A massive thank you to Skillshare for sponsoring this video. The first 1000 of my subscribers
to click the link in the description will get a two-month free trial of premium membership
so you can explore your creativity. So it seems like it’s becoming tradition
that we get to around this point of the year and I make a video talking about racing games
that are getting me through some mental health crisis but goddamn, did TrackMania drop at
the right time for me. For years the series has been my ultimate stress ball, and with
the release of this year’s game, I’ve found myself completely immersed in its utterly
addictive, wildly fast arcade time trial action; losing hours repeating courses over and over
again, as I try desperately to escape the joy vacuum that has been 2020. In all seriousness
I’d say this is easily my game of the year so far; there’s no other title that has
come close to the fun I’ve had with it and yet, outside of noted TrackMania degenerate
Jeff Gerstmann, I’ve seen basically no one talking about this new release.
It’s understandable because, for a bunch of reasons, the long-running franchise has
never been truly able to truly transcend beyond its status as a weird curio; failing to gain
much of a cultural foothold beyond the cult following it’s garnered over the years.
And there really is something that kills me about that fact, because it’s my genuine
belief that TrackMania should be utterly massive. Here we have a title whose gameplay is perhaps
the definition of purity, with an incredibly low mechanical barrier to entry for those
looking for some fast fun, alongside a remarkably high skill ceiling and depth for people who
want to truly master the game, bolstered by a constant stream of incredibly varied content
coming from an extremely dedicated fanbase; all making for an experience that is immensely
exciting to play and, I believe, spectate. And while not a whole lot has really changed
to make TrackMania 2020 a hugely different mechanical experience from its predecessors,
it just goes to show how solid that mechanical core of the series has always been. The way
I’ve described it to people before is that it’s akin to those ridiculous Hot Wheels
tracks you might have played with when you were younger, catapulting the little toy cars
through these crazy loop-de-loops and tight corners and hoping they don’t hit a slight
snag and get flung into oblivion in the process… only, now, you’re placed in direct control
of that car. Initially you’ll likely just admire the
speed at which the game’s sleek metallic look whizzes by you. But once you start getting
the hang of things, as you gradually learn through constant repetition the impact that
bumps or braking at the wrong moment can have on your final time, you’ll likely start
to agonize over every slight graze of a corner. You’ll sizzle with anger over hundredths,
thousandths of a second lost. You’ll internally weigh up the cost of carrying on through a
track, knowing you may have lost any chance of improving your time, against restarting
the whole process from scratch; with the clock ticking away until the next track in the server
line-up cycles around. You’ll bang your head against the wall time and time again,
certain you’ll nail that corner this time, only for you to forget as your focus was on
the other corner coming right at you. Things move at such a blistering pace that any kind
of forward thinking can feel like it comes at the cost of focusing on the here and now—it’s
up to you to find that balance between the two.
Such is the beautiful purity of this game, this series—the definition of easy to pick
up and deceptively difficult to master, with the marker of skill being your ability to
optimise every segment of your repeated runs through a course with increasingly surgical
precision, equipped with the knowledge that there is technically an optimal route through
any given track—you’ve just got to find it, piece by piece; a process distinctly lacking
in any real frustration thanks to your ability to instantly restart a run or load a checkpoint.
So, why then, is no one talking about this masterpiece of a series? Well, on the fringes
of this tremendous racing experience, TrackMania has consistently seen some of the strangest
moves made on both a business and design level that seem to hamper any progress made on gaining
a more mainstream audience. To illustrate this, let me give you some context on this
game and its place within the series. Announced out of seemingly nowhere a few months back,
TrackMania 2020 is actually a remake of 2006’s TrackMania Nations, which is a free-to-play
version of the second game in the series, Sunrise. In between we’ve seen the release
of TrackMania 2 which released in episodes that, over several years, introduced new structures
and handling models specific to each module (and was released as part of the Maniaplanet
framework, which also houses Nadeo’s even lesser known ShootMania), with two of the
modules (Stadium and Canyon) releasing in 2013, then a final episode (Lagoon) released
in 2017 which, oddly, was one year after the sequel to TrackMania 2, Turbo, was released
for consoles—they released the sequel, then abandoned it in favour of the previous game.
