Paul “Rushy” Rustchynsky is the newest high-profile addition to join Slightly Mad Studios this year as the studio looks to strengthen its team and product line.

Paul made the announcement on his Twitter feed on August 28th: “Today is the beginning of my new adventure at Slightly Mad Stu-dios! I’ll be joining as Game Director on a project & I can’t wait to share more about what’s to come,” he wrote.

Paul has been a celebrity game designer within the racing genre for a decade now, serving as director at Evolution Studios, where he en-joyed much critical and commercial success with heavyweight racing games Motorstorm and Driveclub, before shifting over to developing the much-anticipated Onrush that was released earlier this year.

Paul brings 15-years of top-flight experience to Slightly Mad Studios, having begun his career in QA, cutting his teeth in game development at Codemaster’s before his stint at Evolution Studios brought him worldwide fame.

GAMEVIL AND SLIGHTLY MAD STUDIOS SEE THE FINISH LINE WITH PROJECT CARS GO

ISSUE 2 | VOLUME 1 | YEAR 2018

INDUSTRY LEGEND PAUL “RUSHY” RUSTCHYNSKY JOINS SLIGHTLY MAD STUDIOS

SlightlyMAD W rld

Pete Morrish, Director of Production at Slightly Mad Studios, took a few minutes to give a behind-the-scenes look at the current state of develop-ment on Project CARS GO.

The game will be the Project CARS franchise’s debut on mobile. To get it right, the studio is working closely with mobile game specialists Gamevil.

Find out about the challenges of bringing the Project CARS franchise to the mobile space along with a new MADNESS Touch engine here.

Nic Hamilton at the Autosport Awards

Slightly Mad Studios handling consultant Nic Hamilton was at the all-star Autosport gala to pick up brother Lewis Hamiton’s British Competition Driver and International Racing Driver of the Year awards, presented by Pirelli Autosport. “The 2018 Autosport Awards is always a great occasion,” said Nic, “and it was a fantastic opportunity for me to get on stage in front of the ‘Motorsport World’ and announce my 2019 plans in the British Touring Car Championship (BTCC). It was a very proud and special moment.” Nic Hamilton has been working with Slightly Mad Studios for close on half-a-decade, and has been celebrated for his inspirational fight against cerebral palsy.

GAMEVIL AND SMS ON THE VERGE OF REDEFINING RAC-ING GAMES ON MOBILE

PROJECT CARS GO

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OLIVER ERIKSSONRALLYCROSS WORLD CHAM-PION & SMS CONSULTANT

STEPHENBAYSTEDAWARD-WINNING COMPOS-ER WHO SCORES THE MUSIC

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BRINGING CLEAN WATER TO COMMUNITIES IN NEED AROUND THE GLOBE

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WATERAID,SMS, & WMD

INDUSTRY LEGEND BRING-ING HIS UNIQUE VISION TOSLIGHTLY MAD STUDIOS

PAULRUSTCHYNSKY

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BUSINESS-TO-BUSINESS IOTECH GETS UP TO SPEED

iOTECH

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Pay it ForwardSLIGHTLY MAD STUDIOS DONATES £48,000 TO WATERAID

Slightly Mad Studios has donated £48,000 to international char-ity WaterAid.

The company chose to support WaterAid with this donation in order to make a positive contribution towards delivering clean water, decent toilets, and good hygiene for everyone, every-where.

The funds were donated through some of the revenue gener-ated from a community-based funding system developed by Slightly Mad Studios and their WMD (“World of Mass Develop-ment”) initiative.

Members could choose to take the final payment or donate to a charity that helps transform the lives of children, and WaterAid was the chosen beneficiary.

Marcus Missen, Director of Communications and Fundraising at WaterAid, said: “We are hugely grateful to Slightly Mad Studios and the members of their World of Mass Development initiative for their generous donation to WaterAid.“Every single day, around 800 children die from diarrheal diseas-es caused by a lack of clean water and decent toilets. Improving access to these basic services transforms lives—keeping children healthy and in school, and giving their families the time and op-portunity to earn a living. Just £15 can get one person clean wa-ter, and so the money raised by Slightly Mad Studios really will make a big difference to lives around the world.” (READ ON)

The global esports market, which is set to be worth over $2 billion by 2023, was firmly on the agenda at IBC2018.The challenges and opportuni-ties that global esports repre-sent were examined across the IBC Show, with events looking at media rights, sustainable commercial models, as well as the technologies and services required to support the rapid growth of the sector.

