Dohc-WP
Ron Burgundy
Forza Motorsport 4 has been out for a week now but work on the game won't stop for some time. Several batches of additional content are already well into production to keep Forza 4 idling for the foreseeable future. IGN AU chats to Turn 10's Dan Greenawalt, Creative Director on Forza 4, for some additional insight.
"We're going to be having 10 cars a month," says Greenawalt. "This is a cadence we did before; some of the cars will be a la carte. We're also offering in this version a Season Pass where you can get six 10–car packs for 30 per cent off and, if you do that, you get the American Muscle Car pack, the first pack, for free. So it's a total of 70 cars for a reduced price."
"So we're really just experimenting with trying to find out how people want to consume this content. We're gonna make it because we want to keep the game fresh, we want to keep the game hot, we always want to have that car passion being stoked – it's one of the reasons we're an evergreen title – but we're still experimenting. Do they want to buy cars individually? Do they want to buy the Season Pass? We're gonna figure that out this version.
"As far as it comes with other DLC we might do like tracks, Autovista, modes, things like that, we're still evaluating that part. The team's done shipping; we're taking a bit of a holiday. Those things take more people, they take more planning. So we have to evaluate that one. The car DLC is something we're so good at we can just keep that conveyor belt going all the time."
We mention to Greenawalt it's surprising more developers don't fully embrace this kind of pipeline, extending the life of one game by offering content players want to buy (which, in turn, benefits the studio financially and builds a base of content for a new game down the track).
"It's hard to do," says Greenawalt. "It took a lot of process on our part to be able to have a conveyor belt that could be always looking for new cars, always capturing new cars and then being able to deliver them. And, obviously for us, we have to fire that artillery a long time in advance. It takes us almost six months to deliver a car to market so we have to plan that shot."
"Now that means actually starting our DLC before the game ships and yet that DLC couldn't have gone on disc because, again, we've got these shots so well-timed that we get the game into certification and the cars are not yet done, the ones that go on the web. And then they hit and meanwhile we already have three more packs in production at all times. All this artillery's in the air; that takes a lot of coordination, it takes a lot of work. So I think it's one thing to want to do it as a studio, it's another thing to actually rearrange your resources to be able to deliver it. It's a huge team, actually, that's delivering it. We've tried to perfect the art of having nine women make one baby in one month and we've gotten better at it, but we haven't quite gotten there yet."
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"We're going to be having 10 cars a month," says Greenawalt. "This is a cadence we did before; some of the cars will be a la carte. We're also offering in this version a Season Pass where you can get six 10–car packs for 30 per cent off and, if you do that, you get the American Muscle Car pack, the first pack, for free. So it's a total of 70 cars for a reduced price."
"So we're really just experimenting with trying to find out how people want to consume this content. We're gonna make it because we want to keep the game fresh, we want to keep the game hot, we always want to have that car passion being stoked – it's one of the reasons we're an evergreen title – but we're still experimenting. Do they want to buy cars individually? Do they want to buy the Season Pass? We're gonna figure that out this version.
"As far as it comes with other DLC we might do like tracks, Autovista, modes, things like that, we're still evaluating that part. The team's done shipping; we're taking a bit of a holiday. Those things take more people, they take more planning. So we have to evaluate that one. The car DLC is something we're so good at we can just keep that conveyor belt going all the time."
We mention to Greenawalt it's surprising more developers don't fully embrace this kind of pipeline, extending the life of one game by offering content players want to buy (which, in turn, benefits the studio financially and builds a base of content for a new game down the track).
"It's hard to do," says Greenawalt. "It took a lot of process on our part to be able to have a conveyor belt that could be always looking for new cars, always capturing new cars and then being able to deliver them. And, obviously for us, we have to fire that artillery a long time in advance. It takes us almost six months to deliver a car to market so we have to plan that shot."
"Now that means actually starting our DLC before the game ships and yet that DLC couldn't have gone on disc because, again, we've got these shots so well-timed that we get the game into certification and the cars are not yet done, the ones that go on the web. And then they hit and meanwhile we already have three more packs in production at all times. All this artillery's in the air; that takes a lot of coordination, it takes a lot of work. So I think it's one thing to want to do it as a studio, it's another thing to actually rearrange your resources to be able to deliver it. It's a huge team, actually, that's delivering it. We've tried to perfect the art of having nine women make one baby in one month and we've gotten better at it, but we haven't quite gotten there yet."
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