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SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. – August 28, 2011 – Ignite Game Technologies, the online gaming company focused on building a new form of auto racing game—simraceway—today announced it has established a real world racing facility in partnership with the Jim Russell Racing Drivers School.  The driving school widely regarded as the most advanced and prestigious operation of its kind, is now the “simraceway performance driving center,” and will be fully integrated with the simraceway online racing environment in the coming months to create the most technologically advanced driver development facility in the world.  The simraceway performance driving center will be the first to fully integrate offline and online worlds into a single program.

The simraceway performance driving center’s 30,000 square-foot facility in Sonoma, Calif., boasts the largest and most varied fleet in the driving-school business, with more than 70 vehicles ranging from Karts to the Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution and its crown jewel – a fleet of custom-built Lola-engineered F3 racing cars.  With 120+ track days a year, the school is the largest single user of Infineon Raceway.

The simraceway performance driving center will offer a complete driver-training program with the highest level of technology, including instruction from some of the world’s finest coaches, to equip students with the knowledge and skills they need to become the racing legends of tomorrow.

Founded in 1957, the Jim Russell Racing Drivers School has differentiated itself with diverse proprietary curriculum and abundant track practice time. From its focus on simulating real-life racing scenarios, such as skid-pad sessions with slick tires on dry pavement, to the quality and design of the facilities, it stands out as the school of choice for drivers serious about learning to race. The results speak for themselves: Successful race drivers, including Scott Speed, Tony Stewart, legendary Le Mans and Daytona multiple-time champion Derek Bell, and 2011 Indianapolis 500 champion Dan Wheldon are counted among the school’s alumni.

In establishing the driving center, simraceway will gain an unprecedented resource for the development of vehicle physics modeling as well as techniques to improve driver development within the environment. Drivers will be able to practice in simulators at simraceway performance driving center, then step outside to test and temper their skills on the world-class Infineon Raceway track.

“The creation of the simraceway performance driving center marks the first time a real-world driving school and auto racing game have united to fuse both online and real-world racing in one location.  With this we are creating a potent tool to evolve the art of vehicle physics modeling for use in racing games and an unprecedented platform to develop drivers’ skills both online and offline. This is simply a huge asset as we work to reinvent the racing game,” said Ignite CEO Jonathan Haswell. “The team at the facility, and in particular the two chief instructors, have an incredible wealth of knowledge that will be invaluable as we build simraceway the game and simraceway the performance driving center into the world’s most advanced driving development tool.”

“We fundamentally have a product mix which touches both the real world and the online world of automotive experiences. We are extremely encouraged to produce a partnership together, which will raise the bar for the industry in terms of driver training and safety. The combination will encourage people to connect online with the simraceway products and for the user to move to the experience of feeling the real effects of G-Force with our cars under the instruction of our world-class instructors,” said Mark Rayner, CEO, emotive Experiential Performance.

About Ignite Game Technologies

Ignite Game Technologies is a San Francisco-based online gaming company focused on building a new form of auto racing game – simraceway. It was founded in 2008 by skill-quantification experts Jonathan Haswell and James Synge, and plans to introduce its first product in fall 2011. To date the company has raised $12.2 million.

About emotive Experiential Performance

The company is based at the Infineon Raceway, Sonoma, Calif. and operates the Jim Russell Racing Drivers School. The Company was established in 2006. The team has been funded since its inception by Pall Mall Partners Limited, a UK based Private Equity business.

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SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. - Ignite Game Technologies (“Ignite”), an online gaming company focused on building a new form of auto racing game, today announced its online racing game – Simraceway. Focusing on live, person-to-person racing, the new game utilizes highly accurate, simulation grade driving physics, as well as proprietary middleware, for player skill quantification to match racers by skill level.

Some of motor racing’s top drivers, including recent Indianapolis 500 champion Dan Wheldon, are helping to shape the game and will lend their head-to-head racing skills to compete against players in online races. The game will be available this fall for gaming and race fans of all skill levels but passionate racers can sign up now at www.simraceway.com to be informed of the release date and beta access.

Simraceway will leverage a client-server model similar to popular online games such as World of Warcraft, and will contain current and historic licensed content from a variety of auto and racing brands including Bentley, Bugatti™, Mitsubishi and Saleen. The racing environment will be continually updated and contain street, fantasy and real world tracks – many of which will be laser scanned for millimeter accuracy of the racing surface.

