Joining us this week on the Traxion.GG podcast is Jack Basford, founder and CEO iGP Games, creator of iGP Manager – a leading single-seater management game.
Originally released back in 2011, the free-to-play online-league-based title is available via any web browser, or through PC, iOS and Android apps, all of which synch together. Earlier in 2021, a new 3D race feature was added to the game too, and the development team continue to evolve the platform.
We speak to Jack about how he still innovates, over 10 years since the original launch, and what the future is for iGP Manager. We also chat about other games he enjoys playing and his former motorsport experience.
Listen to the latest episode to find out about this innovative experience and why you should check out the game.
Hosted by Thomas Harrison-Lord and Justin Sutton.
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PODCAST TRANSCRIPT
Below is the full transcript of this episode. It’s auto-generated, hence why it’s completely random…
Tom Harrison-Lord:
Welcome to a brand new episode of the Traxion.gg podcast. I'm Tom and joining me today is Justin. How are you doing Justin?
Justin Sutton:
I'm doing great. Thank you.
Jack Basford:
Nice. And we, you might have noticed we have a special guest is Jack Basford, who is the founder and CEO of IGP games, or maybe known as the developer of IGP manager. How are you doing Jack?
Jack Basford:
I'm good. Yeah, a bit hot, but yeah, otherwise yeah, hottest day of the year, I think.
Tom Harrison-Lord:
It is basically the hottest day of the year. I've just had to shut my window and put some studio lights on. So I am...
Jack Basford:
Yeah.
Tom Harrison-Lord:
Melting.
Jack Basford:
Yeah. I mean, I've got fans going, but it's not helping.
Tom Harrison-Lord:
Yeah, but we'll get through it. I'm sure. So I think what we'd like to do today, for those who maybe don't know, IGP manager, we'll discuss, how it came to be and why you should be playing it. And for those who are already into it, hopefully we get some insights into, what it's like to develop for if that's okay. So, stay tuned and we'll dive in. So straight away for those who don't know Jack, on a basic level, what is IGP manager and why should people play it?
Jack Basford:
Well, it's an online multiplayer manager game where you create your own race team. Essentially. It's inspired by a combination of Formula 1 and all the other series. It's a Formula manager game. So you have your own Formula race team and yeah, It can have up to 32 people in the league, in a race, that's one of the kinds of USP's is the amount of players that you can get into a race, and on mobile. So you can play for up to two hours, I guess I've kind of gone over the elevator pitch. Yeah. But like.
Tom Harrison-Lord:
It's all right.
Jack Basford:
It's got a lot of unique elements to it that are not in the other games that are similar like that. So, yeah.
Tom Harrison-Lord:
Yeah. And just so that everybody knows, you could play this across multiple different devices, right. So you can just login in a browser and on a mobile app. Is that fair?
Jack Basford:
Yeah. And you can actually transition between the two seamlessly and you can even have it running on both at the same time. So you can have your phone, your tablet and your PC all going at once. And if you wanted to, I don't know why you would do that, but you can have it on all three at the same time, but yeah.
Justin Sutton:
What got you into game development from the very get-go?
Jack Basford:
Well, it was, I really came in left field on this because I'm not trained, formally, in game development or business. That's what I just, I was initially pursuing a career as a racing driver. As you can see some evidence behind me that I used to like racing and I've got some stuff, but like, yeah, and it didn't work out because I'm not from money. And so you essentially need to be from money if you want to get to motorsport.
Justin Sutton:
Of course.
Jack Basford:
And, yeah, I thought once that, I hit those setbacks trying to pursue a career, I'd done a few competitions. In 2008, I did a championship called V1 championship. I actually won that and I was supposed to get driving Formula BMW off the back of it, with the racing steps foundation.
Jack Basford:
But that was the same year that F1 rights went from. I can't know if it was BBC to ITV in the UK.
Tom Harrison-Lord:
Yeah, I think so.
Jack Basford:
ITV to BBC sorry. That's right.
Tom Harrison-Lord:
Ah okay.
Jack Basford:
And, yeah, it was going to be on ITV4, the whole kind of show around it and stuff. And the BBC didn't want it, so they dropped it. And with that all the funding disappeared and essentially I was left stranded, with nowhere to go. So then, I was a web developer Photoshop guy, I had some skills in technology and I thought, why not apply them to building a game? I wanted to do something about this whole problem as well, motorsport not being accessible to people. So I thought this is the best way for me to do it.
