Stop Listening To The Racing Game Community 

The NFS Reddit is probably one of the most toxic I’ve seen. Some guy posted an NFS Unbound trailer edit that featured the song Shapeshifter from Most Wanted and immediately the Reddit starts trashing him bc the “song doesn’t fit the style of the game” and that his nostalgia is something that doesn’t matter even though the dude made the edit for fun. Creativity and fun apparently isn’t allowed anymore.

Being angry is the new drug. It's addictive, can last for generations and it isn't that hard to come by when it's this easy to spread it and hold on to it. They're not racing fans, they're fans of being outraged and they just found a community to fuel their need for anger.

Message for my future me: the goal is to make a gran turismo parody game with ps1 aesthetic... Don't forget that goal...

Dear god, this vid was a surprise lol. I have noticed that there has been some kind of negativity in the community, hell, even a lot of cynicism. I hope some of those people can at least try not to jump into conclusions and make these negative assumptions all of a sudden. This vid was refreshing lol.

I swear, I miss the days when people just relaxed and enjoyed games as they are, its like positivity and happiness just doesn’t exist in anyone anymore, its seriously unfortunate because the world that we live in is pure hell, and we need as much positivity as we can get.

Nostalgics and ignorant fanboys also help creating and spreading negativity.Honestly,i don’t even bother explaining stuff to people because there are those that are too blind and stuck up to have any type of reasonable conversation.Although,i stand behind my opinion firmly since it’s own experience and not what someone else said and now i conform to it-hell no.

I will strongly have to agree this video, I just recently left the NFS community because so many people don’t know how to respect opinions, I just felt like I had enough with this community.

Final someone calls them out, they take the enjoyment out.

Same happens with most other games. CoD Warzone's and MWII posts is always filled with people crying about anything they think its wrong with the game, yet they play the damn game every day

one thing i learned from any community from my experience btw [for example: gacha tho] Enjoy what you like and with your own pace. we all knew that talking about same negativity over over again and expected something change, is insanity. i knew not everything is bad nor is good. and people can get overboard too especially these days. so much i can relateable. have a good vibe for those who read this. :)

Racing Game Community is Clearly Become Gun Showcase Community at all the point Racing Game is Also Just Like a Hogwarts Legacy similar way It doesn't matter if they are "old school" or "new school" They are Garbage for Nowsdays They just like a Resident Evil Fan Mostly Racing Game All Those Always Disagree Option, Unlike Gun Showcase Community has

You know it's serious when Jake uses MW12 gameplay

Someone actually sent me death threats on a comment section because I said I enjoyed both NFS Shift games AND The Run. It's getting a bit ridiculous.

The best you can do, on anything related to media (Games, Movies, Series, Anime/Manga) DO NOT BE IN TOUCH WITH A LARGE % OF THE COMMUNITY. A large % it's just... well, toxic of course, the best you can do it's have an opinion on what you like, and knowing what's good and/or bad on that piece of media. Enjoy what u like and harm anyone, simple as that :p

The racing game community will torn itself apart. The constant rambling on how "X" game is better than "Y", will only lead to less and less variety. And variety it's exactly what this genre desperately needs.

This is why I do not join any racing game communities, as I know I will come across these types of people. If I have my own opinions, I keep them to myself. That way no one can call me out for them.

I've gotten the impression that only negative opinions are considered "genuine" and that positivity is mostly dismissed as blind fanboyism or being a shill for the devs.

Unless you decide to try to see things from a different perspective, circlejerking old games is not exactly the most unique mindset to have. But then it's easy to hate on something first rather than go out to try new stuff to see if you actually like it or not.

