console space for
NASCAR. You know, what,how are you guys going about you know,
the development structure for getting that productlaunched. Well, the Launchster Games
(36:30):
group that we acquired at the endof two thousand and twenty two. They're
a great group and a really goodcore group based on of Minnesota. And
what we've done is we've really addeda lot of talent to that just like
Iras and we've added a lot oftalent to that group. But it was
(36:51):
important really for IRA you know,the I Rasing brings a lot to the
table too, and so we've beenable to work with that them integrate a
lot of things with them, andso they're they're using a lot of our
assets, a lot of our technology. In fact, they're using they're going
to be using all of our tracksand cars inside that game, just like
the World of All Laws game.They've created integration so when they can easily
(37:15):
pull tracks and cars over from theI Racing from the I Rasing platform.
So from from an art model perspective, their physics is uh is on a
different architecture, but we're using alot of the I Racing Vehicle dynamics group
and whatnot to just like we dowith the World of All a lot of
game to help them out, youknow, we're even they're even borrowing a
(37:37):
couple of our engineers for for formonths to do certain things. So it's
really a team effort. But thethe m g I group is is really
good at building NASCAR games and theythey're very creative, and so we're we're
really letting them drive the ship here, but we're just supporting them in a
(38:00):
way we can to make the bestgame, the best NASCAR game that's ever
built. So it's a team effort. But I like the fact that we
have these synergies, these technical synergiesthat we can share back and forth.
So it's really important. It stavesa lot of time and it makes a
better game. Yeah, and I'msure as we get closer to the launch
(38:21):
of NASCAR twenty five, we'll talkmore about it and maybe we have an
entire episode where we just talk aboutthe development process of that. But let's
stay on licenses for a second andlet's pivot over to IndyCar. This was
another one that was highly contentious inthe community. How that whole situation went
down over the past couple of years, and now it's come full circle.
(38:42):
We've got IndyCar officially licensed back onI Racing We're going to bring back the
Indy five hundred this year. We'reincredibly excited about that. I was talking
with Drew Adamson, one of ourproducer for all of our broadcast yesterday,
making some plans on that. ButTony, can you talk to me about
you know what a lot of peopledon't know about the IndyCar discussion is the
(39:02):
dialogue stayed open the entire time.But yeah, can we talk about that
a little bit. Yeah, justlike the NASCAR situation, Motorspoort Games secured
an exclusive with IndyCar. So ourlicense expired and at the end of twenty
twenty two, so we literally lostour license. And I think, you
(39:25):
know, I think IndyCar, ifthey had their drawthers, would have rather
kept EE Racing in the fold.But you know, they made that decision,
and they were and somebody was goingto do a dedicated IndyCar game for
them, and they do that,they required an exclusive, So I get
why IndyCar made that decision. AndI think Motorsport Games just bit off more
(39:46):
than they could do. They juststarted gobbling up all these exclusive licenses and
they didn't have the capacity to buildall these games. So and so that's
how we ended up getting the NASCARgame back and the IndyCar game for that
matter. But we kept in touchthe whole time, all through twenty twenty
three, right, you know,trying to work this out, you know,
(40:10):
Motorsport Games was honestly, we talkedto them a lot, and they
were they were good to talk to, and I think they got it that
the community wanted to see Indy Kawerand I racing. So anyway, it
ended up that they they never gotthat game out. They ended up losing
that license. So we were ableto, you know, within a matter
of you know days once that happened, you know, snag that license back
(40:34):
to start, you know, thisyear two thousand. So we lost the
license for twenty twenty three, wegot back for twenty twenty four. So,
you know, I think the goodnews is that we grew in appreciation,
a better appreciation one another, IndyCayer and I Racing, And you
know, I think we're stronger partnersthan we've ever been with them, and
we have some more news coming aboutother things we're doing with them. So
(40:57):
you know, I think that's thegood news is the partnership became stronger because
of because of the minor controversy thatthat occurred. Well, and that's that's
the big word in this whole scenarioas partnerships, and I think what what
a lot of these uh, theserace organizers have have started to understand is
a partnership rather than it's not justI Racing as a vendor, Like if
(41:21):
working together, we are a greatopportunity to engage their fan base and an
engage fan base as a fan basethat stays around and whether it's through you
know, NASCAR indyecar IMSA has beena big tell. You know, we've
seen the direct correlations that they've notedbetween the you know, how many people
are engaging and watching and going totheir races, especially the Daytona twenty four
(41:42):
is a great example. Uh.The partnership aspect is incredibly important. You
know, that's and that's something thatit's it's pretty cool to be a part
of and really proud to be apart of. Is growing the f i
A, the f i A thatyou work with. Yeah, you know,
it's just it's really important to us. And you know, we do
look at as a partnership with andyou know, we're trying to we're trying
to always find more partners and anduh we become closer with our partners because
(42:07):
you know, we we really believethat we're part of racing with A with
A with a virtual arm of racing, so of the real world. So
you know it's important to us.All right, let's uh, let's move
along a little bit and let's talkactually moving forward. So you know,
obviously, as we've said, thingsare going well right now, but we
(42:27):
we are not resting our laurels,and if anything, we're doubling down.
And when you're looking ahead to thefuture, you know what what pops in
is the number of the things thatthat you think are from your perspective,
are the things that are important thatwe are are beginning to look at and
and pursue further. I think wealways want to you know, we have
(42:50):
we have engineers that focused on certainthings. They have a certain skill set
and they know certain pieces parts ofthe code base the best. But you
know, we always want to proveeverything to do with I rasing. But
you know, we want to reallykeep making our physics and the driving better.
You know that that's important. Youcan always improve. So we we're
adding more resources to that you know. For example, we're going to be
(43:15):
working on a phase two of theNASCAR you know, the NASCAR Update,
I guess we call it. Wewe release phase one of that and now
we're releasing Faith two. But overall, we want to keep making the tires
and the physics better, keep improvingthings. Graphics is a huge area of
of of focus. That's definitely anopportunity to improve. We're looking at building
(43:37):
a whole new you know, graphicsengine. We haven't quite decide exactly what
we're going to do, but youknow, we want we need a new
renderer and a graphics update, andwe want to I think that's an opportunity
to improve, and then new features. You know, Career mode is something
(43:58):
we certainly want to we're working onnow when we're really excited about the single
I think the single player stuff andI Racing could be much better beyond boarding.
Different different ways to get to getinvolved in I Racing, whether that's
a you know, an interactive racingschool, getting people more comfortable on track.
(44:21):
We have a lot of ideas aroundthat, you know, including including
you know, even a driving coachwith ai UH and a crew chief.
We want to get there's a lotof ways we can get people more comfortable
on the track and too. Youknow, racing is hard to be out
there in the track by yourself.It would be good to get feedback,
just like you do in the realworld with a with a crew three crew
(44:43):
chief and a driving coach. Sothere's a lot of things like that we
have planned. But overall, wewant to just keep improving everything, you
know, the net code, thethe performance, the frame rates, graphics.
You know, we're just gonna youknow, we have a lot of
ideas around new features, so youknow, just up and down the board.
