Games
How Sony’s PS4 speedfest has put its troubles behind it and embraced a whole new racing discipline.
It's fair to say that Driveclub didn't have the best of starts. Evolution's PlayStation 4 exclusive failed to get off the grid in time for the console's launch, and suffered multiple delays before finally rolling out of the garage in October of last year. Server issues plagued the game at launch, forcing Sony to publicly apologise for the botched release and delay the free PlayStation Plus edition of the title, which was supposed to arrive alongside the main game. It was a less than ideal way to kick off the Driveclub story, but since then things have been somewhat different.
"Thankfully we’re making headlines for the right reasons now," game director Paul Rustchynsky tells us in an interview this week. "We’re a long way past the days of the server problems that we suffered with when we launched. It was a hard time for us; we thought we’d prepared really well for the launch and we’d had people playing with early access for a couple of weeks before and everything was running fine.”
“Obviously we’ve since learned that there are extra precautions we can take and we’ve worked closely with the teams at Sony to make sure that the lessons we’ve learned are shared around for the benefit of everybody else developing games, especially those with the kind of social connectivity that features in Driveclub, which has been new ground for us to cover. I hope that we’ve done right by the fans that have stuck with us and that we’re giving them the high quality experience they deserve for their support."
We don't doubt for a second that the fans have been receptive to Sony and Evolution's sterling efforts, as the game has since sold over 2 million copies worldwide and matured into arguably the best racer on the PS4. Evolution is clearly confident that Driveclub is in good shape, as it has recently released a stand-alone package which moves away from four-wheeled racing and embraces superbikes.
Driveclub Bikes, according to Rustchynsky, was born from the studio's love of racing on two wheels. "We’re speed freaks," he admits with a chuckle. "We love everything that moves fast, especially 1200cc superbikes! And for Driveclub we’re always thinking about how we can spice things up and keep surprising everybody, so after many, many months of adding amazing car expansions to the game it felt like a good time to bring our superbike passion into Driveclub. We started prototyping with superbikes earlier this year and it all clicked into place really quickly. The game’s engine is incredibly powerful and a lot of the guys on the team know superbikes inside out, so it didn’t take long to bring them to life."
Despite boasting such genre classics as Sega's Hang-On and Polyphony Digital's Tourist Trophy, superbikes have been pretty poorly served by video games over the years, with players seeming to prefer the fantasy of driving around in desirable and expensive sports cars. However, Rustchynsky feels that bikes have something unique to offer to the racing genre.
"They’re a lot of fun to drive because of the insane acceleration and unbelievable agility," he explains. "The roads feel a lot wider and faster when you’re on a bike and you can overtake more easily than you can in a car, so multiplayer racing is frantic. When we started to show the early prototypes to all of the teams we work with in Sony we set up some multiplayer sessions. We knew straight away that we knew we were onto something special, especially with the multiplayer part of the game. The reactions were fantastic."
When Sony Computer Entertainment President Shuhei Yoshida played it for the first time, the team at Evolution knew it was onto a winner. "Yoshida-san [was] in a multiplayer race with myself and a few people in London. He was battling with me for first place for the entire race even though it was his first time playing!"
Long-time followers of Evolution will be aware that the studio isn't totally new to the concept of bikes — the PS3 era MotorStorm series featured a wide range of vehicles, including those of the two-wheeled persuasion, and this background supplied valuable experience when it came to developing the new offering.
"With MotorStorm we spent a lot of time working with a wide range of bikes and we really honed the sense of speed, liveliness and excitement that you get from riding at breathtaking speeds," explains Rustchynsky. "We also learned how to take away a lot of the frustrations of two-wheel racing; how to make it easy to get around the track without falling, while still keeping the layers of depth that make it challenging and rewarding for experienced riders to compete at the highest level. Striking this balance for people who have never raced a bike before and the experienced bikers who ride all the time was the most important thing for us. It has to feel authentic and exciting for everybody, and our experience over the past 10 years with MotorStorm and Driveclub has definitely helped us achieve that."
Bikes and cars behave very differently on the track, but Rustchynsky says that the Driveclub game engine is versatile enough to deliver a convincing experience, no matter how many wheels you happen to have on the tarmac. "We actually built the engine from the ground up to be able to create very detailed and physically-accurate models for all of the mechanics that power pretty much everything that’s got wheels, a motor and a drivetrain, so getting superbikes into the game and making each individual bike model feel authentic was a lot easier than you might think. The real challenge was fine-tuning the engine to find the right blend of simulation and arcade, especially as we have a fully dynamic weather system across every track, to make it very approachable and fun while still respecting the power of these machines and the high level of skill required to push a bike to the edge of control and achieve an incredible lap time."
