Assetto Corsa EVO, Lost to Gentrification

Gentrification can be described as the process in which a neighborhood changes, as more affluent people move into historically under-invested or disinvested areas. This is often brought on by the displacement of the communities, often full of marginalized people who have lived in the area for generations, through government policy or forced displacement so that new money and investment can be brought to an area to further support private equity, the land and business-owner classes, and power. Of course there are some benefits that occur in this process, such as the potential increase of necessary infrastructure to an area, but it often comes at the displacement of the communities and the people who could most often benefit from having access to those things such as fresh food, healthcare and public transit. The secondary tragedy in this act of displacement is that a lot of the culture, character, and uniqueness that were created by the area's prior residents get wiped away en masse. Those shops, cultural hubs and stories that make a neighborhood it's own get priced out of the market as new money often brings in contemporary competition that's able to undercut what mom-and-pop businesses can similarly provide. Those businesses then close down, the rent increases overnight, and something with new money and lacking the same cultural soul will take it's place.

But.. what does that look like in racing games?

To start we need to look at the real world, as that is where racing titles of all shapes and sizes will derive the building blocks of their game: being the car list. Twenty years ago saw the beginning of the transition that the humble car list would have within the world of the contemporary realistic racing game. Manufactures instead of having varied and unique racing programs to their own slowly began to amalgamate under common principals. Bespoke regulations unique to certain regions started to be replaced with global formulas and ideologies that shunned homegrown parts and products. Touring car racing fell out of favor after manufactures simply stopped making smaller cars, with rallying now not far behind. Underdogs making their own racecars to suit have been effectively priced and legislated out of being allowed to race. New racing games had to follow suit to this new reality that had endurance racing and sports car racing be big business for manufactures; who now have the additional infrastructure in place to make real money out of the venture instead of merely using it as a part of a Halo Marketing strategy. More specifically, GT3 racing has become the class of choice across the world for sportscar racing, with some of it's core structures and principals being prevalent within the current Hypercar regulations at Le Mans and within the construction of the Next Gen car for the NASCAR Cup Series.

This form of gentrification can be seen in the car lists that such racing games now have, and the demands that are now expected in terms of features and their gameplay. The emphasis shifted towards fully realistic, competitive, online racing that had to be fair and balanced at all costs; with endurance racing now being raced as an all-out 24 hour sprint. Substantive single player campaigns that allowed people of all experience levels to play at their own pace got shelved or were an afterthought. GT3s and Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps became the cars and track that got the most participation, outside of iRacing's Daytona 24 special event that replicates the real race, regardless of if it was actually a fun race to do. Everything had to be this and games that prided itself on regional specialties eventually had to yield to capitalistic demands which kill true innovation and uniqueness; with games that aren't about pure, hardcore racing now having to deal with a very vocal minority demanding it's in the game's best interest if they followed the trends, became fully gentrified, and deliberately lose what made them truly unique. This has been a battle at the core of the Gran Turismo community in the last decade, and now has taken a heartbreaking turn in regards to the future of Assetto Corsa EVO.

On February 3rd it was announced on the official Assetto Corsa Evo Discord server, not in a formal press release, that the future development direction had been significantly changed. AC Evo's original single player structure, built around an in-game economy and experienced-based progression using an open-world environment taking place in the Eifel region of Germany and a Driving Academy tutorial mode, has been completely scrapped. While the open world remains as a side feature, the game's single player now fully revolves around the game's Driving Academy with there now being an added emphasis on online competitions and leaderboards for it's multiplayer. In short, everything that made Assetto Corsa EVO truly unique, have a character and a soul of it's own, and a true purpose that stands it apart from the rest of the realistic end of the racing game expression has been torn away and replaced by the same fundamentals and structures that define it's gentrified kin within the genre.

Assetto Corsa EVO was not necessarily meant to be a direct sequel to the original, or to replace Assetto Corsa Competizione in terms of being the franchise's home for competitive online racing. With that emphasis on free roam driving that can do contemporary racing when the moment calls for it, AC EVO filled a demand on PC that no one else dared to try and puts the original Assetto Corsa's main draw firmly into the spotlight. The original Assetto Corsa truly shone when people stopped trying to treat it like a contemporary racing game, and let it's modding capabilities truly sing. Assetto Corsa is at it's best when it's allowed to be expressed through the scope of open world driving, through places like cities and California canyons. The Shutoku Revial Project is one of the greatest mods for any racing or driving game: giving people a chance to drive Tokyo's famous highways in a fully realistic environment that had never been seen before. Similarly, AC's strengths with road cars and open road driving opened it up to be the ideal place on PC for touge battles and drifting with many road car mods having options for performance upgrades to suit such driving cadences. If you wanted a pure, hardcore racing experience, every other game on the market was a better choice; buoyed by the fact that Assetto Corsa didn't have a complete set of rules and procedures to fit typical racing and was never updated to fit those demands and it's artificial intelligence was woeful compared to the competition. So what was truly wrong with making a follow-up that formally integrated the best part of Assetto Corsa's modding scene? It's a modding scene that is truly unique to AC that should be championed, and not just a continuation of what was being done on rFactor.