Jack Basford:
I can apply my skills and the knowledge I've got from my experience with doing these competitions and SIM racing and stuff before that, in order to make a difference and actually create opportunities for people in similar positions. Who, you know, there's just no way in for us basically, if we haven't got the money. You can see that in F1 today, pretty much all of the drivers to come through, no matter how talented they are, some of them are really good drivers. Well most of them, I should say, like there's maybe one or two, I think I won't name names.
Tom Harrison-Lord:
Yeah, no names.
Jack Basford:
But like, yeah. I think most of the people who know who I'm talking about. Yeah, exactly. They spin a lot, but, yeah, it's just about, for me It's about trying to create something that can build opportunities for people in similar positions. And, I think this is the best way for me to do it because it applies all of my skills and all of the things I understand how to do, from, I used to play games a lot. I've been through a few competitions trying to get into motorsport and obviously a huge fan of the sport. So I've kind of seen it from various different angles. I've been a SIM racing team manager and I came in from that angle. It wasn't actually from game development. Yeah.
Justin Sutton:
Interesting.
Justin Sutton:
So would you say, I hate to, I don't mean to use this pun. Would you call yourself a bit of Jack of all trades then? Is that kind of.
Jack Basford:
I mean, that's fair enough. I do actually sort of refer to myself as that because I'm also a master of none. I'm not great at any of the things that I do, but I have enough of an understanding that I can connect all of the dots. And I think that really helps in a management role to be able to, oversee a team of people in all these different areas, from development to photoshop, to creative stuff, artists, and I've actually done all of those jobs as a freelancer before. So I'm able to oversee their work and make sure they're held accountable. They're doing good work and that's why we've, I think we've done so well. We're such a small budget up to this point.
Justin Sutton:
So, with IGP specifically, how did it come about? Was it just you, did you reach out to anybody for assistance for any one particular aspect being a master of none?
Jack Basford:
Yeah, I did. I've always surrounded myself with people that are smarter than me at the things that I need, people that are smart at. So, in the beginning, the game was initially created by me and a friend who was very technically gifted. And, he did a lot of the backend work on the game and I did a lot of the sort of front-end and branding and all of that stuff. So, that was how we kind of paired up and that's the sort of person that I pair up quite well, because that's where I lack the sort of really deep technical skills that like a C++ programmer or something has, but what I, what I lacked there, I sort of make up for in being able to put the right people together and a team and pointing in the right direction. So, yeah.
Tom Harrison-Lord:
So in terms of IGP.
Jack Basford:
I don't know if I answered your question there, by the way.
Justin Sutton:
Yeah absolutely.
Tom Harrison-Lord:
That's all good.
Jack Basford:
I sort of forgot the question halfway through.
Tom Harrison-Lord:
That's all right. In terms of, once you'd got IGP manager up and running and out in the world, this was, maybe over 10 years ago, is that right?
Jack Basford:
Yeah. I mean, cause it was right off the back of that championship thatmsort of fell through that was 2008 and, it was sort of 2009, 10, mostly 2010. I was working on IGP and then 2011, we launched it.
Tom Harrison-Lord:
Right.
Jack Basford:
And you know, we're going to talk about this later, I guess, about the 3D that we just launched in IGP, the 3D racing. We had, we originally wanted to do that back in 2011. We just ran out of money cause we were funding it ourselves and we didn't have the budgets to do anything like that. So, yeah, initially it was a very bumpy ride. The first few years I call the first five years, basically that was my university because I didn't go to university to study any of this. I basically learned on the job in the first five years and then made a lot of mistakes. I did everything you could possibly do wrong. And then eventually I got to the point where I knew all the things that you could do wrong. So I kind of knew what to do right.
Justin Sutton:
Process of elimination.
Jack Basford:
Exactly. I just, persisted through a lot of setbacks in the beginning and eventually got there.
Tom Harrison-Lord:
How do you keep innovating and thinking of new ideas for the, for the title, after such a long time?
