The long and rich history of NASCAR video games contains myriad platforms (starting with “Richard Petty‘s Talladega” for the Commodore 64 in 1984), playing styles and pixelated race tracks.
But there is a general consensus of the golden age in a timeline stretching over four decades.
The early 2000s produced a trio of games — “NASCAR 2003,” “Dirt to Daytona” and “NASCAR Thunder 2004” — that set a standard for gaming excellence in racing.
“If you ask anybody what their favorite NASCAR game in history was, you‘re going to get one of those three,” said Matt Lewis, the director of production for iRacing. “And now we have the teams that worked on all of those games building NASCAR ‘25.”
“NASCAR ‘25,” which is being released widely today, is the first NASCAR-licensed video game for consoles (such as PlayStation 5 and Xbox X/S) in more than four years.
LEARN MORE: NASCAR 25 website
It‘s also the first NASCAR console title produced by iRacing, which has been built around online racing simulation since 2003 but was known in a previous incarnation as Papyrus — the creators of “NASCAR 2003.”
“Dirt to Daytona” was created by Monster Games, which was acquired by iRacing and has been instrumental in the development of NASCAR ‘25.
“NASCAR Thunder 2004” was the crowning achievement for EA Sports, which annually produced memorable NASCAR titles during the mid-2000s. Lewis was among three lead designers for EA Sports during that magical run — and that same trio also has been working on “NASCAR ‘25.”
“It’s this crazy, full-circle deal,” Lewis said. “And the cool part for me is I remember playing ‘NASCAR 2003,‘ and we’re like, ‘Man if we could ever take like the multiplayer and the physics and the authenticity of what Papyrus did and combine it with what EA Sports was doing in career mode and then combine that with the dynamic of ‘Dirt to Daytona‘ and progressing through racing series to become a champion … that would be the best game on earth.
“Fast forward 20 years, and here we are. We are finally doing it.”
The fact that the key developers of “NASCAR ‘25” also track with the glory days of racing video games is a reassuring factor for NASCAR, which has been seeking continuity after a tumultuous period of a few disappointing console game launches followed by a prolonged absence.
“It really is a dream team,” said Nick Rend, vice president for Interactive and Emerging Platforms at NASCAR. “iRacing has taken the foundation of their legendary sim and paired it with console veterans who know how to design careers, progression loops, user experiences and live-service systems. This is a group of people who know both the sport and the genre.”
RELATED: Bell, Byron, Blaney featured on NASCAR 25 cover
The melding of simulation and console gaming in “NASCAR ‘25” also will be a unique marriage in the gaming world.
Console gaming is centered on the accessibility that traditionally has been found in video arcades. With a controller in hand, it‘s possible to play within minutes and quickly progress through a linear storyline intended to appeal to a broad audience.
Sim racing is more about depth, whether it‘s hardware, licenses, competitive ladders and precision. It‘s designed for players who want lifelike realism and real-world authenticity in competition with accurate details from the physics of a car to the physical characteristics of race tracks that have inimitable bumps, elevation changes.
With its move into console gaming, iRacing is essentially scaling up a business that has nearly 350,000 active online subscribers. It‘s expected that “NASCAR ‘25” will be played by an audience well into seven figures.
That growth will mark another step in the progression of iRacing, whose popularity exploded during the pandemic when sidelined Cup drivers raced in nationally televised online races. Since then, iRacing has been a major contributor as a virtual proving ground for new races at North Wilkesboro Speedway, Atlanta Motor Speedway and the Los Angeles Coliseum (and was also used to design the layout of the Chicago Street Race and the Naval Base Coronado in San Diego).
For executive vice president Steve Myers, “NASCAR ‘25” will represent “completing a full circle” to the roots of iRacing.
“An authentic racing PC sim was really unheard of in the NASCAR space until really we made a great product that helped launch iRacing into what we’ve become today,” Myers said. “I think with ‘NASCAR ‘25,‘ we’re getting a chance to take a step back and ask, ‘OK, where is the piece that’s missing for the gamers and for the fans of the sport?‘ And that’s ‘Hey, I want to go into my living room, pick up a game controller and play a quick race against the stars of today.‘
“That’s been missing for all these years, and so it’s very exciting now to take this vast knowledge from 25 years of authentic racing simulations and packing and presenting it in a way that somebody will get that same feeling with a game pad.”
Here are five more things to know about the launch of “NASCAR ‘25,” the sport‘s first new console game in more than four years and the first NASCAR console game created by iRacing and its new studio division:
- This will be the first console game predominantly using laser-scanned assets to create its graphical representation of its cars and race tracks.
