Sociohistorical development of sim racing in European and Asia-Pacific esports: A cross-cultural qualitative study

Abstract

With the accelerated growth of the sim racing industry over the last few years, research on the phenomenon has started to emerge. Nonetheless, the history of sim racing remains unmapped. This study aims to fill the gap by investigating the development in sim racing in Europe and in Asia-Pacific between 1997 and 2021. Twenty four semi-structured interviews were carried out with experts representing sim racing associations, event organizers, and teams from Europe and Asia-Pacific. Data were analyzed using an inductive-deductive codebook approach. The results show the evolution of sim racing throughout five sociohistorical stages, which demonstrate how sim racing emerged as a hybrid of esports and motorsports and has kept evolving since ‘in-between’ their respective actors until today. The findings suggest that the slow evolution of sim racing has been particularly dependent on networked sociocultural actors, while positively affected by uncontrollable events like the COVID-19 pandemic. As a key implication, we find that the history of sim racing differs from that of esports by its multifaceted dependence on the motorsports ecosystem.