fos
12-22-2006, 11:21 PM
a brand new article from the latest Develop magazine
__________________________________________________ _________________________
Evolution’s Martin Kenwright, Mick
Hocking and Simon Benson tell
Michael French the story of how
the studio shifted gears from PS2 to
PS3, what that E3 video really
meant for game production, and
what happens next…
Throughout its recent media storm Sony
has insisted that its new games format, the
PlayStation 3, be judged and defined by
the merit of its software. Talk is cheap –
after all, how else do you explain the specialist press
getting basic facts like game titles wrong and weird
write-ups in big-name newspapers on both sides of
the Atlantic? – so in terms of software, SCE has let
the games speak for themselves.
Unlike Nintendo and Microsoft, Sony has chosen to
find those games outside of its own empire, signing up
independent developers for the key first party titles.
One of those is long-running Sony partner
Evolution and its game MotorStorm. Yet the close
relationship between Sony and Evolution has an
unfortunate consequence – many forget that the
studio is an independent entity. That the two share an
inextricable bond is undeniable: its chairman, after
all, is former Psygnosis/SCEE man Ian Hetherington;
the company produced five first party PS2 games in
as many years; its ‘devolution’ team Bigbig produced
Pursuit Force, one of the PSP’s few new IP successes;
and of course the Evo team has just finished one of
the most talked-about PlayStation 3 titles.
Since its unveiling, a lot has been said about the
PS3, while MotorStorm has gone from an E3 video
representing an emotive concept to a tentpole of
development talks and press conferences the world
over. It’s not just a new IP game, it’s a launch window
title – and that’s launch in the sense it is expected to
propel the machine, not the other way around.
But we’ve all heard or read what the launch means
for Sony. If MotorStorm is pulling the PlayStation 3
cart, we want to hear from the horse’s mouth; it’s
getting the chance to ask Evolution ‘So, how was it
for you?’ that interests Develop, hence our visit to the
Runcorn-based team…
THE CALM BEFORE THE STORM
But first, hit the brakes and reverse: the story of
Evolution and MotorStorm, the studio’s bond with
Sony and it’s deeply ambitious ideas go back further
than 2005’s unveiling of the game or even the
studio’s 1999 founding.
Evolution’s founder Martin Kenwright, who made
the move from A-Level art class to game design, had
founded Digital Image Design in ‘89, a studio that
grew to 50 people by the time he was 25. DID’s
softography had, in his words, already set the
template for “a habitual and consistent” run of hits
with ambitious, technological elements – F29
Retaliator, TFX, Robocop 3D – which would replicate
itself years later.
When DID was bought by Infogrames in ‘99 after a
decade of independence, Kenwright considered getting
out of development altogether. Until Psygnosis cofounder
Ian Hetherington urged him to stay in the
game, that is, encouraging Kenwright to devise
Evolution, a new independent set to keep them free
from publishers and create original immersive games.
Hetherington’s SCEE connection and Kenwright and
co.’s ability to produce immersive environments saw
the company signed to Sony working on the bigmoney
World Rally Championship licence. A perhaps
ironic move, given the intention to be free and
original, but a move that paid off: Evolution was the
first third party allowed to develop a PS2 game; it
produced a five-game racing sports franchise, WRC,
from 2000 to 2005; most recently, The Sunday Times’
Fast Track listing ranked it as one of the UK’s top
performing private companies, valuing the Sony
partnership at £40m.
“We wanted to set the philosophy up that we were
a dream team – like a football squad,” says
Kenwright, looking back. “But we also understood
that while we were, and could be, prolific IP creators
WRC was a cash cow and the ideal way to grow and
cultivate our company, because the industry wasn’t in
the best shape for that at the time, was to stick with
that game. We wanted to be loyal to Sony – and that
will always be there – because they gave us such a
wonderful opportunity.”
In turn Evolution gave back innovation – and the
senior management all say that they were constantly
aiming to impress Sony with ambitious ideas that
would still be classed as next-gen concepts today.
“In the early days we deliberately set out to make a
big difference in the market because, as any market
does, the genre we were in went through a period
where everything was the same,” explains managing
director Mick Hocking, who had worked with
Kenwright at DID. “So we took what were next-gen
ideas from our flight sims – things like huge vistas
and a sense of spectacle – and then put a racing
game into that.”
By the end of the WRC franchise, production
processes had been driven to perfection. The
company embraced SCRUM and agile development
as the team evolved and adapted to a tough 12-
month schedule for each title.
“We grew really slowly over the five years,” adds
Hocking. “The Rally games allowed that, even though
they were hard to get done every year, because that
stable base allowed us to be selective about who
we’d take on. A licence is great because every 12
months you get a game out the door. It allowed us to
make a game in a very healthy game.”
The effect was almost instantly visible, says
producer Simon Benson, pointing out that the first
WRC was made by 12 people – the next 20, the third
around 30, and so on: “Doing a game every year is
both brutal and healthy because you’re reviewing
what you’ve done and going forward to make sure
you are better and sharper. The early games were
made with very few people and we had a lot of
crunch, but when it came to the end of the series
cycle had just one weekend crunch.”
Adds Hocking: “In the games industry getting that
model right is really hard, but we perfected it and
WRC5 was – until MotorStorm, of course – the best
game we’d made. Constant improvement.”