As esports engage a younger demographic along with rising revenues, traditional broad-casters are faced with new, in-dustry-disrupting challenges.

How esports is challenging the traditional sports sector for the elusive 18-to-25 demo-graphic was paramount to the discussions, as well as what the future holds for esports partnerships, players, and broadcasters alike.

Delegates also had the oppor-tunity to take part in the IBC esports racing challenge that featured a full Project Cars 2 simulator on which visitors, delegates, and exhibitors test-ed their skills on the Slightly Mad Studios-developed game. (More here)

Veloce Esports, a pro esports team and consultancy agency, launched their “esports racing hub” in London this August. The venue, which runs the Project CARS game, features a state-of-the-art 200-degree full-motion simulator.

Veloce Esports was co-found-ed by Formula E champion Jean-Eric Vergne, who uses the venue to train and lives-tream elite racing events. (More here)

The Inter-School esports Championship, organized by Gamer.LK and powered by Dialog Gaming, was held on 22nd & 23rd September 2018 at the Trace Expert City Bay 7 in Colombo, featuring Pro-ject CARS. This tournament was open to all students in Sri Lanka, and you can read how this initiative combines with IT seminars to open-up the world of technology and the future to Sri Lanka’s kids here.

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SLIGHTLY MAD NEWSFROM AROUND THE GLOBE

SLIGHTLY MAD NEWSFROM AROUND THE GLOBE

ESPORTS AT IBC18 SHOW

WORLD’S FIRST ESPORTS RACING HUB WITH

THEINTER-SCHOOLESPORTSCHALLENGE SRI LANKA

Stephen Baysted, Sound and Music Director at Slightly Mad Studios, is an award-winning media composer in the games, film, and television industries. The 49-year-old has composed music scores and designed sound for a string of award-winning games, numerous film scores, as well as for TV for Channel 5, PBS, and the Smithsonian.

Stephen has also composed music for radio adverts, including high-profile campaigns for Budweis-er, McDonald’s, Samsung, and Pizza Hut. He has been nominated for two Motion Picture Sound Ed-itors ‘Golden Reel’ Awards, three Jerry Goldsmith Awards, two Game Audio Network Guild Awards, two Golden Joystick Awards, and is the winner of the Best Original Score for his music in Submerged at the WildSound festival.

He is also Professor of Film, TV and Games Composition at the University of Chichester and the Editor-in-Chief of the “Journal of Sound and Music in Games”. He was kind enough to find some time to share his thoughts on the ever-fascinating world of sound and music in the world of video games for us. You can read Stephen’s impressions here.

Stephen Baysted scores the game

“At Slightly Mad Studios, we have always been inspired by our com-munity. In turn, we have always tried to give back what and where we can: from recruiting talent from within the community to invit-ing our community to help create our chart-busting games, giving back is an integral part of who we are as a company.

“With this donation to help transform the lives of some of the world’s poorest communities, our WMD members have, once again, inspired me with their trust, kindness, and commitment to instinc-tively helping those in need. As a studio, we’re all proud and thank-ful to be able to offer this donation to WaterAid on behalf of our community, but particularly on behalf of our generous WMD mem-bers. We continue to be inspired by the good that we can create as a community, together.”

— Ian Bell, CEO, Slightly Mad Studios

Fighting to be Africa’s fastest esports racer is hard-work: Ask 19-year-old Enslin, who hammers out over 50 hours a week prac-ticing on Project CARS 2.

Even more astonishing? The Project CARS World Championship driver still uses the same wheel he was gifted when was 4 years old! You can read all about his unlikely rise to the top in his inter-

view with RedBull here.

The Project CARS franchise, which saw its initial release in May of 2015, has now netted over 3 million sales worldwide across all major platforms. Project CARS, which stands for “Communi-ty Assisted Racing Simulator”, was created with a budget of just $5 million with funding raised by the community and the studio itself. Project CARS 2, the second release (Sept 2017) for the fran-chise, continued the franchise’s success-story. The franchise is scheduled to debut on mobile in 2019.

International development charity WaterAid believes that pro-viding access to clean water and overcoming sanitation issues are the first essential steps to overcoming poverty and creating resilient communities.