Thats every game, especially if it's indie, so many games lose vision. If i see devs ask for feedback or listen to people, it's a big red flag

You make some good points here. I think the majority of toxic people in the racing game community don't stay in the community for very long. I've seen many people who just cause issues in the community come and go. Luckily the other 99.9% of people are fine and you can have discussions about racing games with most of them. All games have issues and if you're doing a review of a game, then you do have to point out those issues to keep the review fair, but for quite a few people if they love a game then they are blind to the game's issues and argue with people how point them out. I've delayed all my upcoming Need for Speed reviews for this reason. I think one of the issues is wording and getting your point out there as you intend it. I've had people comment on a review that I've done where I've liked the game overall but said one negative thing, and it's the one negative thing is what people focus on.

You are great at giving criticism, the (kind of) issue is most people don't have the ability to do so -like me- . But they feel it in their guts, there's something that bothers them about the thing they're supposed to love or enjoy (racing game or anything in general); this unexpressed feeling quickly turns into negative and, dare I say, toxic (I do not enjoy uttering that word) emotion and behaviors such as parroting the popular negative opinion regardless of whether one agrees with it. Have this happen over and over again, the cycle of hype and disappointment of racing game fans, eventually turns love into disdain. It's understandable but unfortunate. Ironically if you look at this from a different angle, the community became strongly united more than it has ever been; even with the difference in taste, whether arcade or sim racer fan, sandbox or tight single player experience, track or open-world, most can find twisted solace in agreeing on how _"racing games aren't doing too good these days"_ or some such. I wanted to say that the fans are at fault (for having too high of an expectation), but most big racing games can't even meet the bare minimum of standard set by the game that precede it. Personally, I think people are only able to get so heated about something because they truly care and love it at heart (or at least did). People say _"oh it's just outrage for outrage sake"_ or _"they're not really a fan",_ but this is *_the_* racing game community™, it is a fairly small niche, one has to be insane to even be outraged about racing games because lets face it, nobody outside of the community cares about racing games whatsoever. Ideally at the end of the road, we'll see the advent of even more indie/AA racing games made by frustrated devs that want to see their specific niche of racing game comes back, more variety of individual games focused on specific experience for fans of those specific niches (like Wreckfest my beloved). Worst case scenario is of course, nothing changes; the community just continues on the downward spiral as yet another unpolished/rushed/unfinished/underwhelming racing game releases. Either way hopefully this dark time will pass and we'll see a revival, a way out of this stagnation. I'm not that smart so I will proceed to be cautiously optimistic for the far future. I hope you will feel better soon™. Btw my hot take of the day is: NFS Rivals is the best Ghost studio NFS game (gameplay wise).

It’s so weird as well how the community (like the NFS community) was begging for a fresh game with a fresh style. And Criterion took a risk and created Unbound with its art style and aesthetics. Just from the trailer people kept clowning on it or just trashing the game in general. And even when the game came out, people kept trashing on various aspects of the game. Yes, no game is perfect and critiques are warranted. But I don’t get why they bother to hate on the game so much. And why people who have NEVER touched the game themselves already have such developed negative opinions on it. You’re right, right now it’s cooler to hate on racing games.

I just want more people to accept that, in my case, I love brake to drift games and recently those have been disappearing slowly Hell, even Need for Speed Unbound makes it feel like a joke I used to love it because it felt like dancing in the corners at high speed and EVERYONE is asking for more realism... In an arcade racer... Let us just have simple fun Damn it!

From idea standpoint, NFS Rivals is my favorite; open world with vehicular combat. Shame the "community" hated it so much and forced the dev never expanded that idea.

The NFS Community is the reason why racing games suck anymore and it's starting to fall apart because of the damn toxicity.

Thanks Jake for this refreshing video, I've felt somewhat similar in the last months, specially nowadays when discussing about our favorite topics stops being fun and instead becomes tiring. I really hope things turn out to be better in the future, not only for the games themselves but for the community aswell