We just got to keep working hardto get better. There's a lot
(45:05):
there's still so much opportunity to improve, yep, and we are. We're
pushing in a lot of areas.Last thing I want to talk about this
isn't on the outline, but it'ssomething that obviously is top of mind for
us. We also have a newtitle with another studio that we've acquired with
the erntas but with Exocross coming outpretty soon, right yeah, so that's
(45:28):
uh. You know, we havethe we have the MG studio that I
talked about, which which right nowhas the world about lots franchise and is
working on the NASCAR game. Butwe have this other studio that we acquired
at about the same time, theOrante Studio, and there were they've been
working. They had a game calledDrag and early release on Steam and it
(45:49):
was it wasn't finished, and sowe've been working on taking that game to
a new level, finishing up thatgame. We've added a ton to it,
other driving opportunity for people. Wehad an AI and you know,
a lot more content, a wholenew you know, more tracks and whatnot,
and and kept working on the features. So we're really excited. The
(46:12):
games arrives incredible and we're scheduled tohave a we're scheduled to release that this
summer, so really excited about it. So we're in not final final stages
of development, but submitted to Microsoftand Sony to get for approval and we're
going to release that this summer.So we're really excited about it. It's
an off road driving game. Itkind of has a futuristic appeal to it
(46:36):
and uh, and it's it's moretowards a rally game, but it's uh,
it's it's super fun and so it'sit's different than anything we do on
I Racing, so it should appealto an audience. But if you if
you really enjoy good driving games,you're gonna like this game. And it's
it's really fun. Yeah, it'sa ton of fun. I know Chris
Leoni, who will be joining usfor the rest of the podcast, has
(46:59):
had his has had a lot ofinput and opinions on the storyline of that,
and that's he's pretty excited. Anybodythat watched the podcast anything on Derek
Chris Loft, So I think peoplereally enjoy it. And the graphics are
amazing and it has an unbelievable graphicsengine. It's one of the things that
attracted us to the studio. Soit's really really cool, it's really fun,
(47:20):
it's really visually it's it's awesome.So I'm really excited about it.
All right, Well, thanks fortaking the time with us today, Tony.
I know we've got a busy dayahead of us, but thanks for
carving out some time for us.And on that note, let's get back
to the show. Thanks thanks forhaving me. All right, we're back.
(47:45):
That was a ton of fun.I always like sitting down with Tony.
You never know what's gonna come upin those discussions. They're definitely free
form, but uh, Tony knowshis stuff. I will say that he
is definitely has his finger on thepulse of the culture here I Racing and
everything going on, and it's reallycool to get his insight and see kind
of what his vision is from thetop, you know, looking at overviewing
(48:07):
everything. You know. I thinkit's very easy in any job, you
know, everybody sees their their littlesphere, and I think Tony has a
really good perspective is the entire eCosof I Racing and yeah, so it's
it's really cool to see that globalperspective and how each little cog works together
on it. So, moving on, let's talk about sports. NASCAR Coca
(48:29):
Cola I Racing Series. Chris,Oh, yeah, no, the So,
the Coke Series has been hitting ithard these past few weeks, these
first few rounds of the season.We've got a nice new format this year
where we've got three segments of theregular season where these little four to five
(48:50):
race chunks. The top point scorerin each of these chunks not only earns
a nice little cash bonus, butalso some playoff points towards the end too,
So there's a lot of value ingetting it right in any given couple
months span. Right now, ColinKeister is your points leader and the season
raps or I'm sorry. The segmentwraps up March twenty six at Richmond with
(49:12):
the fourth round of the season.But that last race at Atlanta, talk
about an intense finish. Malik Rayone of the drivers who has been in
the series for years and years andyears, and everybody was waiting for Malik
to take that first victory on asuper speedway type track because there is nobody
better on a super speedway than MalikRay. And it finally came together at
(49:35):
Atlanta, and I'm sure Spyro Motorsportsis pretty happy about their couple of signings
between him and Casey Kerwin, theformer series champion. But Malik had one
hell of a celebration coming across thefinish line. That's probably one of the
most viral e NASCAR moments that we'vehad in a while. So Malik's got
the momentum. He's one of thetop drivers right now in the standings,
(49:57):
got some of the best positioning totowards the playoffs. But right now,
Colin Keister is your favorite to takehome that segment bonus and Tuesday nights at
eight pm NASCAR dot Com slash Live, we'll see if Colin can hold on
to that points lead at Richmond orif somebody else can knock him off to
take those playoff points in the bonus. Excellent stuff, and we also have
Porscha Tag Hoyer Esports Super Cup Kevin. Yeah. A lot going on there,
(50:22):
and Sebastian Job is hot. Yeah, yeah. The series is starting
to get to the end of it, right, so we just we got
what two more rounds, three morerounds, two more rounds? I think
so, but yeah, so that'sSebastian Job's been the man to beat for
sure, but it's not wrapped upyet. So Diego Pinto certainly got a
(50:45):
shot. I think he's thirty somethingpoints behind with more than I think it's
eighty five points on offer on astandard week. The final race, I
think there's an extra twenty points orso because there's double points in the shorter
race, so a lot on theline. Still been some great racing.
Round four we introduced a tournament format, which was new this year, and
(51:06):
I think it was probably the mostexciting broadcast we had had heat races,
you know, I think it waslike five or six cars in each one
really made it exciting. Three lapsat Watkins Glen there was a lot of
action. Yeah, people had tomake moves. I think it worked out
really well. The whole idea wasto go, how do we make this,
(51:27):
you know, a little bit moreinteresting in the middle of the season.
I think we accomplished that. Hopefullythe drivers enjoyed it as well.
I know I did watching it,so that was super cool. But yeah,
a couple more races. If youhaven't checked it out, it's roughly
every other Saturday in the afternoon herein the US. I think it's seventeen
GMT, but I'd have to doublecheck it. You can check out I
racing dot COM's slash pesk for theactual times. But yeah, season will
(51:52):
be wrapping up, maybe before wedo another one of these, I don't
know, but it's been a greatseason and looking forward to watching the final
couple of races. No, it'sgonna be a good time. These are
some of the most exciting road racesyou can see in all of us.
To see them live, check outthe UH. You can watch them on
demand on YouTube. It's a yeah, really good racing. Excited to see
(52:13):
how it finishes up. Yeah,if you hadn't watched any and you want
to watch one replay, go tothe tournament one. That's the most exciting
one, So Round four at WatkinsGlenn. And on that note, that
has been this episode of the IRacing Down Shift. Don't forget to rate,
review, and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and anywhere else. Chris
is put this thing for Chris Leonieand Kevin Balley. I am Greg West
(52:35):
and we'll see you on the trackthat ring Boots Simon Umbrella five
This week on the I Racing DownShow, Greg has an accident. I
want to know the amount of dieselfumes in my basement right now. Kevin
talks about his favorite track, I'ma lime rock classic kind of guy,
ripped up that he'll launch the carand help you land great. And Chris
is a made man like I alwayshave a guy and they're not wrong.
(00:23):
This is why Emily thinks that I'min the bomb. All that, plus
special guests Tony Gardner and more sostrap In welcome to that raising down ship.
I mean he's Greg West, I'mback with the boys, Kevin,
bob It and Chris Leoni. Guesswhat, We've got a great show for
you as usual, Episode fifteen something. So many of them now I can't
even count, but very excited tobe here doing that in Roman numerals.
(00:47):
That would make it seem more likefancy, don't you think? Well?
