Founder and CEO Ian Bell Announces Departure from Slightly Mad Studios

Ian Bell Leaves Slightly Mad 01.jpg
Ian Bell, who founded Slightly Mad Studios more than a decade ago, has announced that he is leaving the company.

It’s been a rocky past couple of years for game developer Slightly Mad Studios. The third installment of their successful Project CARS series, along with a licensed game adaption of the Fast & Furious movie franchise, were released in 2020 to tepid reviews. More recently, development work on the mobile version of the Project CARS series was shut down. And now, CEO Ian Bell is departing the company.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1454016780850974720

Slightly Mad Studios, which was purchased by Codemasters in late 2019, was founded in 2009. Best known in the sim racing world for their work on the Project CARS franchise, SMS also brought us Need for Speed: Shift, Test Drive: Ferrari Racing Legends, and Red Bull Air Race among others.

What Ian’s departure means for the future of the studio remains to be seen. As CEO, his vision for the company he started more than a decade ago strongly shaped the organization’s focus. The award-winning Project CARS game series trended away from its Community Assisted Racing Simulator theme over time, specifically in the most recent installment, to the dismay of many fans of the series. We’ll have to wait and see whether the new ownership and management structure will mean a return to the original intent of the series.

Also unknown is what lies ahead for Bell. His Twitter handle at the moment simply reads “Free Entity. Look out for TherapyGlobal”. Although many releases under the SMS name have been polarizing, his marketing and business development skills have been instrumental in building a successful business out of a niche passion, so expect to see Ian’s name in the gaming industry again soon.

Let us know your thoughts on this move. Was Bell the linchpin that made Slightly Mad as successful as it has been, or does the move away from his leadership hold the possibility of better things to come?
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About author
Mike Smith
Mike Smith
I have been obsessed with sim racing and racing games since the 1980's. My first taste of live auto racing was in 1988, and I couldn't get enough ever since. Lead writer for RaceDepartment, and owner of SimRacing604 and its YouTube channel. Favourite sims include Assetto Corsa Competizione, Assetto Corsa, rFactor 2, Automobilista 2, DiRT Rally 2 - On Twitter as @simracing604

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Comments

D
I enjoyed Project Cars 1 for a while, but the flagrant bullying I saw him inflict on people on the official forums (often enough for the crime of simply offering genuinely constructive, politely worded suggestions on how to improve the game), and ultimately on me, followed by bare-faced lying about having no recollection of the ban he issued literal minutes earlier when I attempted to call him out on it, soured the whole deal for me, and I could never bring myself to load the damn game up again from that day forward, and certainly never went near any sequels.

I join the good riddance crowd. An unpleasant man; I've no doubt his narcissism will serve him well in whatever his next business venture is. I just hope it's far from the sim-racing industry.

I appreciate the craft and efforts put into the series over the years by the rest of the studio, but given my experience with Ian Bell, I was very glad I discovered Assetto Corsa to be a more consistent and detailed sim in the end.
 
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Toonces
Copef1 said:
He may have done some controversial things, but for me I will always appreciate the original mod he was involved with for EA's F1 series, GTR, and GTR2. I've been sim racing since the early 90's, and before the GTR stuff there was only F1, Nascar, and Indycar sim's.
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Aren't you forgetting the paradigm-shattering "Grand Prix Legends"?
 
A
gunner25 said:
Project cars 3 for me is very beautiful and really funny. What's the problem if sometimes it's not pure simulation? :)
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Project CARS 3 in itself is fine. It's really Need for Speed Shift 3, it's a great little "joypad" racing game.

The problem is, they announced it as well... Project cars 3 and Ian Bell went even further and hyped it as being MORE sim than the previous 2. And it really, REALLY isn't.

It's like being told you're going out for steak and actually being taken to a really good burger joint. It's lovely but it's not what was promised by either the marketing or the name.
 
Austin Ogonoski
Askduds said:
Project CARS 3 in itself is fine. It's really Need for Speed Shift 3, it's a great little "joypad" racing game.

