(Thanks to Tim Wheatley for letting me post this on the forums!) Hey guys! I just wanted to share a new website I've started. It's called the Sim Racing Paddock, and I've been working on it for the past month and a half, steadily filling it with posts, so you'll have some good stuff to read . A little about myself: My name's William Marsh, and I've been passionate about racing video games for about 16 years now, ever since I was 5 years old. My first game was Monster Truck Madness, and my first sim was NASCAR Racing 1999 Edition. I started taking sim racing seriously around 2007-2008, when I got NASCAR Sim Racing. Since then, I've gotten into rFactor 1/2, Assetto Corsa, Project CARS, iRacing, and more. I spent 10 months working for Inside Sim Racing, working as the head blogger for the site. I left in the middle of November, because I decided that I wanted to share my own vision with the community. You can check out my website at http://www.simracingpaddock.com. I will soon be putting YouTube videos to my channel as well, but I want to focus on having solid content on the blog. Please also check out our pages: Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/simracingpaddock Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/simrpaddock Google+: https://plus.google.com/u/0/+Simracingpaddock/posts Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/simracingp/ Thank you for checking out the site! Hope you like it Some recommended posts: Why I Love Sim Racing: http://simracingpaddock.com/opinion/why-i-love-sim-racing/ The Case For Damage In Sims: http://simracingpaddock.com/pc-racing/case-damage-sims/ How Realistic Should Sim Racing Get?: http://simracingpaddock.com/opinion/how-realistic-should-sim-racing-get/
Always great to see new sim sites popping up. I'm sure you are not the last one to take off from Darin Gangi's (Bless his heart *he says with condensending southern accent*) harem. They all do tend to be quite the same, the sim sites, but I suppose it's like checking your daily news from BBC, little bit from a local news site perhaps, maybe some brainfart takes you to FOX news and you click it just to get the morning started with a laugh to random idiots. Anywhoo... Since ISR went through it's changes after Sean took off (I do like SimPit quite alot, even if it's kinda like a garage run by an over enthusiastic child ) I stopped following anything that is going on there, so I do not know what is your "vision", if you ever shared/got to share it at ISR. I would very much like to hear, what do you think is missing from the sim sites and is one of these gaps what you plan on attempting to fill? Nothing but best of luck and success to you and SPR. Looking forward to reading your stuff.
Long story short, I feel my vision is that "The Little Guys Matter". One of the reasons rFactor was such a great title was not because of the out-of-box content (although the content was quite good). It was great because it brought the community together. We saw teams being formed, like Mak-Corp, CTDP (which may be coming back soon?), DRM Modding Group, EnduRacers and so on. I feel that with this new generation of sims, we're seeing not only the same teams, but we're also seeing exciting new projects, such as F1ASR, URD, IER Modding Group, etc. All too often, they pump time and energy into this hobby just as a labor of love. However, I feel they do not get the recognition they deserve. I want to do my part into honoring the effort and energy they put into the community, bringing us some of our favorite cars to drive. I'm not going to abandon big companies though, but I want to put a conscious effort into the third party community. I also am hoping to bring some sort of Top Sim Cars in the near future, which I hope will be a hit with the community! Thanks man! I'm a huge fan of your pictures in the threads! You really show off what rF2 is capable of
This looks amazing William. Good luck to you buddy The site looks slick, nicely done. And the things you said in your post above about being more involved with showing modders work etc, i think is fantastic. Some advice that I'm sure you probably wont need... Is to try not to focus to heavily on ONE sim. I've seen a tendency on other sites to focus way to much one a particular sim's mod content and not on the others. And i didn't know you were the blogger from ISR. So you clearly know what your doing, so i have high hopes Your site has been added to my Chrome Bookmark bar with two others i regularly visit. I truly hope it stays there Good Luck.
This is very good news. I really liked the vehicle specific reviews in the past by ISR, which Racedepartment has taken lately by reviewing couple of sim cars. This is deffinetly something that has become less and less covered in the sim sites of today. Individuals like empty box, gamersmuscle etc... do review sim vehicles and content as such, but thats always a YouTube video and often not very good journalism rather than just opinions which people either agree or not. Alot of mod teams do deserve their work to be accolated, and the longevity and the extra depth that modding gives to these games is hardly being praised enough.
Looks great William. Authored several things myself (none sim related) and if you love to write I can understand why you would want to go your own direction -it gives you freedom of choice. ISR has some great guys there but sadly, for me anyway, Darin has tarnished it's reputation. I try to separate the two as I feel the people make the community but... Anyway, best of luck to you. Bailey PS BTW, I noticed the Twitter icon at the top of your site did not work properly... missing R from your handle. Other links worked for me. Just thought you'd like to know so you could fix.
Thanks Bailey! I really enjoyed writing about some of the cool stuff you showed off in the ISR forums To be honest, I feel the same way as you. I just had to assure myself that my commitment was to the community, and that's what encouraged me to start this site. I love Sim Racing, and really enjoy being a part of this community. Fixed the Twitter Icon, thanks! I originally had it as SimPaddock (Twitter limits length, and it's one letter shy of SimRacingPaddock, so I had to get creative). However, I think "SimRPaddock" looks a little better