I mean, Cisco's here and he'sgonna do the intro video. Don't don't
do that. Trying to figure outwhat's higher our episode count or my incident
point. It's a typical Yes,two races, that's incident points. Yeah,
absolutely, yeah, it's a closerace now, what you boys been
(01:08):
up to, Kevin. It's almostgolf season. It's almost golf season.
It's basketball season though right now,so you know March madness has started or
is starting. Celtics are on aroll. I'm enjoying basketball team. You
filled out a bracket. I haven'tfilled out a bracket. I got a
couple of days, you know,I don't know there's that I never do
well on those, so I mightjust sit back and enjoy the games instead.
(01:30):
I don't know. But yeah,but I'm getting ready for golf.
By getting ready, it means notreally doing anything but anticipating. I'm not
swinging or anything, but I'm readyto play. How about you? Well,
you know PGA two K twenty threewas on the Steam sale. Pick
that up and let me tell youwhat That game might be harder than actual
(01:51):
goal. Yeah. Yeah, puttingis quite challenging. Oh my gosh,
I'm terrible at it, but it'sfun. Yeah. What about you,
Lonie? What's new? How arethe rats? I mean, I've I
have been misusing the wet tires fromthe build that we're going to get into
in a couple of minutes by makingeverything work off road. We noticed,
Yeah, Yeah, that's that's notreally news, is it. No,
(02:13):
No, that's standard operating procedure forI don't know. Other than that playing
in the dirt. You know,got my got my off road stuff that
I go off and do you knowwe just wrapped up the Mint four hundred.
That was a blast. Other thanthat, digging some old guitars out
of the closet and making sure everythingstill works, it's uh yeah, okay,
(02:34):
So in charge of the intro,maybe he could do a new intro
force right, No, No,I'm a rhythm player. I'm not a
lead player. But I know itfine. Chris knows his space. I
know a guy. Everybody. Everybodyalways talks to me like I'm like,
I'm from how I met your mother? Like I'm Barney, Like I always
have a guy and they're not wrong. This is why Emily thinks that I'm
(02:55):
in the mob. I'm not.But okay, what somebody in the mob
would that's what Greg? I havea burning question for you, Greg,
a burning question, burning question.Yeah, that's the temperature in your in
your house today, it's forming up. What happened? Tell I'm an irresponsible
(03:15):
adults and right well over night andhad to go, and I had to
learn some homeowner in New Hampshire.Yeah yeah, so I may or may
not smell like diesel Field at themoment. But no smoking in Greg's house
today because it hasn't burst into flamesyet. But it also just stopped making
(03:37):
noise, so I don't know whatthat means. Anyway, Let's get into
the I Racing. Yeah, seasontwo build. I don't know if anybody
has heard anything about it, butwe literally made it rain. That's the
best I got. That's the reference. That's all right, that's it.
The rain is here, So movingon. That's the build. That's the
build. All right, good show. Actually, before we get into that,
(03:59):
we also we have a great guesttoday. To the guest, right,
President CFO of I Racing, TonyGardner, friend of the show,
gracing us with his presidence. We'regoing to talk about everything under the I
Racing umbrella, I mean everything.You want to stay tuned to that,
and you're probably gonna want to recordthat part because you know, Tony Luslip's
Gardner is a thing. You neverknow what he's gonna say. Just go
(04:20):
with the bleep button ready to go. Probably should bleep what I just said
But let's get into the build Seasontwo build uh, completely new I Racing
Advanced weather System. Yes it rains, it does all kinds of good stuff.
The dynamicism of the sim has itidlome. That was a one raising
(04:46):
the level of the discussion. Kevin, all right, the guy that was
looking up for the source the otherday and couldn't You couldn't spell the source
in the web browser. You alsocouldn't remember your name when we tried to
record the intro here. But Iwasn't sposed to bring down you want to
know the amount of diesel fumes inmy basement right now? I mean,
I should not be leading this showright now. I feel like it's for
(05:11):
the two. Oh, but let'stalk about rain. Let's talk about rain.
I think we got fifteen series thatit can possibly rain in and boy
did it rain and ims of thisweek, that's for sure. We uh
we kicked it off right impsa Suzukaand there was a heavy rainstorm. I
really enjoyed watching some of that.Uh. But yeah, a ton of
(05:34):
cars that can be that are rainenabled. All the IMPS of cars,
so all the four GTPs, thel m P two, uh, the
IMSA GT threes with the rest ofthe GT threes, the Ford McLaren coming
very soon, Ray F F sixteenhundred, Toyota GR eighty six F four
and the brand new super Formula lights. And that's the singular and the plural.
(05:55):
By the way, super Formula lightsalways not like lights lights. Good
to know, ye, yeah,I'm here for you, director of marketing
things. You need to know.This has been a very educational podcast for
me. So there's too many dieselfumes in my basement. But yeah,
just super fun. If you haven'tgot out there going to test session,
make it rain, go drive around, grab the GR eighty six and just
(06:19):
go have a boss. Let methat car is super fun in the rain.
It is whatever whatever weather you choose, right, I mean, that's
probably the coolest part. And it'snot just rain. It's full weather,
so it can be dry, itcan be wet, it can be drying,
you know all that stuff. Ifyou haven't played with it, you
have to. It's so fun.What's your track, Kevin? Do you
where do you go? Okay,you're going to try something for the first
(06:42):
time a car. Where on thesim do you go? Well? Often
it's the Lime Rock because That's myhome track. I grew up going there.
Watkins Glenn would be my other goto. So between those two,
that's where I go for for anyroad road going, you know, road
course sort of things. I'm along I'm a long beach guy. Oh
you're braver than I am. Ilove consequences. I think it's fantastic.
(07:06):
I you know, if you messup, you should pay the price.
So I like, when I'm testinga new car or something like that,
I like to go to a trackthat I know so well that that it's
not the track that is catching meout. It's you know, I feel
like I can evaluate the car orthe rain or traction much better if I
met Lime Rockers. It's just it'sjust something I can do. You know,
(07:27):
in the sleep and Chris, youprobably just pick anything with dirt and
jumps, right, I mean yeah, Wild West is usually my installation track
for things. But that's where Iwould roadside Scuba Sicuba's nice is good?
Which one thousand, No two thousand, two thousand, it's great. I
mean I send pro fors to onethousand all the time, but no two
(07:49):
thousand for anything that I'm using properly. Ye. Well, let's let's uh
quickly gloss that we've got a greatinterview with Tony that takes a pretty good
chunk of time here, but wedo want to touch everything on the build,
so obviously obviously super forming the lights. If you haven't gotten into it,
(08:09):
it's a three cylinder. The soundson it are fantastic. The liveries
on Trading Paints are are awesome,and we had some good help developing it.
Once again. Max Esterson jumped inhelped us out. He has driven
the car in the real world.He also helped us develop the F four
and the ray f F sixteen hundred. He's been quite the workhorse for us
(08:31):
on helping develop open wheelers, andI think I think it shows so really
happy with the way that car turnedout, But just listen to the sounds.
