PS3 seems to be the leading platform for SEGA Rally Revo
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/content_page.php?aid=17847
Racing Ahead
On a surprisingly scenic high-tech business park just outside
Birmingham, a brightly coloured car kitted out with improbably large
tyres and bull-bars is churning up mud and dust into a messy melange,
destroying the once-smooth surface of a dirt track and leaving behind a
churned, deeply rutted assault course which will wreak havoc on the
suspension of any vehicle which dares to cross it.
The local council probably won't be as upset as you might imagine,
though; it's all happening inside a noisy PS3 development kit under the
watchful eye of Guy Wilday, the former developer of the Colin McRae
series of rally games, who has more recently been handed the reins on a
fanboy dream - the resurrection of the classic SEGA Rally franchise on
next-gen consoles.
Although still very much a technology demo - the game itself isn't due
until March 2007 - SEGA Rally already demonstrates some of the key
values of the much-loved series. The graphics are rather lovely, the
gameplay promises to be accessible and arcade-friendly, and of course,
there's plenty of bright sunshine and blue sky - "that's what SEGA is
all about," Wilday grins, "it's what we stand for!" So, no urban gritty
gangsters in this game, then? "Definitely not."
Wilday heads up SEGA's Driving Studio, a new UK subsidiary of SEGA
Europe which is focused exclusively on developing driving and racing
games for next-gen platforms, starting with SEGA Rally but with plenty
more titles planned down the line. Managed from the publishing office
in London, the studio is expanding rapidly - even during our visit,
work was already underway on wiring and fitting a new office down the
hall which will give the team significantly more space - and Wilday is
now in the enviable position of having at his fingertips some of the
best-known driving IP in the world.
We caught up with Wilday to find out more about the studio and its
plans - and why a Japanese publisher has just endorsed sending one of
its most valuable franchises to a studio overseas.
GamesIndustry.biz: How does the Driving Studio fit into the rest of
SEGA?
Guy Wilday: The studio was established in April of last year, so we've
been up and running for 14 months now. It's an internal SEGA studio -
we're remote from the publishing operation in London but we're an
internal studio.
Effectively, obviously, the management is here - we're a remote
internal studio, more than anything else. We'll QA in London; we have
sales and marketing and so on in London. Apart from that, all of the
development activity is right here.
The focus of the studio is exclusively racing and driving titles, and
next-generation is what we're looking at - so it's PlayStation 3, it's
Xbox 360, and high end PC. The original vision, the original motivation
behind setting this up is to create a flagship studio for SEGA that can
develop cutting edge, next generation racing and driving titles.
How did the studio get started?
It was established with a small group of five people, including myself,
as a core technology group that started putting together fundamental
technology for the studio. So, we started building some of the initial
low level graphics engine, started building the framework for some of
the games that we're going to build, and recruiting staff, ready to
start our first game development project.
The studio structure is based around a core technology group, which
we've now grown to about 15 people, and then the intention is to have a
number of game development teams - the plan has three teams,
eventually, each doing individual driving or racing titles based on
using the core technology that we're developing internally.
I think our hope is that by investing in core technology, by investing
in fundamental technology for racing games, we'll have stuff that will
give us a serious benefit - some serious leverage in the titles that
we're making, and in the marketplace as a whole.
So you're developing that core technology alongside your games...
The core technology development is a parallel path that will run
through the whole studio - it will constantly evolve and develop. It's
being worked on by a separate team within the studio. We've got a core
technology group focusing on that, and a game technology group focusing
on our first title - obviously, the technology we're building initially
is going to be tailored towards the first game that we're making, but
as the studio grows, that core tech is going to diversify to enable us
to develop a really broad spectrum of racing and driving titles. The
intention is that we'll have a really diverse range of games that we're
developing within the studio.
Are there any plans to share that technology with other SEGA studios?
Possibly - it's definitely an option, and it's something that we've
discussed. It's early days for the studio, to be honest, and for the
technology - but this is a significant investment from SEGA's
perspective, to get this technology up and running. There's every
potential that we could roll this out and use it within other studios
within the organisation.
Why has SEGA taken the decision to focus its racing efforts in the UK?
SEGA Rally has always been developed in Japan - what compelled them to
move it to the other side of the planet?
I think that generally, within the industry, there is an
acknowledgement that Japanese games are not working as well outside
Japan as they used to. I think the appeal for western content within
the west is growing - and I think that if you look at the big selling
titles in the western territories, primarily now they're western-based
titles - western content and western developed, above anything else.
Vice versa, I think that European titles aren't necessarily doing as
well in Japan - there is some acknowledgement that there is a
difference culturally between those territories, and obviously that
affects game appeal.
That's one of the motivators; if you actually look at driving and
racing studios, to my mind, with some notable exceptions the key talent
lives in the west - and the key talent really lives in Europe, with an
awful lot of it in the UK. We've got a fantastic track record for
racing and driving titles, and I think that was key.
The acknowledgement that Japan's presence within the global games
market is diminishing, and the acknowledgement that we have this talent
base within Europe and within the UK that we could call upon, I think
was fairly significant to setting this up. Those were the very
fundamental issues, for sure.
SEGA, as you know, has a massive backlog of very exciting racing and
driving IP - and I think it made sense, as part of SEGA's growth plans,
to establish a studio to really concentrate specifically on developing
some of that IP for the western market. That's very much what our focus
is.
When you have a title like SEGA Rally - originally developed by AM2 in
Japan - do you take a lot of input from the original Japanese creators,
or are you really taking it over and injecting western design
sensibilities into it?
The game has been designed here, absolutely - it's been designed
internally here and we spent a lot of time getting through that and
getting it right. Our motivation has been very much to take the
essence; the original product, for me, is a landmark and arguably
benchmark offroad driving title. I think it started, and defined, the
whole off-road racing genre.
We've definitely tried to capture the essence of that title. At the
same time, we've got to make it fit within a landscape of offroad games
that is very different, now, to when this title was released and
established. To me, it's not just about bringing it up to date, it's
about actually trying to reinvent the title - about taking the essence
of what that game was, and reintroducing that into a new market. We've
taken that as a significant challenge.
We've got very good relationships with Japan - we've got help,
resources and communication there if we need it, but as I say, the
primary focus has been developing the game here.
You started with five people, 14 months ago; what size is the studio
now?
The studio is at just over 30 people at the moment. They're pretty much
divided equally between core team and game team - that's what we've
done.
The idea was always to have fairly small, compact game development
teams - rather than having the big goliath 70, 80 man teams, we're
trying to keep our game team sizes small, because we believe that that
gives more collaborative and more creative game development.
The way we're doing that is by focusing on core technology, so we've
got the core technology team here which will give us some leverage that
we can use across multiple titles. We're also looking to outsource a
lot of content, so we're working very strongly with some artwork and
audio outsourcing partners to get that all up and running. That's a key
part of the studio's strategy.
The team size is going to grow some for the first title, but not an
enormous amount - and our idea is to keep the team sizes, ideally, to
that 20-ish mark - really quite compact teams. Very compact, very
creative and very focused game development teams.
How quickly are you planning to ramp up to having multiple game teams?
We're starting to ramp up on the second team at the moment - the plan
is that ideally, that team should be up and running this year.
When you're building a team like that, are you looking specifically for
people who have experience of developing racing titles? You've
mentioned that there's a lot of racing talent here in the UK...
That's obviously a motivator - in fact, it's unashamedly one of the
reasons for being here. We're clearly looking for people who have
racing talent, but primarily we
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