But the success was double edged. Evolution
thrived, but it’s games were only a hit in the rally
niche in Europe. One review called the series “the best games you’ve never played”. Evolution created
five PS2 titles to a regular yearly schedule –
something only EA’s teams that are four times larger
has got right – but it was wall-to-wall Rally.
Creatively, ideas to implement in WRC had to go
unused (although, of course, elements such as he
damage models and carnage made their way to
MotorStorm) while entire game concepts were
jettisoned and ironically prove beneficial to the very
likes of the EA. (“Bigbig [Evolution’s satellite studio]
wanted to do street racing, but back before it became
a big thing in games. But our relationship with Sony
meant that we couldn’t compete with Gran Turismo,”
explains Kenwright of an eventually abandoned
concept. Adds Hocking: “Need For Speed Carbon’s
auto-sculpt – we had something identical six years
ago – but obviously, with the licences…”).
So: overworked and overshadowed? Far from it –
but they craved more. Kenwright says the time tied to
WRC was perfect for cultivating a “pressure cooker”
atmosphere – and they were ready to pop.
CREATING A STORM
The earliest germ of MotorStorm‘s existence came
from the team’s excess of ideas, unable or not
allowed to implement in WRC. That germ then turned
viral when Phil Harrison asked Kenwright, during a
WRC launch trip to the Corsica Rally, “What five
things can you do for rally on PS3?”
“Of course, we had been thinking about that for
some time,” explains Kenwright. So we needed to
know their agenda, too. We asked: Do you want to
sell hardware? Do you want a new world-class IP?
Do you want to make lots of money? Or is it a
mixture of all three? If it’s all three, then it’s three
options times three times three – about twenty seven
times harder. And of course Phil did turn to me and
say ‘Yeah, all three’.”
The team went away to bash into shape their take
on the next evolution in racing games. The primary
idea was to emphasise the spectacle and enjoyment
of racing, rather than the competitiveness. For all its
AI fight and technological might, Evolution wanted a
game that inverted what WRC did, placing
entertainment as its main priority – everything else
would be secondary.
And the truth is that the team was also out run over
a few preconceptions about their company along the
way. They didn’t want to just make the expected nextgen
Rally game.
Says Kenwright: “There are misconceptions out
there: that we are already Sony – and we’re not; that
people think we just do Rally – and we don’t; and
that we work for hire – we’re not.”
Adds Hocking: “Rally is great in a number of ways,
but we were so close to Sony that people thought we
were part of their company.”
A great example of how Evolution was so keen to
prove it was evolving is the story behind the game’s
name. ‘MotorStorm’ was thought up by an agency
after a series of meetings with Sony and Evolution,
coming after the studio thought up the idea of a
racing festival that pitted unlikely vehicles against
each other in the middle of the desert.
“We had ‘Eat My Dirt’, ‘Wasted’, ‘Stampede’ and
‘On All Fours… And Lovin’ It’ – we had some terrible
names, actually!” laughs Kenwright. “But we wanted
to be edgy, to prove we were capable of something
beyond WRC, and ‘Eat My Dirt’ and ‘Wasted’ would
have worked well with that festival atmosphere.”
With a co-devised name and game in place (in
many respects, that Evolution wanted to push away
from WRC and that Sony was happy to help them is
a great example of how SCEE’s External Development
team works), Kenwright and co. knew that the next
challenge would be creating something that would be
ready for launch.
GETTING IN THE MOOD
To convey the feel of the game, however, before the
PS3 specs were nowhere close to final – despite the
team being offered a first glimpse as they were with
the PS2 – something was needed to prove the idea
could provoke a response.
But despite strict instructions to not be too
ambitious, Evolution also knew that the worst thing to
do would be to underwhelm, hence the decision to
produce the much talked-about E3 video.
“We realised we had to polarise the vision for the
game and took the commercial decision to take all
the assets we’re creating for the real PlayStation 3,
visualise all the techniques we know it could use and
then render up something based on that – not
something fantastical you couldn’t achieve,” explains
Kenwright. “We aimed high and we wanted to trail
blaze – we did that when designing for PlayStation 2,
we’ve always done that – and we took on a can do
fashion, probably annoyed people along the way, but
this movie would distil all the best bits of this game.”
Despite murmurs in the press, they never felt party
to any deceit: “It was never that we thought the movie
couldn’t be achieved,” he says, and on close
inspection now it’s clear they have been validated.
“We never once thought we couldn’t do it,” he
repeats, before adding: “It was convincing the guys
that it would happen which was a challenge.”
MANAGING EXPECTATIONS
Ah, yes, production. After the matters over ‘target
render movies’ settled down, Evolution had to get its
head down and turn ideas into game. And there were
two challenges to face – both of which centred on
making it clear to both the team and the publisher
what the game was going to be.
“At that point there was an awful lot of people who
wanted to contribute to what we were doing,” says
Hocking. “Some people just thought that it would be
‘Rally with bits’ so we had to be clear to both Sony
and ourselves that it was more than that. The core of
the game is brutal off-road racing, and we had to
stick to that. It was so important those few months
where we kept it focused like that.”
And some judicial editing and a stringent control
process helped them refine what MotorStorm was. It
was a lengthy journey.
“The first 12 months were… well, I think everyone
knows what it’s like when you’re looking at a new
format,” he adds. “The platform gets announced and
you’re thinking ‘bloody hell!’. It never changes much
after that month – although the format specs get
more realistic as times go on. There were so many
ideas flying into the pot, but at some point you have
to think, back when it’s March 2005, that it needs
squeezing down to a product. During those first 12
months as much was taken out as there is left in the
game you have now. So the game wasn’t really built
properly until the last 12 months.”
