What’s Happening?
I was digging through NASCAR 26 league posts on Reddit while working on the next part of this How to Fix series, and I found a guy looking for his first league. He’s been playing NASCAR games since NASCAR Thunder 2004, he can race Tuesday, Wednesday, or Friday. He prefers 25% races but can live with 50%, sliders instead of custom setups, and he says he races clean. Pretty normal league application stuff.
Then, buried at the end of all that, he says, “I’ve gotta make a name for myself.”
That stuck with me, because so much of what I’ve been trying to do with this series is figure out what NASCAR 26 Multiplayer is supposed to give you besides the race itself. Progression gave us somewhere to go. Matchmaking was about actually getting us into races with each other. But if I’m going to keep racing these people, what does “making a name for myself” actually mean?
I can win a race, but who knows about it? I can spend 15 laps fighting somebody for position, finish already wanting another shot at him, then eventually leave the lobby and go do something else. Three nights later, I might race the same guy again without either of us having any idea.
That’s the last piece I want to talk about with Multiplayer.
Who Was That Guy?
That Reddit post got me thinking about how many people I’ve already raced whose names I could not tell you now if you put a gun to my head. I’ve had guys race me clean for 20 laps, the kind of race where by the end of it I know exactly how much room I can leave them. I’ve also had guys absolutely clean me out. We might race together five more times that night, but once I leave that lobby, NASCAR 26 basically forgets any of it ever happened.
That is a huge problem in racing, because so much of racing somebody is remembering them. You learn who you can trust, you learn who you can’t. You start recognizing names, habits, little tendencies. Eventually seeing somebody behind you means something before they’ve even made a move. NASCAR 26 gives you almost none of that. I might race the same guy five times in the same lobby, then see his name again two nights later, and the game treats that exactly the same as somebody I have never seen before in my life.
Why?
The game knows who I raced. It knows how many times I’ve raced them. It knows where we finished. Start doing something with that information. Let me pull up a player and see that I’ve raced him eight times. Give me his basic stats. Give me a useful recent players list. Let me add him, favorite him, invite him back, whatever. If we keep ending up around each other every night, I want the game to eventually be able to tell me, hey, you know this dude.
I don’t need NASCAR 26 manufacturing a rivalry because somebody bumped me once. I want the opposite. I want the game to get out of the way and let me start remembering the people I’m already racing. If I keep seeing the same name, eventually that name should mean something.
Put Something Behind the Name
If I’m supposed to start recognizing people, then there needs to be something behind the name when I click on it.
Right now, a gamertag is basically all I get. That’s fine for one race, but it’s not enough if I’m supposed to keep coming back and racing these people.
I don’t need a NASCAR LinkedIn profile, I don’t need to know where you went to high school. But give me enough information that I can start figuring out who I’m racing. How many races have you run? How many have you won? What series do you spend most of your time in? What tracks are you good at? Have I raced you before, and if so, how many times?
Maybe I click on somebody and find out he has 300 Cup races and 40 wins, which explains why I just spent 20 laps staring at his rear bumper. Maybe I click on somebody else and he has six races total, which tells me I probably should not interpret every weird thing he does as an act of war.
And give me something to do with my own profile, too. Let me pick a favorite series or track. Let me show off some of the progression stuff I’ve earned. If I have a paint scheme I’m proud of, put the car there. Give me a little space to make that profile mine instead of leaving the whole thing at whatever username I came up with when I was 14.
I just want to be able to click on somebody’s name and learn something useful, and the more we race each other, the more there should be to know.
Let Me Race That Guy Again
Once I find somebody I actually like racing, the game should make it easy for me to find that person again.
That sounds obvious, but right now NASCAR 26 mostly leaves that up to me. If we’re both on PlayStation, fine, I can add him through PlayStation. Same thing if we’re both on XBOX. But that’s the console doing the work, not NASCAR 26, and once you have crossplay, the guy I just spent 20 laps racing might be on something else entirely.
If I have one really good race with somebody, let me add him right there. If I don’t want to add him as a full-on friend, let me favorite him. If he’s online tomorrow night, show me. If he’s in a lobby, let me join him. If I’m starting one, let me invite him. At that point, I shouldn’t have to care whether he’s on PlayStation, XBOX, or PC.
