A new game publisher has been formed and it goes by the name Dusenberry-Martin Interactive or DMi. Games veterans Tom Dusenberry and Ed Martin have joined forces with HC2 to establish NASCAR Interactive Entertainment.
Based on their press release at their website, DMi has acquired the NASCAR game assets from Eutechnyx and starting January 1, 2015 DMi will relocate to Charlotte NC. DMi is a new NASCAR Interactive Entertainment games publisher committed to fun and repeatable games for NASCAR Fans.
Here’s a quote from their site:
Quality commitment to NASCAR game fans
DMi is committed to delivering a high quality NASCAR digital game fan experience on video game consoles, PC, tablets and Smart Phones.
So it looks like Eutechnyx will either be working with DMi, or DMi will take over all NASCAR related development and publishing. I just went to the Eutechnyx website and they have no mention of prior or future NASCAR titles. But if I go to the ETXRacing site, this is what shows up with links to both Eutechnyx and DMi Games.
I felt that the “NASCAR The Game” series had potential, but never really got to what it could have been. Maybe with DMi running the show, that will change and a new high quality NASCAR title will emerge on all platforms.
What did you think of the NASCAR titles from Eutechnyx and what do you think about this news in general ? Let us know in the comments below !
I’ve only raced nascar on gt5/6 since its all i have as I don’t have a pc yet
but from the outside looking in there doesn’t seem to be any notable nascar atm but it is looking more and more like this is a going to be a great year for pc racing.
I miss that old papyrus nascar game from ps2.
Got a few of the NASCAR ETX games and they were all bad. Took ages to get a fanatec wheel and pedal set up right. Then when the green flag goes up, all the cars sped away from you.
Terrible online. I hope this lot do something good but seeing they are taking stuff from ETX I can’t see it happening. Thank god for iRacing.
I have all the cars and tracks on iRacing and while they are good/hard to race, just never really enjoyed them, but I do keep trying. I do have some friends that still play the NASCAR 2003 on pc by Papyrus. They say it is great, and it is still available used, but costly. Apparently there are a lot of free modified cars and tracks for the game including dirt tracks.
There really needs to be more RPG elements to this new game. I have been playing NASCAR games for 20+ years and too many of them are the same boring old routine. Practice (which everybody skips) Qualify (which many people also skip), race. Repeat. I want to see more driver creation options and career progression. As a new driver, you shouldn’t be able to just walk right into the top series and start winning. You should have to work your way up with a smaller team, have the option to make friends or enemies, and do press conferences where choices are made about your values and attitude that affect the way people see and treat you. There should be driver interviews before, during (in-car), and after the race. You should be able to sign endorsement deals that actually mean something and can affect your career positively or negatively. There should be more choices to make. More cause and effect.
There should be smarter AI that remembers how you raced before, and more strategy overall. Where are the rain delays and shortened races? I haven’t seen strategy elements in a NASCAR game in years. The latest piece of crap from Eutechnyx is a perfect example. It doesn’t matter if you take 2 tires or 4, you still come off pit road in the same order under caution. Pitting should be interactive. How many times must we ask for this? Pit road is part of the race! Stop taking control and forcing us to sit back and wait on pit road! Why waste the development time making animations when our interaction level is akin to a loading screen? We should control how fast pit stops go, with the possibility for mistakes that cost time. We should have to stop the car in the stall properly, without flat-spotting the tires when we take only two.
Where is the commentary? I’m not talking about my spotter or crew chief. There should be periodic commentary throughout the race telling us what is happening through the field. Whose cars are loose, whose are tight? Who has debris on their grill and is overheating? Is someone seeing rain on the horizon? What are the plans of the other teams? Who can we work with at superspeedways?
We should be talking on the in-car radio. No really, we should have the ability to talk to our crew chief or spotter. You should have the option to speak into your headset, or press a certain button for a response. They already tell us what’s going on, now we should have the ability to answer. The crew chief should ask us how the car is handling, and what we think might be a good adjustment to make in the pits. We should be able to ask about fuel mileage and tire wear. Was one tire about to blow out? Should we drive differently to save our tires? We should be able to ask what corners we are faster in, and whether high or low lines are making faster lap times.
