Thoughts on a whirlwind week for Turn 10 and the Forza Motorsport franchise.
Che Chou, 6.5.2009
On June 1st, Turn 10’s game director Dan Greenawalt shared a stage with the likes of Steven Spielberg and the Beatles to officially announce our next big thing on Xbox 360: Forza Motorsport 3. Those 5 short minutes Dan spent in the spotlight to talk briefly about Forza 3 were made possible through the coordination and mobilization of entire teams at both Turn 10 and Xbox 360.
Here's a bird eye view of the glowing Xbox 360 floor space at the 09 E3 Expo.
Speaking from my own personal trenches in the weeks leading up to E3 madness, I can attest I have never experienced the sort of craziness and stress as I did in the weeks just prior to E3 in my 10 years of game industry experience. Ironically, unlike the typical E3 tornado that comes through and derails a dev team from their main focus (i.e., the game they’re trying to ship this holiday), we weathered the storm miraculously well this year thanks mainly to an amazing and rock solid game that did not crash (as far as I know) on the show floor once. Pretty amazing for alpha code. And because Forza 3 is coming along so well on the development side, we didn’t have to randomize our dev team to produce a one-off E3 build for our show floor demos; instead, we were able to section off just a tiny portion of the game (10 cars, 3 tracks) and slap the build onto a bunch of hard drives which we hand-carried to E3.
While development was able to keep E3 chaos at bay, I couldn’t quite say the same about my community team which consists of myself, Landin, Phred, and Jeremy “Wins Again” Klukan. We knew the response to the Forza 3 announcement would be huge and we needed to bring our A-game to both the show floor and the web. But then again, this is the sort of environment in which we Turn 10 community folks thrive.
Turn 10 Game Designer Jun Taniguchi kicks back and shows off Forza 3 to the Japanese Press.
The week following Dan Greenawalt’s keynote presentation was an well-orchestrated cacophony of behind-closed-doors meetings with the press for 3 solid days where Dan met with hundreds of game journalists from all over the globe to give them a private tour of Forza Motorsport 3. Also juggling some of the private press meetings was Turn 10’s senior designer Jun Taniguchi, whose reputation in Japan was well-known among the biggest publications there as the soul of such Sega classics such as the Sega Rally series. For my part, I gave myself a good dose of Dan Greenawalt training by sitting in as many of the private demos as I could afford time-wise; Dan is a powerful speaker given it’s a subject he’s passionate about and nothing embodies his happy place more than the Forza franchise. I definitely learned a thing or two from watching him over the days.
Nissan Skyline GTR R33...Nuff' Said.
I also met with many of my press contacts and former colleagues on the games journalist side of things to chat about Forza and catch-up on bygone times. The truth is, the games industry is a rapidly evolving field – publishers, developers, and franchises come and go. Tastes are fickle. There’s a new generation of games journalists out there now, doing the sort of coverage we used to do 10 years ago. But in the end, isn’t it all the same? It’s just video games and there’s really no better time to be a gamer.
Here are just a pinch of stories that have hit the wire this week about Forza 3. More to follow as we continue to lift off more of the Forza 3 veil.
Buckle up and prepare for a racing simulation like no other in our custom hydraulic triple screen set-up!
Outside of our private booths at E3, Forza Motorsport 3 occupied a sizeable chunk of the Xbox 360 floor space with 3 massive triple-screen cockpits. The ride of the show, of course, was the much talked about triple-screen with the motion hydraulics seat which hooked up Forza 3’s deep physics system to a sophisticated, industrial-strength simulator seat that pitched and heaved in every direction to convey a tactile sense of immersion you simply haven’t experienced in a driving game yet. There’s a very good reason we require you to wear a seatbelt when you play in the simulator. Combined with the new Fanatec Porsche 911 Xbox 360 wheel (featuring 900 degrees rotation, H-pattern shifter, clutch pedal and more), this hydraulics simulator was a runaway hit on the E3 show floor.
Besides the consistent line of showgoers wanting to try their hand at this rare spectacle, we also had quite a few celebrities come through to play the Forza 3 ride-of-show cockpit. The list is as surreal to me now as it was when I saw (some of) them with my own eyes: Steven Spielberg, Victoria Beckham (with her little boy), Incubus drummer Jose Pasillas, DJ and Turntablist Chris Killmore, folks from LA Galaxy, Aisha Tyler, some dude who came by to shoot a segment for the Jimmy Fallon Late Night Show, and more.
This huge tent hosted Tuesday's VIP party, where folks had a chance to get up close and personal with FM3.
Perhaps the most surprising to me was when a couple developers from Gran Turismo makers Polyphony Digital came by to personally get hands-on with Forza 3, all the while taking careful notes, examining our UI system, shooting photos, and directly asking us some pretty interesting questions. The reason I say I was personally surprised was because PD aren’t generally known as a studio to acknowledge that there are racing games that exist beyond their own. Which could explain why the GT franchise has been so stagnant in the racing genre since GT3. So it seems competition is good for the consumer after all. I know for a fact that Turn 10 will never stop pushing racing games to the next level.
So what can we expect now that E3 is behind us? To begin, we’re about to embark on a long summer where each week we’ll be discussing new Forza 3 cars, tracks, and features in our Pitpass Reports. There are some surprises down the road and of course, a regular cadence of gorgeous, mouth-watering screenshots for your daily, weekly, and monthly consumption. In the short term, Dan and I are taking a trip out to France. Going to check out the watersport scene there – maybe taste some wine. Meanwhile, Landin heads out to NYC to represent at the AXF24 event. The fun never stops! If you’re a painterly type in the Forza community, definitely check out our Audi R8 design contest where the winner gets his design created in Forza 3 and put on Xbox LIVE as a special DLC car for those who preorder the game.
Turn 10 SDE Phil Bergman strikes a pose next to this beautiful flat black Lamborghini Murcielago.
Lastly, if you’d like to stay up to the minute with Turn 10 news and information, be sure you follow us on Twitter here: http://twitter.com/turn10studios/. The feed is mostly updated by me, but will occasionally be co-hosted by others on the community team.
Thanks again to everyone for an incredible E3 and Forza 3 debut. Talk to you soon!