The sounds are fantastic. Obviously thevisuals and the handling are wonderful as
well, but the sounds really setof the part. We also Dirt micro
Sprint, which is multiple cars inone. We got the wing and winged
in the non winged version, andwe're actually going to be introducing a lower
(08:54):
powered version. I don't know ifit will be out at the time of
the show, but if not verysoon for the rookie level, hashtag soon,
hashtag soon. Also a ball.I've driven the prototype lower powered version
because I'm terrible un dirt, absolutelyterrible. I'm worse than on a road
course with a controller on dirt.I want to be clear that. Come
(09:18):
on, I have two wins indirt three oh fives of the controller when
I used to have to travel aroundwith my crappy little laptop. All right,
so fun facts. Uh, let'ssee what else SRX. This is
cool. We had some of theyou know, the die hard community are
saying this is one of the bestoval cars that we've ever built. Uh.
(09:41):
And this thing, I mean,let's be honest, it's kind of
a boat like you have to reallywheel the car, but it's super rewarding
when you get it right. Butdon't drive it in deep You're you have
to be patient with it. Rollthe center, get get out of the
gas a little sooner. It definitelydoes not eighty right. I mean I
(10:01):
was driving those the other day andI was like, wow, yeah,
I gotta I gotta go back thisup a little bit. It's like watching
the cup Boys at Bristol too soona great race. That's never too soon
to talk about a great race.Although I also got to shout out all
the people putting their paints on TradingPaints for the SRX, because we've seen
some ims of gt O paints.Oh they look they're really good. They're
(10:28):
really good. The Trading Paints community, the community of painters, and I
racing just it hats off I don'thave one on, but hats off that
it's amazing that the work that thesepeople do. All right, let's flip
it over to tracks, because wehad a bunch of those. This is
a huge build. Like, Idon't know if anybody's paying attention or keeping
score at home, but this legitimatelycould be the biggest bill as far as
(10:50):
content and features that I've that I'vebeen around for. Kevin, you're an
O G. I mean, thisis pretty high. It's certainly right up
there. I mean when Dirt cameout that I also had a lot of
content, obviously because we needed tointroduce content and all, but certainly in
recent memory, this has been hugeand incredibly impactful. Right, So you
(11:13):
know what's cool is you know therain impacts even if you're not interested in
any of the new cars and newtracks, right, it's still something that
improves the quality of racing in theoverall experience in I racing. Absolutely to
steal Chris's line. So yeah,talking tracks, let's talk Massano. This
is one of the Italian tracks,five layouts. It's gonna be great for
(11:35):
all kinds of racing. Ten tops. Yeah, like you want to just
go there and and and rip around. And this is Greg Hill and the
entire art team put on a masterclassthis build cycle on tracks Massano. We
also have Portamayo. Uh, superexcited about that. If that's not popular
(11:56):
community, you guys are doing itwrong. It's fun. Yeah, yes
it was open downhills. But don'tlet this truck you call out our membership
ID you guys know wrong. Thisis a great track. It is good
for slow cars, it is goodfor fast cars. It is good for
all cars. It's even good probablyfor Chris's trucks. I'm sure. Yes
two is going to race them atsome point probably tested, I'm sure.
(12:18):
But we can spend a lot oftime on Missano Club with the rally cross
cars. There we go six miles. That isn't RX track. It just
doesn't have dirt. Hey, funfacts. The rally cross car has got
bigger fuel tanks for this build,so you can really go and goof off
a little bit. Maybe it placeslike the Nervous Dring just saying yeah,
no, a little release not inthere ring meister. Maybe coming to a
(12:43):
ring meister near you. Who knows, but yeah, Messano and Port Tamaya
on the roadside. You know,even if road racing is not your thing,
go on YouTube check out, youknow, some of Alex and Cole's
videos that they put up to showthem off. I mean, I think
anybody from you know, any ofour now five license categories on I Racing
can appreciate the amount of work andthe level of detail that went into these
(13:07):
tracks. I mean are speaking ofvideos. Sorry, totally off track.
That's what we do here on theDownship podcast. But you made me think
of it. We did so.Greg Hill did a dev blog a few
weeks ago. We just made thevideo version of it, so check that
out if you haven't already. Soif you prefer watch videos versus listen reading
(13:28):
that sort of thing, it's available. Check it out on our YouTube channel.
Yeah, check out the YouTube channelwhich if you're watching this you're probably
on so not sure on twitch,but ma' sure on Twitch. That's a
good point. I heard an echofor a moment, so I got really
distracted. Maybe it's the diesel,the diesel fuels. Why is Kevin look
like a dragon? I don't evenknow. And then if road course racing
(13:54):
is not your thing, uh,Millbridge came out, which is a home
of the dirt micros. It's almostlike we plan that and once again,
not your even if it's not yourcup of tea, go check out the
videos. Just like the amount ofwork that went into these tracks and just
they're beautiful. They're absolutely beautiful.If it is your cup of tea,
go rip around on them. They'rean absolute blast. Uh Nobridg's pretty small,
(14:18):
but good, good fun entertainment,entertainment and uh yeah, looking forward
to seeing uh you know, thehighlights the next top ten and not top
ten video gonna be pretty good,I think. And while we're on tracks,
we also we added four of ourexisting tracks to the base package.
The Rookie series have become significantly morediverse with Leidon on Osha, Slaban,
(14:41):
Sneedtderton and Winton becoming part of thebass package. So if you didn't own
them, you do now congratulations,You're welcome. And that's a win win,
win win. Everybody wins. Everybodywins. We add a little more
geographic diversity to the base package,and that's always a good thing. Yeah,
(15:03):
So he's super excited to also nothave when doing rookie schedules, not
having to repeat tracks multiple times.Right, it makes all the options,
It makes series options much better forour rookie series. Sure. Yeah.
For those of you that do notlike Limerock chicanes, we can we can
probably come up with it. I'ma Limerock classic kind of guy. Launch
(15:24):
the car and hope you land straight. See, I'm in the minority.
I like the west Ben Chicane.I know at me in the comments please
go oh man, I think no. It changes the entire dynamic of the
track. It certainly does. Andanother missing zone, you know, Limerock
Daga gets a little bit more complicated. You got to use that pedal that's
(15:46):
in the middle a little bit.What's that? Hey? Yeah, the
coward pedal? Kevin what we callit? Now? Oh? Good times?
All right, and then let's goand I touched on in the moment
ago other you know big quality oflife and this actually is not on there,
(16:07):
but I'm gonna mention it. Newuser experience. This is really cool
for new users. If if you'relistening to this podcast, you probably doesn't
apply to you, but I thinkthis is really cool. Not true.
I've met people who don't have membershipyet who listen to our podcast who remember
that, right, well, heythe oil companies here, they're filling my
tank. That's good news. Butyeah, so new user experience. Uh,
(16:30):
you know, I racing can bea little difficult and a little overwhelming
to get started. We can admitthat probably not our strong point, but
uh, for new users, theywill be presented with a dialogue box where
you just pick oval or road andthen you just click that and you're immediately
put in to an on track sessionwhere you get to practice a little bit,
(16:52):
and then we put you in ashort AI race. AI is turned
down pretty low, and you havea spot that's going to help you calibrate
your controls. They're going to walkyou through just a few basic aspects of
I racing. You know how toexit the pits, safety exactly. Even
getting on track can be challenging ifyou don't know the I rasing rules because
they might be different than what youused to they're certainly different than any other
(17:15):
game. They make sense once youunderstand them. But to your point,
we didn't maybe do a good jobexplaining them to new people on day one,
So we're really focused on trying toget people to have a great experience
when they join and not get toofrustrated. Yep. And that's so that's
really important and I think it's gonnahelp a lot. There is a way
in the settings menu to actually gothrough it if you'd like to go down
(17:40):
to settings. I'm sure you cannavigate to it. I don't have my
notes off the top of my head, but it's a lot of fun.
