Through the years i’ve played a lot of pc games. In my youth (teens) i’ve played every game i could get my hands on. Some were good, others were crap. Last couple of year my choice of game was Day of Defeat Source. This game is a so called mod based upon the Half Life 2 engine. It’s a simple shooter, but the player base is still strong after more then 10 years it came available. The game didn’t require a bleeding edge pc so i didn’t upgrade my pc, because why?
A little while back i found a post on a a forum i frequently visit about a game called Motorsport manager. I always liked this type of game. I bought EA Formula 1 manager a while back and although the game is nice, the graphics are really out-dated. The game is is from 2000 and still now there are still people creating mods for this game.
One other nice management game is Batracer. This is a webbased game which you can play with others. Every racing round takes one day and you can have one or more teammates. Give it a try i would say, it’s free.
But back to why i created this post, Motorsport manager (MM). This game can be found on steam and it gives you the task to start a racing team. The complete setting is loosely based on the Formula 1, GP2 (now F2) and F3. The team names (if you squint) can be translated to F1/F2/F3 teams, the tracks have the same characteristics like the real tracks, and even the rules are largely gotten from those series. The reason is very simple, if they got the official license from the FIA or FOM (i don’t know a which organisation you need to be, i think the latter), then bring a big bag of cash with you and do that every year you want to have the license. And there lies the problem with this game. If you look at the top class, you don’t recognize a single name, you just don’t have a connection to the driver or the team, so you aren’t really want to hire driver X or engineer Y.
Well, thank god for the guys that created ICE Mode 2017. They created a complete mod with F1, F2, F3, WEC and Blaincpain GT3 series, with known sponsors, real drivers, real team managers. The last two are only available if you have the GT expansion for MM. I just started this mod today, and it’s great. The cars aren’t really rendered like in the real life, but it was great to see Racing drivers like Jeroen Bleekemolen, Stef Dusseldorp racing against my WRT team. I even checked (scouted) and try to get Robin Frijns to drive for my team. (He eventually was to pricey. ;)) Hey i’m still dutch. 😛
I think i will have a lot of fun with this mod and i hope that the mod will be available, and not gets derailed by the FOM.
