Project Motor Racing has a Nazi Problem

CW: This article contains links to articles and images that feature transphobic, homophobic, misogynistic and racist rhetoric. They have been included here as they are a necessary part in profiling the person this piece is talking about.

It was over the summer when talking about how Forza Horizon 5 is included in the BDS boycotts against Microsoft, I mentioned that "video games are not apolitical, and never were," and that the genres most devoid from being political up-front still have the reckon with the realities of their creators. The big recent example of this in terms of those creators was Ian Proulx, who wore a "Make Shooters Great Again" baseball cap during his presentation for online shooter Splitgate 2 at Summer Games Fest. The publicity stunt, with the hat mimicking one worn by fascist leader of the United States Donald Trump, drew the ire of everyone in the gaming community who saw through his antics before developer 1047 Games was hit with layoffs mere days later; no doubt an aftershock from Proulx being up front about being a fascist himself.

There is a reality to one developer in particular in the racing game space that has been glossed over in a big way ever since their game was announced, and when this person in particular was confirmed to be a major part of the development team. It is the climax of their involvement in the space after becoming a name of note within the racing game community for more than a decade now after initially making their name with a blog, not too dissimilar to this one, where they couldn't keep well enough alone about the truth of who they are. And even after the blog was shut down directly because of their actions, their conduct continued to leave nothing to the imagination through their tangents on YouTube and on X, the Everything App. It should also bring into question the character of the CEO of the game's developer too: whether or not he understands or cares that in having him on the team at Straight4 Studios, has effectively made it a Nazi Bar.

That game is Project Motor Racing, and the person in question is Game Design Director Austin Ogonoski. It's about time we talk about this.

Ten years ago, Ogonski and a friend who went by Sev launched pretendracecars.net and quickly became a force within the racing game space by becoming the genre's very own tabloid publication. For nearly three years, it was the slop that fed the hogs: digging and trudging as much dirt and drama as possible through forum posts, comment sections, tweets and the like with a big focus being the ongoing developments of new or ongoing titles like iRacing, Assetto Corsa, and Project CARS often in a scathing, condescending manner. Often a fixture of those pieces was criticism of Kunos Simulazioni co-founder Stefano Casillo and Slightly Mad Studios founder Ian Bell, and in doing so set themselves apart from the entire racing game media apparatus in the process. To say that the whole thing was toxic and criticism of the hobby they claimed to like was extreme wouldn't be a stretch of the imagination as much as they denied they had an axe to grind, especially with Austin often putting iRacing in his crosshairs in the midst of getting permanently banned for running paint schemes that went against terms of service. Did you know that he ran pedocon and Nazi dogwhistle liveries in iRacing and NASCAR Racing 2003? Do you remember the Racers for Trump logo that appeared on PRC for a time?

Intermittent with the chronicling each game's ongoing developments there were additional features that, for a lack of a better term, were Kiwi Farms forum threads masquerading as journalism. The two main profiles he brought to the fore were Jason Jacoby and Josh Martin, eventually getting BlackFlagsMatter to do videos on Jacoby which used Ogonoski's own video and information throughout, notably because by this point pretendracecars.net had been shut down. After years of being on the soapbox, and even calling him a clown despite enjoying Project CARS, the hypercritical nature did catch the eye of Ian Bell who thought such a nature and his experience could be of use. He had caught the eye to such a degree that Ian brought Ogonoski onto the development team for Project CARS 2, supplied him a new computer and hardware, and even went so far as to sponsor Ogonoski in his bid to race a late model stock car in his native Alberta. This would prove complicated, as the venture would quickly prove a conflict of interest with Austin's relationship with iRacing while working for the competition with Ian, allegedly, tired of dealing with the backlash of still having PRC active and it's owner on his development team. Ian and Austin decided, after Ian bought his most fierce critic, that it would be best to simply pull the plug in early December 2017.

This was eight years ago, with Austin still active today on X and YouTube. Included in that was an impromptu discussion with Ian Bell while playing the original Colin McRae Rally three years ago where Ian brought up the fact that Austin Ogonoski is a transphobe and a homophobe and that Ian, "does not give a fuck about your politics, I care how good you are at your job." This discussion would continue with Ogonoski asking, "why wouldn't large corporations want that diversity of opinion to make even more money?" with Ian Bell answering by saying, "you're not allowed to be right wing these days," with Ian continuing on by saying "...the far-left have become more Nazi than the far-right." Perhaps it shouldn't be a surprise that Ian Bell would want to keep Ogonoski around if that is his philosophy on so-called "diversity of opinion" where the diversity includes making sure fascists are included at the dinner table. A little more than a year later, Ogonoski would be formally introduced as Game Design Director at Straight4 Studios and was a part of the development team on Project Motor Racing.

Let's take a bit more of a look at those opinions at hand, courtesy of the Wayback Machine having a majority of pretendracecars.net archived and his personal Facebook and X accounts. Beyond the transphobia, homophobia, usage of nazi dogwhistles, to little surprise Austin Ogonoski is also a gamergater: supporting the targeted harassment, abuse and doxxing campaign by 4chan users against feminist and more inclusive voices within the gaming community after false accusations regarding journalistic malpractice were first made against Zoë Quinn. The common Trojan-horse strategy of gamergaters was to make it about that journalistic malpractice, as a pretense to how gaming was no longer a male-dominated space and a rallying cry to keep their hobby about them and their interests, with Ogonoski writing about that Trojan-horse on multiple occasions, and generally bemoaning conduct that the far-right associated as the actions of social justice warriors.

Similarly, Ogonoski is staunchly anti-feminist: boiling it down to "a bunch of women with various mental illnesses thinking that all men on the planet are conspiring to oppress them," and said "feminism is a synonym for nutjob," one paragraph later. On his Facebook, he has posted transmisogistic comments, calling it a "identity disturbance" and a "personality disorder" and posted transphobic content from far-right think tank PragerU and stochastic terrorist Libs of Tik Tok. He declared Kyle Larson's 2021 NASCAR Cup Series Championship campaign a "revenge tour" in lieu of failing upwards to Hendrick Motorsports and winning the championship after losing his ride at Chip Ganassi Racing after saying a racist slur during a iRacing race years prior, and made a mockery of Bubba Wallace in the process in lieu of the incident that took place at Talladega in 2020. And this was just what I was able to dig up.

As Maya Angelou once said, 'When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.'

We move back to the present day. We are about three weeks away from the release of Project Motor Racing on PC and consoles and so far removed from these realities being within the consciousness in the space that Austin Ogonoski has been renormalizied within the racing space, often seen in the comments at overtake.gg and cited in articles for PMR on both overtake and traxion.gg. But there hasn't been any attempt to reconcile for the past, and instead has further entrenched himself within the far-right while Ian Bell hasn't done anything in resolving the matter being the CEO he works under. It brings into question the morals and ethics of Ian Bell by not caring that he is now so closely affiliated with a Nazi and a Donald Trump supporter, and now how Project Motor Racing has to carry the burden of the reality that it's being developed by, functionally, a Nazi developer.

If there is one Nazi game developer in the room with ten other people working with them, how many Nazi game developers are there on the team?

Perhaps there should be lines that are never crossed, even in a genre most perceived as being apolitical in a world that can never be that. Perhaps not buying the Nazi racing game should be a pretty easy line to not cross, just an idea.

And besides, with the niche Project Motor Racing is seeking to fill, you can just get Automobilista 2 and not have to worry about crossing that line in the first place.