I do like the oval version streetStock at USA. For you advanced guys,
the challenge is not to complete thenew user experience, is to see
if you can lap the field.If you can lap the field, you're
gonna you're gonna have to get afterit. But that is an interesting challenge
for all kill levels. So uh, it's a it's a good Maybe we
(18:03):
should do that for the and thenreport back on the next podcast. See
we can do it, Chris,Yeah, actually no, Chris needs to
do new user experience since he didn'tget his license up. Chris has to
do your experience. Okay, domework, Chris, somebody make a note.
We expect a ten page written reportedproperly eight points brevity. That's impossible.
(18:34):
Uh. See other quality of lifeimprovements. So the road license split also
really important. I'm gonna call this. I'm gonna shout somebody out on staff
that I think was instrumental in thedesign of this. Brian Simpson, who
is you know, one of ourI forget his job title off the top
of my head, senior art somethingvery senior, embarrassing that I don't know
(18:56):
is title off the top of myhead? But is a Formula v fanatic?
Did he Wins actually discussed changing thename of that series to the Brian
Simpsons say it. I don't knowBrian listens to this, but he loves
the Formula Vie and he's very goodat the Formula Vie. I think he's
up to like a three thousand hihrating just off the Formula v But if
(19:18):
he goes into something maybe he's notas comfortable in he's he just gets destroyed
because his irating is not really consistentwith another car like you go to three
thousand, exactly, and that isjust one of probably thousands of people that
are in the exact same boat,and is they don't want to take a
(19:38):
chance on losing I rating and actuallyleads to people not racing as much and
by splitting a little bit. AndI know there's a lot of opinions on
the forums on how we did thisright or wrong or whatever, But at
least it gives you the ability tosay, hey, if I'm a GT
three, you know, hardcore GTthree driver, but you know what,
me and my buddies on Friday night, when of go and go race an
(20:00):
f F sixteen hundred or Formula vieer go rip around in Formula four and
have fun, you know that thatword You can do so without risking your
you know what you've worked really hardfor so you can remain getting in top
split of your whatever. It isa series that's super important to you,
exactly. And no, this isnot saying oh you can go and just
(20:22):
screw around and mess out people's racesup. The majority of people come on
the service, they want to havea good time, but they want they
want to race clean. I mean, there's always going to be exceptions the
rules whatnot. We just want peopleparticipating. We want more engagement. We
want people to to do that andget more value out of your subscription.
Right, So, and it's andit helps the I rating system work the
(20:45):
way it was designed, which isreally about putting you in a competitive split.
It's not a in my mind,it's not a badge of honor.
I mean, it's amazing if youhave a ten thousand I rating, but
that's not the point of it.The point of it is so that whatever
the number is that yours is,is that it's accurate and that you're put
into a race with people of similarskill. And this helps us do that
(21:07):
a bit more across multiple disciplines.But that's Kevin. That's not all when
it comes to quality of life improvementsfor this build. One of the things
I don't know how we haven't mentionedit yet. Between the major update to
the UI and also the homepage ofI Racing in general, why don't you
tell us about that? Yeah,yeah, well I'll speak to the homepage.
(21:29):
So we've done a complete revamp ofthe homepage of I racing dot com.
So check it out if you haven't, I know, not all members
go there every day because you probablyknow most of that stuff, but it's
the it's kind of the window intoI Racing, right, So if you
hear about I Racing from your buddy, or you see one of the logos
on the NASCAR broadcast on Fox orwhatever, however you hear about I Racing
to do a Google, that's whereyou land and we just wanted to make
(21:52):
it a bit more inviting. Imean, from a technical standpoint, it
loads I don't know how many thousandsof times faster. Our technical guys were
blown away when they were looking atstats. So that makes it the experience
better page loading, but it reallyshow tells the story of I Racing briefly
but more completely, all on onepage. You can still dive into things
(22:17):
if you really want to know moreabout I don't know, AI or dirt
racing, or every car that weoffer, every track that's all available.
All the depth of the website isstill there, but the initial landing page
much more modern, clean design,and hopefully it gets the message points across
to potential new people who are joiningI Racing. We're going to continue to
(22:40):
iterate on that and work on theother pages as well. But that's a
longer term project, but super excitedto roll that out and hopefully you guys
enjoy that well. And those themesalso carry over to the UI updates as
well. You know, we've gottena lot of feedback from the community.
The UI has definitely been a workin progress for a long time as we've
shifted away from the classic site forfor technical reasons that you know, there's
(23:03):
we had to do that, anduh, but where we where we are
now is I think, once again, like you said, a much more
modern and streamlined approach. Yes,change is different. It is gonna some
buttons have moved around a little bit, but I think overall people are are
are seeing there's a method to themadness. Yeah, and that's that's worth
(23:23):
noting. I mean it's obvious,but like if things are in different spots,
it doesn't mean they're in the wrongspot. They're just in different spots.
So you may be you have musclememory of clicking on things for years
and years and years. Give ita chance. Right, We've spent a
lot of time. We didn't justkind of randomly do things. There's been
a lot of thought, a lotof a lot of minds behind this.
There's some technical reasons to change thingsas well, but I think once you
(23:48):
give it a shot and get usedto it, you'll find navigation much much
better. Yeah, and I thinkthat, you know, you hit the
nail on the head. There's alot of thought. There's not just one
person in the background saying hey,let's put this here. We've done there's
been we've brought on u i UXexperts, we have got brought They've done
some you know, some some interviews, some customer focus, product testing,
(24:11):
a lot of back end work toreally define what the objective is for each
task that you're trying to accomplish andtrying to streamline it as much as possible.
And you know they'll be they'll continueto be to work to work on
this moving forward as well. Sowe're excited to see where it goes.
There's still some work to be done. But I'm gonna tell you what,
(24:33):
I personally enjoy the fact that they'resignificant less modals. It's just as for
me, it just it just worksin my head a little bit more.
Uh So, Yeah, pretty excitedabout that. On that note, Kevin
Chris, what do you say webring on our guest sounds good. All
right, Yeah, once again Friendof the Show President's CFO of IRA saying,
(24:57):
Tony GOTDNA is going to say downwith Kevin and I. Kevin's a
really integral part of this interview.He really takes the lead in most of
it, and UH pretty excited.I think you guys will enjoy the banter
back and forth between him and Tonyand without further ado, Tony guy.
(25:18):
All right, Kevin and I areback with Friend of the Show, multiple
time guests of our pop guests,I think top guest if you look at
the spreaker statistics, very popular man. President and CFO Tony Gardner taking time
out of this incredibly busy week tosit down with us. Thanks for coming
on, Tony, Well, thanksfor having me on the pod. I'm
(25:41):
a big fan. I listened toevery one of them. Yeah, Tony's
Tony likes seems to like coming onthe podcast, and we kept saying we
were going to bring him on,and then we didn't, and so he
just went and did another interview withoutus, just went around us. He
has, so we've got to getthe messaging out there. Thanks, all
right, with some many advice Iusually show up definitely invite me. Well,
(26:07):
let's get into it. A biglast few weeks for I Race.