Jack Basford:
Well, like I said, a lot of the ideas we're working on now are still, they had the seed planted back then if you like, because that was when I had this whole kind of vision, what I was gonna gonna build. And I think if you're not going to persist, if you haven't got that kind of vision of what it is you're building because, it's tough, when it gets tough, and it will get tough when you're trying to build something like this. When funds are low or people's morale is flagging or the project's taking longer than expected, that kind of stuff, then it's hard to keep going unless you know what you're doing it for. And that's, what's always kept us going, is that vision what we're doing at for, so, yeah, just to go back in time a bit. I mean, it was the, the experience I gathered through my work as a freelancer and through sim racing and stuff that formed all of the stuff I ended up doing, that perhaps more than anything else, it was my education. And the series of failures, like I said, that eventually led to, to some kind of awareness of success looks like in this field. Oh, so you have to do that, like that's how you do it and, yeah, went from there really.
Justin Sutton:
And speaking of the innovation and speaking of the 3D, you mentioned that, that's something that you'd actually wanted to do right from the get go right from the beginning, from the earliest days of, of IGP manager. So, you eventually abandoned it. How long was it until you were like, Hey, maybe we should revisit this 3D thing.
Jack Basford:
Yeah. So, 2011 to sort of 2016, like I said, those kinds of that kind of five-year periods was not there wasn't much going on. I was basically trying to, get it off the ground, and it took a long time, but in 2017 when we launched the app, that was really the point where it just took off from there because.
Justin Sutton:
The mobile app.
Jack Basford:
Exactly. Yeah. So in 2017 we finally launched it as a mobile app and that's when it became properly cross-platform until then it just being a browser game and the app exceeded all my expectations. So I had projected what I thought was a really ambitious growth curve. I was like 5%. I think it was week on week, every week. If we get 5% growth over that year, it was like a hockey stick, exponential growth. And we'd smashed through the end of year target by the end of the first or second month.
Jack Basford:
So it was like, wow, absolutely vertical growth, totally unexpected. But that shows that the demand was there for what we were doing, but it just, so much of what you do in this industry is about getting it in front of people. And if you don't have that, it is, marketing, getting it in front of people, like just getting the message out there because otherwise people don't have an awareness that exists. And I still think to this day, because we're an independent developer and we haven't had the budget to market it, that others have had, I think there's probably still quite a lot of awareness that even exists. So I think, we haven't even scraped the surface on what the potential is or what we can do. So yeah, I'm really optimistic for the years ahead and that we can continue innovating as that budget grows.
Justin Sutton:
And, how was it been received from the existing players? So obviously the existing players would have, been told, Hey, this game that's been 2D for all these years, is all of a sudden going to be 3D? How was it received by them?
Jack Basford:
Well, there was, there was some shock I'm not going to lie because it was like, what we were trying to address was, let's go from being the weakest in this area, which, we had the most basic 2D graphics. We thought let's become the industry leader in this field and really change the perception of what we're doing, you know? And it did have a big impact, people, I saw everybody across Twitter or even people that hadn't played IGP for years were saying, oh, I'm going to give it a try again. This is interesting, what they're doing, because we offer on-board cameras, chase cams, it essentially looks like a race game. I mean, it looks better than, you know not too toot my own horn too much, but I think that it does look better than most racing games on mobiles, on a phone.
Jack Basford:
So, and it's probably better than any of the desktop games that are out at the moment as well on a phone as well. So I think that's quite a good achievement. I'm really, really pleased with what we've done there. There's still a long way to go though, because it doesn't actually, when I talk about scratching the surface in terms of the vision as well, there's so much more that we can do. I mentioned at the start wanting to do create opportunities in motorsport for people as well. Stuff like that. There's ways we can tie all of that in and build partnerships with bigger organizations. There's a few talks going on and off.
Tom Harrison-Lord:
Right.
Jack Basford:
Yeah. There's been a lot of interest as well because you know, people like what we're doing and it's, I mean, it's not all smooth sailing, some people said, I just wanted 2D, what have you done? Why you're spending time on this? But it's, again, it gets back to that marketing aspect and it does get the word out that we're here and we exist because you're not going to raise awareness with a product that looks like it's 10 years old.
Jack Basford:
You need to, you know, and I like innovation. That's what gets me out of bed in the morning. I like building stuff that's futuristic and bleeding edge, that's what I'm really into. So, yeah.
Tom Harrison-Lord:
What do you think would be next on the hit list for the platform? Do you have like a wishlist of features?
