Dan Riffero: Pay To Play? Not For Me
- NR4
- Published ()
I remember paying to race online back in 1997. That was the way online racing was back in the early days and I accepted paying a fee to race online. As a competitor I will not accept such a fee today however.
When TEN was purchased in 1999 the purchasing company moved TEN's services under a different brand and into a new direction. In the aftermath the multiplayer racing community was disconnected from both each other and the track. I would consider those few months after TEN went under to be the Dark Age of Sim Racing. Most leagues fell apart trying to make the transition from NASCAR Racing 2 on TEN to NASCAR Racing 3's WON Network. League running N2 were given short notice of the change. The WON Network interface was buggy and the NR3 network code brought new meaning to the word 'Warp'.
As the months turned the sim auto racing community slowly recovered from the disaster with a new sense of ownership. Individuals now owned the server that their league races where run on. The server admins were empowered with the new tools that running their own server provided. Replay download became easier for the admins to obtain and the quality of racing online improved. And none of the participants paid anything. The cost was on the server owners.
Such an arrangement brought more entrepreneurs to the sport and the real world concept of sponsorship began to take shape. Car scheme painting became it's own community outside of the driving community. Server owners began to host races sponsored by real dollars, not many real dollars, but enough to maintain the server and maybe buy and ship some cheap trophies to the winners.
And none of this would have ever happened if TEN were still running the show and taking $40 dollars out of our pockets.
I'm on this subject because I recently read that a series I had intended upon racing in was moving to a pay to play server farm. Now I admit, $4.95 a month is not very much money (Heck, I pay $8.95 a month to host this site) but it is more the principal of the matter that sends me away from the series.
The series has great drivers and is a long standing contributor to the online racing community. I was behind in running pickup races (I have had no time this month) but I was planning in attending because of my past experience with the organization. The thing that bugged me was that I never received any announcement of the change. I found out on a forum.
I would rather pay the admins that run the show each week, who take the time to review the wrecks, who build the great website that the league to be able to decide what the money does. With pay to play services I don't feel I have that option.
There is no denying that running a online racing organization takes a great combination of people, technology, and capital. How those three components are managed holds the key to how well a league is able to create seat demand, sponsorship, and fan (yes I said Fan) interest.
Many people who are involved in this hobby have the knowledge to contribute but no ability to pay required fees. Where do they get left if their league moves to pay to play?
There is no denying it, running online leagues is time consuming and expensive. Those who have succeeded in reaching the mainstream online racing market (if there is one) have done so by renting their servers out to multiple parties and charging the promotors server time fees. The promotor runs the league site and interfaces with the server provider to create a great experience for everyone. The promotor is able to run a better site because the income is coming directly to them from both sponsors and contributions. Awards and merchandise can be created to promote the series if the demand is there.
Every league admin has the right to decide where the league will race. Leagues that host on pay to play servers will be missing out on the talent in the larger picture of sim auto racing. Likewise, every driver, team, and owner has the right to decide where they will compete and when.
Thank you for your time.