The last few months of I Racinghave been huge, but culminating with the
release a couple of weeks ago.Obviously, rain was the big item,
the big feature development that we finallywere able to put out to the membership
and Tony that has had a significantimpact on the business of I Racing,
(26:29):
specifically the membership. Right. Yeah, we're really excited about that released and
proud of it. You know,we worked for years on it, some
engineers Marana for years, other people, uh just a few months, but
it was a huge effort and uhand uh the reception has been Uh we
knew it would be good, butit's been overwhelming. How positive the reception
(26:52):
to the future asthmen, So thewe've really seen a spike and growth,
uh, customer growth, and soit's been really exciting. So a lot
of people, we know, it'sa lot of people that were members coming
back to try it and really enjoyingit. And it really really I think
demonstrates the I Rasing brand, youknow, how realistic and how much we
(27:12):
put into it different from other games. So you know where we modeled all
the physical elements of rain and etcetera, etcetera. So it's really exciting and
and you know, we've got alittle bit of tweaking to do now,
but we're really happy how it allwent. Yeah, the reception from the
(27:33):
community has been great, and themembership numbers have shown it. This was
this week we eclipsed over two hundredand fifty thousand active accounts in I Racing
and I believe what was that overnightlast night eclipsed a million total accounts,
right, Yeah, now we're over. We picked up another five thousand,
so we're over two hundred and fiftyfive thousand members already. You know,
(27:55):
we just went over to fifty overthe weekend. And yeah, we we
passed on one million accounts. Overthe history of erasing, it took us
nine and a half year, No, it took us. It took us
twelve and a half years. Youget the first five hundred thousand accounts and
then it's taken us three and ahalf years to get the second five hundred
(28:18):
thousand accounts, So you can seethat we're growing a lot more in the
last three years. So pretty amazing. Yeah, it's nice to see,
you know, especially in this niche, you know, to be able to
have continued success and really growing,you know after what we were, you
know, thought was the COVID boom, and we didn't know on the backside
of that whether we would have adip, and we were able to accelerate
(28:40):
and continue growing after that as atestament to the amount of work that was
put in by all the developers becausewe never rested on our laurels. We
just doubled down on everything, putit back into the product, and tried
to continually improve the products and evenraise the bar rather than being complacent.
So that's been really cool to seeand how that was organized. We've I
(29:03):
think we've finished unterrupted. I thinkwe've finished covid, you know kind of
times we define as with one hundredand eighty thousand members and now we're up
over two hundred and fifty five thousandmembers, so you know, a lot
of game companies went backwards a littlebit even strong, so we've continued to
grow. So really excited about it. And it's it's really about making the
product better and listening to customers.That's that's what it's all about. It's
(29:26):
not any fancy marketing messages or anything. You have to make a good product
and keep improving it, and that'show you grow this business. Yeah,
I think it's worth noting that thatgrowth isn't just in terms of customers and
users. But the company has beengrowing huge right So to Greg's point and
your point, we've been reinvesting.There's been you know, lots of additions
(29:47):
to staff across the board in alldifferent areas, things like that. So
it's nice to see that. Yeah, we've taken that growth and we've put
it right back into the product byyou know, doubling our staff and left
you know, two or three years. So really, uh, it's all
about talent and creating a culture.And uh, we've hired really talented people
(30:07):
in the last you know, threeor four years, and I think people
are starting to see it. Infact, I don't think Rain Rain.
I know, Rain wouldn't have beenas good without some of the new people.
Not to discount some of the peopleI've been here forever. There we
have really smart people who have beenhere for so long. Uh they're critical
as well, but it's it's nightto have more bodies, smart people working
on the product. Well let's let'sstay on this for a second. Uh,
(30:32):
you know, from your perspective,with everything that's happened since COVID,
so you know, we go toa more remote workforce rather than than just
everybody being in the office. Plusas you said, you know, basically
doubling the size of the staff.You know, how do you approach the
culture with all of those those uh, those changes, Like how do you
maintain that? Well? I thinkyou really need a good you know,
(30:55):
you know, culture is a broadword, but you know, a culture
that where everyone's you know, feelinglike they're part of it and they're heard
and and uh and they're accountable.You have to create that type of culture.
But I think it's really important tohave a really good structure, a
management structor, a leadership structure.And you know, I think we have
that, and I think, youknow, just a culture where people want
(31:19):
to come to work every day andwant to make the product better. You
know, just you know, wehave a very pathnic group and we really
encourage that. And I think it'sdisinfect us. You know, we have
a lot of you know type agethat are just so passionate about this.
I think it's infectious and it reallycreates this great culture. We try to
support that with really strong communication anduh, but it is difficult. You
(31:42):
know, we're you know, somany people. I think we have employees
in about eight different countries now andyou know in about thirty states, So
it is difficult, uh, sortof keeping keeping communication. But we we
have we have a lot of meetings, but they're fishing meetings. We do
a lot on a lot online anduh, and so it's it's it's been
(32:05):
a challenge, but I think it'sit's worked out really well for us.
It's also been a nice, nicetempo change in the last I guess probably
a year. You know, anybodyin the area going in on Thursdays and
so we go into the office oncea week and actually get to see people
and sometimes I feel like you don'tget as maybe as much done off your
regular checklist. But the collaboration,at least to the discussions that happened around
(32:28):
the cafeteria or just walking over tosomebody and chatting about it, that's uh,
that helps a lot too. Andwe're finding a little bit of that
balance where you do get that inperson collaboration. So that's been really nice.
Let's pin it over, Oh,go ahead, I was going to
say, Yeah, the collaboration isreally important and that's how we work.
(32:49):
And you know, but you gotto be careful of committees too, you
know, because the old thing isnobody ever built a statue of a committee.
So at the end of the day, you need some you know,
you got to get feedback from everybody. But then you have to, you
know, make a decision, andthat has to be a leader, and
you know you can't sometimes when youstart bothering, you start negotiating what's to
(33:14):
be done, then you end upwith something less. So you know,
you know, I have to walkout for that to Collaboration is great,
but at the end of the day, you have to empower certain people to
you know, to make good,good decisions, and I think we have
a lot of those good people inplace. Sorry interrupting, No, all
good. So let's let's pivot alittle bit. We're gonna go over and
(33:34):
we're going to talk about you know, one of the big acquisitions was bringing
Monster Games on with I Rasing andmerging those two U two studios really together
under the I Rasing brand. Andnow with the announcement of the NASCAR twenty
five project for consoles obviously is bignews within the same racing community, a
(33:55):
lot of excitement of irasing getting backto its roots. Let's talk about how
did this come about, because thiswas a long time in the works.
