Trust was my first mistake. As I dropped into one of the 83 racing simulators in the new F1 Arcade At my location in Washington, DC, I told the company's CEO, Adam Breeden, that I had raced many times before. I chose the Semi-Pro difficulty, even though Breeden told me he recommends that most first-time visitors to arcades choose something simpler. I tuned the Vesaro simulator, started the race, and caused a six-car pileup in the first corner of the race.
Luckily for me, F1 Arcade is designed more for fun than fidelity, so my career wasn't over. He finished four minutes later, in last place, when the on-screen timer thankfully hit zero. On a normal day at the arcade, this would signal that it's time for someone else to run. For me, getting behind the wheel a few days before the arcade opened to the public meant my embarrassing journey was finally over.
F1 Arcade's DC outpost is the company's second location in the US; the first opened in Boston earlier this year, after two UK locations have been huge successes. (Breeden says one location made double its projected revenue in its first year.) The project began a few years ago, when Formula 1 approached Breeden to develop a more experiential product for racing fans. Breeden has been doing this sort of thing for a while (he calls it “competitive socialization”), creating brands for table tennis, mini-golf, bowling and darts, and he says he came up with the idea for racing simulators right away. Millions of people have sat in arcade chairs and driven cars on screen in games like Cruis'n Worldand many people are willing to shell out hundreds or thousands of dollars to have a steering wheel and pedals in their own home. A fun, social and competitive racing experience seemed like a winner.
The 83 simulators inside this massive DC space are the same: an all-in-one machine built by a company called Vesaro. (The company sells a modified version of the setup, which it calls the V-Zero Mark IIfor less than £40,000). It has a steering wheel, two pedals, and a seat that rumbles and moves just like your car does in the game. “If you play this with full manual settings,” Breeden says, “it's functionally a pro-level racing sim.” He says that his team is already working on new versions of the equipment, but that he is also happy with the state of things. And you're trying to make sure you think about everything; Even F1 Arcade's food menus were designed in part to ensure you don't stick dirty fingers into the cockpit.
Racing simulators are not, by nature, fun to watch or particularly social. The Sims are complicated and require all your attention, races last hours, and watching someone's front view isn't fun for long. For Breeden and his team, the most important thing about F1 Arcade was making it a group activity.
That process began with creating a completely new game to play. Starting 83 copies of F1 24 It just wasn't an option. “Ultimately, console gaming isn't really suitable for a concept like this. It's very complicated,” says Breeden. What the arcade needed, he thought, was a way for racers to simply sit down and start racing without having to make a lot of decisions and wait through loading screens. It also needed to be connected so people could compete against the person next to them or even everyone else in the bar.
Starting 83 copies of F1 24 It just wasn't an option.
The F1 Arcade game is based on rFactor 2, a well-known simulator and rendering engine that is often used and modified for various types of professional simulation. (It's also the game that real-life F1 champion Max Verstappen uninstalled rage last yearafter it crashed and cost him a virtual race.) Everything outside of the main racing experience has been modified for the arcade, Breeden says. “And it's not just about the software,” he says. “It's the booking system, the points, how it leads to the leaderboards, how it feeds the virtual currency that we have.” The F1 Arcade team has also designed a complete online system for the game: you play the reflex game by scanning a QR code instead of dropping a quarter, and you earn that virtual currency instead of tickets. It all took years and a team of engineers. Breeden says he's much more CEO of a technology company than he ever expected.
The game has several different modes designed for in-person racing. Most people will compete head-to-head against others in their group: The arcade rents out simulators in 30- or 45-minute increments, the same way you'd reserve a lane for bowling. You can also team up and take turns competing against up to 19 other teams in the venue. And for the most skilled and competitive racers, F1 Arcade will have overall leaderboards and full races.
You don't win by taking the checkered flag but by accumulating points. You get points for being first when the four-minute timer ends, yes, but also for passing other racers and doing other things on the track. The idea is to give everyone a chance, even newbies: each player selects their skill level, which can be anything from essentially “Full manual simulator” to “Car basically drives itself”, and the game must adjust to keep everyone competitive. If you imagine playing a photorealistic, high-end version of Mario KartYou'll understand exactly what F1 Arcade is supposed to feel like.
When you're not playing, of course, the idea is to eat and drink. And look. Each simulator has two ultra-wide 49-inch ROG Strix displays, stacked vertically in front of the seat. The bottom screen shows the view of the race, while the top screen shows something more like what you would see on TV, so the people behind you can watch the race and cheer you on. “The race is close and everyone is banging on the back of the simulator, yelling and screaming for their team,” he says. “And it's very participatory, which is what you want.”
F1 Arcade is much more than simulators. There's a huge, upscale bar, with a menu overseen by Lauren Paylor O'Brien, the champion of Netflix's first season. Masters of the drink. There are other games, such as a wall of lights meant to test your reflexes. Most of the decor is in some way related to F1: the roof lights are shaped like various tracks or telemetry data coming from the cars, and there are those iconic round red lights everywhere. Breeden is convinced that the way these places succeed is by attracting people who don't care about the activity and just want a place to hang out; People who love racing will come anyway, you know? Still, it's a room full of simulators.
Much of the gaming room recognizes the fact that we are all gamers now and that modern socialization often includes screens. This digital-IRL collision is happening everywhere: Nintendo created an AR Mario Kart experience at Universal Studios in Los Angeles and Osaka, Dave & Buster's is filled with mobile games and VR headsets, and kids hang out in Roblox and fortnite the same way they hang out at the mall. Breeden is fine with all that. He's just trying to build something worth leaving home for.