WaterAid is working to make clean water, decent toilets and good hygiene normal for everyone, everywhere within a gener-ation. The international not-for-profit organization works in 28 countries to change the lives of the poorest and most marginal-ized people. Since 1981, WaterAid has reached 25.8 million peo-ple with clean water and 25.1 million people with decent toilets.

For more information, visit www.wateraid.org, follow @Wate-rAidUK or @WaterAidPress on Twitter, or find WaterAid UK on Facebook at www.facebook.com/wateraid.

• 844 million people in the world—one in nine—do not have clean water close to home.

• 2.3 billion people in the world—almost one in three— do not have a decent toilet of their own.

• Around 289,000 children under five die every year from diarrheal diseases caused by poor water and sanitation. That’s almost 800 children a day, or one child every two minutes.

• Every £1 invested in water and toilets returns an average of £4 in increased productivity.

• Just £15 can provide one person with clean water.

To find out if countries are keeping their promises von water and sanitation, see the online database www.WASHwatch.org

IS ALLERIC “ULTI” ENSLIN AFRICA’S FASTEST RACER?

PROJECT CARS TIPS OVER 3MM

SLIGHTLY MAD STUDIOS DONATES £48,000 TO WATERAID

SLIGHTLY MAD NEWS FROM AROUND THE GLOBE

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Paul on: the yoyo nature of game devI think most people forget that the gaming industry is still in its infancy. Working practices, development techniques, and levels of professionalism have improved dramatical-ly in my time in the industry. Having said that, we’re still learning how best to make games as an industry, and part of that is why it’s such an exciting place to work, as things never stand still.

I’ve been so lucky to have been involved for such a long time—even with the ups and downs—and being part of its evolution. Now it’s time for another new chapter for me, creating another new game using all of the lessons I’ve learned whilst also trying to keep up the latest trends in games development. It’s going to be a challenge, but that’s why we do it, right?

Paul on: the future of racing games What excites me most about the racing genre right now is the sheer quality and diversity of racing games on offer. I don’t think it’s heading in any one particular direction, instead we’re seeing growthin all areas, as the au-dience for racing games continues to expand, which can only be a great thing! I’ve had lots of fun making rac-ers over the years, pushing bounda-ries and innovating along the way. I only hope that we, as an industry, can continue to challenge ourselves to make the best arcade and sim style racers, bringing fresh and exciting ways to race to all players.

Paul on: racing games for a generation that is turning away from mo-torsport I absolutely think that there’s space for the traditional racer, there’s a large audience who live and breathe motorsport, so I don’t they’ll be going anywhere anytime soon. And what I find interesting right now about this space arethe effects that esports is having on both the genre and real-world motorsports, as I’d argue that games are changing the face of actual racing, providing new and more accessible ways to get into the sport.

Like any medium or genre, though, you’ve got adapt to the ever-evolving needs and demands of players. I think SMS are doing a great job of that right now, catering to such a wide audience, with the ultimate simulation in the form of the business-to-business Project CARS PRO and, at the oppo-site end of the spectrum, with Project CARS GO, which is set to innovate within the mobile market.

Paul on: initial impressions of Slightly Mad Studios It has been an exciting few months for me, it’s a completely unique environment, unlike any job I’ve had before. It takes a short while to adjust to working from home after being in an office for all those years, but once you get over that hurdle

and realize all the benefits, it’s great.

One of the best things has to be being able to work with such a diverse and talented team from around

the world. Plus, I’m amazed just how well commu-nications work despite not being face-to-face with anyone.

Paul on: 3 games to take to MarsIf I was on Mars alone, that’d rule out any online or co-op games, so I’d want 3 endlessly playable games that I could happily play for a lifetimeMy first choice would the ulti-mate form of Tetris, the very recent Tetris Effect, a game that never grows old. I’d play it in VR whilst attempting to finally get the Decahextris, Perfectris, and Ultimatris awards.

Second would be Minecraft as it’s a platform for limit-less creativity. Here I could explore, create and survive in a world of my own.

And this last game isn’t as endlessly playable as my previous choic-es, but it’s my favorite game of all time.

Bloodborne is a game that I’ll simply never tire of, I’ve completed it numerous times already, but could happily run through the stunning gothic world slaying monsters for a lifetime on Mars—or even Earth!

INDUSTRY LEGENDPAUL “RUSHY” RUSTCHYNSKY

… the effects that esports is having on both the genre and real-world motorsports—games are changing the

face of actual racing, providing new and more accessible ways to get into the sport...