Yeah, I could probably talk foran hour about it. But you know,
I Racing. I Racing has hada license with NASCAR for I don't
(34:15):
know, fifteen years, Kevin,Yeah, I would guess, But we're
on our fourth renewal of the licensewith them, and our license is exclusive
for for what we firs assimilated racinggame on PC and we never took an
interest in the console space because wedidn't really have the capacity to build console
(34:38):
games, so but it was alwaysin the back of our mind. We
always wish we could, but weyou know, we didn't want to restrict
the license because it was important toNASCAR obviously have console games and the licenses
expensive, but it was always inthe back of our mind. So,
you know, we were starting totalk about possibly creating building up our own
(34:59):
cons full shop. But when theyou know, when the mg I studio
became available, we we we jumpedon that it's a great studio. They've
built NASCAR games, and well thatwas going on. We always kept in
touch with with NASCAR and motorsport gamessaying, hey, we would we would
like to get you know, possiblya car bout or or get the license,
(35:22):
and just kept talking to them overthe years, and you know,
finally with Motipot Games it became available. NASCAR felt we were and the teams,
the RKA felt we were the rightpartner. So it all just worked
out in the end. And butit was years of discussion. It was
really the dream, our dream licenseto get or console products. So we're
(35:46):
just really thrilled that came together.And uh, you know, it was
quite a bit of negotiation, youknow with all these different parties involved more
sport games, NASCAR and all theteams or all different entities that we had
to figure this all out with.So it took a while, but it
all worked out the end and we'rereally excited about it. Let's let's talk
(36:06):
about the development structure there. Youknow, so many people have so many
questions about, you know, whatwe're gonna do. There's such a responsibility
to the community to to really bringa quality product to the console space for
NASCAR. You know, what,how are you guys going about you know,
the development structure for getting that productlaunched. Well, the Launchster Games
(36:30):
group that we acquired at the endof two thousand and twenty two. They're
a great group and a really goodcore group based on of Minnesota. And
what we've done is we've really addeda lot of talent to that just like
Iras and we've added a lot oftalent to that group. But it was
(36:51):
important really for IRA you know,the I Rasing brings a lot to the
table too, and so we've beenable to work with that them integrate a
lot of things with them, andso they're they're using a lot of our
assets, a lot of our technology. In fact, they're using they're going
to be using all of our tracksand cars inside that game, just like
the World of All Laws game.They've created integration so when they can easily
(37:15):
pull tracks and cars over from theI Racing from the I Rasing platform.
So from from an art model perspective, their physics is uh is on a
different architecture, but we're using alot of the I Racing Vehicle dynamics group
and whatnot to just like we dowith the World of All a lot of
game to help them out, youknow, we're even they're even borrowing a
(37:37):
couple of our engineers for for formonths to do certain things. So it's
really a team effort. But thethe m g I group is is really
good at building NASCAR games and theythey're very creative, and so we're we're
really letting them drive the ship here, but we're just supporting them in a
(38:00):
way we can to make the bestgame, the best NASCAR game that's ever
built. So it's a team effort. But I like the fact that we
have these synergies, these technical synergiesthat we can share back and forth.
So it's really important. It stavesa lot of time and it makes a
better game. Yeah, and I'msure as we get closer to the launch
(38:21):
of NASCAR twenty five, we'll talkmore about it and maybe we have an
entire episode where we just talk aboutthe development process of that. But let's
stay on licenses for a second andlet's pivot over to IndyCar. This was
another one that was highly contentious inthe community. How that whole situation went
down over the past couple of years, and now it's come full circle.
(38:42):
We've got IndyCar officially licensed back onI Racing We're going to bring back the
Indy five hundred this year. We'reincredibly excited about that. I was talking
with Drew Adamson, one of ourproducer for all of our broadcast yesterday,
making some plans on that. ButTony, can you talk to me about
you know what a lot of peopledon't know about the IndyCar discussion is the
(39:02):
dialogue stayed open the entire time.But yeah, can we talk about that
a little bit. Yeah, justlike the NASCAR situation, Motorspoort Games secured
an exclusive with IndyCar. So ourlicense expired and at the end of twenty
twenty two, so we literally lostour license. And I think, you
(39:25):
know, I think IndyCar, ifthey had their drawthers, would have rather
kept EE Racing in the fold.But you know, they made that decision,
and they were and somebody was goingto do a dedicated IndyCar game for
them, and they do that,they required an exclusive, So I get
why IndyCar made that decision. AndI think Motorsport Games just bit off more
(39:46):
than they could do. They juststarted gobbling up all these exclusive licenses and
they didn't have the capacity to buildall these games. So and so that's
how we ended up getting the NASCARgame back and the IndyCar game for that
matter. But we kept in touchthe whole time, all through twenty twenty
three, right, you know,trying to work this out, you know,
(40:10):
Motorsport Games was honestly, we talkedto them a lot, and they
were they were good to talk to, and I think they got it that
the community wanted to see Indy Kawerand I racing. So anyway, it
ended up that they they never gotthat game out. They ended up losing
that license. So we were ableto, you know, within a matter
of you know days once that happened, you know, snag that license back
(40:34):
to start, you know, thisyear two thousand. So we lost the
license for twenty twenty three, wegot back for twenty twenty four. So,
you know, I think the goodnews is that we grew in appreciation,
a better appreciation one another, IndyCayer and I Racing, And you
know, I think we're stronger partnersthan we've ever been with them, and
we have some more news coming aboutother things we're doing with them. So
(40:57):
you know, I think that's thegood news is the partnership became stronger because
of because of the minor controversy thatthat occurred. Well, and that's that's
the big word in this whole scenarioas partnerships, and I think what what
a lot of these uh, theserace organizers have have started to understand is
a partnership rather than it's not justI Racing as a vendor, Like if
(41:21):
working together, we are a greatopportunity to engage their fan base and an
engage fan base as a fan basethat stays around and whether it's through you
know, NASCAR indyecar IMSA has beena big tell. You know, we've
seen the direct correlations that they've notedbetween the you know, how many people
are engaging and watching and going totheir races, especially the Daytona twenty four
(41:42):
is a great example. Uh.The partnership aspect is incredibly important. You
know, that's and that's something thatit's it's pretty cool to be a part
of and really proud to be apart of. Is growing the f i
A, the f i A thatyou work with. Yeah, you know,
it's just it's really important to us. And you know, we do
look at as a partnership with andyou know, we're trying to we're trying
to always find more partners and anduh we become closer with our partners because
(42:07):
you know, we we really believethat we're part of racing with A with
A with a virtual arm of racing, so of the real world. So
you know it's important to us.All right, let's uh, let's move
along a little bit and let's talkactually moving forward. So you know,
obviously, as we've said, thingsare going well right now, but we
(42:27):
we are not resting our laurels,and if anything, we're doubling down.
And when you're looking ahead to thefuture, you know what what pops in
is the number of the things thatthat you think are from your perspective,
are the things that are important thatwe are are beginning to look at and
and pursue further. I think wealways want to you know, we have
(42:50):
we have engineers that focused on certainthings. They have a certain skill set
and they know certain pieces parts ofthe code base the best. But you
know, we always want to proveeverything to do with I rasing. But
you know, we want to reallykeep making our physics and the driving better.
You know that that's important. Youcan always improve. So we we're
adding more resources to that you know. For example, we're going to be
(43:15):
working on a phase two of theNASCAR you know, the NASCAR Update,
I guess we call it. Wewe release phase one of that and now
we're releasing Faith two. But overall, we want to keep making the tires
and the physics better, keep improvingthings. Graphics is a huge area of
of of focus. That's definitely anopportunity to improve. We're looking at building
(43:37):
a whole new you know, graphicsengine. We haven't quite decide exactly what
we're going to do, but youknow, we want we need a new
renderer and a graphics update, andwe want to I think that's an opportunity
to improve, and then new features. You know, Career mode is something
(43:58):
we certainly want to we're working onnow when we're really excited about the single
I think the single player stuff andI Racing could be much better beyond boarding.
Different different ways to get to getinvolved in I Racing, whether that's
a you know, an interactive racingschool, getting people more comfortable on track.
