Ahhh, some of those tweets make sense now!
But I truly, honestly don't get it. It strikes me as incredibly peculiar, as there's nothing stopping anyone from enjoying both... no gate that has to be passed for one to enjoy it when they already have access to the other (a la GT vs. Forza and having to buy a new console/wheel to see how the other half lives). Same platform. Same hardware.
Am I right in thinking that it only seems to happen with iRacing fans? Perhaps it's because they're paying for a subscription model where they could've dropped literally hundreds of dollars over a period for an experience that could soon be closely replicated (to an extent) in a package with a once-off outlay of cash. That's the only possible explanation I can think of.
Otherwise, they literally have no other reason to be upset. If Kunos makes a better sim, THEY CAN JUST PLAY IT. Ugh. I like that the internet gives us access to such projects so damn easily, but I hate that everyone feels entitled to why their opinion is the only one that matters and everyone else's is wrong (and should know about it).
You only need to read the Forza and GT threads here where the fanboys take great delight in trolling each other and it can be the same for PC sims. iRacing has its ardent fans but it also cops a lot of justified and unjustifed criticism too. iRacing has a lot of issues that almost all sims have in that the tyre model and physics could be better - and in iRacing it's always evoloving at a speed that suits Dave Kaemmer - and is missing features that other sims have such as changable weather. On the flip side it has all laser scanned tracks, looks quite good for rather average hardware requirements and the mulitplayer is the best available on the PC.
I tried iRacing for 3 months and couldn't understand why people called it 'ice racing' as all the cars felt fine and I seldom got a spin that wasn't deserved. I certainly didn't experience any 'WTF?' moments, even in the largely hated Cadillac. If I was more time rich, I'd happily pour money into iRacing.
In regards to Kunos, I think at times the weight of community expectation gets to them at times. It is their own fault in that screenshots and videos are released and people want more and become impatient.
Aristotelis Vasilakos posted the following on FB on the 18th:
"I have to get this weight out of my back.
I've been reading lately that we are very good at teasing, masters of marketing and other things, regarding Assetto Corsa. Now I'm a positive thinking guy and willing to believe that the word "teasing" is meant in a good way, but I'll explain a couple of things anyway, no offence given or taken. First of all, I'd like to remind that a team of 10 guys with very limited resources, is trying to do a project that normally requires a team of at least 40-50 persons. That means that everyone of us is working every day at least 10-14 hours. This doesn't mean we are sacrificing our lives for the simracing cause, not at all.
We really really love what we do and that's why we're doing it, so I'm not complaining. But it does mean that when you're behind a monitor for so many hours, for so many days, for so many months, the monitor and your FB or twitter or chat contacts become your friends. And as such, whenever you're excited for something you really want to share it. That's what we do, we share our everyday job with friends. We even try to not talk to much about it, because we feel the "agony" (lol) of people that still can't drive AC, so we can't really describe everything we do, it would be a torture. We also can't tell everything because of stupid contracts, NDAs and other various reasons, we don't even have the time to tell everything, but sometimes we are so full of excitement that we need to get it out somehow.
So no, I can't really accept the word teasing for anything I say about Assetto Corsa. I'm not taking it personal or whatever, but then again I wanted to make it clear that there is no teasing.
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Regarding official screenshots and people that are "bored" from the ongoing "teasing" again
I'll give you something to consider. Our Facebook page has almost 10000 likes (yay! thank you!). Let's double that and say that we may have 20000 people knowing about Assetto Corsa but not all of them have clicked "like". Do you think that's enough people in terms of possible sales (if all 20k people are buying it)?
Well, count 10 people monthly pays, count the licenses, count taxes (italian taxes
ouch), count bills, count 3 years in the making etc and without not even going into details just think about it
I understand that informed simracers, probably know all there is to know about AC and are bored by the usual screenshots, but just have a look at the comments and see how many people still don't know nothing about it and asks questions that have been answered months ago. What should we do? Mainstream big video game websites and magazines won't even mention AC, we are nobody outside the small simracing community and even inside the simracing community still not everybody knows about AC. So how are we going to reach more people?
Are we doing everything perfectly? Of course not! Still, before thinking we're just teasing or before suggesting things like "put another car in the TP" or "get a demo out", or "release the game" and "stop the teasing I'm bored and my cat is angry" consider that we might have some very valid reasons for doing so
it's not too hard to imagine either.
Sorry for the long post, going back to my cave to try some more tweaking. Cheers everybody!"