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Barcelona is not only the home of many indie devs, but also of quite a bunch international AA and AAA studios. Here we talk with Nicolle Fadanelli and Arnaud Benefice about Gameloft's ongoing racing games: the Tim Burton-flavoured Season 10 for Disney Speedstorm, and the "Temerario" success of the more recent Asphalt Legends Unite.
"All right, we're at the Indie Dev Day 2024 and again, it's in Barcelona and that means that not only can we talk with indie devs that are based around Barcelona or in Spain but also international studios, international publishers that have an office, an operation here in Barcelona such as Gameloft. Thank you so much for joining us guys. Let's talk racing."
"You guys are the racing guys here, both Disney and Asphalt.
So, you guys have new content, new game this year. Let's start with Disney.
So, what can we expect from this game? 10th season already? You guys released last year 10th season already.
How does that work?
So, actually we release seasons every two months usually and every season is IP themed based on one of the Disney or Pixar IPs."
"So, the new one that we just announced, it's the next season, season 10 and it will be all about The Nightmare Before Christmas.
Tim Burton.
Makes sense.
Yes, it makes a lot of sense and we have a lot coming, a lot of new stuff and our community can actually check everything on our social media pages and we have all the information there."
"But what I can say is that we're going to have The Nightmare Before Christmas racers themed and a sneak peek of them, the roster will be like Jack Skellington, Sully, Oogie Boogie and Dr. Finkelstein plus two new bonus racers that I will not reveal because these are a surprise for the community, so let's wait a bit more.
Okay."
"And a team track based on The Nightmare Before Christmas universe.
Perfect. I will go for Asphalt a little bit and I will come back to Disney.
So, you guys introduced this game this very summer, so it's very recent.
But you guys also released some new content this very week."
"Yes, we just released an update centered around the Lamborghini Temerario, which is a new Lamborghini that Lambo just announced in August, it's already available in the game and actually if you're seeing this interview soon, if you're playing right now you can unlock the car for free just by playing the first stage of the event."
"Which would you say, I mean I took a look at the trailer that you guys released before announcement in the summer, which would you say are the features here that sort of are different coming from other Asphalt games to this new entry?
Right, so there's two really big things that we've been focusing on.
The first is we've had a massive graphic overall, so there's a lot of technology that's been going in it, new lighting, new shadows, etc. So the game looks really, really improved."
"It's also now available on PlayStation, which means that we have all of the platforms now available.
And the last thing, the big focus for us in terms of feature was multiplayer.
We have new multiplayer modes, new ways to play, and we have cross-save and cross-platform.
So if you're on Switch you can play with someone who's on PlayStation, with someone who's on mobile."
"What can you tell us about the success of the game so far?
This summer only, but what can you tell us about the feedback from the community?
Is it crazy, arcade-y, super fast, compared to Speedstorm it's different.
Yeah, we've got really good reception, the multiplayer modes especially have been really well received."
"There's a lot of action, it's very immediate.
We've also been receiving a lot of the feedback from the community and acting on this.
So there were some changes that the community wanted in terms of graphics and things like that.
We have an update that just released which addresses all these points."
"So it's been fantastic to get all that feedback from the players and be able to act on this.
But overall, we're really happy with the way that Aspall Agents has been going so far.
It's cross-platform, isn't it?
It is, absolutely, yes."
"Let's get back to Disney. I'm currently playing Disney Epic Mickey R. R. Rats.
Your timing, guys, is fantastic now to be back. Disney is, again, trendy.
I mean, when is it not?
So I asked you about reception, community feedback, blah, blah, blah."
"A year after, many seasons later, how do you feel about that?
About the community, about people playing this sort of card-racing genre with Disney characters?
So actually, for us, we are really happy with the results so far.
Our community is incredibly committed, and we get a lot of feedback from them that actually we are listening to and try to implement them season by season in order to balance the game and make them community-driven."
"So our main objective is to actually have the fans being the first ones involved in our creation.
So community for us is fundamental, and this is why we put a lot of effort on all the communication and the social media channels in order to give community sneak peeks of what we are doing behind the scenes or just, like, reveals, or we tease them which characters are going to come in order for them to have fun and guess who the other players are going to meet."
"Cool. You don't have Oswald in the game, do you? Oswald the rabbit.
Yeah, we have it, and as well Nortensia.
So then it's going to get trendy again. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Okay, and speaking about that, I know you guys don't do Dreamlike Ballet, okay?
But did you notice, like, did you sort of collaborate in a way that you can sort of tease what's going on in Dreamlike Ballet with this game or the other way around?
Did you guys are somehow inviting players of Dreamlike Ballet to play the racing game?
So in the game itself, we do some social media collaboration mainly in order to have a kind of cross-collaboration between Disney and Pixar titles."
"And we have, like, Disney Dreamlike Ballet presence on our Steam page as well in order to have, like, if you are a Disney and Pixar fan, you can actually come on Disney's page, and you will see something Disney and Pixar related at the bottom of our Steam page."
"All right. I think, I don't know if I missed anything from you guys that you guys want to mention. I know you're keeping some secrets.
If not, that's a wrap-up. Thank you so much for your time.
Enjoying the day. It's been a pleasure."