Jack Basford:
Yeah. There's all kinds of stuff. Like we want to build an event system that would allow us to tie in a lot of these opportunities and partnerships that I was mentioning. Also, I mean, there's just so much we could do with the assets we've got now as well. Like, a racing game, for example. Yeah. It would be very easy to create just a racing game spinoff. That's just based on what we've got, using those assets so there's, and there's been interest in that too. So yeah, there's, there's all kinds of directions we can take. But racing games is ultimately where I want to go as well. I will just say one thing, I'll clear up one thing, cause there's been some speculation that what we're doing is we're going to make it so that you can race in IGP manager. But actually, that actually isn't the plan.
Tom Harrison-Lord:
Right.
Jack Basford:
Nobody is expecting what we're going to do over the next few years. So I'll leave it at that. And it's, yeah,
Tom Harrison-Lord:
Well, now I'm extra interested here. Stay tuned.
Tom Harrison-Lord:
Just quickly on that point, you know when you get player feedback, it's the lifeblood of most game developers, right? How'd you handle it? Do you, obviously you embrace it, but do you have to prioritize
Jack Basford:
You do, you really do have to prioritize that's one of the hardest parts of the job actually is you get all of this feedback that floods out, especially when you get to the scale we're at now, we've crossed 2.5 million users we're on our way to 3 million. And you know, it's, it's a different world to where we were at the beginning when we were in browser game space. And we had maybe tens of thousands of players, I just get feedback coming up from all sides and it's impossible to process all of it because we are still a small company, behind the scenes, you know? So it's more a case of, yeah, prioritizing. You have to decide, we decided that visuals was the most important next step before we get to some of the other stuff that we want to do, because it increases the whole marketability and awareness of the product first.
Tom Harrison-Lord:
Yeah. Certainly the 3D update as like a big news article on Traxion from that a lot, a lot of people. Oh.
Jack Basford
Saw that.
Tom Harrison-Lord:
Right, I've never heard of that before. Yeah, no worries. Those future updates you were hinting at earlier, just let us know.
Jack Basford:
Of course, yeah. I'll give you the scoop.
Justin Sutton:
And, you know, that I, in particular, Jack love, super competitive IGP manager at like at the top level. And just like any, any game, it is super competitive at the top level. How soon might we see IGP esports in 3D or something similar to that?
Jack Basford:
Well, I was, I sort of alluded to that when I was talking about events. So I think that could be coming by the end of this year. That's what I would like, like to do, but, yeah. And you're more than welcome to commentate as well. We need commentators, so yeah, there's, there'll be opportunities for jobs there too. Like if you're, if you're free on the side.
Justin Sutton:
Absolutely.
Tom Harrison-Lord:
Oh, you might get some work out of this Justin.
Jack Basford:
Always got a backup plan.
Justin Sutton:
I mean, it genuinely is. I love that about the game because it sort of almost rewards, intelligent people. It's not sort of like a skill thing. It's an intelligence thing. I mean, you can certainly pick up tips and tricks and stuff like that. I did a video way back when many, many, many years ago I did a video.
Jack Basford:
I rememeber, that was how we first connected.
Justin Sutton:
Yeah. That was actually.
Justin Sutton:
And it's such an in-depth game, there's so many layers to it. You can jump in and you can have fun for sure. But there's a lot to peel back, obviously there. So, that's why I'm especially keen on the high level side, because again, we also saw just really, really incredibly close racing and, really exciting stuff, in the competition stuff that we saw previously. So yeah, personally, I'm just really excited to see, something like that in 3D cause the game looks great. And obviously, I had a lot of fun playing with the different camera angles and experiencing the sound as well too. The engine sound, fantastic.
Jack Basford:
Yeah. There's a whole lot more we can do with that. I mean, TV cameras are on the horizon. We did actually have them,
Tom Harrison-Lord:
Oh.
Jack Basford:
Yeah, we had those in the development builds, but they didn't make it to launch because, some of the tracks were finished quite late, late in the day. We weren't able to get the cameras on suppose tracks in time, but that is coming. So there'll be TV cameras as well. And yeah, it's going to be all set up broadcasting, so it'd be ideal for that kind of stuff.
Justin Sutton:
Nice.
Tom Harrison-Lord:
That sounds very promising. We'll definitely check that out. Yeah. For those who might be, hardcore into iRacing on that PC or Gran Turismo on their PlayStation, for example. Why should they get involved in IGP Manager for the first time? For me jumping into it for the first time.
