iRacing Staff Member Profile: Director of Development and Production John Schneider

This week on the return of the iRacing Staff Member highlight series, we’ve got one of the key members from the Monster Games side of things, the Director of Development and Production, John Schneider! Following the recent release of World of Outlaws: Dirt Racing ’24 and heading towards next year’s release of NASCAR 25, John has a lot on his plate. Thankfully, he was able to spend some time to talk about his journey, how he wound up working with Monster Games more than 20 years ago, his love of Rock Band, some Halloween show-and-tell, and so much more!

You may have heard John on the iRacing Downshift before, back around the time when iRacing and Monster Games first teamed up. Be sure to check that out if you haven’t yet already. Here’s more about John Schneider!

John on the lake goofing around with his family!

• Who are you, and what is your job title at iRacing?

Hi there! My name is John Schneider, and I am the Director of Development and Production.

• How long have you been working at iRacing, or rather, Monster Games?

I was hired (at Monster Games) in February of 2002, so I’ve been around for nearly 23 years.

To think, on my very first day, while I was putting together my desk, one of the guys on the team took one look at me, turned to a few other people, and said, “I don’t think the new guy is going to last.”

• What got you interested in working for Monster Games?

John with NASCAR driver Anthony Alfredo at Phoenix during a NASCAR Heat 4 activation!

I have always loved playing video games. My first experience was on the Apple IIe. I played tons of games—Lode Runner, Choplifter, the original and awesome Castle Wolfenstein, Dr. J vs Larry Bird, Test Drive, and countless others. I could not get enough. My brother and I learned enough BASIC code to write a dumb text game that was basically “Does Mr. T think you are cool?”

Anyway, my one superpower is that I can play games for days on end and never get fatigued or burned out. When I found out that some of my friends worked for a game company, I begged them to give me a chance. Fortunately for me, they actually needed somebody to do a little testing and some very minor production work, and I was hired.

At the time, I had a very stable job working for a giant insurance company and I had good benefits. I left all of that behind to go and work for this tiny video game company where I was employee number 13.

My parents thought I was completely nuts. They were pretty disappointed, and thought I was making a terrible mistake with my life. However, after nearly 23 years, I am happy to say that I think it has worked out so far, and even my parents came around eventually.

• What does your job entail, from daily tasks to larger projects?

I help run the Monster Games portion of iRacing. This means, very generally, that I am partially responsible for making sure that our games are released on time, and have as many great features as possible. This involves a lot of planning, project management, talking, and listening. In addition, since we are a smaller team, I tend to pitch in and help on the day to day tasks as well. I work through design issues, help with tuning, and manage assets, like drivers, paint schemes, upgrades, sponsors, schedules, and so on.

A trip to Phoenix Raceway! From left to right: John Schneider, Todd LeGare, Troy Harder, Evan Rattner, and Dave Broske. All of these guys have worked at MGI for over 20 years!

I also make sure that things get done on time and on budget. This is by far the most important aspect of my job. Sometimes, something simply needs to get done and I have to find a way to get it done no matter what. For example, let’s say you shipped a devkit to an overseas developer, and that developer never received the devkit. Now, you have to find it. This might involve calling several different shipping distributors from several different countries and having very little success. If you are lucky enough to get a person on the phone, you are dismissed or given a random phone number and told to talk to somebody else. Maybe one of the new phone numbers you receive is an overseas number and it goes to a recording letting you know the number you called is no longer monitored. At some point, after all of this, if you are lucky, you figure out where the shipment is, what the problem is, and why it hasn’t been delivered. Unfortunately, you are unable to move the package along because according to the random shipping distributor that has your package, you don’t have the correct “company profile” to fix the issue. So, you set up a new personal shipping account, with the correct profile, pay for any additional charges, and the shipment finally gets delivered. Now your programmer can finally start working! Hurray!  …and yes, I use this as an example because this all happened just six months ago.

It is very important to remember that it is impossible to do this job all by yourself. You need other people. I am extremely fortunate that I am surrounded by a ton of really, really, really talented people. I could not do my job, or be where I am today, without the help and support from Richard Garcia, Dave Broske, Evan Rattner, and many, many others. Fortunately for me, we get along exceptionally well, and we have been together for a long time. It is an unbelievable benefit to have a caring group of people who are always there for you whenever you need them, no matter what, especially in tough and stressful situations.

• Are there any projects you’ve worked on that stand out above any others? Something you are proud of?

Oh man, yes! Although I have enjoyed every single one of the 18 games I’ve worked on over the years, three games stand out above the others—Dirt to Daytona, Donkey Kong Country Returns 3DS, and World of Outlaws: Dirt Racing.  

While visiting a ski place in Colorado, John and his family took a detour to go visit the top of Loveland Pass.