Oh and, by the way, you can still download and play the original Nations for free and
it’s kind of a different game to 2020’s instalment which seems to have more in common
with TrackMania 2 Stadium. Oh, and also this game is free to play but you pay for it yearly
but it’s not a subscription… apparently? What?!
One of the most fascinating things about TrackMania over the years, for me, has been trying to
figure out what is going on at Nadeo or Ubisoft that the franchise has so consistently maintained
such a confusing release model. Is Nadeo stretched for resources? Does Ubisoft just not care?
It’s a confusion reflected in the fragmentation you see within its player base; with people
haphazardly dotted around TrackMania 2 Stadium and Canyon, some here and there in 2016’s
Turbo, no one playing 2017’s Lagoon and a surprising amount of people sticking with
2006’s Nations over this year’s remake. And look, I’m not here to rant about the
payment model because frankly, it’s not as big a deal as it was made out to be. In
practice what they’ve done is given players a fairly substantial demo, with the option
to upgrade to a remarkably cheap yearly subscription that comes with the promise of so much regularly
updated content and replay value inherent to the game’s design that I certainly don’t
begrudge paying it. The real problem is this idea that, well,
they could have just positioned it as that—a demo with a subscription—but instead, for
whatever reason, this whole big song and dance has to be performed as to why this thing isn’t
what it clearly is. It’s a move on the part of either the developer or publisher that,
again, is remarkably reflective of TrackMania as a franchise—that the gameplay itself
is purity defined, but it’s surrounded by this ridiculous shell of utterly extraneous
stuff that you first have to crack through in order to access it any of it.
For example, I’d go so far as to say that TrackMania has some of the worst UI design
I’ve ever seen in a franchise that’s otherwise so fantastic. I mean, just… look at this.
What is this?! What am I looking at here?! Now, obviously as someone who has been playing
these games for years I’ve developed a sense for Nadeo’s unusual visual vocabulary, but
think about approaching this from the perspective of a bright-eyed newbie looking to experience
the joy of this series for the first time. OK, Solo seems pretty self-explanatory, but
what does “Live” mean as opposed to “Club”? Where’s multiplayer? What’s the “Arcade”
mode—I click it and it says something about Mario Kart and a timer for half an hour? How
does that differ from “Summer 2020”? Ah yes, a much needed training mode to get players
to grips with the various handling and speed modifiers… except there’s no explanation
as to what type of obstacle level 16 of 25 will contain, nor the function of said obstacle
or how to most effectively navigate it—not even a textbox. You want to know about ice?
Or how about “reactor boost down” as opposed to “reactor boost up”? Well you’ll just
have to cycle through each numbered level sequentially until you find the specific situation
you’re curious about. On top of that, users being able to group together collections of
their crafted courses is neat but unless you have something specific in mind that you want
to play, there’s seemingly no way to filter any of the good stuff from the bad—you just
have to scroll through… all of this. I think even long-time players will have to
admit there are ways this entire experience could be heavily optimised—it was actually
pleasantly surprising to see how many within the community seem to share this frustration.
I mean, I was fairly astounded to find just how obtuse the process of downloading and
installing user-created content was in this game—actually taking you out of the program
and downloading a ZIP file within your web browser, and that’s even if you can figure
out how to access the download button or what the download button is. Somehow, in this revitalisation
of an older title, Nadeo has made accessing user-generated content, arguably the cornerstone
of their franchise, an even worse experience than it was before. This is ludicrous.