The problem is, they announced it as well... Project cars 3 and Ian Bell went even further and hyped it as being MORE sim than the previous 2. And it really, REALLY isn't.

It's like being told you're going out for steak and actually being taken to a really good burger joint. It's lovely but it's not what was promised by either the marketing or the name.
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My $0.02, Project CARS 3 was just a few design decisions away from being a sleeper title.

The game's core problem is it shipped with too much recycled content from the first two games. The car and track list is 95% identical to pCars 2, albeit with a ton of features removed, so why not just play pCars 2 - a game they already own and has a lot more under the hood? That's the same mentality I think a lot of people had.

However, a smaller, curated experience that had a very tangible identity would have been just what a lot of ppl were looking for from a "sim lite." The reality is that a lot of people think the idea of sim racing is cool - driving with realistic behaving cars and tires - but the normies don't want to fart with iRacing's MMO structure or learn how to navigate content manager just to turn a few laps. pCars 3 was kind of going for that crowd but IMO it needed to do a little bit more to convey that was the goal.
  • Remove ALL vehicles except street cars, hypercars, and some trackday stuff like the Zonda R or P1 GTR.
  • Remove ALL tracks except street circuits and the Nordschleife.
  • Sell it for a discounted price: IE $35 USD.
  • Call it something else -> Project CARS: Tour
At that point you have built a spiritual successor to PGR or Driveclub - albeit powered by a proper sim engine and sold at a discounted price to acknowledge it's not a "mainline" entry. It becomes a game to match race McLaren's against Ferrari's around Shanghai with very believable physics, do some challenges, and collect XP.

Too much recycled content diluted the vision IMO.
 
wolftree
Austin Ogonoski said:
However, a smaller, curated experience that had a very tangible identity would have been just what a lot of ppl were looking for from a "sim lite." The reality is that a lot of people think the idea of sim racing is cool - driving with realistic behaving cars and tires - but the normies don't want to fart with iRacing's MMO structure or learn how to navigate content manager just to turn a few laps. pCars 3 was kind of going for that crowd but IMO it needed to do a little bit more to convey that was the goal.
  • Remove ALL vehicles except street cars, hypercars, and some trackday stuff like the Zonda R or P1 GTR.
  • Remove ALL tracks except street circuits and the Nordschleife.
  • Sell it for a discounted price: IE $35 USD.
  • Call it something else -> Project CARS: Tour
Click to expand...
Many sims ship with too many cars/categories - PC2 has at least 60% of cars that could easily have been cut, AMS2 and AC both have perhaps 30% totally unnecessary cars that eat up development time and have modelling errors that make them unpleasant to drive. If people want dozens of poorly driving cars with virtual Ferrari stickers on them there's always *********** for that.

More focused sims (max 20 different cars) would allow more finely tuned physics and allow the devs to focus more on the things that are weak in most games: AI, race rules and race weekend immersion, more interesting single-player experience, and a structured multiplayer that is beyond just glorified open lobbies.

Then again NASCAR 21: Ignition has exactly one car (or four if they modelled road course, short track, speedway and superspeedway cars properly) and even that doesn't work properly...
 
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Kyuubeey
wolftree said:
Many sims ship with too many cars/categories - PC2 has at least 60% of cars that could easily have been cut, AMS2 and AC both have perhaps 30% totally unnecessary cars that eat up development time and have modelling errors that make them unpleasant to drive. If people want dozens of poorly driving cars with virtual Ferrari stickers on them there's always *********** for that.
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I too would prefer a limited amount of cars with some actual effort put into the models, but you need to remember that racing games are mostly advertisements for automotive companies, hence why they would like to force the publisher to force the developer to add a bunch of cars in to advertise their products that otherwise would not have been included.
 
