The F1 Games and why they are going to die

The F1 game franchise is an annual series released by Codemasters, with each game following the F1 season that the game is released during. Each installment to the franchise promises to be bigger and better than the previous, but promises can't always be kept. Though this game is solid when it comes to the single-player modes such as Career, the same cannot be said with multiplayer with bugs, cheaters and an unrealistic handling model causing the game to almost lose it's eSports appeal.

Esports appeal is one of the most important parts when it comes to a sim-racing game. With games such as iRacing, Assetto Corsa Competizione, and more infamously, rFactor, all thriving in terms of player count and hours spent on the game. With the amount of money the high-end players earn due to their skill and participating in competitions, a casual player would be determined to grind and keep playing the games in hopes that maybe one day, they can make a living out of doing what they love.

A key factor in keeping these players engaged is having a handling model that is realistic as compared to real life racing cars so as to make it feel like as though they can drive these cars without needing to spend money or time to actually become a real racing driver. However, this cannot be said for the F1 game franchise as it is a simcade, a mix of it being an F1 simulator, as well as an arcade game. Though that is not a problem with franchises such as the Forza franchise thriving off of this, the F1 handling model is way far off the real life F1 cars. Many people have been criticizing Codemasters' new installment, F1 22, for changing their handling model after they had got it right. With cars being even more prone to sliding, which is realistic to F1, but in the 90s as now cars are much more easier to control and drive around which has led many F1 players into using the Assetto Corsa mods that are much more easier, fun and realistic to drive instead. So if the handling model keeps being unrealistic, players may not want to keep playing the game as it does not really feel like a real F1 car.

Another crucial factor into making the sim-racers want to keep playing is, of course, a stable multiplayer. No multiplayer game can be bug-free or perfect, but most good multiplayer games can still be played and enjoyed with other players in spite of the present bugs. In F1's case however, a multiplayer bug called 'desync' caused the multiplayer mode to be unplayable for months on F1 2021. With the most notable instances being PSGL, the most famous F1 league, having to be suspended due to a race at Monza where the desync was too much for players, and even commentator George Morgan, to handle.

As for F1's latest installment, desync is still present, not as prominent as before, but still present. A prominent issue however, is the game crashing. Game crashes are bound to happen at least once, but if it crashes twice during an event and costs your race, players may start to wonder what the point is of playing if they cannot even get a chance by the game to showcase their craft. This happened to F1 eSports driver Bari Boroumand during another PSGL event, where he disconnected from the game not once, but twice! He went on to twitter posting frustrated tweets saying "Why am i keep playing this game????" and "Hahahahahahah nah im done" when he disconnected again.

If a sim-racing game that could make people's careers, can't even have a stable platform for them to showcase their abilities and get them to be recognized and make a name for themselves, then people will not play the game and lead it to die. A more recent case famously happened at the Virtual 24 Hours of Le Mans in rFactor where 2-time real life F1 champion Max Verstappen, got disconnected several times from the race and was forced to retire, leading him to lose $500,000 and to go on a rant on how ridiculous the situation was, with a majority of the sim-racing community going on to say that rFactor is not a good enough game to host these kind of big events. If a big enough influence like Verstappen were to say such things on F1's official games in all it's problems, it could die out like rFactor has since Verstappen's wrath.

A more recent issue that comes to light, are players who cheat in events. A case that highlighted this was during the F1 Creator Series where a driver in an Alfa Romeo used grip hacks during the event to give him an advantage over others and was on eSports level pace in his pole position time. Having that pace obviously does not mean that you are cheating, but it's in the way that he got the pace. Grip hacks were evident in how he avoided the apexes, which is usually the optimal line through corners, and still gained time from using the suboptimal line.

If this kind of cheating is present in big events such as the Creator Series, players may question if it's also present in eSports races and the legitimacy of the competitors in the competitive side of the F1 game which may make them demotivated to carry on playing the F1 game as they may put their time and devotion into being skilled at the game, only to be beaten by somebody who is using less effort to be fast by simply using cheats. A simple and obvious solution would be to implement and anti-cheat system in the F1 games, but for some reason, there isn't any yet and if it's not introduced as soon as possible, the F1 games may lose it's appeal of being a serious eSports game.

All in all, the F1 game franchise has a good chance of falling off if the issues above aren't fixed. As video games through the years are starting to appeal more to players who are willing to play competitively and earn a living out of it, Codemasters and EA have to make an effort to make sure that their multiplayer modes can run smoothly and trouble free for at least 90% of the time as otherwise, sim-racers may switch to alternatives such as iRacing, who have their own variation of the F1 cars which players praise for being more realistic than the F1 game, or Assetto Corsa where fans can make their own F1 cars as mods and have an even better experience playing it there than on the official F1 game.