Are Narrative-Led Racing Games here to stay?

There have been a couple of pivotal moments in the arcade racing game sector which brought innovations to the limelight; Need For Speed Underground popularised car customisation and the underground racing scene in 2003 and we saw a long list of similar games launched throughout the decade. The Forza Horizon franchise was seen as the flagship arcade racer throughout the 2010s and saw competitors pivot their games to try and capture that slice of the market with vast open-world gameplay mechanics.

Now interestingly, the latest influencer is not even a racing game; it is the Drive To Survive docuseries run by Netflix. It is important to point out that narratives in games with Full Motion Videos are nothing new to the racing game franchise, we saw a whole host of them during the mid-2000's.

The most famous iterations include some of the Black Box era Need For Speed games, such as Most Wanted and Carbon. Their scenes were so famous they've produced memes that are still relevant today! It wasn't just arcade racers that featured cutscenes, as I mentioned in the article about GRID Legends, the Toca Race Driver series was also known for its FMV's back in the day.

Fast forward to the present day and now we have F1 2021 featuring the Braking Point, a new mode that follows the journey of a Formula 1 rookie having to deal with on and off-track drama as he seeks to make a name for himself and secure a seat at a top team. As you would expect, the inclusion of this game mode is due to the success of Drive To Survive, which has also drawn more people to watch F1. Turns out when you emphasise (and in some cases, exaggerate) the drama which happens in the F1 circus, people become more invested and want to see controversial events unfold in real-time!

Looking ahead to 2022, we have no shortage of racing games on the Horizon. We already know GRID Legends and the next Need For Speed games are likely to have solid narratives, but what can we expect from other offerings? The luxury lifestyle themes of the Test Drive Unlimited series will have a very different narrative to the race-day focus of Forza Motorsport. Narratives offer the chance to deliver captivating stories which keep users hooked, let's hope more developers make use of this opportunity to benefit like Formula 1 has.