To further enhance the realism, Simraceway is also partnering with a number of racing series, teams, car manufacturers, and professional drivers, such as Dan Wheldon, each to be announced in the coming months.

“The core aim of the Simraceway online racing environment is simply to do online, live, multiplayer racing, really, really well,” said Jonathan Haswell, founder of Ignite. “This racing environment will be much less about high detailed visual models and cinematic replays, like most current racing games, and much more about close, hard, door handle to door handle racing with live people who have been well matched by skill level, or against professional drivers like Dan. A critical design realization for us has been that it really doesn’t matter how good, or not, you are, or actually what you’re driving, if you’re battling hard against other real drivers of similar skill level you’re having fun and that’s what we’re looking for here.”

Commenting from Mid-Ohio where he’s testing the 2012 IndyCar, Dan Wheldon, current Indianapolis 500 Champion, said of the announcement:

“I’ve always enjoyed my time in the simulators and since meeting Jonathan two years ago it was pretty obvious that Ignite was not looking to build just another racing game. So the opportunity to influence Simraceway’s physics directly was pretty appealing. Thus far it’s been a fun project to be involved with but I’m really looking forward to getting into the meat of it later this month, when we do the physics model shakedown at Infineon. Of course the real fun will begin when I get to start racing against users live online!”

The complete video with Dan Wheldon is available here.

About Ignite Technologies
Ignite Game Technologies is a San Francisco-based online gaming company focused on building a new form of auto racing game – Simraceway. It was founded in 2008 by skill quantification experts Jonathan Haswell and James Synge and is planning to introduce its first product in the fall of 2011. To date the company has raised $12.2 million.

CHICAGO and SAN FRANCISCO – Aug. 9, 2011 – Today, SteelSeries, the leading manufacturer of premium-quality, competitive gaming peripherals and Ignite Game Technologies, an online gaming company focused on building a new form of auto racing game, announced their partnership and plans to bring an exclusive new form of racing controller to market, later this year. The partnership is being announced today in conjunction with the announcement of Ignite’s online racing game environment, Simraceway™.
The joint venture was formed to examine innovative ways to improve driving game controllers and will leverage SteelSeries’ deep expertise in professional gaming equipment with unique expertise developed from Ignites’ research into improving the racing game. The hardware will be designed to work with all major PC racing titles but will work particularly well with Ignite’s just announced online racing game environment – Simraceway.
“It has been a part of who we are as a company to collaborate with professional gaming teams in identifying features and technologies that will enhance gameplay; whether it’s with peripherals that improve how teams hear approaching footsteps in an FPS, or the ability to create multiple layers of macros for more efficient raiding in MMO’s, it’s this joint force that sets what we do apart from the rest,” said Bruce Hawver, CEO of SteelSeries. “The Ignite team has applied that same outlook to their gaming platform, by working with the best, most recognized drivers in auto racing. We’re thrilled to be partnering with them, in supporting both the launch of the new online racing community and by teaming up to bring a new, original product to the market, later this year.”
For the past 10 years, SteelSeries has worked with competitive gaming teams to support, design and build peripherals that will impact and improve their professional game-play, while Ignite has focused on developing the most realistic live, online racing environment. The new racing environment, Simraceway, set to launch this fall, will feature simulation grade driving physics and have a strong focus on close, hard, live multiplayer racing. Some of the world’s top racing drivers will be using the environment for both practice and fun and will be competing alongside everyday gamers. To further enhance this environment, SteelSeries and Ignite Game Technologies are working together to create a unique device that will greatly improve upon current racing game controllers.
“The reason we founded Ignite was to examine ways to improve the racing game and we feel it wouldn’t be possible to achieve that goal without looking at how users physically interface with racing games,” said Jonathan Haswell, CEO of Ignite. “We are excited to bring our thoughts in this area to life and fully explore the realism improvements that can be achieved through combining Simraceway’s racing game environment directly with a custom hardware solution. It is exciting to have a partner with the brand and depth of experience of SteelSeries, with which to do that.”
For more information about the partnership and news about SteelSeries, be sure to check out SteelSeries online at http://steelseries.com. Be sure to follow SteelSeries on both Facebook and Twitter to stay up to date on product availability, contests and news. To find out more about the new Simraceway Community, please visit http://www.simraceway.com.