Game-Changing: iGP Manager's 13th Anniversary update

Happy 13th Birthday to iGP Manager, on the week of Friday the 13th! The number 13 holds a special significance for me personally - it was my number in racing. Today, it marks a new beginning. This blog will be the first in a series on the new iGP Manager, launching January 2025.

While we aimed to release everything by the end of 2024, pushing our resources to their limits to meet that goal, we ultimately decided that taking an extra month would be worth it to deliver the best possible experience.

iGP Manager has always been a labour of love, built by a small and dedicated team. The bulk of the changes you’ll see in this update have come directly from myself, while the 3D/native content has come from our team of new developers and artists. We also recognised advances in AI early on and adopted these tools into our workflows. They are a powerful amplifier and we will continue to push the frontiers into 2025 and beyond.

Over the weeks ahead, I’ll share more in-depth blogs about each area of the new game. These will cover the revamped UI/UX which includes a fresh and fully 3D avatar editor, the new car for 2025, and outline the revised Rookie tier, designed to revitalise racing and populate all tiers fully.

A New Look, a New Feel

The user interface is completely revised: Modern, clean, intuitive and filled with gorgeous animations. The menu is now grouped into five distinct areas. Tapping a menu item multiple times cycles through its sub-tabs, creating a rapid and steamlined navigation experience.

The new Assistant feature is an evolution of the race preparation checklist, covering a broader range of areas. The Assistant will help you stay on top of everything happening in your team in one place.

Community at the Heart

The homepage represents a new central hub to connect with the community or your league, review league standings, or to jump into a race. It’s not just a dashboard- it’s a hub for connecting with fellow managers and staying updated on what’s happening in the world of iGP Manager.

Community is a strong emphasis in this update. Any sense of being isolated within a league is gone. The wider iGP Manager community, content creators, and more will be at your fingertips. The full extent of these changes will be detailed in the next blog in this series on the new UI/UX.

High Performance

This is more than just a surface makeover. Under the hood, a new content caching system has been built from the ground up, giving iGP Manager near native app performance. Whether you’re on a mobile network, Wi-Fi, or even offline, the menu and any cached content will load instantly. As you navigate the user interfaces, each new page and dialog is added to the cache, enabling instant and even offline re-viewing*.

The Anticipated Arrival of the New Car

The new car finally arrives! When the update launches, all classic liveries are set to be included with some new options to customise the appearance of the car, not available in the current livery editor. Can you guess what’s new in the comments below? All will be revealed in the dedicated car blog in the weeks ahead.

Rookie Revisited

As alluded to in my previous blog, the Rookie tier has been completely restructured in this coming update, transforming the experience for new players. These changes make progression to Pro and Elite tiers smoother and more balanced; particularly addressing the unique challenge the Pro tier faced as leagues grew in age. Rookie gameplay will be fast-paced, 'Quick', and engaging, with the slower experience of leagues arriving in Pro, ensuring both are always well-populated. The final blog in this series will explain this in full. It's a much larger change than many will be picturing, and perhaps the most transformative update of all for the future of iGP Manager.

Explore the HQ

Your team’s HQ is now an interactive and zoomable map. Initially, this will be largely a visual change, but this redesign sets the stage for exciting future updates. With future updates, you’ll be able to customise the appearance and location of your HQ and more.

Looking Ahead

This update is all about laying a solid foundation for iGP Manager’s future. Although we initially aimed for a 2024 launch, we’ve decided to take a little extra time to ensure every detail is polished. The update will officially launch in January 2025, and the exact release date will be announced in the fourth and final blog in this series.

This journey wouldn’t be possible without you, the iGP Manager community. Your support drives everything we do, and we are beyond excited for you to experience this next chapter.

Stay tuned for the next blog, where I’ll dive deeper into the new UI/UX. Follow us on social media to receive all the latest news as we countdown to January! 🚦

*Offline viewing requires the cache to be populated beforehand, which needs an initial internet connection. This feature is particularly useful in scenarios with slow or intermittent connectivity rather than complete offline use. Cached pages should load instantly regardless of connection conditions.