When I was little, I was really into cars. My first completed game was NFS Underground 1, followed by FlatOut 2. 2F2F was my favourite movie. What is surprising to me is that there is no popular racing game among the top games. I played The Crew 2, and it just does not feel as good. The graphics are much better, but it made me realise a few concepts today's game developers overlook. Fair warning: if you are making a unique game, you probably should take the paragraphs below with a grain of salt. If you are making a reskin/roguelike in 2026, you probably should take the paragraphs below really seriously.
If I was high IQ individual I would have done it for the past years as a game dev. Truthfully, I made a lot of game and gain a total of 0 Euros out of it. The problem is that I looked at game designs and art and musci composition and I was not copetent at any of it. Game Design can not be applied to a single dev anymore. Companies focus on graphics and I can not blame them. Its easily marketable, but they lack new mechanics. As an icompetent indie dev I should have focused on new mechanics. I mean cmon we have a lot of computing power, surely I can make a game that simulates fuel economy, a game where engine can blow up, a game where tires wear out. With bad graphics. As a modern indie dev I should focused on helping large industries research new mechanics, that could be incorporated into a large game.
Sure, players would probably want to recreate the Skyline from 2F2F; weebs probably want to recreate the AE86, etc. As game developers, we cannot ignore that because technically there aren't many games that allow us to do so. But I realised this puts us into "creative freeze." I believe that our generation of game devs is the first generation that has to create new icons and carry out the legacy of the old ones. And the cars do not need to be unlocked. Maybe the Skyline can be a boss battle?