I do agree with the idea of not caring about the opinions of greater communities. As of late, I have been replaying FH3 and it has been a great experience. It’s a great game if you can appreciate it for what it is. Back then, I set up unrealistic expectations as I engaged a lot with Forza subreddit back then. And yeah, reading others’ nitpicks about the game did lessen the experience. It was, as you said, a draining experience. It soured my experience with the game back then. Now that FH3 has been sunsetted, I do not put any expectation anymore. FH5 has turned into the focus of nitpicking now-a-days. I could finally experience the game for what it tries to be, without any external voices that would wrest MY opinion on the game. I am, however, quite sad that I couldn’t love the game during its heydays. It also made me realise a pattern: all of my favourite racing games are all games that I bought after they had been out after a while. NFS The Run, FM4, PGR4, and FH2 to name a few. I did not set absurd expectations on them, nor did I actively seek online discussions on these games. I didn’t notice their flaws since no one spelt them out for me, you know! That was an important lesson learnt: do not let others lessen your enjoyment. Sometimes it’s good to bury your head in the sand. I plan to do so when FM drops later this year.

I get that misery loves company, and some recent games aren't the most beloved, but wow. I've never seen such a massive, consistent amount of negativity in the last month alone in this community. Even KuruHS, one of the channels i looked up to the most, reacts to the same "Racing games are dead" video every two days. The negativity in this community makes pessimistic philosophers of the past look optimistic by comparison

I feel like gamers these days only play games just so they can complain about how it isn't like their childhood. Too stuck about how they had fun in the past, they can't have fun in the future anymore.

Like others have mentioned, this is really a broader cultural issue/ trend. This whole attitude of constant "disaffected" cynicism and criticism is very degrading, wears people down mentally with the unnecessary negativity and doesn't result in anything productive as people never give any alternative options/ genuine thoughts of visions for the future.

Right now, I don't want to join any gaming community. They are not really good. I try multiple games and multiple communities (include racing community). Most of them keep complaining about every single thing that is not really a problem to me. And I keep finding negative comments every day, draining my energy to enjoy my games. The day I left the community is the best decision in my life. It's not like every community is bad, but if some community has similar toxicity, just get out

tell me about it, everytime I see someone disrespecting mw2012 I just ignore it at this point and commet "cry more" instead of the 4 paragraphs I used to write instead

I would actually like to recommend you Cole Hastings' "The rise of NPCs: why critical thinking is dead" video because that shows what is mostly happening on all communities, not just gaming.

True, we can be dumb sometimes...

To be honest, Unbound is a great game, it gives me the vibe of Underground but the music is just off it doesn't have variety but that is just my opinion

I pretty much agree with what you have to say about this topic. While it's true that today's racing games have problems, but it's not like the older games have problems that took years to fix and/or change. With negativity being a game now, my big concern about it is that if this progresses, then we're going to see a lot cyberbullying and harassment in these discussions. Which is why I don't take part of these discussions anymore because it shows that they're not having fun with the game and it influences your opinion.

I've never felt this way cause I (usually in any community) don't follow the vast majority of which does this thus I never find myself with these negative issues. And honestly this isn't something new cause I've witnessed this happened to multiple communities. But in the end you are entitled to your own opinion and I respect your analysis on this matter.

I have not been really confronted with such events cause i stay out of Racing related communities cause i feel pressured to own the best new game and the most recent hard and software. That is to me draining. On the other hand i enjoy videos from you Jake. They are unique to me. But i notice in other communities that a lot of people will only read what they agree with or what they have come up with. Sort of elitism gets created and that is what also makes communities quite quickly toxic :( Thank you for explaining so many things 😊

Good video with some good points. I personally love racing games, FH2 on the Xbox 360(yes the really bad one) was my intro to gaming as a whole, and to this day my favorite genre is racing. I try not to listen too much to what others think, as at the end of the day opinions are opinions and if someone doesn’t like what I like or vice versa it’s whatever. Imo the big problem with the community these days is it’s too whiny. Whenever a new game or content is announced, recently it seems people just whine and cry about it not having exactly what they wanted or for not being exactly like the old games that get worshipped to no end (Forza Horizon 1, NFS:Most Wanted 2005,just to name a couple)

