![]() Several days go by before each race, allowing for practice rounds, the careful maintenance of egos for a team of divers, hiring designers for upgrades, and weathering the mood of a rich chairman who may fire me and end my career for sustained ineptitude. Racing comes off like something more akin to chess, as so much hinges on the setup. It's a strange way to start a game, but it works because it waits until after that tough round to pull back the curtain to reveal how many options are on hand for success. ![]() This, that first lesson seems to say, is what racing's really like. Few if any games do such a good job of emphasizing the importance of small victories for staying profitable in racing or how devastating losses can be. On top of that, the drivers berated my incompetence over the radio. Video games tend to emphasize wins, but even my best tutorial playthrough seemed designed to highlight the astounding degree of loss associated with racing, particularly when at least one driver on my team doesn't come in better than fifth and a big sponsor withdraws that $250,000 bonus I was counting on. This, despite successfully risking a shorter pit stop with an added chance of mistakes. This, despite my best calculations based on the tutorial's explanation of watching the forecast to time the changing of tires for different road conditions. Motorsport Manager's extensive tutorial seemed intent on starting off by rubbing in how much I didn't actually know about the sport, as it tossed me almost immediately into a full race with a scripted rainstorm that forced me to watch helplessly as my two chosen drivers slipped ever closer to last place. All that, and it's greatest strength is that it rarely feels overwhelming.īut it can be disheartening. It's not just about cars and parts (though there is that), it's about securing sponsorships and finishing a race in a certain position to score payouts, it's about balancing travel expenses and catering to the egos of drivers, and it's about hiring whole teams of people, juggling emails, and sometimes even hoping an inspection team doesn't find an illegal part you snuck in for a win. For anyone not fully familiar with racing, it can be humbling to see just how big that picture gets. Motorsport Manager, a simulation game for PC, Mac, and Linux that casts you as the manager of a Formula 1-style racing team, tosses that personal focus aside to emphasize the big picture and emerges the better for it.
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