M
There is also a lot of people who DON"T want to drive GT3s every day of the week and twice on Sunday. Some (many) users want to have a variety of cars to race with and would like them to be credibly modeled. That is the original idea of PCars 1 and 2. The problem is SMS and Ian Bell had a great idea, created the most advanced tool for car physics simulation but did not stick to it long enough to realize its potential and deliver on the promises they made. It can clearly be seen by the amount of work Reiza has been putting into ME for few years now in tuning it and the car models and still lots has to be worked on.
The reality is that Bell/SMS business model conflicted with the reality that a proper in-depth simulator requires a ridiculous amount of work in tuning which is hardly a good business case for big publishers/developers unless money comes from other pockets.
 
D
I made money from PC1 and I still have no time for the guy :)
 
H
Xela1 said:
The pcars sequels are the best example to show what happens when the CEO Ian Bell is resistant of critism. They could made Pcars 2 to an epic game but closed their eyes and ears but not their big mouth. The Devs were the best Lemminge I ever met.

AMS2 is on a good way, hope REIZA will take advice from their customer
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eehm, ams2 is on a good way to where ?
online is bad, car pack is strange (must be licensing issues), vr performance is on a low side, any change that require engine programming is cancelled .... due to it's requirement in the engine programming. Wondering, how much years it will take to make an adequate replay navigation, save\load, autosave, tyre selection for cars, motec telemetry instead of payware rst, no mod support
For now it's ac - the only one that polished like a cat's balls
In a perspective we should not wait for any other ac killer accept ac2
 
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D
Hipp-E said:
eehm, ams2 is on a good way to where ?
online is bad, car pack is strange (must be licensing issues), vr performance is on a low side, any change that require engine programming is ca
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pah, extreme and incorrect arguements Mr. Hipp:
- Car packs are OK for hobby sim racing
- VR is best out there atm
- car physics are in line with other sims / not that lifeless ACC ones
- programming is an on-going thing,
- graphic (u didn t mentioned) is highest level with playable fps on normal systems
- fire up the sim and have a great immersion is a really stressless pastime
- Hipp you re welcome
 
M
Hipp-E said:
online is bad, car pack is strange (must be licensing issues), vr performance is on a low side, any change that require engine programming is cancelled .... due to it's requirement in the engine programming. Wondering, how much years it will take to make an adequate replay navigation, save\load, autosave, tyre selection for cars, motec telemetry instead of payware rst, no mod support
Click to expand...
Mixing many things here... In short:
  • Car packs strategy was explained by developers since the beginning: they decided to give some samples of many different categories with limited cars rosters initially and then beef them up only in the long term and that time may not be that far away by now
  • Online ranking is coming within end of the year. until then it is unlikely that public lobbies will take off, only leagues will be active and there are already several around and kicking. Reiza knows and admitted the strategy with MP wasn't the best one. Once that is released it seems logical that there will be more and better quality of MP life in the sim
  • VR performance is the best bang for buck. Even non-martian systems can pull quite a great performance and quality. Far more than ACC for example which requires a nuclear plant to run barely ok in VR
  • Not sure where the news that engine programming is canceled comes from: changes to the engine core have already been made. Definitely not the fastest changes so far but still. The issues with replay and events saving was recently explained in their interview: the encryption of the engine makes very difficult to have replay navigation and load/save of a given offline race. Those things apparently would require a very invasive change to the engine coding that probably would come after much lower hanging improvements.
  • Mod support has been excluded since day one by Reiza, so not sure why someone would be waiting for it
 
H
Xela1 said:
pah, extreme and incorrect arguements Mr. Hipp:
- Car packs are OK for hobby sim racing
- VR is best out there atm
- car physics are in line with other sims / not that lifeless ACC ones
- programming is an on-going thing,
- graphic (u didn t mentioned) is highest level with playable fps on normal systems
- fire up the sim and have a great immersion is a really stressless pastime
- Hipp you re welcome
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1 - we want to see cars that are avialable to people, international racing series shown on tv - no one who likes rds gives a sh*t about cruze racing series, and vice versa
look at street cars category - funny, huh ?
2 - check out dirt 2, assetto corsa with sol+csp tweaked
3 - yes, force feedback is on the rf2-iracing side, physics and asphalt are somewhere going-there too, but it is still not that good to leave good old ac. ACC is one of the worst force feedback avialable on the market.
4 - you release a commercial product, widely avialable worldwide, and having programming issues ? guess it's ok for 21



