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RACING SPECIAL // DESIGN | BETA


The race for innovation


Racing games have enjoyed something of a resurgence in recent times, despite being widely decried as a dying genre just a few years ago. James Batchelor asks veteran devs how the sector can avoid stagnation in future


IT WAS ONLY four years ago that people proclaimed racing games were dying. There were frantic attempts to shake things up, most notably with the likes of troubled action racers Split/Second and Blur, but nothing seemed to dissipate the feeling that the genre was already becoming stale. And yet in 2014, a variety of titles are bringing something fresh to the racing space, from the anti-gravity quirks of Mario Kart 8 to the social functionality of Driveclub and the open world antics of The Crew. But how are developers making these titles stand out when they’re arguably all centred around the same concept: crossing a finish line? “I think ‘just crossing the finish line’ is to the racing genre what ‘just shoot the other person’ is to the FPS or ‘just jump from block to block’ is to the platformer,” argues Will Musson, producer at The Crew co-developer Ubisoft Reflections.


“Racing is about a sense of mastery, high-speed decision making, risk taking, perfect execution, and putting in the work to be better than the next racer. I believe that gives plenty of room for innovation.” Eutechnyx’s marketing manager Ashley


Westgate adds: “Compared to other genres, driving itself is a known quantity. The majority of people drive, or at least have been driven in a car, and so have an understanding about


a driving experience. Not deviating from this expectation means that the core mechanics across sim-based racing games will always be similar, making wholesale change hard.


Just because the goal’s to get from


A to B, it doesn’t mean you can’t experiment with how and why. Ashley Westgate, Eutechnyx


“That isn’t to say innovation is impossible. Just because the objective is to get from A to B, it doesn’t mean you can’t experiment with the how and the why. Across the genre we’ve seen a wealth of interesting innovations: dynamically changing tracks, narratives, objectives, social features and meta games to make the journey more interesting.” Codemasters’ chief games designer


James Nicholls says the company looks at every possible aspect of both the race itself and everything around it to find new ways to excite fans of the genre and newcomers. “Looking at the drivers, how can we can make the competition more


JUNE 2014 | 21


personal?” he says. “How can we make AI opponents more human? How can we create narrative and drama around each race? “We’re also continually working on the camera, force feedback and audio to tell you what a driver would be feeling. There’s so much we could do given the time and raw processing power that we’ve not even touched yet.”


WACKY RACES


Plenty of companies are attempting new things with their games, although perhaps not all are as high profile as the serious simulation titles now on shelves.


Sony is hoping to usher in a new era for racing with the social features of Driveclub (main), from the creators of the action-focused MotorStorm series (below)


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