Beyond Rennsport.. What *Is* The Point of All This?

Nearly a year ago when this fantasy became reality in a form never seen before, one of the things I wanted to do with Powerhouse Takahashi was to have a place where we can go a little deeper into the world of racing games. We need places and people that are willing to go beyond face value, and importantly be willing to fit racing games within the broader video game landscape and the world at large. If there is ever a space that needs contextualization with the real world, it is video games and more so those genres that feel the most sheltered away from reality or most seen as an escape from that reality.

In a conversation I had with friend of The Powerhouse aleXis Core, she asked me about what I think the task of journalism to be and what should a website, blog, YouTube channel, etc should aspire to be when fitting into the specific spaces that we find ourselves in. A part of the answer I gave her thinks about the idea that we, as human beings, are intrinsically curious beings: we are curious of the world we find ourselves in, find other people in, and how we and other people got to specific points in time and space and the events that resulted. A part of the beauty and task of journalism is to move that curiosity out of the abstract, and put it into a language that can be openly interpreted by other people who are as curious about the topic at hand through learning and understanding how we got to this situation in the first place.

A part of the art and beauty of journalism is being able to go deeper into topics and conversations in how it finds itself in a broader picture when we allow ourselves to be curious, though it's not often the case in the world of racing games. It's not always easy when my peers have strict no politics rules as a part of their content guidelines for users, which no doubt extends to the editorial guidelines over at Overtake.GG. When there came a chance to address an elephant in the room, as was the case back in November, they couldn't and had to feign ignorance to a Neo-Nazi they gave relevance and reverence to. But I'm not talking about Project Motor Racing this time, because I want to address a recent column by Luca Munro regarding Rennsport titled What Is The Point Of Rennsport?.

It's the rare time that Overtake.GG asks one of those elephant in the room questions about the game that I noted was simply here back in December: why go for this one in particular? Why go for Rennsport in 2026 when it's failed to give itself a stated purpose after it's partnership with the Saudi Public Investment Fund-owned ESL came to a close? Answering that question is hard, when it does circle the same drain as most of it's competition without giving itself much of a leg to stand on unless you purely want to drive the restomod HWA Evo.R before it presumably makes it's way to Raceroom. I tend to agree with a use case put up by Luca in having it be an ideal place to race on consoles if Gran Turismo and it's ilk simply aren't what you are looking for; especially when the things that make Gran Turismo what it is and always has been gets in the way of what some people claim they want. If you want to race the driest, most soulless expression of the realistic racing experience on consoles and you don't want to give Ian Bell your money, sure: Rennsport does tick that box, though it does need to do more off-track to give people a reason to then go on-track. As I said back in December, Rennsport is the lowest common denominator of all the realistic racing games on the market and not much has changed.

But I feel like the question that we should be asking of Luca is why are we asking 'What's the point of Rennsport' now, in the middle of 2026? Why would we be asking this question now well after the goose has well and truly been cooked, and the runway for it's future seems limited? In the beginning when Rennsport was still wet behind the ears, ESL partnership in hand, there was a more concrete place for it to stake territory, though it still had an almighty mountain to climb as it's was going directly in the same space as iRacing and Raceroom. In looking at the mountain of viability Rennsport wanted to climb, that question could have been asked when it was fresh and new and was clear it was entering a busy pond as a fish with little to allow it to uniquely survive, and thrive. But rather than asking those necessary questions when they would have had the most positive impact, we're left with what feels like a given obituary ahead of time before an untimely demise.

What's going to happen now when investors start calling Rennsport CEO Morris Herbecker and he doesn't have an answer about a potential return? What kind of return is Rennsport even going to get, especially so far removed from it's original goal and purpose? Why wasn't 'What's the point of Rennsport' asked more when there was a chance to give it a point in these last few years?

It is however easy just to focus on the face value of the games themselves, and the capitalistic competition that then has to take place that will then decide if any of these games have a purpose or a point. In many ways it was always going to be an uphill battle that Rennsport was simply never going to win, so why point out the fact that it hasn't won? If we ask plainly "What is the point of Rennsport" or any of the other games in this market space the answer is to make money for it's investors, but that's not the kind of answer that Overtake nor Traxion are ever going to give. They have to give it in the context of the genre itself, not of the outside world that we all live in.

