THE BIG GAME GRID AUTOSPORT
GETTING ATTACHED
Autosport being made on current- gen consoles allowed for a quick development
time around we already had the team and technology in place. Rather than building new things that hadn’t been done before we knew very much what we could do, and had a list of things we wanted to do,” Nicholls explains. “We knew the direction the game
was going to go in. It allowed us to get going very quickly and bring the game together very fast. We managed to squeeze some extra performance from the current- gen consoles, which is fantastic. Autosport has come together very rapidly and has been an absolute pleasure to work on.” This ease of development was also one factor in the title coming to PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 rather than their newer and shinier siblings. The other big factor was the game being developed primarily for PC. “The console transition was faster than we might have expected, but there are millions of people with the current-gen hardware,” Nicholls explains.
June 20th 2014 “We lead with the PC
development and PC players aren’t at all fussed about console transitions. They just want good games. We could launch straight into making Autosport on current- gen because we had the tools and the technology. What we didn’t have time to do is port it to next- gen – that would have delayed us much further. “And the PC allows us to push
that bit harder with the graphical fidelity and the amount of effects we can layer on. The PC version benefits from optimisation that goes into getting a console version spot on as well. You don’t need a bleeding edge top end PC to get it running at 1080p 60fps – that’ll run on a moderate PC. The game that has come together is very exciting. Our fans are going to love it.”
FAN SERVICE Speaking of fans, the Grid community has been essential to the development of the new title.
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Autosport isn’t just a response to Grid 2. It’s a game that we wanted to make.
James Nicholls, Codemasters
IT’S not just the single player that Codemasters has tweaked for Autosport – the multiplayer has been changed, too. Racing fans will own cars and develop a relationship with them. This is more in line with the multiplayer found in the original Grid. “We’ve completely rebuilt multiplayer in Grid Autosport, giving you the ability to purchase a garage of persistent cars,” James Nicholls, the game’s chief designer explains. “Players can buy any car
in the game if they have enough cash – there are no unlock restrictions.
“When fans purchase a car,
they can either buy a factory- fresh new car, or a second hand one which already has miles on the clock and a history of its own. “The car will pick up wear and tear in each race and needs to be maintained. As it gets older, it’ll get more costly to keep it running at top racing condition. “In this way, fans form a kind
of affinity with their car – the longer they own it, and the more miles raced in it, the more you’ll gain the ability to customise it to your heart’s content, and set it up perfectly to your liking for every race.”
“We were trying to expand the scope and reach with Grid 2 and to bring more people into the brand. What we didn’t want to do is reach out and then ignore our core console audience, our core fanbase. We wanted to make sure that those guys were still happy with the game,” Nicholls says. “They were very vocal about the
things that they didn’t like about Grid 2, particularly the handling and the move away from the motorsports side of things that they loved. We obviously wanted to make sure those guys were catered for and make sure we took their feedback on board. But it’s not just a response to that – it’s a game that we wanted to make. It’s something that really clicked into gear when we make this kind of game.” It wasn’t just the fans that
provided input, either. AutoSport magazine played a key role in the game’s development. “We approached AutoSport because we wanted to use the Autosport name and were
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