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What are some of the biggest challenges in porting Project CARS to the mobile space?The two main things were the control system, and the metagame. The control system was all us: distilling down Project CARS into something more appropriate for mobile. And we think we’ve done it without losing what the Project CARS franchise is all about.

The metagame is all the stuff outside the core racing and progression—earning money, buying upgrades, all that sort of thing. And although we knew some of the theory in the mobile space, we’re by no means experts. Gamevil are. They helped identify and design a metagame that sup-ported and respected the brand and the gameplay.

How did Gamevil help find solutions to these challenges?Simply put, they’ve done this before. A lot of times. When we first started working with Gamevil, we had a very early proof-of-concept up and running. We knew the game was going to be fun in and of itself; luckily, Gamevil agreed. They understood what it was we were trying to achieve by taking Project CARS into the mobile space, and—as huge fans of the franchise themselves—worked hard on taking their experience with mobile gaming on one side, and our experience with racing on the other. We’ve ended up with something where each benefits the other.

As a studio, you guys are accustomed to working on your own vision, but with Gamevil, there’s a second party involved in the development phase of the project. How has the experience been from a creative viewpoint?On the contrary—we almost always work with external publishers. And Gamevil have been exemplary. When working with a new publisher, there’s always an initial worry that they mightn’t be good to work with, or they might be too controlling, or they might just not care, or they might do nothing for ages before suddenly becoming too controlling, or some other developer horror story (and we’ve all got ‘em!), but signs from Gamevil were very good from the get-go. They were true fans of the franchise, and were genuinely excited to be working on Project CARS. More than that, they respected the franchise—rather than just get into ‘we’re making a car game’ mode, they took great effort to understand why we did what we did with Project CARS, what’s important to us and to the franchise, and to design and position their metagame and feedback as something that could support and complement the core franchise, rather than just be something that shares a logo. They’re a great partner.

Gamevil were very good from the get-go. They were true fans of the franchise, and were genuinely excited to be working on Project CARS. More than they, they respect-ed the franchise—rather than just get into ‘we’re making a car game’ mode, they took great effort to understand why we did what we did with Project CARS, what’s im-portant to us and the franchise, and to design and po-sition their metagame and feedback as something that

could support and complement the core franchise

What did SMS as a studio bring to the project?A lot of experience in racing games and racing simulations. We know racing inside-out and back-to-front, and al-though we’re a small team, we punch well above our weight. In the space of two games,

we’ve made Project CARS something that’s talked about alongside the likes of Gran Turismo and Forza Motorsport.

That brings us respect, and it brings us business. We have licensors—car manufactur-ers, track owners, etc.—that actively want to work with us, and that want their products and brands in our games.We also know what the end result—Project CARS on a mo-bile platform—needs to look, feel, and smell like. We’ll get the nuance right in a way that other developers, without our experience and background, just can’t.

What did Gamevil bring to the project?They’re experts when it comes to mobile gaming and metagame design, in live ops, in community building, and so on. They’ve launched countless very successful mobile titles to market, and so have experience that we simply don’t—and, moreover, experience that we couldn’t get quickly, and likely couldn’t just buy in.

They’ve also got technical solutions for online function-ality, server-side tech, and customer relations.5

PROJECT CARS GOPETE MORRISH

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RX2 WORLD CHAMPION OLIVER ERIKSSONOliver Eriksson was just a fresh-faced, excitable young racer with a great career ahead of him when, 18 months ago, he joined Slightly Mad Studios as a Handling Consultant on Project CARS 2.

Oliver contributed enormously to the feel of the Rallycross cars in-game. He also joined the studio at the industry’s ‘gamescom 2017’ event, where he demonstrated his immense prowess behind the wheel in exhibition races alongside the rest of the studio’s list of world-class race-driver consultants.

In 2018, Oliver had an absolutely phenomenal season of racing. He switched focus from the national Red Bull GRC series in the USA and moved to Europe to concentrate of the FIA World Rallycross Champion-ship. He started out in the RX2 support class, and put his talents to the test against the world’s best young Rallycross stars.

By season’s end, Oliver was the RX2 World Champion. We caught up with him for a chat about an amazing year of racing and success.

Oliver on: an incredible season of racing Yeah, the 2018 season has been fantastic! I’ve competed in three different series. Won two and came second in one. I won RallyXOnIce, I came second in RallyX Nordic Supercar, and I’m now the champion of the RX2 World Series. This year it really felt like a lot of pieces fell into place. I brought over all of the experience that I gained in USA, and of course the engineering communication has been a lot easier since the development work I did with Slightly Mad Studios for Project CARS 2.