Throughout all that time the studio walls were
covered in shots from the movie, almost every frame
turned into a poster.
“Imagine how much of a challenge that looks
when there wasn’t a line of code written,” says
Benson. “On the one hand, while we can talk about
inspiring people, you’ve got to understand that there
was no next-gen code base in place when the first
movie was shown. Keeping people’s belief that they
can do it when they can’t even render polygons at
that point was difficult.”
Benson and product manager Matt Southern have run
through some of the production’s biggest challenges
above. In all, the sweet taste of any challenge is the
resultant relief, and now the game is done the pride
amongst the 100-strong team is immeasurable.
And they know that they’ve nailed it, says Benson,
despite the long race to the finish line: “The only point
you can prove you were right is fairly late on because
you won’t have something running at full pelt early.”
So the shadow of the early movie was turned into
an illuminating light. In the flesh, the visualisation
trailer and game share so much in common that any
doubts seem a little stupid.
Says Hocking: “The thing about those videos is that
they were perfect for visualising the product nice and
early ahead of launch. The problem is that everyone
turns around and says ‘Are you pulling the wool over
our eyes or is this what it can really do?’ And you know
what, it turns out that this is what you really can do.”
EYE OF THE STORM
Through all of the game’s production, however,
Evolution found itself stood in the centre of the PS3
frenzy. Blu-ray, the machine’s delay, the disputed
memory specs, the constant chatter in the press,
Sony’s introduction of a tilt-sensing control pad –
everything Sony did, Evolution saw close-up and first
hand, which means that the team has a unique
perspective on what’s been happening to its format
holder friends.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, they don’t think Sony’s got
anything to worry about.
“This is the biggest thing Sony has done as a
corporation, but their critics will all be singing their
praises in a few months time,” says Hocking. “Sony’s
made a very brave move and have produced an
incredible piece of hardware – it will have paid them
dividends in three or four years time.”
“It’s damned if you do, damned if you don’t,” sums
up Kenwright. “We’re moving into an amazing new
business model and that’s a great save by Sony.
They’ve been really beaten up about it – but I’m so
happy they had the balls to come out with such an
ambitious machine. They only get beaten up for the
ten per cent they didn’t do rather than the 90 per
cent they have. PS3 is the most amazing bit of
machinery – all the console manufacturers deserve
credit for creating any machine quickly ahead of the
market, but everyone wants to beat Sony up.”
He’s also quick to join Sony’s software chorus and
say that a huge part of how Sony will succeed relies
on teams like Evolution: “Whatever you say, there’s a
warm glow of pride here. It was the team, 100 per
cent, which got it sorted. There was so much work to
do. We had a new format, loads of assets to sort out,
and our publisher was under a lot of stress because it
was their new format. It was the best of times and the
worst of times and so many people were nervous,
anxious. But it’s worked.”
And then he likens the widespread distribution of
the PS3 MotorStorm demo, available to every PS3
sold and connected to the web, to being revolutionary
on a level akin to id’s introduction of its first PC
demo: “It’s the ultimate Trojan horse for
downloadable content – a huge stone that we’ve
thrown into the pond, what Doom did for online PCs
is what we aim do for online consoles.”
And, asserts Hocking, with the whole of the
MotorStorm experience the team has helped not only
live up to Sony’s mandate for next-gen games – by
producing and completing the first PS3 game made
in Europe, they’ve helped shape that agenda. “We’ve
helped prove on day one that it works. Launch games
usually only ever hint at what a console can do – I
can’t think of any other game that really nails what a
machine can do, but we’ve come bloody close.”
THE NEXT NEXT-GEN
So, with one of the most talked about first party
launch games for the world’s most talked about
home console in the bag, what happens next?
In the short-term, MotorStorm remains a priority,
even after its release. Set to play a major part of
Sony’s ‘Beyond the Box’ philosophy, when Develop
toured the studio teams were hard at work on online
content, such as downloadable cars to be rolled out
as the PlayStation Network Platform and Store picks
up the pace.
And, of course, experience on a launch title, says
Hocking, “means we’ve got a second gen title in the
works while people are making their first one.”
But while that goes on, the company’s top brass
are devising the next five-year plan.
“We crawled, now are walking and are ready to
run,” says Kenwright. “And from that, we’ll always
have our feet on the ground – and will keep making
excellent stuff like MotorStorm – but I’ve got my feet
on the ground but my head in the clouds, perhaps,
and working out what’s next.
“The development business model is going to
change beyond all belief over the next few years. So
what we’re looking at is balancing long-term aims
while consolidating our position.”
He calls MotorStorm “a curtain raiser” for both
Evolution, the PS3, and that ‘big change’ – so what’s
behind the curtain? “Yes, I know what that next thing
is. We want to be in the business of IP creation,” he starts to explain, before delivering an unexpected
punch: “Right now, I’m already thinking about the
PlayStation 4 era and beyond.”
He doesn’t seem to be joking: “That’s the way we
need to think now in this business. We need to be
proactive – and be first or best. Not be a clone or
copy anyone else.”
He goes on to tell the story of how when he
recently finished the business plan for the company’s
next phase, he stuck a label at the top of his monitor
with ‘2011’ scrawled on it, “because what happens
then is the next big goal.”
