The Annual - Part 1, 2014 in review

By Jack Basford
Last updated: Tue, 30 Dec 2014 21:52

When iGP launched around the start of 2012 it was a big leap for online motorsport manager games. There was no example to follow or study when it came to providing online, live and interactive races. We blazed a trail, but that made things hard out of the gate. 2014 has been a year of applying what we've learned from the experiences we've had together since then. It may have seemed like a fairly anonymous year for new gameplay features, but it has been a vital year of foundation building and re-building, in preparation for major gameplay changes.

Before the recent service updates, if we had released major gameplay changes, the service wouldn't have been able to handle the resulting demand. We've kept all of the major gameplay updates under wraps to prevent that from happening, which has actually had many perks. We've been able to review and reimagine the gameplay improvements several times over, making them better and better each time. The gameplay improvements have been refined to the point that we're really pumped about introducing them in 2015. There's a lot more variety, more ways to play and we're even extending the service to new platforms.

Another shakeup worth mentioning was the reshaping of our team this year. The year in review doesn't make much sense without it. Anybody racing at peak times in early 2014 probably had their fair share of "connection" messages. The people behind those systems chose to move on rather than repair it, which left us in a sticky situation. We remained resolute and maintained these systems in their absence, and more than that, have massively improved them and continue to do so, even though we didn't build them originally. It's as if Mercedes pulled out of F1, and Williams' own engineers had to read the blueprints and figure out how the engines work and how to improve them. Because of the compartmentalised way iGP was developed originally, that's pretty much how it happened. It took a while, but we figured it out, and have transformed the back-end of the service. If you haven't seen less "connection" messages lately, I'll eat my hat. This has been helped along by the newly integrated way we are working across simulator and web development.
 
A lot of people have told me they had no idea about the drama behind the scenes in 2014. That makes me happy, because it means we did a good job of keeping that away from you guys, so you could enjoy the racing. Speaking of which, I've had a boring boring week spent entirely filing our annual company accounts, something I want kept away from me in future! (any volunteer bookkeepers? :P).
 
We're making more improvements to the capacity of the service as I write this, and hope to add full Java 8 support for the viewers in January (before replacing Java as soon as we can). Stay tuned for my follow-up blog in the new year about what gameplay updates are coming in 2015, and the new platforms we'll be extending the service to.
 
Thank you to everyone that has supported us in 2014.  This is honestly the most exciting time I can remember to be leading the charge at iGP. Happy New Year!
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iGP Developer Blog

The latest news about technical and gameplay developments on iGP Manager
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Matt Taylor 9 years 100 days ago
Great to hear it's going well for you guys. Brilliant game idea, I'm looking forward to the new features
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Patrick Roper 9 years 108 days ago
Keep up the good work Jack! Love the game looking forward to the new year. The Game is definitely improving I feel fortunate to be here and able to assist by being a paid subscriber.
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Alex Sal 9 years 110 days ago
Great work, Jack (though i only play for 3 months its enough to see your efforts and game improvment)

Congratulations.
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Kieran Cheung 9 years 111 days ago
Whoop Java8
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J B 9 years 111 days ago
Keep up the good work Jack, I am hooked.
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Antero Croop 9 years 111 days ago
I wanna PaySafeCard method of Payment. That will be gorgeous :)
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Percy Wright 9 years 112 days ago
Thanks for making this game Jack & Company! You guys gave us something that we racing fans Love! Happy New Year!
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Jason Chen 9 years 112 days ago
Thanks for developing this game!
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James Greer 9 years 112 days ago
Thanks Jack & everyone else behind the scenes. Hope you all have a good new years.

I'm guessing Q2 of 2015 will be the game play changes as you a writing a blog detailing them in Q1. ッ
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Yunus Unia Blunion 9 years 112 days ago
Thanks for the update! Looking forward to the next blog post and future game updates.
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