And with all of that said, while the way these games have consistently been packaged has
remained an utter mess, it’s hard to deny that it was partly that strangeness that so
intrigued me about the franchise in the first place all those years ago. As frustrating
as it can often be to see the game overlooked for its own arbitrary bullshit, that bullshit
is a key part of TrackMania’s identity in my mind. It says a lot that in the (albeit
slight) attempts on the part of Nadeo to present a more streamlined, console-friendly appearance
with Turbo—you know, to make TrackMania look like an actual game—all this served
to do was cause a large section of the fanbase to yearn for that clutter; quickly taking
the opportunity in 2020’s game to bring back the nostalgic barrage of plug ins, server
records, track times and the like; reviving such classic TrackMania courses as Star Wars
Metallica with its terrible fonts and Obi Wan Action Cam; blasting dubstep remixes of
Limp Bizkit while you do donuts with a bunch of random ghosts. It’s the height of maximalist
nonsense and it’s as baffling as it is hilarious. In this sense, the stuff surrounding TrackMania
might be the opposite of functional, and it might be difficult for new players to fully
grasp it all, but learning to grasp it, being thrown into the deep end and forced to work
your way through this mess on your own can also be ridiculously fun, or at least funny
in its own right. You know, while I certainly don’t doubt there is a contingent of players
who live and die by this wall of data and stats, I get the feeling that for the most
part it’s just a bunch of people coming together in a true celebration of the absurd—turning
the rather solitary, insular experience of improving your own time into this wacky, but
weirdly communal experience; all while losing none of the zen-like focus that makes its
moment-to-moment racing so captivating. You know, in this time of extreme stress and
isolation so many of us are experiencing, there’s a strange feeling of comfort to
seeing a cluster of ghosts so dense that their usernames blur into nothing, the server struggling
to accurately represent their precise movements all at once. It’s a nice reminder that you’re
not alone—that rare kind of multiplayer game where these people aren’t really your
competition per se, you aren’t trying to take them down. They’re just people in competition
with themselves, improving themselves bit by bit just as you are. Even if you can’t
interact with them directly, they’re navigating this weird, lawless land alongside you—and
that odd, unspoken camaraderie is something I really grown to appreciate.
All of this is to say that TrackMania could be the biggest racing franchise on the planet,
if someone on the inside actually took the time to properly clean things up. Its biggest
hurdle to reaching the kind of mainstream success its gameplay deserves is itself—and
honestly, outside of the weird subscription stuff, I don’t know if I’d have it any
other way. There are plenty of racing games that focus purely on that racing—there is
also nothing quite like stepping into the weird, chaotic world of TrackMania.
Speaking of stepping into something new, why not take the next step in your creative journey
with today’s sponsor, Skillshare! Skillshare is an online learning community for creative
and curious people. Explore new skills, deepen existing passions and get lost in creativity
with Skillshare’s inspiring online classes, on topics including illustration, photography,
video, design and more. Do you enjoy the speed of TrackMania but find
it difficult to keep up with everything else going on in your life? Then you might find
Thomas Frank’s Productivity Masterclass: Create A Custom System That Works particularly
useful. It’s a remarkably accessible class that emphasises making small changes that
will have a big impact on your routine, whatever it is you’re setting out to do.
What’s more, Skillshare offers classes designed for real life and all the circumstances that
come with it. These lessons can help you stay inspired, express yourself and introduce you
to a community of millions, all for less than $10 a month with an annual subscription. And
because Skillshare is sponsoring this video, the first 1000 people who click my link in
the description can get a two-month free trial of premium membership, so there’s no risk
to checking it out for yourself, and you’ll really be helping the channel in the process.
Thank you to Skillshare for sponsoring this video, and I hope you all enjoyed this piece
on TrackMania! As always I’d like to sincerely thank my
patrons here—it’s your continued support during this weird time that allows me to keep
making these videos and I’ll never be able to thank you enough for that. If you feel
like you can (and only if you feel like you can) you can really help the channel continue,
as well as get things like early access to ad-free video uploads by heading to http://patreon.com/writingongames
and pledging only what you feel comfortable with. I am immensely grateful for your support
in whatever form it takes. Special thanks go to Mark B Writing, Samuel Pickens, Shardfire,
Artjom Vitsjuk, Constantinos Tsikinis, Ruth Knapman, Dallas Kean, TheNamlessGuy, Ham Migas,
Hibiya Mori, Henry Milek, Lucas, Bryce Snyder, Timothy Jones, Ana Pimentel, Rob, my dad,
William Fielder, Tommy Carver-Chaplin, Lea Chinelo, Justins Holderness, David Bjork and
Charlie Yang. And with that, this has been another episode of Writing on Games. Thank
you so much for watching, stay safe and I will see you all next time.