Interview: Paul Waters on F1 2010
Codemasters' Paul Waters describes how, with the latest in the F1 series, they hope to recreate the F1 experience both on and off the track. How? By complaining about your fellow drivers in interviews, of course!
Codies have pedigree when it comes to racing titles, most recently with their muck-slinging, off-road spectacular DiRT 2. Now, with the Formula One license firmly in hand, they're set to give the world's most technically challenging sport that same, high-gloss, realistic-yet-fun treatment. We grab Codemasters' Paul Waters in the pit lane to ask him what's in store for F1 2010, and whether or not you can slag off Lewis Hamilton in post-race interviews.
Lorenzo Mosna: We've heard F1 2010 isn't all about the driving experience - could you explain some of the behind the scenes features?
Paul Waters: When we designed the game there was a motto in our minds: "Be the driver, live the life". So the main features of the game reflect these two aspects: "be the driver" is about all the things that you see on the track, all the things that Codemasters is known for in games like DiRT and DiRT 2. So it's all about stunning graphics, excellent handling, the weather system, the flashback system... all these kind of things.
"Live the life" is about giving people something more. When we developed the game we spoke with a lot of fans and the majority of them were interested not only in driving but also in what happens off the tracks, and so we wanted to bring this aspect inside the game. In our previous games you just finish the game and bam, congratulations, you won, go to the next race. In F1 2010 you get out of you car, go into the garage and see your race engineers, walk into the paddock and meet the media, etc. We want you to immerse yourself in what a Formula One driving experience should be, in both its aspects. It's not just about "sitting behind the steering wheel and going fast". That's probably the biggest part of the game, but it's also about this behind the scenes thing as well.
This interaction with the media is very important for your career. For example: let's say you have an incident in which Lewis Hamilton crashes into you in the last lap. The media will interview you about that and you might say: "It's Hamilton's fault" but then you think that you're probably going to race for McLaren next year, and so you better be careful what you say. We wanted to recreate the difficulties that the drivers face every day in real life.
How exactly do these interviews affect the career and the game? Do the AI controlled rivals change their driving style?
Yes, they actually do. But it depends. If you call someone that usually arrives around 18th or 19th a bad driver, you'll probably let him down and he's going to drive even worse. But if you insult a very good driver... well, he probably won't like it and he'll try to go as fast as he can in the next race. That means that we modelled the characteristics of every single driver. Hamilton will be very aggressive, Button will be very smooth, Schumacher will be very difficult to get past - your interaction with them will change these aspects.
What sort of research went into the track and car design?
P: Well, it's a multi-stage process. Let's talk about tracks first: we sent some of the guys of our team to every single race track. They walked along the track and took a picture every five metres in every single direction. Remember that tracks are usually three miles long, so these are long days! Then they sent these pictures to our designers that used also archive data to get precise information about distances, heights, slopes, so it looks very realistic.
- PAGE:
- 1
- 2
- System:PC, PS3, Xbox 360
- Genre:Racing
- Developer:Codemasters
- Publisher:Codemasters
- Offline players:1
- Online players:1-12
- Age limit:From 12 years
- Release date:24 September 2010
- GTR 3 PC
- F1 2011 Multi
- Forza Motorsport 4 Xbox 360
- Nascar: The Game 2011 Multi
- F1 2009 PSP/Wii
- Race Pro Xbox 360
Did Blizzard get a bad deal over DOTA naming rights?
Gamereactor since 1998 - Published by Gamez Publishing A/S Toftebæksvej 6, 2800 Kongens Lyngby, Denmark +4545887600