Oliver on: the challenges of global competition Outside of my own racing career, I’ve actually been quite used to travelling. My dad drove in the European Rallycross Championship when I was growing up, so I’ve basically lived in race paddocksaround Europe all my life, but of course competing in the world series there are some longer distances to travel, but I’ve learned some tricks to keep me sharp along the way.

Oliver on: developing the feel of Rallycross Lites in-game The in-game car handles as a winning car in real life should. It’s perfect for me as a driver in the se-ries because I can use the sim driving to be more prepared for the next upcoming race. Since the handling is so good and most of the championship tracks are in the game, I find it easier and fast-er to learn tracks, and I can use the time that I save there to perfect the setup of my car instead.

Oliver on: using Project CARS 2Preparation is everything in motorsport and as RX2 is a spec series It’s even more impor-tant. We need every little detail to be absolutely prefect, and that includes the driver! I try

to get the upper hand over my competitors in everything, so of course when most of them had already driven on the tracks that we visited this year, I had some catching up to do. This is where Project CARS 2 really helped me. To be prepared for every week-end and for every track that we were up against.

Oliver on: how to drive super-quick Give us three top tips that sim-racers could use to im-prove their speed and their race craft on gravel.The best tip I can give is to find that fine balance be-tween being aggressive and being smooth. Normally you just want to be aggressive in the entry of the corner but as soon as you get the rotation going you have to change your driving into being smooth to get the best possible exit by maintaining the momentum. Late braking is important too. Just because it’s slippery doesn’t necessar-ily mean it that the braking is less efficient. The car brakes when going sideways so by braking a little later and using a little more rotation, you can become more efficient. Final-ly, in Rallycross I always focus on corner exits. The sooner you can get on full throt-tle, the quicker you will be through the corner, so some-times you should sacrifice a tenth in entry or mid corner to get a perfect exit.

Follow Oliver’s racing at:Facebook: https://www.face-book.com/erikssonoliver16/Instagram: https://www.insta-gram.com/olivereriksson16/Twitter: https://twitter.com/olieriksson And his team channel: @OlsbergsMSE

SCORING THE GAME STEPHEN BAYSTEDYou’ve composed music for pretty much every industry—adverts, mov-ies, TV, and games. Which gives you a greater sense of achievement?This is a difficult question as they are all so different. On balance, I’d have to say games. Games differ fundamentally from the other genres in that games are non-linear and that poses specific challenges for the composer.

When scoring for games, what’s the “purpose”? Is it unique for every game, or is there a defining goal that you’re trying to achieve? There’s always a concept, an aesthetic and a goal, and as each game is unique, the music needs to reflect that. For Project CARS 2, for example, I wanted to explore the range of emotions and psychological states that a racing driver experiences and their responses to them. The music rang-es, therefore, from dramatic, powerful and intense to more contemplative, symbolic of an inner strength and courage that drivers seem to possess.

Scoring for a racing game seems a strange ask for a composer. How do you go about this? Where do you even begin?It is even more problematic than the question suggests since in racing simulations, music is never heard during gameplay, so all of the work of the composer and the impact on the player has to happen during the menu system. I always try to immerse the player in the sound world of motor racing and prepare them for what they are about to do. This means not only composing music that represents the driver’s battle with his or her adversaries, but the internal, psychological bat-tle with fear. I also use race day atmospheric sound design to help situate the player more readily, and in Project CARS 2 you will hear voice over commentary and reflection from Ben Collins.

How did you get into making music for games? And how would you suggest kids who are interested in this as a career go about dipping their toes in?Like many things in life, it was a happy accident. Back around the turn of the millennium, dial-up internet was just about stable enough and fast enough to allow multi-player racing online. One of the people I raced with and got to know well was Ian Bell—CEO of Slightly Mad Studios. I can’t remember exactly when a group of us, led by Ian, decided to make our first mod but it must have been 2000 or 2001. By 2003 we were working on our first commercial release: GTR: FIA GT Racing Game. How to get into composing for games is a difficult question; some come from film and TV composition, others from the audio side. Regardless, my advice would be to study music serious-ly, both composition and music history, and then begin by finding mod teams to work with and try your hand out.