It seems almost preposterous to be talking about
those things already, despite things like Sony’s own
widely-reported speculation in a recent issue of Wired
that it’s next home console format could be disc-drive
free. To be thinking about the next generation must
be a headache for everyone in the industry, especially
given the not-quite-perfect birth of the PS3.
But Hocking argues the case for such ambition:
“Yeah, it’s a risky thing to say, but if you don’t do that
it’s more risky to just look at the current gen and try
to fit in with what everyone else is doing. That strikes
me as crazy. Think of it like taking a hairpin on a
race track - everyone looks at the corner but you
really need to be looking at the track and see what’s
further ahead otherwise you end up really surprised.”
And anyway, says Kenwright, Evolution has always
thought big in this manner – that’s simply how he
and the team approaches work: “When we were
making PS2 games we were thinking of PS3-typespecs
as our bar for World Rally. Now we’re on PS3
we’re thinking about what aiming for the PS4 territory
would allow us to achieve.”
At which point he can’t help, before clamping his
hand over his mouth, but brand the next Evolution
production as “beyond anything you could consider
in the current development space”.
Without spoiling the surprise, then, how is that so? “In
general, there’s different ways of making games in the
future and I think a lot of the things people talk about as
being problems in this industry will become less of an
issue,” Kenwright says, pointing at the way Evolution
worked with Havok to produce constantly evolving
courses – embracing middleware as gameplay feature
rather than just a technology solution – as a key
influence on the market.
“It’s gone beyond the old attitude of a technological
difference being what makes things work or how you
succeed – in the end things like the concept behind your
game and the brand will overtake all that. If you ask
me, there’s a huge wave coming that’s going to change
things dramatically, and we will aim to be the crest of it.”
And it’s hugely unlikely that the team will have
forgotten to pack their surfboards.
UNDER THE BONNET
OF A NEXT-GEN TITLE
MotorStorm product manager
Matt Southern and producer
Simon Benson give further
insight into the development of
Europe’s first PS3 game…
With the benefit of hindsight, developing for PS3 compared to PS2
feels like we truly grew up in many ways and started doing things
much more seriously. For a long time people have looked to TV/
movie production standards as something to emulate – but
actually we have now surpassed them in some regards.
Take reference gathering, for example: at a very early stage we
decided it should all be High Definition, so production values for
the reference materials became extremely high, so much so that
the 1080p Monument Valley reference was of a higher fidelity
than the BBC’s Planet Earth hi-def footage. We had used
helicopter pilots and airborne camera equipment that only the
highest-budget movies use. Compare this to WRC and a guy on
his own in Finland photographing snowy stones with a digital
camera that is worse than some current camera phones.
The only reason we could deliver something like MotorStorm
for the launch window (which is a truly incredible achievement –
nobody else has anything ready over a similar timescale), was our
experiences delivering a WRC every year, and outside of the coalface
as a company we looked to continually improve our
processes. We created new project management software as the
team grew, and hired a business mentor to help staff stay buoyant
through difficult times. We now have staff who are pretty much
100 per cent dedicated to simply making sure we do things better,
a true hallmark of the PS3 dev era.
Developing for PlayStation 3 showed marked differences
between our expectations and the reality – however it must be said
that in many ways these discrepancies ended up being quite
positive. There are a few examples that spring straight to mind.
Firstly we thought that dealing with HDTV footage (for
reference, marketing, pre-visualisation, etc.) would be a real
nightmare as the data volume was truly enormous, reaching
absolutely unprecedented levels. However, thanks to Moore’s Law
kicking in over the course of the project, we didn’t have too much
of a problem. Terabyte external drives, gigabit networking and
dual core processors turned this initially daunting task into a trivial
issue. In no time it was like laughing at a 48k Spectrum.
We also anticipated that when we took receipt of our first PS3
test kit, getting the game to run on it would be fraught with
problems as typically the hardware is not the same as a dev kit
and you get little feedback from the kit if the game doesn’t boot,
other than a blank screen shortly followed by the scratching of
heads. However, MotorStorm was a ‘first time runner’ on the debug tool – which, until I saw it with my own eyes, I thought was
an industry myth – nothing works first time.
It was expected that burning a Blu-ray disk would be a costly
and time consuming process. On PS2, the first DVD burner cost
about £5,000 and took four hours to burn a £35 single use DVD.
Every time we burnt a disk that didn’t work, it was a massive let
down due to the long wait, and most dev staff had a £35 coaster
for their coffee cups by the end of the WRC1. On PS3 however,
the Blu-ray burners cost just £600, and we could use £10 rewritable
Blu-ray disks that only took 30 minutes to burn. Bliss. This
really helped with development, particularly at the end of the
project when turn-around times are critical.
Meanwhile, when we first discovered that PS3 had loads of
card readers built in, it concerned us greatly.
On PS2 it was always a nightmare to deal with cases where the
player could pull out the memory card at any time and swap it for
another, or an unformatted card, or a full one, etc. The testers
used to really go to town on every possible permutation and drive
the dev team crazy with some really obscure memory card
messing that would cause the game to crash, or overwrite game
saves. The thought of letting testers loose with lots of different
card slots would just make this problem infinitely worse –
fortunately for us, the PS3 came to the rescue with an integrated
hard drive in all models. Let’s see the testers pull that out!
Also the system software shouldered the burden of the memory
card slots – nice one, keep it in your own back yard Sony –
much appreciated.
