NASCAR 21: Ignition Releases in 10 Days to High Expectations from Fans

NASCAR 21 Ignition Coming Soon 01.jpg
With just over one week to go until NASCAR 21: Ignition is released, there is optimism in the NASCAR community based on what Motorsport Games has revealed so far about the upcoming title.

A few months ago, when it seemed like Motorsport Games had a major announcement every few days, one of the biggest pieces on news surrounding the game developer and publisher was the reveal of NASCAR 21: Ignition. The concept of a racing title using the Unreal 4 engine for visuals and rFactor’s physics engine for the driving experience seems like a sim racer’s dream come true.

The title focuses on the NASCAR Cup Series, and Motorsport Games has been deliberate in distancing themselves from the NASCAR Heat game series. The Heat series had developed a reputation for underwhelming fans of NASCAR, and the hope is that Ignition represents a rebirth of the official title of one of the most popular auto racing series in the world.


Reception of the subsequent game teasers and trailers on the official Motorsport Games YouTube channel has been overwhelmingly positive, with each receiving 95% or more likes. The team has also given the public a few peaks behind the curtain as far as the development of the cars and tracks, and an introduction to some of the members of the development team.

NASCAR 21: Ignition was even playable for NASCAR event attendees recently. Motorsport Games brought the game to select races in recent months for fans to try. While some cell phone footage shot at the live demos has popped up on YouTube, it’s difficult to say whether the title will live up to its potential. Questions have been raised about the level of customization possible in Ignition, and some footage seems to hint at flaws in the AI. But, with the full game not yet shown and many post-release updates surely still to come, there is optimism in the community that NASCAR 21: Ignition will be the game fans have been waiting for.

NASCAR 21 Ignition Coming Soon 02.jpg


NASCAR 21: Ignition is scheduled for release on the 28th of October on PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. Be sure to check back with RaceDepartment for a full review shortly after release. Let us know what your expectations are for this title in the comments below.
About author
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

Comments

Only THREE boring marques - Ford, Chevy and Toyota - on mostly samo-samo ovals. Just not interesting enough.
... NASCAR has three marques running in it at the moment. What other marques would you like to see?

NASCAR runs mostly ovals. What non NASCAR tracks would you like to see? Nords? Circuit De La Sarthe?

It boggles my mind, people who can't seem to get their heads around the point of releasing games dedicated to ONE series.

If you have no interest in the game because it's NASCAR, why even waste the time to comment, other than to troll?

For me, I'm hoping they can create a decent experience. I got into racing on the PC way back with NASCAR racing 1, so it would be a bit nostalgic for me to have a decent oval racing game. It doesn't need to be a full on sim but hopefully they'll consider the sim crowd. Judging from the videos posted above, I'm not too impressed, which sucks because I was fully looking forward to the IndyCar release.
 
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Well I've watched three previews today as someone casually interested in this game and I have to say it's jaw dropping.

Motorsport Games and 397 ought to be thoroughly ashamed of themselves offering this up to customers at an AAA price. It really is Cyberpunk/Mass Effect Andromeda levels of utter ineptitude, from staggering missing basics (cautions, wheel support, pit strategies, private lobbies. co-op) to a mind boggling, inexcusable litany of bugs.

When youtubers given preview code rapidly forgo any desire to attempt a race and resort to ramming and running the track backwards within 5 minutes of their FIRST playthrough of a brand new IP you know that something is deeply wrong.

Quite something when you spend 3 years developing a new Nascar game only to leave Monster games and Eutechnyx rolling their eyes.

Review car crash incoming.
 

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You probably only have Iracing left which pretty much covers everything about NASCAR. Their AI (if you fancy offline) is imo on the way to be the best among all sims (and they only have AI since end of 2019, so still room to improve). However…there are the costs…
I'm still hopeful that they will some day make an offline version, where you pay once but cannot race online, only offline against AI and can opt in to the online subscription.
 
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A IndyCar series game isn't lost yet, iirc. Wasn't there a murmur that Automobilista 2 might happen to produce a North American Open Wheeler car/car set in the near future?

Also, RRRE car set goes alright as well. :thumbsup:
 
I watched several videos with the gameplay, but I still don't understand - is there an option in the game to custom setup the car or just presets and is there a virtual rear-view mirror? Can anyone please clarify? The fact that the mouse is not supported, I already understood that.
 
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As this is the first MSG title to carry RFactor2 physics I'm interested to know if they will keep the physical tyre model or go for something simpler and dumbed down.

I mean, would a PS4 be capable of running full-fat Rf2 physics AND a full field with pretty graphics or will it be another Madness style hatchet job? I'm hoping the answer isn't as obvious as it seems...
As far as I had read in the past, the simulation engine for the wheels, although been realtime, is not that cpu demanding; but given that a car is not only wheels, but also suspension, weigh transfer, forces, chassis flex, temperatures, wind, etc only time will shows how's the game in it simulation front.

Sorry boys, I'm in the no vr no buy front. While that happens there's always stock cars in rfactor2.
 
I don't care about NASCAR as a racing discipline, but I'm excited to see how UE and rF merge together.

AMS2 is fundamentally hampered by the Madness Engine but I'm hopeful that this new endeavor might bear fruit.
 
Content creators got ahold of it tonight. Game is a complete mess. Makes me worried for the future of Motorsport Games. Aggressively snatching up licenses only to make borderline shovelware.