What has been your most challeng-ing composition project?The one I’m working on at the moment, but it’s

one that I am not allowed to talk about!

What has been your most satisfying, proudest achieve-ment?Seeing Project CARS and Pro-ject CARS 2 released; these are the work of people who I’ve known and worked alongside for almost 20 years now.

If you had to choose 3 CDs for a trip to Mars, which 3 would they be? Ouch—tough question! What’s a CD? (…only kidding). Off the top of my head right now: Vaughn Williams’s Fan-tasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis; U2’s Joshua Tree; and Zimmer’s score to Interstellar. Ask me tomorrow, and the an-swer would be very different I suspect.

What is the stand-out moment in your ca-reer?Being able to record the score to Project CARS 2 at the iconic Air Lyndhurst studios in Lon-don, with some of the finest musicians in the world from the London Metropolitan Orchestra. Thanks Ian!

Being able to record the score to Project Cars 2 at the iconic Air Lyndhurst studios in London, with some of the finest musicians in the world from the London Metro-

politan Orchestra ...

Watch Stephen Baysted at work at the Air Lyndhurst Studio here

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IOTECH’S B2B APPROACH WITH NIMA AZARMGIN

ioTech is the B2B branch to Slightly Mad Studios. The London-based en-tity develops applications based on the authoritative gaming technolo-gy developed by Slight Mad Studios for professional markets focused on two main sectors: automotive, and location-based entertainment.

Nima Azarmgin, COO and managing director ioTech, explains how the market is adapting to changes, and how ioTech’s technology is uniquely adapted to meeting the challenges of today.

ioTech is the B2B branch to Slightly Mad Studios. The London-based entity develops applications based on the authoritative gaming technology developed by Slight Mad Studios for professional markets. In particular, since the beginning, ioTech have mainly focused on two main sectors: auto-motive, and location-based entertainment. The traditional automotive market is going through some fundamental changes. On the one hand, it needs to constantly adapt its design, production, and marketing processes in order to keep pace with competition. On the other hand, it has to increasingly integrate consumers’expectations and habits in these processes. In fact, globalization and digitalization push for more mass-customization which, in turn, heavily influence time-to-market of new products as well as new services designed to attract and retain customers.

In parallel, OEMs are faced with new challenges brought by the shift toward autonomous cars. These challenges are spe-cific to the design and the engineering of autonomous cars themselves. But they also relate to a totally new ecosystem in which OEMs have to evolve, one that relies on mass data collections and analytics, and in which GAFAs and their likes are far more advanced than OEMs.

We therefore see new platforms of cooperation surface.

Finally, it appears that the whole business model of the in-dustry is going to change with autonomous cars. Ownership might soon become a concept of the past, being supplanted by the sharing economy, or the nascent notion of transport-as-a-service which will make what was once a vehicle of freedom now a mere commodity. In both cases, the market is massively investing time and re-sources to survey innovative solutions in order to optimize their processes. More specifically, vir-tual reality or best, mixed realities applications developed in the gaming industry have emerged as being instrumental to the automotive industry. One reason for that is tied to efficiency: in-dustrial processes need to converge. The more design, engineering, and marketing departments interact upfront, the closer they get to what the market is expecting from them. And current mixed-realities applications are making such interactions happen.

Also, autonomous cars will never hit the tarmac in mass without consistent testing and validation of the sensors they will be equipped with. That is simply because, if sensors malfunction, the car will literally become a weapon of destruction. And such testing and validations can only be done in virtual environments because they require millions of km of driving.

Virtual-reality has also been a game changer in the location-based entertainment industry. The latter, after the boom of good-old coin machines of the 80s, declined until recently when market players and developers started to see the infinite possibilities offered by VR. New experiences with enhanced players’ engagement, but also creation of bespoke content to attract new demo-graphics, have emerged as some of the main trends of a rising multi-billion-dollar business.

