The End of the Conelanders Racing League

During my ongoing literature review I often discover interesting facts about things I’ve never thought about. Sometimes I can connect these facts with my own observations: The result is mostly a completely new idea why things are as they are. Maybe these ideas are new to you, too. Therefore I’ll share my new science based knowledge with you!

This week: This time, I think about the end of the Conelanders DiRT Rally Racing league which kept me entertained and challenged for the last one and a half years.

Next month, about two years after DiRT Rally was made available as an early access game, DiRT 4 will be released. Amongst other things, the next version of the rally simulation game implements a random stage generator which automatically generates unique stages that can range from easy short stages to technical long stages. In addition, by randomly generating stages, players can no longer memorize specific locations and hence will be challenged over a longer period of time. Also, this feature hopefully ensures a better competition in DiRT’s league system as, in DiRT Rally, players who memorized a stage had a strong advantage over players who were dependent on the co-driver calls.

DiRT Rally

With the upcoming release of DiRT 4, the Conelanders Racing League–a relaxed racing community I was a part of since its humble beginnings one and a half years ago–will come to an end next Wednesday. Over the course of the last 17 months, the Conelanders DiRT Rally League challenged its drivers with weekly and sometimes monthly events thus bringing the members closer together and resulting in many new friendships. One of the unique features of this league was the strong focus on video content creation. For this purpose, most of the events could be completed within 20 minutes which is a good length for a YouTube video.

Personally, the content creation became a weekly ritual to me I was all the time looking forward to. Every event was different and provided the potential to tell a very exciting and unique story: a very close competition, a great recovery run or just an empty stage to discuss observations I made while playing the game. Of course, there also was the competitive aspect of competing with my friends on a weekly basis. I eagerly awaited the videos of their runs to see how well they did and where they managed to pull away from me.

After having produced more than 60 Conelanders DiRT Rally videos, it feels very strange to me that the league now hosts its final event. The celebrations of the league’s end already started two weeks ago as the Child’s Play grand finale began. Drivers who wanted to compete in this final evant were asked to support this charity thus ultimately racing for a good cause.

In the end, the last one and half years of Conelanders DiRT Rally were fantastic. I made many new friends from all over the world, expressed my creativity by producing a couple of unique intros for my videos and improved my driving skills by playing the game.

Thank you Conelanders and, more importantly, thank you ConeDodger240 for having organized the league!