Remco Moedt wrote:

> I'm sure we'll see RL one day, and I hope it will be as good as we all
> think it will be. And even if it never will be finished then it's fine
> with me, there are lot of others games. The only thing I don't like in
> this matter is the fact that the community is blamed for the negative
> publicity. IMO it's part the fault of the developers, and part of a
> small group of the community.

I blame the internet! The community naturally has a diversity of views
on seemingly most things such that the very nature of usenet and web
forums just escalates these views into flame wars. The sim racing
community is no different to any other games communities (action games,
flight sims etc.) or for that matter any sports group (check out the F1
newsgroups for some hostility!).

The one common view I would expect every sim racer to have is for better
sims to be developed and with the pressures from publishers this is
threatened. A number of developers have taken the time to join in the
forums but I believe it simply becomes too much of an overhead, hence
the community members involved in the development take the stance of
spokesperson, but they are simply termed fanboys and either stop posting
or spend their time in a defensive stance.

I can understand the West's for believing they could join in with the
community and evelop their product with us. Sim enthusiasts moving away
from publishers so they could produce what they want and believe we
would want - a hardcore sim. Personally I find it embarrassing that the
community did not accept that - I don't see what we had to lose - the
West's were the ones taking the only risks. Though I am not surprised
having seen the way internet forums work.

Maybe they didn't understand the community at large compared with the
small groups they had dealt with and got the communication wrong - too
much too soon and then nothing. Though selfishly I would rather they
spent time developing than becoming PR experts.

When you look at the sim racing community it seems to have more villains
then heroes right now. We would only need rFactor to be delayed a couple
more weeks for a pre order scam to hit the boards and join the evil
ranks of Simbin and Dave Kaemmer according to some elements of the
community.

In my view we should push the developers to give us what we want, yet
that can only be achieved by working with them not against them. This
will only work in closed beta groups in my view and they will want to
stay quiet for fear of stirring the proverbial hornet's nest and the sim
community in general will stay in the dark. Which is pretty much where
we are now...

Cheers
Tony