One good race turns into five. Five turns into, “Oh, Bro’s cool.” Eventually maybe I’ve got four or five people I keep running into, and now when I get online I’m not just looking for a race, I’m looking to see who’s around.
I do not want to go hunting through console menus or start exchanging Ventrilo information like we’re trying to organize a Counter-Strike match in 2004. Just let me keep racing the people I actually want to race.
Give Us Somewhere to Go
If I keep finding people I like racing, sooner or later one of us is going to say, “We should do this every Wednesday.” NASCAR 26 does not have much for what happens after that.
I don’t have to make up some hypothetical league to show you the problem. H&N Racing League is running NASCAR 26 on Friday and Saturday nights right now. Want the schedule and rules? That’s in their Discord. Points updates and winner posts? Instagram. They have a YouTube channel for the race hub and announcements. That’s not me picking on H&N, either. They’re doing exactly what they have to do because none of that has anywhere to exist in the game.
And these guys can get deep with it. PASSCAR is setting up a 36-race season with driver, team, and manufacturer standings, its own points system, a midseason tournament, an All-Star Race, and a full rulebook. There are people willing to build all of this around NASCAR 26. And in return, the game gives them…a lobby.
Give them more than that! Let me create a league in the game, invite people, put the schedule there, keep the standings there, save the results there. Give a couple people admin controls. If we race every Wednesday night for 10 weeks, when I turn on NASCAR 26 Wednesday afternoon, I should be able to see who we’re racing that night, who won last week, and who is leading the points.
Let Us Watch
Before NASCAR 26 even came out, Matt Lewis was asked about spectator mode. He said it didn’t make the game, called it one of his most personally wanted features, specifically said leagues need it, and pointed to it as a priority for a future release. Crossplay ate up the online team’s development time, so spectator mode didn’t make the cut.
I understand that explanation. Games have budgets, people have deadlines, and if you spend months getting PlayStation, XBOX, and PC talking to each other, those months have to come from somewhere. What I do not understand is why spectator mode is being talked about like some cool thing we can hopefully get next time. The game’s senior producer is right that leagues need it. Great. Then why is it not in the game I already bought?
H&N Racing League already has a YouTube channel for its races. If I wreck out 20 laps into one of them, I should be able to sit there and watch the rest of the race. If somebody wants to call it for YouTube, he should be able to enter the session without taking up a car, move around the field, and actually show people the race he is talking about. This is not some elaborate fantasy feature I cooked up after digging around the edges of the game. I am asking to watch the multiplayer race.
And we do not have to guess what happens when you leave this stuff out. Before NASCAR 25 released, PCL was running its NASCAR league in Forza Motorsport with 49 members and actively recruiting commentators. They planned to move the league to NASCAR 25. Somebody pointed out that the game would not have spectator mode, and the organizer’s response was simple: “We’re on motorsport atm, so we’re still looking for commentators since 25 wont have spectator.”
There it is. They wanted to race NASCAR in the NASCAR game. Your NASCAR game could not do the basic thing their league needed, so they kept racing NASCAR in Forza Motorsport instead. The same Forza Motorsport that is sitting there on XBOX Game Pass RIGHT NOW.
That is the floor. You do not get to compete only against old NASCAR GameCube games or whatever and grade yourself on whether this one has better physics than NASCAR Heat 5. You are selling a $60 racing video game in a world full of racing video games. If one of them already sitting in somebody’s Game Pass subscription has the basic tools his NASCAR league needs and you do not, congratulations, Forza just ate your lunch without even having to make a NASCAR game.
And iRacing Studios already knows how this works. The iRacing service has spectator sessions. You can spectate league sessions. It literally has a support page called “How to Broadcast.” You already make the racing game where people do this! You know why they do it. You know what tools they need. You know leagues need them because the senior producer literally said so before NASCAR 26 was released.
This is why I called NASCAR 26 a toy instead of a game. I can drive the cars. I can admire the cars. I can put Miles the Monster in my little trophy room. Then I decide I want to watch my friend race, and pow, suddenly I’ve reached the edge of this tiny product again.
