Why F1 sells gamers short

Hot on the heels of two of the biggest gaming franchises of all time releasing their latest instalments, Formula 1 stepped up to the plate last week with its annual title hitting the shelves.

But in comparison to FIFA 14 and Grand Theft Auto V, it feels like F1 2013 from Codemasters is arriving with little fanfare or momentum, and it's the fault of the sport rather than the game developer.

The FIFA and Grand Theft Auto titles are behemoths of the gaming world. Each new version is bigger and better than before, and they continue to fly off the shelves.

In comparison to the mainstream appeal of football and - how can we put this? - 'virtual crime', Formula 1 finds itself sitting in a niche. So to directly compare the investment and/or sales of all three games would be unfair.

But F1 seems to be slipping further behind each time its latest virtual representation is put on sale. It would be easy to point the finger at game developer Codemasters for this, but the firm is doing a very good job operating in what appears to be some frustratingly stringent parameters.

Unfortunately, with a little digging, it becomes clear that the main cause of the problem is that Formula 1 - with its restrictive approach to managing the rights of the sport and its competitors - is falling behind the times in a fast-moving industry.

In the words of one senior team figure, the way it works at the moment is "the teams effectively hand over a bunch of rights to the Commercial Rights Holder and are trusting him to provide a financial conduit to exploit those in the most effective way".

Codemasters has developed the official F1 game since the 2009 season

Sauber team principal Monisha Kaltenborn believes F1 has fallen behind, and that the contractual complexity that appears to be the cause of this stunted growth could have been avoided in past Concorde Agreement negotiations.

"I think it's generally an area where, altogether, we've not really exploited it to the extent that we can," she says of the gaming market.

"This is about IP (intellectual property) rights at the end of the day - any party needs those to truly exploit the [gaming] platform.

"When we had the discussions in 2008-09 for the new Concorde Agreement we had actually taken quite a step on how we can do more together. But that didn't work out, and it wasn't signed off like this."

As is so often the case when it comes to change (and moving with the times) in F1, the failure of teams to reach any sort of agreement for the common good has left it languishing off the pace in the games market.

"As to why we're not exploiting this, I think the problem mainly lies in that we're not agreeing, together [as teams] and with the Commercial Rights Holder on how we can exploit [the rights of] more than one team on this," says Kaltenborn. "That's where the hurdle is.

"All of us have ideas, but if you are to really reach out to the fans you need all the teams in there, and that's where the restrictions come in. I think that's the main reason why we have not been able to exploit it as much as other sports might have done."

Forget FIFA and Grand Theft Auto for a moment. Much closer to home, MotoGP 2013 has something that an F1 title would benefit hugely from: a multi-level career mode.

Imagine if, instead of starting your 'career' at the back of the F1 grid and then simply switching teams each season to race against the same guys in the same cars (more on that later), you could cut your teeth in F1 feeder series like GP3 and GP2?

MotoGP 2013 includes a multi-level career

Both categories feature on the F1 support bill in real life, so there would be no need for new tracks. And you would think that it would be a relatively straightforward negotiation to get championships that are seemingly directly tied to the big show to feature on the game.

"I would have thought it wouldn't be too difficult to incorporate [those series]," says Marussia sporting director Graeme Lowdon, whose team is represented in GP3 through its Manor Racing squad. "Building in things like a career path from GP3 to GP2 to F1 would make sense, and from what I can see there wouldn't be a big issue with rights.

"The biggest mistake you can make with any of these forms of entertainment is to underestimate the desire of the customer, because there is a huge desire for immersive content. And the sport we're in lends itself to gaming."

The MotoGP game's career mode starts you off with a handful of 'wildcard' rides in the Moto3 class, from which you work your way up the ranks. And while the specifics are unclear in F1, it is understood that the contractual maze of the sport prevents its own support bill from appearing in the game - as much as its developers may want to make it happen.

Earlier this year AUTOSPORT ran a feature hailing the original games in the TOCA Touring Cars series, which centered on the British Touring Car Championship in 1997 and 1998.

Even as long ago as 1998 the TOCA games featured 'support races'. While there was no career mode, you could take in Formula Ford racing or drive smaller tin-tops and sportscars. We're now in 2013 and you still can't drive anything else - even F1-affiliated - in a Formula 1 game.

BTCC series chief Alan Gow - a man who is very good at having his finger on the pulse of moving targets like the motorsport gaming industries - highlighted the fact that a one-series-only game does not cut it in the modern world.

"In the '90s it was different because the 'generic' racing game genre hadn't really taken off and there wasn't the choice you have now," Gow says. "Titled games [based around a specific series] are now seen as being too restrictive to the player."