Photo references and Google Maps typically have been used to create the surfaces, but “NASCAR ‘25” will rely on the speedway laser scanning that has been a staple of iRacing.
“We have all these technologies that we’re able to apply like laser scanning and advanced ways to build tracks and the physical models of the race cars that we never had 20 years ago,” said Greg Hill, executive vice president and producer for iRacing. “And really an unparalleled level of connection and collaboration with NASCAR and the manufacturers as well. We’re working directly with their race engineers and the people who build these cars in the real world and operate them on a daily level, so we can incorporate all of their information into how we build the cars in iRacing. That is just so critical.”
Track surfaces will be dynamic, meaning that rubber buildup will affect handling as in the real world. Noting the hills and undulations of Sonoma Raceway as a good example, Hill said each track “has its own kind of subtleties that people discover.
“They will definitely notice and feel the scale of everything is exactly right. With many racing titles, they just kind of piece it together and generalize this world that approximates a Daytona, Indianapolis or Richmond. But with this, everything is exactly the right size and in the right place.”
- More than 100 artists were employed just to work on the details for every track in NASCAR ‘25.
For comparison, “NASCAR 2003” had a total staff of roughly 20 people working on the game at Papyrus.
“It took a lot to build, of course,” Hill said. “Just the core engineering of the systems and the physics, but also the art is a mammoth undertaking for this title in building out the full calendar of NASCAR tracks. Combined with an engineering and design staff of 30 to 40 people, as many as 150 people have been working at this game at certain points. It’s been the most sizable effort probably at the company.”
- Rich Garcia, senior vice president for iRacing, began working on “NASCAR ‘25” more than two years before it was announced — not long after Garcia‘s Monster Games Inc. was acquired by iRacing in January 2022.
“Our real wish was to get to NASCAR,” Garcia said. “We didn’t have the NASCAR license at the time, but I started designing it even before we had the license. Nobody knew for sure, but I just thought it was coming, so I’m going to start laying it out. And so I worked with one of the designers on a new plan to upgrade our tech, re-integrate all of the iRacing assets, redo how our career mode works and redo the whole game as a big step up.
“The lead principal engineer is somebody I’ve been working with for 30 years, so it’s not like we bring on like novices who’ve never done racing before. It‘s been a pretty fun project. I used to have to really battle with the publishers to get the quality where I wanted it, but now I’m working with people that understand the ins and outs of racing completely.”
Since its “Dirt to Daytona” title (which Garcia created as a career ladder-style game to fill the void between the realism of Papyrus‘ “NASCAR 2003” and EA Sports‘ NASCAR licensed games), Monster Games also relaunched the “NASCAR Heat” franchise a decade ago and recently had created “Tony Stewart‘s Sprint Car Racing.” Those are just a few highlights in a long career of racing games for Garcia, who started as the third employee at Papyrus in 1988 and went on to focus mostly on developing console games. His mantra is to “never make it dumb. We never do an arcade game. It‘s got to have this entry point where you feel anybody in the family can sit down, pick up the controller and have a good time.”
- The “NASCAR ‘25” cover features William Byron (who started his career on iRacing), Christopher Bell and Ryan Blaney.
Lewis said all three stars have been among the notable support that the game has received, noting he got daily emails asking for game demonstrations.
“We didn’t get that back in the day,” he said. “It was much more of us going to them and asking ‘Hey can you please have one of your drivers play this game?‘ Now it‘s “I want to see it and make sure it‘s good.‘ The more people we get in front of and like it and genuinely want to say good things about it, the better we all are.”
As the first console game since the end of the 2020 season, “NASCAR ‘25” will feature many new sponsors, paint schemes and social media elements.
“We haven’t got to do the Kyle Larson and William Byron paint schemes and adding those drivers into the mix and then the Dale Jr. podcast,” Myers said. “There are a lot of cool things that we’ve been able to do to kind of bring the industry into the game a little bit and make it feel current. It‘s not just a rinse and repeat of what’s been done before.”
- It‘s the first video game to feature all of NASCAR‘s top four national series, which helps enhance a career mode that Lewis said can unfold over multiple decades of a player‘s career.
“It ramps up,” he said. “At the ARCA level, it literally looks like your backyard garage. As you move into trucks, now you’re in a warehouse. Then you go up to Xfinity and now you’re in a business park, and you start to hire more employees and do more management-type stuff with R&D and parts and chassis.
The career mode also will feature dozens of possible “turning points” that fall off the track and create a “Choose Your Own Adventure”-type narrative.
“You might encounter three or four of these if you win the championship, but the theory is if you go back and replay it, your story will be completely different,” Lewis said. “It’s this feeling of you’re doing more than just racing the car, and it gets you to this other level of having things to manage.”
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