I used to be in the mindset "current nfs sucks because I saw the nfs mw 2 cuts" but quickly wear out my ownself. It's easy and addictive to hate things and people and rant about what could have happened but it's too unhealthy in the long run. When I decided to just stop and move on I felt refreshed I think imo it's not that people don't know about this it's that they're addicted to it so I really appreciate videos like these speaking about this unhealthy mentality

It's not just the racing game community it's gaming in general. However games, mtx's, and consoles are getting more expensive and inflation is a thing outside of gaming. So if they expect people to spend more money on their stuff, they should listen to actual feedback no matter if it's positive or negative. The people who make every problem seem like a huge issue or constantly say "dead game" as a joke should be ignored. But I wouldn't be honest if I didn't say some of these devs/publishers are almost constantly screwing over their fans. Story games however still try to do right most of the time because of a lack of MP.

It's really hard to be not angry when we're blindsided by 15 years of lackluster racing games and a industry mandate of making games live services (which none of us want) that cannot be sustainable with the cars themselves being licensing nightmares

If you enjoy something, you can still be critical of it. Sometimes the only way for developers to actually listen to a community concern is when said concern gains enough traction to have a video with decent traffic made on it. Developers these days basically have to be shamed into making any positive changes (looking at you, Turn 10/Playground), so I definitely understand the frustration on both ends.

I really can understand what you are pointing here, like really, and it's not only the racing games community but every other community like you said, i feel like people just want to hate everything about anything just so they can feel good with themselves or something like that idk. It's really frustrating to see people just going around just tossing trash and not enjoying what you can enjoy about any game or movie or whatever. Im not saying we can get to like things that are just plain wrong or something like that but damn. Thank you for doing this video im not really that good explaining myself in English but i hope you can understand.

5:19 i like need for speed payback, imo it has a better map than the last 2 nfs games yes i know the tuning is made around gambling. yes, i know the story is crap. yes i know the specific car for specific events isnt that well viewed. but the soundtrack, ong it just FITS, imo nfs paybacks soundtrack is the modern version of the nfs underground series soundtrack there it is, i've said it

People can get blinded by nostalgia and be stubborn to embrace newer games as they are. Sure, newer games have their issues, but simultaneously, older games had their own, and those can't go unoticed.

This video should also be directed to everyone who review-bombed Gran Turismo 7 over excessive grinding and the cars sold at the Legend Cars dealer being over 20 to 50 million credits. Those people are acting like their whole world will fall into chaos if game developers didn't make the games the way the community "wants them to". They're pushing their buttons. At least I have no delusions over the kind of racing games I wanted despite Need For Speed Most Wanted 05 still being the best NFS ever made that made me wish EA could go back to making fun racing games like old times instead of raving and ranting about the new ones like Dante Hicks blaming everyone for all the bad things that happened in his life. If they don't like the games, then why the hell did they buy it in the first place?

Oh thank God you posted this, I definitely agree with you on this. I try my absolute best to agree that the point of people talking negatively about the more recent NFS games yet they still secretly piss me off on the inside like I know NFS Unbound's not dying, it's just unfinished and Criterion are trying to take their time to help finish it in many possible ways in their future updates, yet people are that impatient of it that they call it dead instantly just because its updates are a little slow, yeah, but that doesn't mean they won't give Unbound the game post-launch support and live service updates/content to keep the game running, I am so glad you made this video, you make the best content 👍🏻

these are the same people who will still play the games they badmouth for tens if not hundreds of hours lmao the racing game genre is just that deprived of good alternatives (or alternatives in general)

Good to see game with the best online ever in the background

glad to see someone finally talking about this... hopefully people understand better

from a psychological aspect, I think that a lot of this negativity stems from disappointment after disappointment. a lot of racing game fans are burnt out, banging heads against the wall with everything from EA's "abandonment" of NFS Unbound, the achingly slow development of TDU SC (someone on Twitter said that they would believe it if someone told them that it was a money laundering scheme), the state of Forza Horizon, Gran Turismo 7's launch, no more true competitors to Need for Speed compared to 15-20 years ago when there was dozens of them, having to rely on indie devs and the list goes on. while I can understand the community's revolt against the state of racing games at the moment, I don't think that toxicity and constant bashing is the way to go. everyone should respect everyone else's opinions but they should also value their own opinion and not be afraid to say it. attacking devs and other racing game fans because they like Most Wanted 2012 or saying that they can actually squeeze some fun out of Forza Horizon's multiplayer is not it. everything needs to just calm the hell down. let's all enjoy racing games, old and new, arcade and sim, that's one of the things that brings us together in the first place.

