papyrus-software posts

Many racing game fans know the name Papyrus Design Group (also known as Papyrus Software). Founded in the late 1980's the game developer had a huge success on the PC with the NASCAR Racing series of racing simulations. The games, published by the now defunct Sierra, were highly accurate simulations of driving NASCAR rides on the tracks and even some real NASCAR racers (most notably Dale Earnhardt Jr.) were both fans of the game and used it to train for the real thing.

When the NASCAR game rights were sold to Electronic Arts in 2004, Sierra/Vivendi Games shut down the developer for budget reasons. However many of Papyrus' team decided to launch a new venture, an online PC racing simulation service called iRacing. The actual online service launched in August with little fanfare. However this week iRacing announced that it had brokered a deal with NASCAR to launch a full-saction online NASCAR racing series. It will be the first time the NASCAR franchise will be made available to play on the PC platform in over five years.

While the series won't begin until early 2010, Big Download wanted to get more info on iRacing's plans and got its co-founder David Kaemmer (also the co-founder of the original Papyrus) to answer our questions about this new online-only racing series.

The legendary NASCAR Racing sim games from the now defunct Papyrus Software and Sierra were some of the best racing games ever made. But when Electronic Arts got hold of the exclusive NASCAR game rights a few years ago they pretty much game the PC platform the cold shoulder. They ported a couple of their console NASCAR games to the PC but the last PC specific game they made was the disastrous NASCAR SimRacing, released four years ago this month (that's the box cover on the right).

Now it seems EA's NASCAR exclusive deal could be on the ropes. The Sporting News is reporting that NASCAR is considering that instead if just renewing EA's deal it is "considering a nonexclusive approach that might open the category to other game makers." If such a move happens it could pave the way for a true NASCAR PC racing sim title to be released.