__________________________________________________ _________________________
Evolution’s Martin Kenwright, Mick
Hocking and Simon Benson tell
Michael French the story of how
the studio shifted gears from PS2 to
PS3, what that E3 video really
meant for game production, and
what happens next…
Throughout its recent media storm Sony
has insisted that its new games format, the
PlayStation 3, be judged and defined by
the merit of its software. Talk is cheap –
after all, how else do you explain the specialist press
getting basic facts like game titles wrong and weird
write-ups in big-name newspapers on both sides of
the Atlantic? – so in terms of software, SCE has let
the games speak for themselves.
Unlike Nintendo and Microsoft, Sony has chosen to
find those games outside of its own empire, signing up
independent developers for the key first party titles.
One of those is long-running Sony partner
Evolution and its game MotorStorm. Yet the close
relationship between Sony and Evolution has an
unfortunate consequence – many forget that the
studio is an independent entity. That the two share an
inextricable bond is undeniable: its chairman, after
all, is former Psygnosis/SCEE man Ian Hetherington;
the company produced five first party PS2 games in
as many years; its ‘devolution’ team Bigbig produced
Pursuit Force, one of the PSP’s few new IP successes;
and of course the Evo team has just finished one of
the most talked-about PlayStation 3 titles.
Since its unveiling, a lot has been said about the
PS3, while MotorStorm has gone from an E3 video
representing an emotive concept to a tentpole of
development talks and press conferences the world
over. It’s not just a new IP game, it’s a launch window
title – and that’s launch in the sense it is expected to
propel the machine, not the other way around.
But we’ve all heard or read what the launch means
for Sony. If MotorStorm is pulling the PlayStation 3
cart, we want to hear from the horse’s mouth; it’s
getting the chance to ask Evolution ‘So, how was it
for you?’ that interests Develop, hence our visit to the
Runcorn-based team…
THE CALM BEFORE THE STORM
But first, hit the brakes and reverse: the story of
Evolution and MotorStorm, the studio’s bond with
Sony and it’s deeply ambitious ideas go back further
than 2005’s unveiling of the game or even the
studio’s 1999 founding.
Evolution’s founder Martin Kenwright, who made
the move from A-Level art class to game design, had
founded Digital Image Design in ‘89, a studio that
grew to 50 people by the time he was 25. DID’s
softography had, in his words, already set the
template for “a habitual and consistent” run of hits
with ambitious, technological elements – F29
Retaliator, TFX, Robocop 3D – which would replicate
itself years later.
When DID was bought by Infogrames in ‘99 after a
decade of independence, Kenwright considered getting
out of development altogether. Until Psygnosis cofounder
Ian Hetherington urged him to stay in the
game, that is, encouraging Kenwright to devise
Evolution, a new independent set to keep them free
from publishers and create original immersive games.
Hetherington’s SCEE connection and Kenwright and
co.’s ability to produce immersive environments saw
the company signed to Sony working on the bigmoney
World Rally Championship licence. A perhaps
ironic move, given the intention to be free and
original, but a move that paid off: Evolution was the
first third party allowed to develop a PS2 game; it
produced a five-game racing sports franchise, WRC,
from 2000 to 2005; most recently, The Sunday Times’
Fast Track listing ranked it as one of the UK’s top
performing private companies, valuing the Sony
partnership at £40m.
“We wanted to set the philosophy up that we were
a dream team – like a football squad,” says
Kenwright, looking back. “But we also understood
that while we were, and could be, prolific IP creators
WRC was a cash cow and the ideal way to grow and
cultivate our company, because the industry wasn’t in
the best shape for that at the time, was to stick with
that game. We wanted to be loyal to Sony – and that
will always be there – because they gave us such a
wonderful opportunity.”
In turn Evolution gave back innovation – and the
senior management all say that they were constantly
aiming to impress Sony with ambitious ideas that
would still be classed as next-gen concepts today.
“In the early days we deliberately set out to make a
big difference in the market because, as any market
does, the genre we were in went through a period
where everything was the same,” explains managing
director Mick Hocking, who had worked with
Kenwright at DID. “So we took what were next-gen
ideas from our flight sims – things like huge vistas
and a sense of spectacle – and then put a racing
game into that.”
By the end of the WRC franchise, production
processes had been driven to perfection. The
company embraced SCRUM and agile development
as the team evolved and adapted to a tough 12-
month schedule for each title.
“We grew really slowly over the five years,” adds
Hocking. “The Rally games allowed that, even though
they were hard to get done every year, because that
stable base allowed us to be selective about who
we’d take on. A licence is great because every 12
months you get a game out the door. It allowed us to
make a game in a very healthy game.”
The effect was almost instantly visible, says
producer Simon Benson, pointing out that the first
WRC was made by 12 people – the next 20, the third
around 30, and so on: “Doing a game every year is
both brutal and healthy because you’re reviewing
what you’ve done and going forward to make sure
you are better and sharper. The early games were
made with very few people and we had a lot of
crunch, but when it came to the end of the series
cycle had just one weekend crunch.”
Adds Hocking: “In the games industry getting that
model right is really hard, but we perfected it and
WRC5 was – until MotorStorm, of course – the best
game we’d made. Constant improvement.”