1634654305128.png

Car in the air while stand still.
 
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Yes, the 2nd Racing USA DLC is said to revolve about oval racing, that should include open wheelers as well.
It's actually revolving on Indycar according to Reiza, but not sure if oval will be in the menu as of yet. Stock Car and oval racing is in the menu for the 3rd pack in 2022 (Spring if memory serves me well)
 
I am gonna take different angle on this post.

Motorsport games is publicly traded company on Nasdaq.

The financials are not looking good and if this continues with absolute garbage games like this Nascar attempt.

They could be out of business in 2 years.

Screenshot 2021-10-19 at 10-00-54 MSGM Motorsport Games Inc Stock Quote.png


Financial metrics quarter over quarter are getting worse.

-negative net income doubled previous quarter
-operating income doubled
-decrease in total revenue
-net income negative

basically they are burning money
 
As this is the first MSG title to carry RFactor2 physics I'm interested to know if they will keep the physical tyre model or go for something simpler and dumbed down.

I mean, would a PS4 be capable of running full-fat Rf2 physics AND a full field with pretty graphics or will it be another Madness style hatchet job? I'm hoping the answer isn't as obvious as it seems...
rf2 physics only require a Core 2 Duo processor so a ps4 shouldn't have any problem.
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Content creators got ahold of it tonight. Game is a complete mess. Makes me worried for the future of Motorsport Games. Aggressively snatching up licenses only to make borderline shovelware.

I had decently low expectations for this already, but what in the steaming pile of fecal matter is this?
How many motorsports IP's does this company currently have the rights for? Unless the Day 1 Patch is absolute LEGENDARY it is about to be dark days for racing games based on real world series.
 
The official trailers didn't inspire confidence in this collaboration, then you watch actual game play and you think it's a joke. Unfortunately I agree with earlier post this doesn't look good for shareholders.
 
Motorsport Games better get their act right, they currently have a lot of series with huge fanbases under their wing and if this is the sort of end product we're gonna get those contracts might come back to bite them
 
Oh well. This is like the once famous premier brands that end up in Sports Direct (UK high volume, low quality sports outlet) and have become terrible versions of their former selves.

I doubt we'll get anything the standard of the old Toca or Nascar games from Papyrus or even the EA stuff looking at that video. Doesn't bode well for the rest of the games.
 
Some serious astroturfing going on in the comments of those YouTube glitch videos. Tons of accounts with no avatar and no channel activity trying to convince others this is only "beta footage" and everything will be fixed with a day one patch.

The game releases in a week.

During my time with SMS, at no point did we send a release candidate build to streamers that was this egregiously broken. We did not send "beta builds" that were "months old" either. Builds are only shown off to the public & sent to streamers when the game is 99.7% complete. The gaming industry is extremely calculated and nothing is left to chance or "oops we sent a buggy build from three months ago haha."

They also claim the whole point of streamers being given early access is to "find bugs", which is just not true. It is a lie told by developers to run damage control on an unsuspecting public when things like this happen. AAA projects like this have both internal and external QA teams working on them from day one of development. Any bugs or design issues streamers could find, have most likely been found internally several months in advance. You might think you're "helping" by reporting bugs on a community discord channel or streaming the game pre-release to "hunt bugs", but in reality they were probably already found by the QA team during development and this just allows them to prioritize what customers are frequently running into.

But even a good team will already do "mock runs" of a game and prioritize things ahead of time so you could argue none of this is needed. Save for placating the public and pretending like they're helping.

My own semi-professional opinion, is that what's happening right now at Motorsport Games is... chaos.

It's likely they knew six months out, that this game just wouldn't come together. Inexperienced dev who was still rapidly expanding as early as this spring (I should know; I applied there as QA lol). But due to sunk cost they had no way to back out or shelve the game. This is why a lot of teams will build a project first and then announce the game very late in development when it's clear it'll be a quality product.

We can get into really crazy territory quite quickly. We've had enough bad games released in such a short period of time that a precedent has been set for them to be pulled from online stores. If the same fate happens to NASCAR 21, investors start jumping ship, might even be a lawsuit or two from NASCAR themselves. Ad campaigns bought and paid for months in advance have to be scrapped. Company folds because they're constantly bleeding money.
 
I like Nascar Heat 4 finally. It is far from perfect, it lacks some features, it is not a full sim, but what it does works quiet fine. There are even setups! What has been shown by these content creators is unbelievable.

How can a company dare to show a product in that state as a prelaunch teasing campaign? The idea is to kill the product? Someone's hiding the true last build of the game to make the shares value decrease to buy them?

They can forgot the sales on day 1. The sales will depend only on yhe first reviews. Good job.
 
Having seen an actual gameplay video for this somewhere on YouTube with AI actually racing and not just in a train-track (as Austin Ogonoski had rightfully feared) I'm somewhat hopeful. Pretty graphics + rF2 engine is reason for hope, too. But yeah, let's not get our expectations out of whack.
Oh dear, my attempt to be optimistic didn't age well. Jesus H Christ this is (right now) a mess. It doesn't look like rF2, but it sure shares some aspects: unfinished, bugs, "we'll patch that in or fix that later", and screen freezes. My general reaction:
Screen Shot 2021-10-19 at 10.20.14 PM.png

Tracks and pit crew details look pretty, but that's about all I can judge from these videos people are putting out.
 

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Mike Smith
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