Develop 2009: Bizarre Creations presented the evolution of their award-winning Xbox 360 racing franchises at this year’s Develop conference
Handing out Lucozade tablets to those who admitted partying the night before, in Brighton, was a funny way to start, but generous Chris Pickford, designer at Bizarre Creations, certainly had the bleary-eyed audience warm to his presentation on the award-winning Project Gotham Racing series.
Bizarre Creations started in 1994 and have produced a range of games for many platforms over the years. Their work on Project Gotham Racing begins with the release of Dreamcast title, Metropolis Street Racer. Pickford said the now famous Kudos system (that rewards players for racing with style) was inspired by a drag racing experience his boss shared. Kudos was one of Bizarre’s core design principles in MSR, along with realism (real cars, tracks and locations) and flexible race modes. It was also one of the first console games to have online functionality. After creating this title, Bizarre were approached by Microsoft to produce a racing game to help launch their new home entertainment system, Xbox.
There wasn’t enough time to start from scratch, so Bizarre resolved to rewrite MSR for the Xbox, adding additional features as they went. These included an on-screen Kudos counter, more licensed vehicles and radio stations with licensed music. Arriving in time for the Xbox launch, following an exhausting ten-month turnaround, Project Gotham Racing was born.
“We added a new city, New York, hence the name ‘Gotham’. PGR was actually the codename for the game. We actually had a whole host of other names. It was going to be called Evo Pay at one point,” said Pickford. Following on from this comment, Pickford explained that Microsoft mistakenly setup banners displaying the name “Project Gotham Racing” at their E3 booth, so the name stuck. The first PGR game went on to sell remarkably well (the franchise itself has done over 7 million copies) and it wasn’t long before a sequel was green lit.
Pickford stated PGR2 was when the company started thinking seriously, “core principals, how can we take this forward? What do we have to do to make a franchise?”
Adhering to their core principals, Kudos, realism and ‘choose your own challenge’ all returned for PGR2 (plus the franchise’s future iterations). On top of more tracks and cars, key developments here were DLC packs and the 13-mile circuit, Nurburgring. “It was a complete curveball for most of the industry,” said Pickford, citing the latter as major selling point for PGR2, “now, a lot of racing games do have the Nurburgring in.”
Geometry Wars, a hidden easter egg in PGR2, is now a popular arcade franchise of its own. Curiously, Pickford commented, “we put [Geometry Wars] in there as a joke.” Bizarre has always been one of the most technically proficient developers around. PGR2 was one of the first games to be Xbox Live enabled. A fan base of earlier online users flocked to the game upon its release in late 2003. This tradition of pioneering technology and features was set to continue into the next generation when Microsoft asked Bizarre to produce PGR3 for their forthcoming Xbox 360 console (codenamed “Xenon” at the time).
Having established a successful franchise and fan base, Pickford explained that it was harder to iterate on each new title. They wanted to keep the experience fresh, but couldn’t remove or dramatically alter any of the franchise’s staples, since players would expect them to be there. “Realism was dropped for ‘real sport’ – we were going to make this a global new sport that people could play,” he said. Again, additional cars, tracks and music were added, plus a photo mode. Online was given a much greater presence in PGR3. In addition to online multiplayer modes, Gotham TV streamed live race gameplay to other spectators.
A tournament campaign that gave 256 participants the chance to win a real life racing experience was produced in conjunction with the game. Pickford added, “it was all through Xbox Live – we wanted to make it so that people could sit in their living room and take part in a global tournament, and actually win stuff.” Bizarre were working right up until the last minute on this next generation project, as final hardware only arrived in the last two months of development. The marketing for PGR3 was more resolute than it had been in the past, and the game received a great deal of praise for its graphical fidelity and car damage, when it launched alongside Xbox 360 in November 2005.
When discussing feature cuts for PGR3, Pickford admitted, “we were going to have betting in the game, which was hearkening back to the MSR days, where you could bet how good you were [before races] and then get a reward from it.” Unfortunately, with the inclusion of Las Vegas as a selectable race location, Microsoft got cold feet and demanded the feature be struck from the game, claiming “it would be like allowing miners to bet through an Xbox”. Gotham TV was a great idea in theory, however, the reality was that users didn’t really what to watch other racers playing if there wasn’t anything for them to gain or interactive with personally. There were also issues with matchmaking online, the game progression and route creator.
Having learnt some substantial lessons from all of their previous works, Bizarre felt it was time to up their game, and shoot for perfection with PGR4. All of the core principals remained, albeit honed further. They added yet more new content to their car, city and music libraries. New race challenges, a daily rotating tournament system, simulated weather effects, and ‘Gotham TV on demand’ (tweaked with users ratings and share features) were also added. The big addition for PGR4 was motorbikes, which Pickford admits gave the development team a hard time, when it came to balancing the gameplay between cars and bikes.
Referring to franchise evolutions, he said, “as the [games] go on, there’s not always going to be a console launch about, there’s not always going to be a technology launch about – you end up chasing your tail a little bit, thinking ‘what [are we] going to do next?’”
Although it was getting harder to iterate and meet players expectations, Bizarre created a true masterpiece in PGR4. They fixed many of the criticisms levelled at PGR3 as well as improving the visuals, singer player progression and online functionality. PGR4 received plenty of critical acclaim when it was released in October 2007. However, the release window and marketing for the game were two determining factors in making it a commercial letdown. Pickford confessed, “If your releasing [a game] anywhere around [the release of another] Halo – you’re really fighting for your life.”
Bizarre were forced to cut part of their production time, in order to bring their project in early (ahead of Halo 3) in time for publicity. Earlier that same year, Forza Motorsport 2 had arrived, and was being heavily marketed by Microsoft. With another first-party racing game already on the market and monolithic launch of Halo 3 swallowing everything in its wake, Microsoft’s marketing efforts on PGR4 were sparse to say the least. This meant that there was a severe lack of consumer interest in PGR4, thanks to being “lost in a sea of other games.”
Epitomising his presentation, Pickford summarised the things that evolved during the franchise’s development. He noted that the core principles remained the same, new features were added over the years, but it became more difficult to innovate each time. He said, “you have to do progressively more work, to get progressively less rewards.” Launching new technology (like Xbox Live and Xbox 360) can also be very restrictive, with slim deadlines and vague parameters, which often means the game design suffers.
Having built one of the most critically praised and commercially successful racing series out there, Bizarre Creations are hoping they can reenergise the genre once again with their upcoming title, Blur. Some would say that launching a new franchise in a genre as competitive as racing is crazy, but if any team can pull it off, it’s likely to be Bizarre Creations… the makers of Project Gotham Racing.
We had to chance to interview Chris Pickford after this session. To find out more about the PGR series check out Bizarre Creations.
Aaron Lee
Tags: bizarre creations, develop, pgr, xbox 360