But the success was double edged. Evolution
thrived, but it’s games were only a hit in the rally
niche in Europe. One review called the series “the best games you’ve never played”. Evolution created
five PS2 titles to a regular yearly schedule –
something only EA’s teams that are four times larger
has got right – but it was wall-to-wall Rally.
Creatively, ideas to implement in WRC had to go
unused (although, of course, elements such as he
damage models and carnage made their way to
MotorStorm) while entire game concepts were
jettisoned and ironically prove beneficial to the very
likes of the EA. (“Bigbig [Evolution’s satellite studio]
wanted to do street racing, but back before it became
a big thing in games. But our relationship with Sony
meant that we couldn’t compete with Gran Turismo,”
explains Kenwright of an eventually abandoned
concept. Adds Hocking: “Need For Speed Carbon’s
auto-sculpt – we had something identical six years
ago – but obviously, with the licences…”).
So: overworked and overshadowed? Far from it –
but they craved more. Kenwright says the time tied to
WRC was perfect for cultivating a “pressure cooker”
atmosphere – and they were ready to pop.
CREATING A STORM
The earliest germ of MotorStorm‘s existence came
from the team’s excess of ideas, unable or not
allowed to implement in WRC. That germ then turned
viral when Phil Harrison asked Kenwright, during a
WRC launch trip to the Corsica Rally, “What five
things can you do for rally on PS3?”
“Of course, we had been thinking about that for
some time,” explains Kenwright. So we needed to
know their agenda, too. We asked: Do you want to
sell hardware? Do you want a new world-class IP?
Do you want to make lots of money? Or is it a
mixture of all three? If it’s all three, then it’s three
options times three times three – about twenty seven
times harder. And of course Phil did turn to me and
say ‘Yeah, all three’.”
The team went away to bash into shape their take
on the next evolution in racing games. The primary
idea was to emphasise the spectacle and enjoyment
of racing, rather than the competitiveness. For all its
AI fight and technological might, Evolution wanted a
game that inverted what WRC did, placing
entertainment as its main priority – everything else
would be secondary.
And the truth is that the team was also out run over
a few preconceptions about their company along the
way. They didn’t want to just make the expected nextgen
Rally game.
Says Kenwright: “There are misconceptions out
there: that we are already Sony – and we’re not; that
people think we just do Rally – and we don’t; and
that we work for hire – we’re not.”
Adds Hocking: “Rally is great in a number of ways,
but we were so close to Sony that people thought we
were part of their company.”
A great example of how Evolution was so keen to
prove it was evolving is the story behind the game’s
name. ‘MotorStorm’ was thought up by an agency
after a series of meetings with Sony and Evolution,
coming after the studio thought up the idea of a
racing festival that pitted unlikely vehicles against
each other in the middle of the desert.
“We had ‘Eat My Dirt’, ‘Wasted’, ‘Stampede’ and
‘On All Fours… And Lovin’ It’ – we had some terrible
names, actually!” laughs Kenwright. “But we wanted
to be edgy, to prove we were capable of something
beyond WRC, and ‘Eat My Dirt’ and ‘Wasted’ would
have worked well with that festival atmosphere.”
With a co-devised name and game in place (in
many respects, that Evolution wanted to push away
from WRC and that Sony was happy to help them is
a great example of how SCEE’s External Development
team works), Kenwright and co. knew that the next
challenge would be creating something that would be
ready for launch.
GETTING IN THE MOOD
To convey the feel of the game, however, before the
PS3 specs were nowhere close to final – despite the
team being offered a first glimpse as they were with
the PS2 – something was needed to prove the idea
could provoke a response.
But despite strict instructions to not be too
ambitious, Evolution also knew that the worst thing to
do would be to underwhelm, hence the decision to
produce the much talked-about E3 video.
“We realised we had to polarise the vision for the
game and took the commercial decision to take all
the assets we’re creating for the real PlayStation 3,
visualise all the techniques we know it could use and
then render up something based on that – not
something fantastical you couldn’t achieve,” explains
Kenwright. “We aimed high and we wanted to trail
blaze – we did that when designing for PlayStation 2,
we’ve always done that – and we took on a can do
fashion, probably annoyed people along the way, but
this movie would distil all the best bits of this game.”
Despite murmurs in the press, they never felt party
to any deceit: “It was never that we thought the movie
couldn’t be achieved,” he says, and on close
inspection now it’s clear they have been validated.
“We never once thought we couldn’t do it,” he
repeats, before adding: “It was convincing the guys
that it would happen which was a challenge.”
MANAGING EXPECTATIONS
Ah, yes, production. After the matters over ‘target
render movies’ settled down, Evolution had to get its
head down and turn ideas into game. And there were
two challenges to face – both of which centred on
making it clear to both the team and the publisher
what the game was going to be.
“At that point there was an awful lot of people who
wanted to contribute to what we were doing,” says
Hocking. “Some people just thought that it would be
‘Rally with bits’ so we had to be clear to both Sony
and ourselves that it was more than that. The core of
the game is brutal off-road racing, and we had to
stick to that. It was so important those few months
where we kept it focused like that.”
And some judicial editing and a stringent control
process helped them refine what MotorStorm was. It
was a lengthy journey.
“The first 12 months were… well, I think everyone
knows what it’s like when you’re looking at a new
format,” he adds. “The platform gets announced and
you’re thinking ‘bloody hell!’. It never changes much
after that month – although the format specs get
more realistic as times go on. There were so many
ideas flying into the pot, but at some point you have
to think, back when it’s March 2005, that it needs
squeezing down to a product. During those first 12
months as much was taken out as there is left in the
game you have now. So the game wasn’t really built
properly until the last 12 months.”