Within the scope of realistic racing games, those that strive to make their own path should be championed for doing so, and doubly so for something that's a PC exclusive. Gran Turismo remains the champion for this, having it's original ethos effectively be if Hot Version had been turned into a video game before becoming the virtual automotive museum that it is today with Gran Turismo 7. There are those in that vocal minority that think the future direction of GT7 should follow the precedents that Gran Turismo Sport had at launch: with the single player being an afterthought and all the emphasis being on online play with GT3 and GT4-adjacent racecars. In the post-launch updates that followed however, much of Polyphony Digital's efforts were made were put into making it into a Gran Turismo game again. That persistent effort in adding single player races across a vast variety of road cars payed dividends, allowing GTS to be a fully capable video game for more than just that chosen audience with much of the same happening to GT7. With other contemporary realistic racing games getting more up to date race car offerings, their demands for GT to follow suit grew louder instead of simply playing the games that had them instead. More on that at another time.

This was the chance for Assetto Corsa EVO to make it's mark in a similar way to what GT originally did to an audience that never had such a game in their hands. A driving game that drives with a fully realistic expression that has a single player that takes you through some of the best driving roads in Europe earning money and experience that allows you to unlock faster or truly special road and race cars is a dream video game waiting to happen for a lot of people. Having Kunos Simulazoni attempt to follow through after realizing the potential that existed via those free roam mods in the original was a venture worth paying into for a lot of people. They didn't want to see yet another game exist in the same space as iRacing, RaceRoom, Le Mans Ultimate, Assetto Corsa Competizione, Automobilista 2, rFactor 2, Project Motor Racing or Rennsport; there was room for something to try and truly carve it's own path. There was room for a game that championed the more pure art of driving that hadn't been fully realized in this way yet, and that got a lot of people excited to see what was to become of AC Evo. Except now, they effectively got rugpulled to bankroll a game that nobody had asked for in this new capacity. Those people deserve a lot better than this, and ideally Steam will let them get their refunds.

These next few weeks and months are going to be key for the future of both Kunos Simulazioni and for Assetto Corsa EVO. They have effectively betrayed their community that's wanted a video game in this capacity on PC for an incredibly long time, and are instead making a game that doesn't bring anything new to the table to appease an audience that already has a king's ransom of options at their disposal. If I wanted to play a contemporary realistic racing game with all the latest bells and whistles, why would I want to play an untested title that's struggling through Early Access? With the defining feature of AC Evo now being effectively meaningless, and no real mod support yet active, how do they think whatever the game becomes will be successful in the shadow of ever improving competition? Who scared them into thinking that a single player campaign that more general video game players would want to play was not worth their time in developing?

My mind's eye had Assetto Corsa Evo being a dream game for car and driving enthusiasts, not as a pure sim racing game. Perhaps the Career Mode could have given you a chance to work up towards being a manufacture's top test driver, which would include chances to race for them at the Nürburgring and abroad? I think there was something truly incredible there, and something everyone could enjoy at their own pace regardless of their skill level or what difficulty they play racing games at. It just needed time, focus, and direction to make it happen; things I'm not so sure Kunos Simulazioni have had for a very long time.

But back to where this all began. Hardcore realistic racing games are a fully gentrified space within the racing genre presently. Those that don't fully present themselves within that strict GT3-focused expression while still driving realistically are often looked down upon or scorned by those who have cheered on this current boom period of titles that all do effectively the same thing. The problem being, most of these sim racing titles are poor video games that deliberately alienate vast audiences where winning or losing doesn't matter to them as much as long as they're having fun. Sim racing is suppose to be fun! Let people have fun with their realistic driving, instead of gentrifying everything to look, sound, and race like GT3s at Spa-Francorchamps or an unlicensed Formula 1 car racing at Monza.

Because this current trend of gentrification within the realistic racing space has left nothing to the imagination, caused harm to the genre at large, and exposed the realities of a sub-genre that needs to stop acting like it's better than everyone else.