Jack Basford:
I can answer that straight away, like, because it's nothing like any of those games, it doesn't, like suck all your time into it. You know, that's a big thing of how we designed it. So, like Justin said, you can kind of get into it as much as you want to, as much as you feel comfortable doing. That's not necessarily the case that a lot of those other games. They do become a massive time drain if you wanna get your setups right, race competitively. I used to do that myself, like yeah, exactly. I mean, I ran the team that won the iRacing World Championship in 2011. So I've got that experience right at the top level as well of like what, what competitive esports is like on that side. And it's just, it becomes more than a full-time job. It's crazy. So, yeah, I don't want it to become like that because I don't even think that's healthy to be honest.
Jack Basford:
Like, I think that people should be able to live their life around the game, especially if you've got a job, a family, those kinds of things. So it's IGP is one of those games where you can kind of set up in about 10 minutes and when your race is on, you might be there for as, you can have two hours, you can have half an hour, you could have 45 minutes, it's really your choice. But yeah, it's just, it's designed to fit around you basically. And that's something I would say that almost none of the other games are, they're just like a constant churn of like, you need to put in a hundred more laps to unlock the achievement. You need to win this race. You need to unlock this car. I mean, there's elements of leveling up in the game, but they don't take your time.
Jack Basford:
You don't have to sit there, grinding it out to get the levels. So that's, that's been built into the game that it fits around your life and it should be quite convenient. So in terms of why someone who plays any of those games should play it. I would say that's a great reason if you're feeling like your time is just going into these games too much. This is a great way to bring it back down to a manageable level.
Tom Harrison-Lord:
And still get that racing kick and the competitive element.
Jack Basford:
And still get the kick. Yeah, exactly.
Tom Harrison-Lord:
Exactly. Yeah. And with it working across all the devices, it really helps to be flexiable.
Jack Basford:
Yeah if you're on. Yeah. If you're on the go, you don't have to get your wheel out and set up and stuff.
Tom Harrison-Lord:
Oh, have you seen that portable Steam device? I will see people plugging in their wheel soon on the train.
Jack Basford:
We'll hook up to the Steam device.
Tom Harrison-Lord:
When you first, when you visit the website for the first time, it's nice. A nice little quote there from Dale Earnhardt Jr. How did that relationship come about?
Jack Basford:
Oh, that was really funny because he was, he just playing the game already with Brad Keselowski, a bunch of race spotters.
Tom Harrison-Lord:
That's cool.
Jack Basford:
Yeah. They were in a league and I was like, no way. I was like, this is not, it's not the Dale Earnhardt Jr. This is someone with his name because you get that, you get people that put in. And I was like, I looked at his email and database and I was like, that's gotta be his email, that's his address? That's his email. So I was like, well, that's a bit suspect. Is it really him? I started the question it. So I sent him an email on that email. I said, you know, I thought this is the best way to do it. I'll contact him on his email. And then if he says, yes, I'm actually doing this, then it's really him, you know? So, and he did, I sent an email and I said, you know, are you playing IGP? Is this something your do? And he's like, yeah, actually, there was, there was another layer to that. I've completely forgotten because it was so many years ago. I remember what happened. I think there was an interview in SB Nation where he mentioned IGP Manager.
Jack Basford:
He's like, that's it. Yeah. That was how I saw it. He was like, I'm playing IGP manager. I love this game. I was like, what is this real? I was like, yeah, I scanned him in the database. And that was it. And then I sent him an email and then I was like, okay, this is really Dale Earnhardt Jr. and he was like, yeah, I'll give you a testimonial. I don't, I love it. And I saw her in the league as well, Brad Keselowski was there, he said a bunch about spotters were in the league. Yeah, I also know, by the way, last, was it last year, maybe it was last year or the year before, but Jean-Éric Vergne and Felipe Massa and a bunch of the Formula E drivers also had a league.
Justin Sutton:
I was going to mention that. Cause that's from when I was there, I think, yeah. I remember JEV and Felipe Massa.