Was enjoying NFS unbound but theres no button remapping (HOW??) and the default layout is awful so i had to refund it Wanted to play the new Crew game, but its not on Steam( HOW???) Ubisoft servers keep crashing to me

Hot take: Racing open worlds with big cities only work if the game is really arcade-y. If you put a huge city map in, lets say Forza Horizon, it will be boring and not as interesting. I'm open to have a section of the map being a big city, but not an entire map, as people were saying that they wanted a big city expansion that only had a big city in the map. The best city map was Paradise City from Burnout Paradise because it was an arcade racing game that had huge jumps and wacky routes.

Couldn't say it better myself! You're spot on, bro. There is too much freaking negativity going around. I can't stand it.

Exactly, while in many ways the newer games are worse than older ones, they are not bad games.

you know, you mentioning that the only way to say something that would be remembered would be making a video is relatable because when i want to talk about something and i typed a long text about it like the lack of creativity of racing game nowadays or invention that could shake shit up. people just ignore it.

The racing community is filled with old fans that are in this nostalgia that old games are better than the new stuff that we get like 1,000 times

I experienced some stuff that made me something wrong. There are other sides of the community that are toxic and that aren't. If it's something in misbeliefs, then they should keep it in themselves and not show it to anyone and do some unethical things against a person which is connected to their misbeliefs, which aren't true. Cynicism is not a good option for everyone.

Love your video bro keep the good work my dude love you dude

I know that I hate and disagree on so many stuff that you say but holy shit this video maybe the most agreeable thing you made in a year. I am saying it this gen is going to be another golden era for racing games, we already have got masterpieces like unbound, GT7 and grid legends, this gen is peak sim racing with GT7, ACC, WRC generations and others And this gen we got also indie devs that are doing great games too and they are racing games to relax on And this year and 2022 are just the racing games years we got NFS unbound, GT7, WRC generations, horizon chase 2, Dakar, grid legends, hotwheels unleashed 2, LEGO 2k racing, carX street, Night runners and so much others I hate that people everywhere are so negative about new racing games, even the freaking casuals that don't like cars are hating on them

Stuntfest is back. 💯🔥 and I'm having a blast playing it. 💯

I'm hope racing games make a huge change same thing with the entire community as a whole and hope that video games companies like Bandi Namco or sega (yes they still make racing games) and heck even ea make racing games that they want to make and are game-changing as a racing game fan who not a part of the community I'm really disappointed but I know that not all of them are like this but the entire racing game community needs to realize that racing games don't always have to realistic and also need to accept new things and move on and you don't need to join a community to do what you love the most you can still be a racing game fan without being part of the community and thanks jake for making this video beacuse this needs to said and as Kratos said it best.....WE MUST BE BETTER THEN THIS that's all I have to say.

I honestly agree with everything you said about the racing game community, Jake.

Sadly The Racing game community and Rockstar Community (E.g. GTA and Midnight Club) are don’t know how to respect people opinions

THANK YOU SO MUCH!

100% agree with this. Great video!

i like cars they exist

It's not about understanding bruh If you put something in game's trailer you should put it in the game on the release date. And it is true that racing games declined and recently the only blow of good time I've seen is Grid Legends. Though gonna admit NFS Unbound was so so close too

This is honestly a great take on the subject of excess bad takes and rampant negativity. To be fair, I am not part of any seriously large community online per say, so I am not as versed with dealing with excess negativity and cynicism online, yet.

