Interview with SimBin, Award-winning Developer of RACE Games

I recently caught up with the renowned Swedish developer SimBin about RACE On, the latest title in the company’s RACE series. Launched in October, RACE On is the only official game of two of the world’s biggest touring car spectacles; the World Touring Car Championship (WTCC) and the Swedish Touring Car Championship (STCC). The game has highly detailed driving and utilizes the features on the Logitech G27 Racing Wheel to full effect. Here are some excerpts from an interview with Jay Ekkel, a member of the development team:

Q: What is the advantage of playing RACE On with the Logitech G27 Racing Wheel? How do you use the RPM indicator LEDs?

A: The G27 lets you experience every feedback from the game so that weight transfer, grip and subtle hints from the track surface are felt with realism. With proper feedback, like on the G27, you’re able to react quickly to what the car is doing and get totally immersed in the game. The RPM LEDs are a nice addition to the G27 – we use these in RACE On as an indicator of the optimal timing to shift up. During speed build-up, the LEDs are used as any RPM light, and on optimal gear shift timing the LEDs will start blinking, indicating time to shift up.

Q: Describe your favorite feature of the game or a feature that gives it more depth than other similar games?

A: Easy to drive, hard to master. Anyone can drive a car, but it becomes interesting when you start pushing the car to its limits. We have used this philosophy during the development of our games, and it comes out very strong. You can pick up and play our games, but to be the fastest you will need to push the car to its limits. This make it very exciting to play.

Q: When you and your dev team find yourselves running on empty, what is your fuel of choice?

A: Pizza and a huge amount of sweet candy mixed with some red bull have dragged us through the crunch periods. Besides that, the team spirit and motivation to keep our high standards has helped us through many long and hard crunch periods. But every time it was worth it!

For the full interview, go to: www.facebook.com/logitechgaming

Author

Director Of Innovations & Strategy at Logitech