5 -
BIY.gif
Did you tried ac-sol-csp with a3pp ? Dirt 2 ?
sadly, but graphics is a notch better than rf2
6 - yeah, console-style experience, way we all love it here
7 - You're welcome either

The only thing i play it is night muddy rainy races, no other point at least now imho.
 
H
MadDriver11 said:
Mixing many things here... In short:
  • Car packs strategy was explained by developers since the beginning: they decided to give some samples of many different categories with limited cars rosters initially and then beef them up only in the long term and that time may not be that far away by now
  • Online ranking is coming within end of the year. until then it is unlikely that public lobbies will take off, only leagues will be active and there are already several around and kicking. Reiza knows and admitted the strategy with MP wasn't the best one. Once that is released it seems logical that there will be more and better quality of MP life in the sim
  • VR performance is the best bang for buck. Even non-martian systems can pull quite a great performance and quality. Far more than ACC for example which requires a nuclear plant to run barely ok in VR
  • Not sure where the news that engine programming is canceled comes from: changes to the engine core have already been made. Definitely not the fastest changes so far but still. The issues with replay and events saving was recently explained in their interview: the encryption of the engine makes very difficult to have replay navigation and load/save of a given offline race. Those things apparently would require a very invasive change to the engine coding that probably would come after much lower hanging improvements.
  • Mod support has been excluded since day one by Reiza, so not sure why someone would be waiting for it
Click to expand...
Mostly fits, except one thing : we already payed for the product, with season passes, that actually is a pcars2 heavy modification format thing at the moment. Please don't promise, don't tease - just do it. If you are selling it - do it. Hello games are doing it, with a far more complex systems - without teasing and pr sh*t
 
D
@Hipp-E c“mon think big. Reiza is brazilian so Stock-cars and other foreign cars are a must have. U should know I m deep in AC since the beginning and know xfab and Peter well. So spread your thing on ur neck and calm down
 
H
Xela1 said:
@Hipp-E c“mon think big. Reiza is brazilian so Stock-cars and other foreign cars are a must have. U should know I m deep in AC since the beginning and know xfab and Peter well. So spread your thing on ur neck and calm down
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47llcz.jpg

Enjoying my coffee :)
 
SvenUilhoorn
DW1 said:
I enjoyed Project Cars 1 for a while, but the flagrant bullying I saw him inflict on people on the official forums (often enough for the crime of simply offering genuinely constructive, politely worded suggestions on how to improve the game), and ultimately on me, followed by bare-faced lying about having no recollection of the ban he issued literal minutes earlier when I attempted to call him out on it, soured the whole deal for me, and I could never bring myself to load the damn game up again from that day forward, and certainly never went near any sequels.

I join the good riddance crowd. An unpleasant man; I've no doubt his narcissism will serve him well in whatever his next business venture is. I just hope it's far from the sim-racing industry.

I appreciate the craft and efforts put into the series over the years by the rest of the studio, but given my experience with Ian Bell, I was very glad I discovered Assetto Corsa to be a more consistent and detailed sim in the end.
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As a pCars 1 backer and someone who also offered constructive criticism, I couldn't have written this any better myself! Glad I got a profit out of that project though!
 
G
He won't be missed.
He created the WMD platform in order to make a game without having to obey to big dogs like EA, but in the end he sold the Project Cars franchise and the SMS to Codemasters, well knowing that in this way, sooner or later, EA would have bought the SMS.
I like to think that his decision is the result of EA pushing behind the scenes to have him out of the games.

I wonder if Austin can start a new Pretended Race Car blog now that the bald guy is gone. ;)
 

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