Jack Basford:
I spoke to JEV on the phone that was so surreal. He was like, I love this game. I was like, there's been some weird coincidences and happenings, but I think it goes to show that if you, if you put in the effort and if you're passionate, it shows in the products and people that love the sport can feel it, you know? Cause these people are about as passionate as you could possibly get about the sport and they know about as much you can possibly know. And if they're enjoying it, then for me, that's a big tick. That's like, we've achieved what we're trying to achieve in the product is to give people that experience, like I said, in a convenient way that fits around their life. And if these guys can play it, that shows, we've achieved that.
Justin Sutton:
Absolutely. Absolutely.
Jack Basford:
I can't think of anyone more busy, frankly.
Justin Sutton:
Yeah. It's a very good point. Now I know, the next thing I wanted to ask you about, I partially know the answer to already, which is what games other than IGP manager you play already, and I'm going to spoil this and because I know for a fact you play one of my favorite games in the world, which is Forza Horizon 4 or at least you used to play it.
Jack Basford:
I love that game.
Justin Sutton:
Yeah, exactly.
Jack Basford:
Yeah.
Justin Sutton:
So I'm going to spoil that. I know already that you're a big fan of the greatest racing game ever, that you actually play aside from IGP.
Jack Basford:
I'll actually second that I've come away.
Justin Sutton:
It's really good.
Jack Basford:
Yeah. I've come away from being a purist about all of the, simulation aspects.
Justin Sutton:
Esports, hardcore.
Jack Basford:
Yeah. I mean, I like that in what we're doing, but in terms of what I look for when I'm just trying to enjoy a game, I quite happy with more arcade stuff. These days I've got a family, I've got bills to pay and stuff to do. I need to be on the go and I need to be doing stuff. So, again, for me, it's about convenience. It's like, I mean, you can actually, bringing this back to IGP and in a way you can see that's actually how IGP evolved. The initial products that I built was very time-consuming and stuff. And it was, it was built around, the way that I used to play games, I used to be a sim racer, and all that kind of stuff, and it was built around that kind of.
Justin Sutton:
League racer.
Jack Basford:
Yeah, you spend hours doing your set up and tweaking the widgets and stuff. And then as, as I, you know, grew up a bit and had to go into the real world a bit more, and didn't have as much time to play games. The philosophy behind IGP shifted with that. So I started to think more about how can we keep the essence of it and put it into the mobile game, for example, which is really tough challenge to do it. It's easy to make things complicated. You've probably heard this before, but it's really tough to make them simple. And, I love that phrase. I think it was Einstein or someone said, make things simple, but no simpler or something like that, or make things as simple as they can be, but no simpler. It's something like that. I love that phrase. Yeah. I'm putting it terribly there, but the essence of that phrase is essentially what we try and do.
Justin Sutton:
Yeah. Any other racing games that you've been playing? Cause obviously we're a racing publication and stuff. Anything else you've been dabbling in besides Forza Horizon 4?
Jack Basford:
Not really. I tried Forza Horizon 5, I liked that. Mario Kart has always been a favorite of mine, I love a bit of Mario Kart. Yeah. So yeah, just stuff I can play with with the family now there's stuff I can play with my son, that kind of stuff. That's where I'm at, I can't put on games that are like morbid on the tele or anything, anymore it's got to be family friendly stuff.
Thomas Harrison-Lord:
So, somehow we've managed to Justin to say Forza Horizon 4 on the podcast again.
Justin Sutton:
Yep. In a podcast about IGP Manager as well. That's a new achievement unlocked.
Tom Harrison-Lord:
Well done, but yeah, fair play.
Jack Basford:
What a great time. Yeah.
Tom Harrison-Lord:
Oh yeah. It's brilliant. Any trends in the gaming industry that catch your eye right at the minute that you like or dislike or, might want to aim for?
Jack Basford:
So it's not really a trend, but Apple there move towards privacy is making our life harder. And the license was a bit more tricky.
Tom Harrison-Lord:
Yeah.
Jack Basford:
I actually fully support what they're doing, so at the same time, I'm not mad, but it's like, it's made it much harder to do marketing in an effective way. That's something that's going on right now. So the whole industry is dealing with that fallout from that decision at the moment, that's something that's going on. I don't, it's not really something that I think too much about, but when you talk about trends at the moment, that's actually something, the industry as a whole is dealing with. I'm quite excited by some of these new consoles, like stuff you were talking about, like the portable consoles that are starting to get more advanced. I love VR. I think the VR has got a big future, but it's not quite there yet. It just I've been saying this for years, but it needs about another five years, I think, to be ready. When it's not coming with all cables attached to it and it doesn't weigh you down and it doesn't when you feel free playing it, then I think that's going to be a really interesting space. So that's something I'm really excited about.
