Under the Bonnet: SHIFT 2 Unleashed - 1

It's absolutely critical and it shouldn't even be a conscious decision as a games designer; you should naturally have a passion and love for both playing games (I wouldn't hire anyone with less than 20,000 Xbox gamerscore), dissecting and analysing them, and being pro-active and investigative about the competition.

I've played games all my life from the classic Pong all the way through ZX81, Spectrum, Amiga, SNES, PSone, Xbox and 3DS. Whilst watching movies doesn't necessarily make you a good director (Tarantino accepted), it gives you an encyclopaedia of knowledge of past experience, trends, expectations, and predictions.

I don't want to play a game that doesn't push the boundaries in some way. When I was back at Sony, Phil Harrison used to have the phrase 'the first penguin' and that meant you were either the first or the best at something and it's something that appears within the first few pages of any design doc I write... What are the features in our game and why are they either the best or the innovations? And how do you categorise them within the different pillars you've identified?

For SHIFT the analysis is very clear - other racing titles are 'car owning' games; they're about the grind for cash to then collect the car catalogue available. When it comes to the actual racing we feel they're lacking (cars never deviating from the racing line, unrealistic damage, lacklustre sensation of speed, feeling of 'loneliness' when driving due to a lack of atmosphere etc) so those are the areas we continue to pioneer in; the second-to-second core gameplay rather than the menus around it. The Helmet Cam, Night Racing, and Autolog speak specifically to that and are all either the best or first in their category.

Again, it's part of the journey... When SHIFT was released, the Need for Speed franchise was splitting into different products dedicated to a particular audience so there was us, and Nitro, and World. The Need for Speed name was the glue associating them all.

Starting with Hot Pursuit, the Need for Speed name has now been abbreviated to the 'N' ident you see on their box art and then for SHIFT 2 Unleashed we continue on by simply using that symbol both for brevity (since "Need for Speed: Shift 2 Unleashed" is a bit of a mouthful) and also to move towards defining the SHIFT experience as a franchise unto itself. The parallel here would be EA Sports = Need for Speed and Madden = SHIFT. It was a mutual and strategic decision.

Forza and GT are on their third and fifth iterations. So there's clear brand loyalty to those titles, a considerable consumer base, and a high benchmark in terms of quality and expectation. So we know the audience we want to reach and we know the standard required by those guys right off the bat.

Our attitude isn't one of copycatting though - you'll always be playing catch-up if that's the case. Instead we focus on questioning every aspect of the racing genre as a whole and ask why they're like that? Are they still relevant, and can they be improved or rebooted?

Elements like the cockpit view in the first SHIFT or night racing in SHIFT 2 Unleashed are prime examples there. Both have been in games for years but one always felt really restrictive and the other never gave any additional gameplay challenge. So from a design perspective those were things to 'fix' and keep the competition on their toes.

Otherwise though we don't see them as a threat; they have very clear visions for their products as do we. We're not here to play a numbers game on the amount of cars or tracks we each have as the indication from players is that that's not a high priority anyways. I've said before it would be like Call of Duty and Medal of Honor having an argument about the number of guns in their games versus the actual experience of firing a single one.

But we will continue to add the features we feel are compelling and pioneer features that the community requests (and we have a strong list on our whiteboards already).

We approach the SHIFT franchise from the perspective of the gamer - the one who grew up with Need for Speed and is now a little bit older looking for something more mature. They may watch NASCAR or Formula 1 but the sterile elitist nature of Forza/GT isn't appealing to them; they're the guys that might have moved to Project Gotham when it was around. So they're after a kickass racing experience they can play with their friends that is fresh and contemporary but moves into a more authentic area; that's SHIFT.

The design of the first SHIFT therefore brought a brand new attitude and direction but the heritage of Need for Speed - the traditions that those players have become familiar with over the years - still remained like Nitrous and 'In The Zone'. We then built upon that with the Star system which rewarded you for completing objectives during the race (so even if you came last you still accomplished something and could progress) and the XP system which rewarded you for your natural driving style and provided a system to deliver new cars, cash, paints, vinyls etc.

In direct comparison to Forza/GT, yes of course these will look like 'arcade gimmicks' but without them you would have a very dry experience - one that simply provided races to enter and money to win. And unfortunately, that's what players have been accustomed to in those titles.

When it came to the on-track experience we very consciously provided all the hooks, dials, sliders and modes to allow you to customise the difficulty and handling to your driving style since we knew that both the core Need for Speed community (who were used to a more 'arcade action' experience), and the 'sim' players needed to have that accessibility. Out of the box we evaluated you with a test lap to aid you in the decision-making process but throughout you could tweak and tailor it how you wanted. So if you wanted a more 'sim-like' experience the tools were all provided but equally your 12-year-old nephew could get enjoyment out of it opening it on Christmas Day.

The actual raw feeling of driving however wasn't weighted one way or another though; it's an emotional simulation of the feeling of racing a car at high speed.

At the core it has a detailed mathematical simulation of the physics forces involved, and layered on top it has the first-hand expertise and knowledge we get from real-world drivers and our own track day experience. There's no deliberate decision to 'dumb it down' here at all - the maths are accurate and the emotion is authentic. If it feels raw and fast and fun when racing then you have to question why you feel other titles are 'more realistic' when every tool we have at our disposal is saying otherwise.