Gow was talking about his own championship there, but even if Formula 1 is a far bigger worldwide brand than the BTCC, the same logic applies. No matter how big the brand is, people expect a lot more from their games than they were getting 15 years ago. The official game of F1 is never going to have the expansive appeal or possibilities of a title like Forza Motorsport or Gran Turismo, but that doesn't mean it should stand still.

F1 2013 now features 'classic' mode

The addition of a 'Classic' mode for this year featuring a handful of old cars and tracks is a welcome feature in F1 2013, but thanks (again) to contractual wrangling and rights issues, the selection is limited. By having to go through the proper channels, a company like Codemasters is never going to be able to compete with the variety on offer through 'mods' in a series like the PC-based rFactor games.

As other game genres expand (can you imagine a modern football game only featuring the Premier League?), Formula 1 isn't moving with the times. You're never going to get an officially licensed game covering various disciplines of racing, but the F1 game is crying out for something, and in GP2 and GP3 it should have an easy win to adding a single-seater ladder of some sort. But no, the path is blocked. The complexity (to put it politely) of Formula 1's contractual situation puts paid to many of the features that have become commonplace for years in games depicting rival sports.

Whether it's a game representing football, cricket, golf, rubgy, boxing, wrestling or America's NFL and NBA (we've checked them all), the games involving the world's other major sports are left wide open for players to customise. Create your own teams, players, competitions or arenas, and in some cases even modify things from the real world that are in the game already.

Simply put, it's hard to find a sport that doesn't offer gamers some sort of freedom. Except for Formula 1, of course.

These sports have it easy compared to F1, because their rights are far more streamlined. While there are exceptions, in most cases the approval for a games company to do as it wishes comes from one central source. While the rights to a Formula 1 game essentially come from one source - Bernie Ecclestone's Formula One Group - the rights that are handed over in the first place come with varying levels of restrictions which are insisted on by those involved. As Kaltenborn puts it: "If we were all together in this we could exploit it much more. But we all have to agree and that's where it's lacking at the moment."

Lowdon adds: "We seem to be dominated by a business model based around more traditional media. Times change, people's habits change and the way they want to interact with the sport changes. So it's absolutely important that all those things are addressed. It's not a case of the game itself being done wrong, perhaps it's a case of there being an awful lot more that can be done."

FIFA games offer more variety than F1's

So what can be done? Imagine an F1 career mode that includes the option to set up and run your own F1 team. One of the major criticisms of the F1 games at the moment is a lack of depth. Even in the driver career mode you essentially play out the same season over and over again, with the same races in the same order, occasionally changing your car and with some fluctuation in the performance of your rivals.

Compare that to football, where you have the option to manage and play for hundreds of teams, across various divisions in all sorts of countries, buying and developing new players while your computer-based rivals are doing the same. So much is changing around you during that experience. Which one is going to get repetitive first?

Continuing the football theme, if you find yourself at Barcelona and you want to sign that club's nemesis Cristiano Ronaldo from arch-rival Real Madrid, the only thing that could prevent that from happening is the game's realism - not any contractual block from the teams or participants involved in exchange for handing over their rights in the first place.

Want to lure Fernando Alonso away from Ferrari, or see if someone else will sign Sebastian Vettel to create that opening you are craving at Red Bull? Not a chance. F1 is still stuck in the dark ages believing that something happening on a game, in a person's living room or bedroom, reduces the value of those who have made commercial investments in the sport.

Does it really hurt Ferrari or its major backer Santander if a game allows Alonso to be decked in the silver of McLaren or Mercedes? Or would such options in fact widen the appeal of Formula 1 games (and potentially the sport in general), meaning more people are aware of those Santander logos in the first place?

Football's governing body makes plenty of headlines for the wrong reasons, and F1 is way ahead of football when it comes to the media availability of its stars. But in terms of gaming, football is streets ahead of Formula 1. It has a huge-money deal with a gaming powerhouse in EA Sports, forming a two-pronged attack with the power to overcome almost any red tape that could get in its way.

EA has previous experience with F1 of course, dating back to around the turn of the century. Then the sport did an exclusive deal with Sony, and since that deal lapsed, EA - whose F1 console games left a lot to be desired at the time, in fairness - has hardly been knocking down the gates to the F1 paddock to come back.

The first FIFA game to feature club teams (its 1995 edition) had eight playable divisions. This year's version features 33 leagues. Expansion on that level would never be possible with a more specific genre such as Formula 1, but the fact that so little has been added since the officially-licensed series kicked off (also with its 1995 season) screams out that the sport has not moved with the times.