NASCAR the GAME - They Use The Fans And Now Hold Out On Them

I don't know about you, but when I'm part of a huge voting scheme that takes many weeks to wrap up, I'd love to know the results when it wraps.  Not sometime next spring.  But that's exactly what the masterminds behind the latest NASCAR video game, NASCAR the GAME (NTG), is doing, holding out.

NASCAR the Game over several weeks, held a voting contest as to what driver will adorn the box cover of their newest game coming out next fall.  The voting looked entertaining as they held it in brackets as drivers were slowly being eliminated one by one in their head-to-head voting contests.

The moment it started up, I predicted Dale Earnhardt Jr. to be the winner.  He wins everything when it comes to voting.

But then the contest began.  When July 2nd rolled around, it came down to Kasey Kahne versus Dale Jr. and on July 15th, all we got was a blank driver outline and being told we'll find out when the the game comes out next fall.  That's it...  now we're back in the dark about the winner.

Historically, NASCAR games haven't done well.  One did, back in the day, when it was put out by Papyrus/Sierra, but it had its day and it faded.  The same guys who made that game, through a tumultuous process, ended up creating an online gaming experience.  The game itself, made back in in the early 2000's, had an incredible physics engine and to this day, is still supported by a few user groups.  But it's now called iRacing and they took some of their game's best tech and applied it to the online environment.  It is now, also integrated with the NASCAR website.

But that's been it.  No one else has come close to putting out a great game, and in the process, support it properly.  In fact, when you hear about drivers checking out a track for the first time in a simulator they're usually referring to the Papyrus or iRacing experience.  (Yep, it's that good.  Heck some years back Dale Jr and Martin Truex executed a 1,2 finish at Talladega and credited the game for the idea and practice to do it.)

So any newcomer coming into the gaming side of NASCAR, would probably want to get users to start embracing them as early as possible.

They've created a Facebook and Twitter account and they populate those locations on the social web, like any fervent blogger might.  They have "highlight the car" days, they report race finishes, have preview vids of the game and what not.

But if you want to know who won the driver on the game cover contest, you are out of luck. 

Me personally, I'm waiting.  They've already got a few strikes against them in my book, with one of them totally ignoring my inquiry on their FB page.  That's fine.  There's a lot of noise in a FB page sometimes.  But to blow off the people who had been voting for several weeks, I think, is a diss.

They need to embrace everyone and get them excited about the game.  To tell us who won, then tease us about how the art will look, in my humble opinion (IMHO), would have been the better way to go.  This would have kept the voters engaged.  Not this shell game they're pulling.  It feels like a gossip trade trick.

Me?  I'll wait and see what professional game reviewers have to say about it and what the community says after testing it out for a while.  I love my N2K3 game, but someday, something will come along to replace it, when it's good enough.

- http://nascarthegame.com/ -

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