Throughout all that time the studio walls were
covered in shots from the movie, almost every frame
turned into a poster.
“Imagine how much of a challenge that looks
when there wasn’t a line of code written,” says
Benson. “On the one hand, while we can talk about
inspiring people, you’ve got to understand that there
was no next-gen code base in place when the first
movie was shown. Keeping people’s belief that they
can do it when they can’t even render polygons at
that point was difficult.”
Benson and product manager Matt Southern have run
through some of the production’s biggest challenges
above. In all, the sweet taste of any challenge is the
resultant relief, and now the game is done the pride
amongst the 100-strong team is immeasurable.
And they know that they’ve nailed it, says Benson,
despite the long race to the finish line: “The only point
you can prove you were right is fairly late on because
you won’t have something running at full pelt early.”
So the shadow of the early movie was turned into
an illuminating light. In the flesh, the visualisation
trailer and game share so much in common that any
doubts seem a little stupid.
Says Hocking: “The thing about those videos is that
they were perfect for visualising the product nice and
early ahead of launch. The problem is that everyone
turns around and says ‘Are you pulling the wool over
our eyes or is this what it can really do?’ And you know
what, it turns out that this is what you really can do.”
EYE OF THE STORM
Through all of the game’s production, however,
Evolution found itself stood in the centre of the PS3
frenzy. Blu-ray, the machine’s delay, the disputed
memory specs, the constant chatter in the press,
Sony’s introduction of a tilt-sensing control pad –
everything Sony did, Evolution saw close-up and first
hand, which means that the team has a unique
perspective on what’s been happening to its format
holder friends.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, they don’t think Sony’s got
anything to worry about.
“This is the biggest thing Sony has done as a
corporation, but their critics will all be singing their
praises in a few months time,” says Hocking. “Sony’s
made a very brave move and have produced an
incredible piece of hardware – it will have paid them
dividends in three or four years time.”
“It’s damned if you do, damned if you don’t,” sums
up Kenwright. “We’re moving into an amazing new
business model and that’s a great save by Sony.
They’ve been really beaten up about it – but I’m so
happy they had the balls to come out with such an
ambitious machine. They only get beaten up for the
ten per cent they didn’t do rather than the 90 per
cent they have. PS3 is the most amazing bit of
machinery – all the console manufacturers deserve
credit for creating any machine quickly ahead of the
market, but everyone wants to beat Sony up.”
He’s also quick to join Sony’s software chorus and
say that a huge part of how Sony will succeed relies
on teams like Evolution: “Whatever you say, there’s a
warm glow of pride here. It was the team, 100 per
cent, which got it sorted. There was so much work to
do. We had a new format, loads of assets to sort out,
and our publisher was under a lot of stress because it
was their new format. It was the best of times and the
worst of times and so many people were nervous,
anxious. But it’s worked.”
And then he likens the widespread distribution of
the PS3 MotorStorm demo, available to every PS3
sold and connected to the web, to being revolutionary
on a level akin to id’s introduction of its first PC
demo: “It’s the ultimate Trojan horse for
downloadable content – a huge stone that we’ve
thrown into the pond, what Doom did for online PCs
is what we aim do for online consoles.”
And, asserts Hocking, with the whole of the
MotorStorm experience the team has helped not only
live up to Sony’s mandate for next-gen games – by
producing and completing the first PS3 game made
in Europe, they’ve helped shape that agenda. “We’ve
helped prove on day one that it works. Launch games
usually only ever hint at what a console can do – I
can’t think of any other game that really nails what a
machine can do, but we’ve come bloody close.”
THE NEXT NEXT-GEN
So, with one of the most talked about first party
launch games for the world’s most talked about
home console in the bag, what happens next?
In the short-term, MotorStorm remains a priority,
even after its release. Set to play a major part of
Sony’s ‘Beyond the Box’ philosophy, when Develop
toured the studio teams were hard at work on online
content, such as downloadable cars to be rolled out
as the PlayStation Network Platform and Store picks
up the pace.
And, of course, experience on a launch title, says
Hocking, “means we’ve got a second gen title in the
works while people are making their first one.”
But while that goes on, the company’s top brass
are devising the next five-year plan.
“We crawled, now are walking and are ready to
run,” says Kenwright. “And from that, we’ll always
have our feet on the ground – and will keep making
excellent stuff like MotorStorm – but I’ve got my feet
on the ground but my head in the clouds, perhaps,
and working out what’s next.
“The development business model is going to
change beyond all belief over the next few years. So
what we’re looking at is balancing long-term aims
while consolidating our position.”
He calls MotorStorm “a curtain raiser” for both
Evolution, the PS3, and that ‘big change’ – so what’s
behind the curtain? “Yes, I know what that next thing
is. We want to be in the business of IP creation,” he starts to explain, before delivering an unexpected
punch: “Right now, I’m already thinking about the
PlayStation 4 era and beyond.”
He doesn’t seem to be joking: “That’s the way we
need to think now in this business. We need to be
proactive – and be first or best. Not be a clone or
copy anyone else.”
He goes on to tell the story of how when he
recently finished the business plan for the company’s
next phase, he stuck a label at the top of his monitor
with ‘2011’ scrawled on it, “because what happens
then is the next big goal.”