Simulation games have a place apart in this industry. First, they attract different demographics than MMOs or FPS or other arcade games of that sort. Then they are readily spectacular and full of suspense to the general public. In that respect, the Project CARS franchise has seen growing demand to address the specific needs of the two markets cited above.

ioTech is currently developing an attraction based on Project CARS 2 for a major Chinese theme park operator. While keeping the content of Project CARS 2, we develop the interface as well as

the logic, allowing operators in the attraction to manage the pods. Some of these devel-opments are done on an abstract basis. But most of them require bespoke development. We are collaborating with a local hardware manufacturer to develop the software. This

project gives us a lot of insight into the Chinese market. In fact, the particularly of this market is that, although we are developing solutions for professional customers, we need to always keep in mind end-users’ experience and ex-pectations. That is the B2B2C approach. And it is a very enriching one, especially be-cause we discover an alterna-tive approach to amusement. The project also allows us to develop sustainable partner-ships for the future. Indeed, we are confident that this project will open the doors to a vast market both in the amusement industry, but also in the LBE markets in China and in the rest of Asia. On the automotive side, thanks to a couple of recent projects with OEMs, we have proven our capabilities in the professional virtual test-drive domain. That allows us to provide solutions destined to design departments for design visualization and val-idation or to car dealerships for marketing applications. In complement to that, and in collaboration with our SMS colleagues, we have also built a major manufacturer’s test track for design, and alterna-tive marketing purposes. We are in discussion with other partners for similar appli-cations, but also for more engineering-oriented solu-tions which are more bespoke and require a slightly different approach.

2019 is going to be an exciting year for ioTech with some interesting developments with respect to the projects that are in the pipelines and in consequence the positive impact they will have upon the teams. We now have a sol-id team of developers under Fabio Corrirossi’s leadership. The tech team covers the development of LBE solu-tions. In the automotive area, we are investigating the car configurator as part of our solutions, and will be hitting the market with a portfolio of applications as soon as Q1 2019. We will also have to build a solid commercial and marketing pillar to support the LBE developments.8

PROJECT CARS & GLOBALESPORTS: McLaren, Logitech, Renault, and A1The Project CARS esports scene has continued to grow from strength-to-strength in 2018, and shows no signs of slowing. Earlier this year, the A1 esports League, and the Renault esports Series featured great entertainment which both energized race fans and helped to raise the profile of the drivers, teams, and, of course, the franchise itself.

Prizes included €15,000 and a much-sought after day of training at the Palmersport race school in the UK.Since the summer, the A1 esports league, in partner-ship with ESL, has returned for a second season, again featuring €15,000 in prizes. The finals were an all-celebrity affair hosted at Game City in Vienna, and the on-track entertainment was absolutely superb, arguably the closest ever in a Project CARS competition, as drivers swapped positions and ran side-by-side, lap-after-lap, until the checkered flag.

The runaway success of this tournament lead to a new partnership with Logitech G and a new series called the Logitech G Challenge. Following a sequence of online qualifying rounds, the fi-nals for this series took place on an incredible stage at Paris Games Week, with appearances from 2019 McLaren Formula One driver, Llando Norris, and the team’s test driver, Rudy Van Buren.

The tie-in with McLaren esports was an important addition to Project CARS esports as it saw the winner of the Logitech G Challenge take a place in the McLaren Shadow Semi Finals, an event that was hosted at the McLaren Technology Centre in the UK.

This multi-game competition is an effort by McLaren to find the best all-around sim-racer to join their official esports team.

Project CARS 2 was the one of the chosen simulators for the Semi Finals live-stream, with the McLaren 720S (which was also featured in the game’s Limited Edition cover art).

The McLaren Shadow Finals, one of the biggest-ever racing esports events, will now be held in January 2019, and will again feature Project CARS 2, this time in VR. This will further showcase the engine that powers the game—the SMS-owned MADNESS Engine—as the industry-leader in Virtual Reality technology and implementation both in the games sphere as well as in the auto-motive industry for B2B experiences.

We are also working to finalize the sponsorship arrangements for the next edition of our major series, the SMS-R Championship, which will see past champions and new faces compete for the biggest title in Project CARS in 2019.

We are also working on concepts for additional manufacturer esports championships with our automotive partners. More details will be announced later this year as negotiations progress.

… the finals for the Logitech G Challenge series took place on an incredible stage at Paris Games Week, with appearances from 2019 McLaren Formula

One driver, Llando Norris, and the team’s test driver, Rudy Van Buren ...

TX3 Storm: Champion of A1 esports League Season 2

Kristian Kwitniewski: Champion of the Logitech G Challenge, and Semi-Finalist at McLaren Shadow

The winner of the Logitech G Challenge secured a place in the McLaren Shadow Semi Finals, an event that was hosted at the McLaren Tech-nology Centre in the UK. This multi-game competi-tion is an effort by McLaren to find the best all-around sim-racer to join their offi-cial esports team. 9

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