Interview: Slightly Mad Studios (Need for Speed: Shift)

Posted on 08. Jul, 2009 by Mark Cullinane in Featured, Interviews, PS3, Xbox 360

I’ve already given my impressions of EA’s upcoming Need for Speed: Shift, and concluded that racing fanatics, for once, should sit up and take notice of EA’s oft-criticised franchise.
I sat down with Suzy Wallace, producer at Slightly Mad Studios, to grill her about all things Need for Speed- and I threw in a few curveballs just to keep her on her toes.

Need for Speed: Shift is nothing if not a looker.

Mark: When EA handed the Need for Speed license to Slightly Mad Studios, were you given free reign to do what you wanted creatively or were you given a specific brief?

Suzy Wallace: (Laughs)It’s a bit of both really. When EA approached us, they knew our background obviously, which is in hardcore PC racing sims. So yeah, they very much didn’t want another arcadey Need for Speed title. We’ve been working with some parties within EA, particularly Patrick Soderlund from EA Europe and Mike Mann who is Executive Producer in Black Box who’ve traditionally produced Need for Speed, so there’s been a lot of communication with those guys, talking about design ideas we wanted to implement- a lot of to-ing and fro-ing between the two companies. But I don’t think anybody wanted to make another arcadey title.

Mark: The arcadey Need for Speed Titles have been very successful for EA, though, always selling millions of copies. Do you think that moving to a more simulation style of gameplay risks alienating the mainstream audience that have always been the bedrock of support for the series?

Suzy: I think the thing with the Need for Speed series is that although its very popular, it is difficult to please everybody. There’s a lot of different type of racing game and a lot of different kinds of gamers. Everything from Burnout to something like previous Need for Speed games. Trying to make one title to cater for everybody is risky- you try to do everything, and you might do everything well but nothing amazingly. I think that by splitting the franchise into separate games enables us to focus on specific types of gamers and to provide the kind of experience they want. Obviously it’s going to be a big change for some people. People who don’t like to brake- and in previous NFS titles it’s not something you necessarily had to do very much- might have to learn that this is a different kind of experience. It is a big change but we think that the different, optional, driver aids we’ve included mean that there is scope for people of different abilities to play the game.

More cars.

Mark: Burnout is another EA game, of course, and has risen to prominence as one of the foremost racing series. Have you learnt any lessons or taken any inspiration from Criterion’s games?

Suzy: Obviously we’re all driving game fans, I love Burnout titles personally, and you’re obviously looking at what other games are doing, but for us it’s very much a different title- pretty much at the opposite end of the spectrum to where Burnout is. We’re not doing an open world, police chases or elaborate storylines. I think they’re very different titles- although we’re big Burnout fans.

Mark: You mentioned earlier Patrick Soderlund from EA Europe. He said recently that developers have ‘maxed out’ the Xbox 360 in terms of graphical achievement, but not the PlayStation 3.

Suzy: Oh did he? (Laughs)

Mark: Yeah, he did. So my question to you is a double one- firstly, do you feel that you’ve maxed out the Xbox 360, and secondly, after the heavy criticism of the previous Need for Speed title’s PlayStation 3 conversion, will there be parity between the two versions?

Suzy: Yes- it’s critical to us that the the game plays the same on all platforms. The art assets we use is shared over all platforms, including the PC. It’s absolutely critical that you don’t play on one platform and have a poorer experience. But yeah, the PS3 can be quite trick to develop for, actually. There’s more common ground between the PC and the 360. The PS3 is quite different. Our background is obviously in PC titles so the change to PS3 development is a challenge. It’s not like we’ve just ported it over and hoping it’ll all work- we’ve got dedicated guys working on each platform, and they’re all making sure that the experience is the same. We sit there with the game on both consoles on screens, side by side, to make sure they look the same. It’s not acceptable to have a lower performance on PS3.

Mark: What’s your take on the new motion controllers, from Wii MotionPlus to the Sony Wand to the Xbox’s Project Natal? Can you imagine patching in Natal support to Need for Speed in the future?

Suzy: Em..To be honest I’ve not seen much on any of them. As for Project Natal, I’ve been too busy working on our game to find out much about it. I’d like to learn more before commenting properly on it. I think it could be interesting to see how it works, but actually I don’t think that the technology is incoming very soon at all, I think it’s probably still a way off. There’s nothing like having a real steering wheel or real pedals. But yeah there’s tons of exciting stuff happening, and I’m looking forward to seeing how it all works out so we can see how we might integrate these new control methods into our games.

Mark: What about online features and DLC for the game?

Suzy: Online is a big thing for us- there are some new exclusive modes for NFS Shift, but we’re not really discussing them today.

Mark: Burnout made waves in the way it supported the community, long after its release. Do you think there’s scope with an annual title like Need for Speed for a similar approach to extending a game’s lifespan?

Suzy: No, we’d very much like to support the community post-release. There will be stuff coming down the pipeline, that is very important for us.

Still more cars.

Mark:  I recently read an interview with Bizarre Creations, another competitor of yours based in the UK, where Ben Ward commented that the racing genre is in trouble, with few titles becoming major hits, unless of course the game is called Mario Kart. Recent big budget racing titles games like PGR4 on Xbox 360 and Pure on PS3 haven’t performed as expected. Do  you think that the genre is in trouble?

Suzy: No, I don’t think it is in trouble actually. I think people will always want to drive racing cars. The closest most people get to that is in games. I think with Shift we’ve got enough to make the game feel substantially different from other titles, particularly with the focus on the ‘True Driver Experience’ that we’re trying to create. I think that Shift is a breath of fresh air for the series- I just hope that people don’t dismiss it if they didn’t like previous Need for Speed titles. Overall I think that the genre is in a really good place.

Suzy also confirmed to me that a demo would be made available prior to the game’s release in September. I’d like to thank Suzy for her time.