It seems almost preposterous to be talking about
those things already, despite things like Sony’s own
widely-reported speculation in a recent issue of Wired
that it’s next home console format could be disc-drive
free. To be thinking about the next generation must
be a headache for everyone in the industry, especially
given the not-quite-perfect birth of the PS3.
But Hocking argues the case for such ambition:
“Yeah, it’s a risky thing to say, but if you don’t do that
it’s more risky to just look at the current gen and try
to fit in with what everyone else is doing. That strikes
me as crazy. Think of it like taking a hairpin on a
race track - everyone looks at the corner but you
really need to be looking at the track and see what’s
further ahead otherwise you end up really surprised.”
And anyway, says Kenwright, Evolution has always
thought big in this manner – that’s simply how he
and the team approaches work: “When we were
making PS2 games we were thinking of PS3-typespecs
as our bar for World Rally. Now we’re on PS3
we’re thinking about what aiming for the PS4 territory
would allow us to achieve.”
At which point he can’t help, before clamping his
hand over his mouth, but brand the next Evolution
production as “beyond anything you could consider
in the current development space”.
Without spoiling the surprise, then, how is that so? “In
general, there’s different ways of making games in the
future and I think a lot of the things people talk about as
being problems in this industry will become less of an
issue,” Kenwright says, pointing at the way Evolution
worked with Havok to produce constantly evolving
courses – embracing middleware as gameplay feature
rather than just a technology solution – as a key
influence on the market.
“It’s gone beyond the old attitude of a technological
difference being what makes things work or how you
succeed – in the end things like the concept behind your
game and the brand will overtake all that. If you ask
me, there’s a huge wave coming that’s going to change
things dramatically, and we will aim to be the crest of it.”
And it’s hugely unlikely that the team will have
forgotten to pack their surfboards.
UNDER THE BONNET
OF A NEXT-GEN TITLE
MotorStorm product manager
Matt Southern and producer
Simon Benson give further
insight into the development of
Europe’s first PS3 game…
With the benefit of hindsight, developing for PS3 compared to PS2
feels like we truly grew up in many ways and started doing things
much more seriously. For a long time people have looked to TV/
movie production standards as something to emulate – but
actually we have now surpassed them in some regards.
Take reference gathering, for example: at a very early stage we
decided it should all be High Definition, so production values for
the reference materials became extremely high, so much so that
the 1080p Monument Valley reference was of a higher fidelity
than the BBC’s Planet Earth hi-def footage. We had used
helicopter pilots and airborne camera equipment that only the
highest-budget movies use. Compare this to WRC and a guy on
his own in Finland photographing snowy stones with a digital
camera that is worse than some current camera phones.
The only reason we could deliver something like MotorStorm
for the launch window (which is a truly incredible achievement –
nobody else has anything ready over a similar timescale), was our
experiences delivering a WRC every year, and outside of the coalface
as a company we looked to continually improve our
processes. We created new project management software as the
team grew, and hired a business mentor to help staff stay buoyant
through difficult times. We now have staff who are pretty much
100 per cent dedicated to simply making sure we do things better,
a true hallmark of the PS3 dev era.
Developing for PlayStation 3 showed marked differences
between our expectations and the reality – however it must be said
that in many ways these discrepancies ended up being quite
positive. There are a few examples that spring straight to mind.
Firstly we thought that dealing with HDTV footage (for
reference, marketing, pre-visualisation, etc.) would be a real
nightmare as the data volume was truly enormous, reaching
absolutely unprecedented levels. However, thanks to Moore’s Law
kicking in over the course of the project, we didn’t have too much
of a problem. Terabyte external drives, gigabit networking and
dual core processors turned this initially daunting task into a trivial
issue. In no time it was like laughing at a 48k Spectrum.
We also anticipated that when we took receipt of our first PS3
test kit, getting the game to run on it would be fraught with
problems as typically the hardware is not the same as a dev kit
and you get little feedback from the kit if the game doesn’t boot,
other than a blank screen shortly followed by the scratching of
heads. However, MotorStorm was a ‘first time runner’ on the debug tool – which, until I saw it with my own eyes, I thought was
an industry myth – nothing works first time.
It was expected that burning a Blu-ray disk would be a costly
and time consuming process. On PS2, the first DVD burner cost
about £5,000 and took four hours to burn a £35 single use DVD.
Every time we burnt a disk that didn’t work, it was a massive let
down due to the long wait, and most dev staff had a £35 coaster
for their coffee cups by the end of the WRC1. On PS3 however,
the Blu-ray burners cost just £600, and we could use £10 rewritable
Blu-ray disks that only took 30 minutes to burn. Bliss. This
really helped with development, particularly at the end of the
project when turn-around times are critical.
Meanwhile, when we first discovered that PS3 had loads of
card readers built in, it concerned us greatly.
On PS2 it was always a nightmare to deal with cases where the
player could pull out the memory card at any time and swap it for
another, or an unformatted card, or a full one, etc. The testers
used to really go to town on every possible permutation and drive
the dev team crazy with some really obscure memory card
messing that would cause the game to crash, or overwrite game
saves. The thought of letting testers loose with lots of different
card slots would just make this problem infinitely worse –
fortunately for us, the PS3 came to the rescue with an integrated
hard drive in all models. Let’s see the testers pull that out!
Also the system software shouldered the burden of the memory
card slots – nice one, keep it in your own back yard Sony –
much appreciated.