(44:21):
We have a lot of ideas aroundthat, you know, including including
you know, even a driving coachwith ai UH and a crew chief.
We want to get there's a lotof ways we can get people more comfortable
on the track and too. Youknow, racing is hard to be out
there in the track by yourself.It would be good to get feedback,
just like you do in the realworld with a with a crew three crew
(44:43):
chief and a driving coach. Sothere's a lot of things like that we
have planned. But overall, wewant to just keep improving everything, you
know, the net code, thethe performance, the frame rates, graphics.
You know, we're just gonna youknow, we have a lot of
ideas around new features, so youknow, just up and down the board.
We just got to keep working hardto get better. There's a lot
(45:05):
there's still so much opportunity to improve, yep, and we are. We're
pushing in a lot of areas.Last thing I want to talk about this
isn't on the outline, but it'ssomething that obviously is top of mind for
us. We also have a newtitle with another studio that we've acquired with
the erntas but with Exocross coming outpretty soon, right yeah, so that's
(45:28):
uh. You know, we havethe we have the MG studio that I
talked about, which which right nowhas the world about lots franchise and is
working on the NASCAR game. Butwe have this other studio that we acquired
at about the same time, theOrante Studio, and there were they've been
working. They had a game calledDrag and early release on Steam and it
(45:49):
was it wasn't finished, and sowe've been working on taking that game to
a new level, finishing up thatgame. We've added a ton to it,
other driving opportunity for people. Wehad an AI and you know,
a lot more content, a wholenew you know, more tracks and whatnot,
and and kept working on the features. So we're really excited. The
(46:12):
games arrives incredible and we're scheduled tohave a we're scheduled to release that this
summer, so really excited about it. So we're in not final final stages
of development, but submitted to Microsoftand Sony to get for approval and we're
going to release that this summer.So we're really excited about it. It's
an off road driving game. Itkind of has a futuristic appeal to it
(46:36):
and uh, and it's it's moretowards a rally game, but it's uh,
it's it's super fun and so it'sit's different than anything we do on
I Racing, so it should appealto an audience. But if you if
you really enjoy good driving games,you're gonna like this game. And it's
it's really fun. Yeah, it'sa ton of fun. I know Chris
Leoni, who will be joining usfor the rest of the podcast, has
(46:59):
had his has had a lot ofinput and opinions on the storyline of that,
and that's he's pretty excited. Anybodythat watched the podcast anything on Derek
Chris Loft, So I think peoplereally enjoy it. And the graphics are
amazing and it has an unbelievable graphicsengine. It's one of the things that
attracted us to the studio. Soit's really really cool, it's really fun,
(47:20):
it's really visually it's it's awesome.So I'm really excited about it.
All right, Well, thanks fortaking the time with us today, Tony.
I know we've got a busy dayahead of us, but thanks for
carving out some time for us.And on that note, let's get back
to the show. Thanks thanks forhaving me. All right, we're back.
(47:45):
That was a ton of fun.I always like sitting down with Tony.
You never know what's gonna come upin those discussions. They're definitely free
form, but uh, Tony knowshis stuff. I will say that he
is definitely has his finger on thepulse of the culture here I Racing and
everything going on, and it's reallycool to get his insight and see kind
of what his vision is from thetop, you know, looking at overviewing
(48:07):
everything. You know. I thinkit's very easy in any job, you
know, everybody sees their their littlesphere, and I think Tony has a
really good perspective is the entire eCosof I Racing and yeah, so it's
it's really cool to see that globalperspective and how each little cog works together
on it. So, moving on, let's talk about sports. NASCAR Coca
(48:29):
Cola I Racing Series. Chris,Oh, yeah, no, the So,
the Coke Series has been hitting ithard these past few weeks, these
first few rounds of the season.We've got a nice new format this year
where we've got three segments of theregular season where these little four to five
(48:50):
race chunks. The top point scorerin each of these chunks not only earns
a nice little cash bonus, butalso some playoff points towards the end too,
So there's a lot of value ingetting it right in any given couple
months span. Right now, ColinKeister is your points leader and the season
raps or I'm sorry. The segmentwraps up March twenty six at Richmond with
(49:12):
the fourth round of the season.But that last race at Atlanta, talk
about an intense finish. Malik Rayone of the drivers who has been in
the series for years and years andyears, and everybody was waiting for Malik
to take that first victory on asuper speedway type track because there is nobody
better on a super speedway than MalikRay. And it finally came together at
(49:35):
Atlanta, and I'm sure Spyro Motorsportsis pretty happy about their couple of signings
between him and Casey Kerwin, theformer series champion. But Malik had one
hell of a celebration coming across thefinish line. That's probably one of the
most viral e NASCAR moments that we'vehad in a while. So Malik's got
the momentum. He's one of thetop drivers right now in the standings,
(49:57):
got some of the best positioning totowards the playoffs. But right now,
Colin Keister is your favorite to takehome that segment bonus and Tuesday nights at
eight pm NASCAR dot Com slash Live, we'll see if Colin can hold on
to that points lead at Richmond orif somebody else can knock him off to
take those playoff points in the bonus. Excellent stuff, and we also have
Porscha Tag Hoyer Esports Super Cup Kevin. Yeah. A lot going on there,
(50:22):
and Sebastian Job is hot. Yeah, yeah. The series is starting
to get to the end of it, right, so we just we got
what two more rounds, three morerounds, two more rounds? I think
so, but yeah, so that'sSebastian Job's been the man to beat for
sure, but it's not wrapped upyet. So Diego Pinto certainly got a
(50:45):
shot. I think he's thirty somethingpoints behind with more than I think it's
eighty five points on offer on astandard week. The final race, I
think there's an extra twenty points orso because there's double points in the shorter
race, so a lot on theline. Still been some great racing.
Round four we introduced a tournament format, which was new this year, and
(51:06):
I think it was probably the mostexciting broadcast we had had heat races,
you know, I think it waslike five or six cars in each one
really made it exciting. Three lapsat Watkins Glen there was a lot of
action. Yeah, people had tomake moves. I think it worked out
really well. The whole idea wasto go, how do we make this,
(51:27):
you know, a little bit moreinteresting in the middle of the season.
I think we accomplished that. Hopefullythe drivers enjoyed it as well.
I know I did watching it,so that was super cool. But yeah,
a couple more races. If youhaven't checked it out, it's roughly
every other Saturday in the afternoon herein the US. I think it's seventeen
GMT, but I'd have to doublecheck it. You can check out I
racing dot COM's slash pesk for theactual times. But yeah, season will
(51:52):
be wrapping up, maybe before wedo another one of these, I don't
know, but it's been a greatseason and looking forward to watching the final
couple of races. No, it'sgonna be a good time. These are
some of the most exciting road racesyou can see in all of us.
To see them live, check outthe UH. You can watch them on
demand on YouTube. It's a yeah, really good racing. Excited to see
(52:13):
how it finishes up. Yeah,if you hadn't watched any and you want
to watch one replay, go tothe tournament one. That's the most exciting
one, So Round four at WatkinsGlenn. And on that note, that
has been this episode of the IRacing Down Shift. Don't forget to rate,
review, and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and anywhere else. Chris
is put this thing for Chris Leonieand Kevin Balley. I am Greg West
(52:35):
and we'll see you on the trackthat ring Boots Simon Umbrella five
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