Unusually, Driveclub Bikes is DLC which doesn't require the core game to function. Rustchynsky reveals that this decision was made in order to ensure that the game was accessible to all. "We want to make it easy as possible for people to enjoy the games we make, so limiting them to DLC only feels pretty old fashioned," he says.
"If you’re really into bikes, you can skip everything else and go straight for them with the standalone option. If you’ve already picked up Driveclub and you want to add Bikes to your game, then the DLC option is there for you, and you’re going to get a better price on the DLC as a 'thank you' for owning the game. Giving those options is important, and making sure that both of them work perfectly with each other is important too. If you want to hop between bikes and cars, maybe because you’ve got a challenge to play or because your club needs extra fame from specific events, then you can switch between them seamlessly. It doesn’t matter which version of the game you got first, you just open one application and get right into everything that’s going on."
Despite being a stand-alone entity, Driveclub Bikes isn't totally separate from Driveclub, and its development has allowed Evolution to improve and enhance the main game as well. "Every expansion is an opportunity for us to showcase our latest and greatest developments, to enhance and expand the game for everyone," Rustchynsky says. "We take great pride in working with our community to keep updating the game, to keep it fresh for the regular players and to make it bigger and better for anyone who’s just joining us now. So as well as the bikes expansion itself, there’s a load of things that benefit the entire community, like the new automatic braking assist option and the introduction of multiplayer private lobbies."
Both of these improvements have come about due to feedback from the fans, which shows how much stock Evolution places in its followers. "The braking assist option is there to help new players get to grips with the game, based on feedback from players and also based on the data we get to see about how people are playing the game," explains Rustchynsky.
"A lot of new players were braking really late into corners, so this new option should have a positive impact on changing this. The private lobbies give players the power to create and customise their own multiplayer events, so that you can set up your own events with your friends. We let you play around with lots of options too, to make the racing more or less realistic to suit the way that you want to play. So over and above just choosing the tracks, vehicles, weather and time of day settings, you can also adjust physical factors like the gains from drafting, collisions and penalties. We’ve also augmented our physics and graphics engines to make the game look even more photorealistic, with a new dynamic shadowing technique and a highly detailed model for showing tyre deformation, so that each wheel on every vehicle really connects with the world and reacts to the pressure of racing as you’d expect it to in real life. We’re always working on improvements like this, pushing our technology further, so you can expect to see more from us with each new update to the game."
While some developers might be cautious about how driving fans would react to such a major shift in focus, Rustchynsky reveals that the response from fans has been incredibly positive. "The launch at Paris Games Week really electrified the community," he says. "The fact that it launched on the day that we announced it added to the surprise too. It was really cool seeing the reactions when people realised how big it was, and which bikes we’ve included, and that it has a platinum trophy set, and other details like that. The buzz around the game was great and ever since then we’ve had some great feedback from the people playing it and we love seeing all of the absolutely jaw-dropping photos and video clips they share with us. It’s funny how often people tell me that they were surprised by how good the bikes feel to race and how quickly they were able to get to grips with them. I think a lot of people worry that they’re going to be way too hot to handle, but realise pretty quickly just how much fun it is switching to two wheels!"
Having conquered the world of superbikes, could we see Driveclub expand to cater for other vehicle types? "It’s certainly possible with the technology that we’ve built up," Rustchynsky tells us. "For the time being, we’re still devoted to Driveclub and Bikes. We will continue evolving the game around the community, so you can definitely expect to see more of the most popularly requested cars and bikes coming to the game, along with more improvements to the core game itself."
Could we perhaps see a game from Evolution which is exclusively based on two-wheel racing, given that so many of the team are fans of bikes? For now, Rustchynsky feels that Driveclub Bikes fills that niche quite neatly. "That’s a really big part of why we decided to offer Driveclub Bikes as a standalone game as well as an expansion to Driveclub, to offer the dedicated motorcycle fans a direct route into the game without forcing them to get Driveclub first. We want them to be able to jump straight in and enjoy what we’ve created. In the future, who knows? There’s plenty more we can do with this technology, you’ll have to keep checking back as we bring new updates out over the next few months."
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