There should be fantasy venues. Just a few would be nice. A couple more road courses like Road America and Mexico City, and a couple smaller tracks like North Wilkesboro and Rockingham.
Drafting in superspeedways needs to be fixed. In recent games, it has been too easy to just pull up behind someone and push them around the track, pulling away from the field. In the latest game, I have been able to just get out front and drive away all alone. This needs to be more realistic. I know it’s hard to do with a video game, but we have got to do better.
More AI crashes. In the last full season I raced, I think I saw maybe 2 or 3 AI wrecks that had nothing to do with me. That’s 2 or 3–for the whole year. Not good enough. There needs to be single car spins and blown tires. Multi-car crashes that end up taking only the cars involved. You know what happens to me all the time? My car will get a little loose and I’ll slide up the track. The car behind me will push forward, wrecking me into the wall, and all 30+ cars behind them will hold down the gas pedal as if nothing was wrong, starting a 30-car pileup. Let off the gas AI! When there’s a wreck, slow down and avoid the crash instead of gunning it straight in. This is isn’t Days of Thunder.
Rookies and lapped cars need tweaking. Look, it’s a race. I get that. The goal is to go faster than anyone else. That being said, there is an unwritten rule in NASCAR that lapped cars and slower drivers need to move over for leaders if they are not in contention. This needs to happen. I’m tired of getting wrecked by a lapped driver or a rookie that just won’t move out of the way. Many tracks have a preferred, faster line. These cars need to get out of the way when they aren’t in contention for the win. I’m tired of zig-zagging through lapped cars that are significantly slower just so I can get through the final laps of the race.
Paint schemes are getting better, but still need improvement. Eutechnyx actually did a decent job with the paint booth in NASCAR 14/15. However, it still wasn’t quite up there with the Forza series, that has been doing it even better since the mid 2000’s. A few improvements are needed to make NASCAR’s game great. For starters, there just needs to be more shapes. More pages of shapes and decals to start off with. Like 10 times more. More fonts. More sponsors and logos. And how about the ability to load our own pictures? What if I want my face on the car? PS4 and XOne have the ability to use USB, so why can’t we upload a picture? Worried about censorship? Only allow photos to be loaded to offline paint schemes.
Where is my reward? There has been no sense of achievement in recent games. Don’t give me that crap about Xbox Live achievements, does anyone really care about those anymore? Look at the NBA2K series. They have all these animations to choose from for your player. I want to choose from various celebration animations for my driver. From the Carl Edwards back-flip to the Tony Stewart fence climb, to the Kyle Busch bow, I want to choose my own way to celebrate. So I won a championship, now what? Oh great, the season is over. What’s the next thing to do after working so hard to dominate for 36 weeks? Start over from the beginning. Yay….how BORING. How about post season interviews, endorsement photo shoots, guest appearances on a late night talk show…the list goes on. I want to feel like a star for winning. Not just a monkey trained to do the same routine over and over. I really enjoyed games like Tiger Woods PGA Tour. When you would win a tournament, a video of Tiger himself would play, congratulating you on your victory. How cool is that? I want a video of Jeff Gordon congratulating me, or Richard Petty, or Tony Stewart. How about the awards ceremony? There should be a segment where you can attend the awards ceremony in Las Vegas and accept your award, amongst the other drivers and awards. Where’s the hall of fame? If I win 8 championships in the game or 201 races, I would like to think someone might notice. The commentators can’t tell Ryan Blaney from Jimmie Johnson.
I know all of these added elements takes up disc space, but you can’t tell me it can’t be done. Other games have already done it–figure it out. If these devs want to be remembered (like Papyrus) then they need to make the game memorable. With downloadable content and huge hard drives available, there’s no excuse to leave features out of a game anymore.