The Driggs Factor’s First Post!

Hello and welcome to the Driggs Factor, a new blog written and updated weekly on Thursdays by, you guessed it, Driggers. The first question you likely have is “Why did you post on a Friday, stupid?” Well, MRG3 went live on Thursday night, so I’m obviously posting this after the fact.

Anyway, I’ll be discussing things in this blog about sim painting, the world of NASCAR, cars in general, and some rather random personal observations about…well…everything! So, let’s get started!

First things first: most of you know who I am. I’m a Site Artist here at MRG and have been a member for over a year now. I’ve been painting NASCAR 09 cars since the day the game came out in June of 2008 and I’ve been putting some of them out for download here on MRG. It’s been a blast for the past year and I’ve seen a lot of different things and people come and go.

Normally I’d give you guys my life’s story but I don’t feel like boring you. You’ll pick up on everything as I go along. Right now I wanna dive right into what my first blog post is all about. So without further nonsense on my part, here we go.

The “Credit Crisis”

Over the course of the last two to three weeks, some of you may have noticed that a handful of templates are now gone from the templates download section. This isn’t because someone decided they weren’t up to par with the rest of the templates, it was because another site within the sim painting community asked that we remove them. Obviously we did. With the exception of one template, credit was given to all the necessary authors and, we assumed, we were in the green to use them.

But obviously this was not enough to suffice, and as one person decided to blow the whistle, one of the sites we have had a very unique and close working relationship with went from something of a second home for MRG members to a hostile environment.

You see, when MRG was first starting up, a lot of us didn’t know how to make parts. So it was necessary to convert templates from NR2003 to N09. Mind you, this was back in mid-to-late 2008. We gave proper credit and that was that. And, for almost a year, the site we gained these parts from seemed to have no issue with it. Over the course of that year, the staff members and indeed our guest artists became more experienced and made templates from scratch. So it came as a bit of a surprise when a troll decided to run through and say that MRG and its members “rip” things from other sites.

I’m not going to defend the fact that yes, we used parts from someone else’s template, but we gave credit. We didn’t blatantly steal from them. We didn’t parade these templates around saying “OH, LOOK AT THE BEAST I HAVE CREATED FROM SCRATCH.” We gave a nod to the people who created the original templates. But evidently we’re supposed to get permission first…and while that’s understandable, there is a couple of questions I have for our accusers.

My first question  is, what do you think you did when you created the parts on those templates? The headlights, taillights, logos, etc., surely you didn’t hand-draw all of them. You had to have gotten them from somewhere. Did you get permission from GM and Chevrolet to create a comprehensive Impala template for NR2003? Are you the “officially licensed” template-makers? Or did you “rip” from them? If you can’t honestly say that you have permission FROM the automakers to use any part from their cars, then you have no right to bash us for not asking permission from you.

My second question is, if giving credit isn’t enough, then what more do you want? Royalties? If you want us to pay you for using parts you ripped from the automakers, that’s the kind of thing that gets you sued by said automaker. You cannot use these things for profit under any circumstances. The way I see it, when you post something for other people to use, you accept the fact that people will use the parts in a capacity that transcends the original use you intended.

I’ll be the first to say personally that I’m not a template maker, I just understand what I want in a template and how to organize it. My Nationwide Impala template is little more than a collection of parts that other people have made that I arranged. That’s why there’s a massive credit layer in the .psd file. It would’ve been a different story if I had just thrown the parts together and said “IT’S ALL MINE” when clearly it wasn’t. Getting upset about getting no credit at all is fine, but getting upset because someone didn’t get permission to use a rivet set that you made six years ago is like going ballistic on a kid who apologized for accidentally running through your flower garden six years ago. It’s stupid and we’ve got better things to do than to argue and sling mud about parts on a car.

I’m not attacking any  site but my solution to this problem is to lighten up. It’s just a game. It’s not like any of us are getting paid for this.

Reinventing the Chase

Jimmie Johnson won his fourth consecutive Sprint Cup championship the Sunday before Thanksgiving, and while I’m sure he and the entire Hendrick Motorsports organization is happy, even I can say I’m a little tired of Jimmie.

If there’s one thing Johnson has done, he’s exposed the biggest flaws in the Chase system. And it’s not even the twelve drivers or the seeding based on wins. It’s the fact that dominance in the Chase is something that is practiced year in and year out. I’m not debating the legitimacy of Johnson’s titles – he’s the best player by the rules that NASCAR has handed down. But I am questioning NASCAR’s rules.

In the current system, there are twelve drivers, seeded by wins in the 26-race regular season, and ten races in the Chase format. Ten races seems the perfect number, but maybe it isn’t. In those ten races, if a driver has ONE bad finish, his title bid is over. And since points are the name of the game, here are some common-sense solutions to fix the Chase.

1. Longer Schedule.

A longer Chase would make a far more interesting prospect. Extending the Chase by five races would give drivers who have one bad run an opportunity to gain back ground. But this by itself would probably not be enough to fix it completely…

2. Different Point Allocations for Chase Drivers

If Chase drivers are seeded differently than the rest of the field, they ought to be scored differently as well. A points system scoring a driver relative to where he finishes to the leader would enable drivers to finish 32nd and still remain 3rd in points if drivers from 4th-12th finished worse than he did.

3. Different Chase Schedules Every Year

When the schedule stays the same, it’s easy for teams to prepare all season for the Chase races. The spring race at Loudon is a perfect testing ground for the first Chase race there in the fall. In fact, most of the tracks in the Chase are tracks that are getting their second visit in the season. This needs to change. In addition to a road course and another short track date, the tracks the Chase takes place at need to change as well – put in more tracks that the Sprint Cup Series visits only once a year in the Chase and watch the fireworks fly.

4. Drop A Poor Finish

As mentioned before, one poor finish in the Chase will turn someone’s title hopes into a hunk of sheet metal. If none of the solutions above are implented, at LEAST implement this one. If a driver is allowed to drop his worst finish of the Chase, that would put that driver back in the hunt. But at the same time, for a driver like Jimmie Johnson, who is a threat to win every week and almost always finds his way to the top 10 or top 5, this could be a bad idea.

Just my thoughts on the way they could fix the Chase. Or they could get rid of it altogether and go back to the old points system.

Fix it NASCAR.

Random Thing of the Week

To close out this edition (and every edition) of the Driggs Factor, I will post a link or an excerpt from a random item on the Web just to give you something to think about. It may be entertaining, hilarious, or interesting, but it will definitely be worth the look.

In this edition of RTotW, Ventrilo Harassment makes its debut with my personal favorite, Luigi. Watch and see for yourself what kind of reactions the harassers get when they spam a Ventrilo server with clips of Mario and Luigi talking. And no, this isn’t exactly safe for work.