Tom Harrison-Lord:
It's definitely getting there and I love playing VR, but you're right. Sometimes It just will sit there because I can't be bothered almost.
Justin Sutton:
Yeah.
Jack Basford
Yeah. I actually, I got an Oculus and the box has been used as a foot rest more than it has been used.
Justin Sutton:
It's the same with my racing wheel though. Like, it just doesn't get used. I'm just like, ah, I don't want to set It up.
Jack Basford:
Yeah. I've got a wheel. Well, I'm not sure where it is at the moment, but I've got a, I can't remember what it is, yeah, I've got a wheel.
Tom Harrison-Lord:
Yeah. We'll take your word for it.
Jack Basford:
Yeah. Promise.
Tom Harrison-Lord:
Nice. Well, I guess we're coming towards the end of the time. We obviously don't want to keep you from developing IGP Manager and lots of the new features or ideas that you were talking about for the future, that sound really exciting. Is there anything that, about the game that we haven't covered already, that you'd like to sort of bring up.
Jack Basford:
Yeah. Watch this space really and just development because we spent so much time and resources developing 3D that, and that's now finished. So we've got the foundation in place for the future now. And yeah, the development we're doing now is in a way more exciting than that, because it's actually the gameplay. Now we're starting to really look at game play and how we can make the game more fun. Visuals are great, but it's not going to change everything, in terms of some of the goals I've got, in terms of making the sport more accessible, there's so much we can do to connect with the sport in a much deeper way than we have now, to bridge that gap, partnerships we can do. So yeah, if also, if anyone's out there listening, who's running one of these companies.
Jack Basford:
Yeah. Just email me, you know, why not? I'm really open to ideas and, I'm quite. I don't plan, I have these visions of what I want to build, but I don't keep them set in stone 10 years away or something, if something comes up, I will consider it always. And, I'll, even if it doesn't happen there and then often I'll just say, let's look at, look at this again in a year, something like that. And so there's a lot of potential partnerships and stuf that I said, let's look at this again in a year, a year ago, where now maybe we getting to the point, I said once we've done 3D, let's talk again, a lot of those opportunities are now going to sort of start to come to fruition. And I think, yeah, there's some really exciting stuff we're going to be doing over the next few months. So yeah. Watch this space.
Tom Harrison-Lord:
Nice. Yeah. We're both looking forward to it. I'm sure. If you want to find out more it's IGPManager.com and you can play it on any browser. So I guess like desktop laptop, Chromebook, whatever, if you want to do 3D, there's a PC app, if that's correct. And there's iOS and Android apps as well, so do hunt it down. It is free to get involved and you can join a league and there's a nice tutorial. So we both.
Justin Sutton:
It's the best with friends. Certainly as my recommendation, if you can get a few friends together, it's a lot of fun. It's a lot of fun.
Jack Basford:
Yeah.
Justin Sutton:
Which is why real racing drivers play it.
Jack Basford:
Exactly. Yeah. And that's why they always come with a few others. It's like they always come as a group. Yeah.
Tom Harrison-Lord:
Can people find you on social media, Jack.
Jack Basford:
Yeah. I'm on, Instagram, JackBTV, Twitter, @jackbasford, I'm on LinkedIn as well.
Justin Sutton:
Cool.
Tom Harrison-Lord:
Well if those companies were listening then they'll catch you on LinkedIn. I'm sure.
Jack Basford:
On LinkedIn is not the best place. I've got an unbelievable amount of unread messages on there.
Justin Sutton:
That's so relatable.
Jack Basford:
Sorry to everybody on Linked in. Email's good.
Tom Harrison-Lord:
All right. Well Thank you for your time, Jack. It's been a pleasure. We hope you have a good day and cool down soon. I know I'm certainly looking forward to that. And for everybody listening, please do a like, and subscribe to the YouTube channel. Leave a comment below if you're watching on YouTube, if you've just got into IGP manager, if you've got any questions, if you're listening on Apple podcast or Spotify, please do like our follow on there as well as much appreciated we're TraxionGG on social media, Traxion.gg is the website for now. Keep it pinned.