That is what keeps happening with this game. Not “wouldn’t it be cool if I could own a motorhome and walk around the infield?” Not “maybe NASCAR 27 can have 100-car Raid Races.” I’m talking BASIC things I have been trained by decades of video games to assume will happen when I press the obvious button.
Let me enter a race without taking a car. Let me switch to the battle for the lead. Give the broadcaster timing and scoring and cameras he can actually control. Spectator mode is not some mystery we still need to figure out. We already know how this works.
I do not need to hear that spectator mode is high on the list for some future release. I paid for NASCAR 26. Where is it?
Make the Name Mean Something
The guy looking for his first league said he wanted to make a name for himself. If he sticks around long enough, that’s what should happen: people should start knowing the name.
If I race a guy three nights in a row and he gives me room every single time, eventually I stop worrying about what he’s going to do when he gets to my door. If another guy has driven through me the last three times I’ve seen him, I don’t need a tutorial explaining why my blood pressure goes up when his name appears behind me again. I know that guy. The game needs to stop forgetting him when I turn it off.
Put some of that on the profile. Tell me we’ve raced 14 times. Let me commend him after a race because he raced me clean or we had a great battle. If I favorite him, remember it. If I blocked him Tuesday night, definitely remember that on Friday.
I do not want a five-star driver rating. I do not need NASCAR 26 deciding whether somebody is a Good Person, and I definitely do not need to be the judge. Letting an angry gamer hand out one-star reviews to everybody who throws a block at Talladega would produce exactly the kind of useful information you would expect from letting an angry gamer hand out one-star reviews to everybody who throws a block at Talladega.
Keep the public stuff positive. If 50 people have commended somebody because they liked racing him, put that on his profile. Keep the ugly stuff personal. If I blocked somebody, tell me. I don’t need the game sentencing him to multiplayer prison.
Then when that dude who wanted to make a name for himself finally shows up in my lobby six months from now, maybe he actually has one.
Give Them Something to Make
I built a huge chunk of my Progression article around YouTubers for a reason. Give somebody like RealRadman or Sloppy Joe something in Multiplayer worth chasing for a few months, and they can turn around and make a few months of videos out of it.
I was pretty cynical about creators in the Matchmaking article, because having an audience completely screws up their perspective on that problem. Radman or Clabel can say, “Come race with me,” and 20 people appear. That makes them lousy examples of what Multiplayer is like for the average guy sitting at home. But if we’re trying to build a community around this game, weaponize them.
I am not asking iRacing to build some special Creator Mode. Give them the same stuff the rest of us are missing, like real leagues with schedules, standings, and results. Or how about player profiles so the people in those races are more than a list of gamertags? How about a spectator mode so somebody can actually broadcast the race?
And I know creators can already make videos about Career Mode and Championship Mode. Cool, but those are single-player modes. I like single-player games! But the Call of Duty campaign is not what millions of people are tuning in every week to watch! This is supposed to be a NASCAR game. The interesting part is supposed to be what happens when a bunch of actual people all want the same piece of asphalt, not “watch me kick Waymo’s ass.”
Put 30 people in a real league, let somebody actually show me the race on YouTube, and now 30,000 people outside that lobby can care what happens, too. Suddenly, the championship exists for more than the people holding controllers.
iRacing flew creators to Daytona before the game came out, put NASCAR 26 in their hands, and the rest of us spent days tearing through those videos looking for anything new. That cannot be the peak!
Months after launch, Multiplayer should still be coughing up stories without waiting for somebody to publish patch notes. Somebody wins something, somebody blows it, somebody starts a rivalry, somebody becomes impossible to beat at one track, somebody finally gets over the hump after a month of trying. The creators do not have to invent the story if the game keeps producing one.
If six months from now the only thing left to make a video about is the latest patch notes or somebody starting another Career Mode, the creators did not run out of ideas, they ran out of game.
The NASCAR gaming community is already out there building leagues, keeping points, making videos, broadcasting races, and trying to turn strangers in a lobby into people they actually know. NASCAR 26 does not need to invent a community, it needs to give the one that already exists a video game big enough to live in.
If you’ve been playing NASCAR 26 online, what is still missing for you? What would actually make Multiplayer feel like a community you want to keep coming back to? Join the discussion on Discord or X, and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube for more.