Wanting a return on investment for the shareholders is the easy part, the line has to go up does it not? In this case, the resulting product of that investment is a realistic racing game that people will buy, race in, and presumably enjoy. The nature of that enjoyment is subjective: depending on what the individual wants, feels, and gets as a response from what they put in based on what the game tells them. But it has to have an obvious reaction to that subjectivity, that's how you continue to get people in the door to buy in. That subjectivity and the wanton for it to become objective, has defined the way this end of the racing game spectrum has always been and it was always going to result in games that broadly drive the same, with the similar rosters of cars and tracks that they all have today. Capitalism does not breed innovation, but it sure can sell you the same bottle of water under numerous different brands.

In that, perhaps, brings forward my biggest frustration with the piece penned by Luca or this comment penned by fellow Overtake contributor Yannik Haustein: why are we asking what is the point of any of these games when we've taken for granted why we do this in the first place? ' "To have fun" or "to have an enjoyable experience" ' continues to look at the act of virtual racing at face value and treats the games, and us, as a commodity for capitalist to extract capital out of. To get beyond that, and the idea of plainly to have fun, we have to realize there's plenty of yes and to go around and be able to break free.

Simply put, the only over genre of video game that can replicate something done in the real world to this level of precision and authenticity is the flight simulator. That is where we are at with realistic racing games, now more than ever as the technological refinement regarding direct drive wheels has grown leaps and bounds since their first introduction in the last decade. There is of course things that will always be amiss compared to the real deal: as forces put through the body of a actual driver have to instead be translated through the wheel and the screen in the hope that the user interprets them the same way. To say that developers have gotten very good at that nailing that translation is correct, though that constant capitalistic drive for more will dictate there is always more room to chase a perfection that will never be realized, as developers will never perfect the dark art of tires in the first place. But in looking at all that, look at what we are able to do now, and what we have always been able to do when trying to realistically race in the virtual world.

We can live lives that, through the massive financial cost to actually race, that we otherwise would not be able to. We can race icons of our youth and see if we could best Jeff Gordon or Sebastian Loeb when they were at their very best; because they will always be at their very best in this moment and we have to live up to that to make our inner child proud. We can ask questions unfulfilled, and race cars on tracks that simply won't happen in the real world instead of just doing the obvious thing and doing what does just happen in the real world. We can push the limits of cars that we believe can do more, and push ourselves to the very bleeding edge of what physics and the human body are capable of. Except, we don't have to worry about blacking out from the G-load of a Champcar at Texas Motor Speedway. We can travel back in time, go to the 1960s and earlier, and experience a whole different world of racing without having to fear dying from an errant steering input or something breaking. But it doesn't even need to go to those extremes, as we can go on adventures and travel the world in ways we otherwise can't. You can team drift with people all across the world at Nikko Circuit without taking the flight, or living in Japan. You can cruise the Pacific Coast Highway at your leisure if you're like me and refuse to go to the United States on principal. You can do whatever your mind takes you, and we can't take for granted any of that; and this is before the other creative outlets of car culture that racing and driving in the virtual world can similarly provide.

There is so much enjoyment and pleasure with the automobile that is on offer in the virtual world that not everyone has the chance, or the privilege to do in the real one. To race in the virtual world, through a realistic scope or otherwise, isn't just fun: it's freedom. It's that freedom that we've forgotten when the main talking points are bickering about if a game is a "simcade" or not, if there's a so-called "point" to a game or any game, and about incidents on track rather than the good times that are had along the way with friends and foes alike. It's that freedom we've forgotten when we're so busy trying to make things so realistic that we've made the virtual racing just as boring as what we see on any given Sunday. That's the point of all of this, including Rennsport; it's more than just fun at face value, but we need to give that room to breathe, room to grow and to go beyond the idea of absolute realism being the way things have to be and the false peak that it strives for so that the line can continue to go up. Then, the freedom that is racing in the virtual world is about will be let free.

For all of that to matter, and mean something in spite of the feeble attempts to give virtual racing a purpose by the powers that be, we have to remain curious. We have to be open with being curious about what is possible out there in the world of virtual racing and the communities that can be created, instead of just letting the obvious and mundane be what dictates how we are when we do race. There will be always a time and a place for pick-up and play organized racing where the car and track combo is laid out for you, but there is so much more on offer. The trick then comes when we have to look at what's out there, and be able to create something more than just the sum of it's parts.

It's just that in Rennsport's circumstance, for it to be more than the sum of it's parts requires it to actually try to be more than that. And that is something that is a challenge, when normally that is good enough if you're Overtake.gg.