Dirt to Daytona was the very first project I worked on, and I loved every second of development. It was so exciting to be working on a video game. In that game, I was responsible for general testing, some tuning, like the goal lap times, and the post-race headline screen. Since it was the first game I was involved in, there were a few funny things that I had to learn that I completely did not see coming. For example, I was playing the game for roughly four hours every single day. Without realizing it, I became an expert at the game. That meant that when I initially set goal lap times for every track, they were all impossible. To solve this, I played two-player, split-screen against myself, where my right hand controlled the top car, and my left hand controlled the bottom car. I figured that if my non-dominant hand could get the goal lap times in this scenario, the lap times would be A-OK!

If I could go back in time and tell a young version of me that I would eventually grow up and work on a Donkey Kong game, a young me would have been very excited. That actually happened when we worked on Donkey Kong Country Returns 3DS.  Since it was a port of a Nintendo Wii game, most of the base game was created by our friends at Nintendo and Retro Studios. However, in addition to porting the base game, we were tasked with adding a few new levels to the 3DS version. We took a trip down to Retro Studios for a super intense crash course on how to create proper levels for a Donkey Kong game. We were on site at Retro for about a month, and after we “graduated” from Retro’s level design creation school, Nintendo of Japan sent us a super talented and experienced level designer to help us finish our level designs at our office in Minnesota. All of the levels we designed had to be approved by both Nintendo and Retro Studios for the 3DS version. Although the work was extremely hard and very stressful, at the end of the day it is mind blowing that we created levels good enough for a Donkey Kong game. It was an incredible experience!  

The latest World of Outlaws title, World of Outlaws: Dirt Racing ’24, is available now! For more information on World of Outlaws: Dirt Racing 24, visit worldofoutlawsgame.com

World of Outlaws: Dirt Racing was the first game I worked on with the iRacing team. I didn’t really know what to expect, but it was amazing to work with iRacing. They were incredibly generous with their time, shared all of their knowledge and expertise, and helped us wherever and whenever we needed it. They were always reaching out and asking us what they could do to pitch in and offering to help in any way possible. Whenever we develop a game, we always strive to make the experience as authentic as possible. Being able to utilize their knowledge, resources, and assets really upped our game across the board.

When the iRacing dirt physics team tuned our physics and car models, we knew that we finally had high end, authentic sim physics running the game, with realistic tire models and correct moments of inertia. On top of that, since we were using all of the iRacing scanned track assets, we could finally make our track surface models completely accurate. If you drive over a bump in the game, we know that the bump is there in real life. It was so satisfying to finally get the proper reference so that we could deliver an authentic racing experience. Most importantly, the game is amazing, and all of the hard work has resonated with fans in the reviews and comments.  

• Are there any future projects that you can’t wait to jump on?

Yes, absolutely! I’ve been spending most of my time working on the new NASCAR 25 console game. I’m very excited to build and deliver the NASCAR game that we’ve always wanted to create. The fans and the entire industry deserve it, and we can’t wait to share more as we head into 2025. 

For more information on NASCAR 25, visit iracing.com/nascar-game/

• What are some of your favorite car and track combinations to participate in, on either iRacing or World of Outlaws: Dirt Racing 24?

I love superspeedways, and I love dirt short tracks! My favorite car and track combinations in World of Outlaws: Dirt Racing ’24 are the 410 Winged Sprints at Kokomo Speedway, and the Street Stocks at Diamond Grove Raceway. On asphalt, I love Talladega Superspeedway. That track is the best!

John crosses the finish line in a half marathon road race last year!

• Are there any other video games, racing or not, that you enjoy playing currently?

Although I play a bunch of different games from time to time, I’ve been playing Civ IV nearly every single day since it came out about 17 years ago. I also play a lot of NBA 2K. I’ve owned every single one of them, going all of the way back to the very first NBA 2K on the Dreamcast with Allen Iverson on the cover. 

Oh, and Rock Band. I love Rock Band. I just love to sing… even if you need to plug your ears… and I have a ton of DLC. I think I have just under 2,000 total Rock Band songs.  

• Outside of video games, what other hobbies do you enjoy?

I love nearly all things on the water—swimming, wakeboarding, waterskiing, floating, and ice hockey.

Also, I run a lot. I run just about every day, nearly always outside, and all year long. 

• What are some of your goals you hope to achieve, either at work or outside of it?

At work, we are focused on delivering a NASCAR game that fans will love again. It is extremely important that we take care of the fans of the sport. Outside of work, I hope to spend time with my family doing fun things, like floating on the water, or playing Rock Band, or whatever.   

• Anything else we should know about you?

I have a Bachelor of Science degree in Physics, and I was a waiter in a suburb of Philadelphia for a while.

I love Halloween, and I worked in a pork processing facility—a slaughterhouse—where I was a ‘loin boner’… true story, that was my title. 

John has the pictures to prove his love of Halloween! Here he is, dressed up as a Hockey Zombie (left) and Bjorn Borg (right) for Halloweens past!

In case you missed it, here’s the second Dev Diary for NASCAR 25, featuring John near the end!

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