Aw man. I’m so tired of seeing “the decline of racing games” videos and how anything made past 2011 is “trash”. People are getting too sucked up into these elitist subcultures that have no basis in reality - I get that it can be addicting to be part of such a community, but there’s really so little critical merit to most of their commentary that I can’t take them seriously. Good vid

Honestly, I couldn't agree more.

@JakeMG You should review nfs undercover for PS2/Wii versions

Here goes my retirement. This genre used to mean something great. Now its a train wreck. Hey i wish i could apologize but people simply wont let me do it. And because of this, im moving on from this genre and find me something else to do.

hows my favourite brah doing?

I think everyone are finally starting to realize the issues with racing/car games especially after the latest video from Raycevic. I believe I should do my piece on the matter too.

Just make good games that are finished

I've always thought getting angry at each other in a racing community is ridiculous. We should all be on the same page considering a lot of new racing games are without a doubt, ass.

holy fucking based

How the hell you do immediately jump to the conclusion it's a licensing issue? Porsche, Cadillac, and the the Chevy Corvette being removed from a Forza game? Both of those brands have been in the game for years. Assuming you have the money, these brands should be ridiculously easy to license nowadays for a racing game, especially a pre-established franchise that's been going on since 2005. Even if you want to point to livery sponsors and how those could be an issue, why can't they remove the specific logos on the livery until the properly secure the license? That's what Horizon 4 did with the Kenwood branding on the McLaren F1. They just removed the logo. It's what they're doing with the Ford Focus in the new FH5 DLC, although that's more likely due to censorship since it's an alcohol brand. If this was a brandwide issue, which it looks like it isn't, why else would these specific cars need to be removed? Is Porsche going to call up Turn 10 and be like "hey, yeah. no all of our other cars are fine. just those two SPECIFIC cars needs to go. yeah, you can't have that one." Unless this is the genuine case and Turn 10 accidentally tripped and scanned, designed, and programmed six ENTIRE cars they didn't secure the licensing for beforehand. SIX WHOLE CARS? And you know what? Fine, let's just say it IS a licensing issue. It could be the case, nothing's impossible. THEN CAN THEY AT LEAST FUCKING TELL US IT'S A LICENSING ISSUE? BECAUSE THE LOGIC IS SO FAR GONE WITH HOW THESE WORK. THERE'S NO CONSISTENCY WITH ANY OF THESE DEALS, YET EVERY SNARKY 12 YEAR OLD IN RACING GAME CIRCLES HAS THIS WEIRD AURA OF SUPERIORITY AND ACTS LIKE THEY KNOW HOW THEY WORK. NO ONE DOES, ESPECIALLY THE CONSUMERS. Don't immediately jump to conclusions with every little trip-up Forza has as a licensing issue. Who the fuck knows? They probably will be DLC and just pre-order bonuses or launch day car packs. Maybe they are free, but are part of some kind of launch season where they need to be obtained like the festival playlist. Forza's developers have shown how scummy they are with how they handle these things.

I wonder what Sadhgurus take on the racing game community might be?

I thought he said stop listening to racing game soundtrack for a sec

I think GT7 ultimately was the final blow to cause this toxic tipping-point where people have just lost all faith in modern racing games anymore... And I cant really blame them for it either...

São uns idiotas brigando eu prefiro jogo por diversão eu amo nfs world mesmo sendo jogo 10 anos atrás não fico falando mal dos outros e das coisas dos outros TD bem não posso gostar eu respeito de qualquer jeito de outro.

Yes let us all respect each other's unique opinions. THE CREW 1 IS THE BEST CAR GAME EVER!!!

nfs most wanted 2005 is so overrated

What really stinks is that when I mention an old racing game I get the same old response. "Blinded by nostalgia."

You wanna know why you're seeing a lot of people complaining about racing games being shit now? *Because they are.* And the more you ignore it and lap up the slop that is modern racing games, the worse they'll get.

- Makes a negative video essay on racing game one day. - Complains about the amount of video essays and negativity surrounding racing games the next day. ...Are you for real?