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This isn't an appreciation thread nor is it a wishlist, it is just a simple discussion about this make of car that as far as I can tell, has only ever been in really old rally games. Why has Skoda, never been in Forza at least? I mean don't get me wrong, the lineup of cars is not all that amazing...but that doesn't stop the addition of KIA or Volvo in Forza games, not to mention Peugeot...but with Skoda, what's the deal? Not a single car, ever, across all 7 of the current Forza games?

Unless Forza 6 suddenly starts adding them...I don't quite understand why this manufacturer has never been added. Is it a license thing? Do they not want any of the cars they make in any more games (why would they do that) or is it just been overlooked for other, unintentional reasons? Will it make it's first ever showing in FM6? I for one, hope so, even if it was only the RS line because some of them are great little cars.

Thoughts?

I think its ALWAYS a licence thing. Or maybe they are just... well.. not special enough. There's no Opel/Vauxhal 1.7 diesel in the game either and I'm not sad about it ;)

Unlike the rest of the VW Group brands Skoda isn't marketed globally. You have to go back to the 60s through to the 90s when Skoda produced their own cars and were successful at Group 2 rallying. In recent times the brand offers nothing not found in the comparable VW.

Heh, not fair to give a bad Vauxhall example ;). I was actually meaning more things like Kadette D and the Manta 400 and Vectra had that awesome 2.0L I4 too so...yeah.

Back on topic, Octavia vRS and Fabia vRS are great little run arounds, easily placeable in the D/C rank as contenders, next to even things like the Volvos and other french hatches etc. I think the issue could be lack of decent cars lol, I mean, the newest vRS models are actually pretty decent, as are some of the older varients and are I say even the yeti...but that could be enough, 3 or 4 cars. I mean them only have 2 or 3 TVR's to me is still a tragedy...I mean, where is the Griffith 500 and Chimaera?!

I dunno, sure they don't have amazing cars but niether does Volvo (yes I'll keep using that as an example), KIA, Saab and Citroen but they have featured many times.

Either way it's not a huge a deal...i just always wondered if it was T10 or Skoda themselves that decided.

@ Above I suppose you are correct with that, even still, you could argue the existence of the above are not favourably comparable either yet they still feature. Either way, it would nice to see the latest vRs Fabia and Octavia, but perhaps we never will.

Edited by user Wednesday, July 8, 2015 9:13:26 AM(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

It's more or less just a licensing thing. T10 has to want the cars in the car first off and then get the licensing agreement from Skoda if they wanted to. I'm sure T10 has a team of marketing reps that are always working on licensing all the time and wanting to license more and more cars. It's just a matter of getting cooperation between the companies. Who knows. Maybe we'll see Skoda in FM6. The list has a ways to go before being filled.

I'd assume it's partially down to the VW Group, owners of Skoda, who would probably rather Turn 10 focus on their more globally recognizable brands like Volkswagen, Porsche, Audi, Lamborghini etc....

Did I hear a Porsche in there? Their licensing doesn't go through VAG but through EA.....
You mean VAG wants Turn10 to focus on Volkswagen, Audi, Lamborghini, Bentley, SEAT, Bugatti..... you know the ones that make money.

I would love to see some Skodas in the game, one might say it would be my Favorit. :) Let's see the Czech cars represent....

They could pull every Citroen from the list and replace it with a Sköda, and I doubt I'd notice.

Maybe Skoda is happy enough as it is with them always (for two decades; it has even earned ŠKODA a GUINNESS WORLD RECORD for ‘the longest-lasting main sponsorship in the history of sports world championships') being the official main sponsor of the IIHF ice hockey world championships.
Skoda is also an official partner of many cycling events, one being the Tour de France.

Perhaps video games is something they have no interest in being part of.

Plenty of rally games have featured Skoda.

Edited by user Thursday, July 9, 2015 7:06:11 AM(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

I think licensing has nothing to do with it. Sure, licensing is a part of the process of getting a new marque into the game, but there's nothing to indicate that Skoda would be any more difficult than any other manufacturer, barring Porsche.

I think T10 just doesn't want to put them in the game. Prior to FM5's release, The Smoking Tire asked Dan if "obscure" cars ( the BMW Nazca C12 was mentioned by name) would ever be in Forza. Dan responded that cars that were "a flash in the pan" didn't have any place in Forza. That comment has never sat well with me, for a lot of reasons- it seems to claim that if a car isn't featured in Forza, its existence was meaningless; it also indicates that T10's car picks are motivated solely by marketability. While Skoda is certainly not a "flash in the pan", it's something that is no doubt excluded by that toxic mindset.

It's down to one of these, pick whichever one suits you:

• Turn 10 aren't interested in adding Skodas to their games.
  
  
• Turn 10 are interested but do not have the appropriate licensing agreement with Skoda to include their cars.
  
  
• Turn 10 are interested and have a licensing agreement, but have not yet announced the addition of Skodas to Forza Motorsport 6.

Add to the list: Turn 10 is interested but given limited development resources chose other car models as higher priorities.

This list applies to every "Why isn't [car] in the game?" question.



Without direct evidence of negotiations, there's also nothing to indicate that Skoda is easy.



I'd have to relisten to be sure I'm referring to the right podcast, but if I recall correctly in the Petersen Museum's Car Stories podcast (linked in last week's WIR) Dan also addresses concept cars and talks about how if they don't seem to have lasting relevance then they're not included. His description of the evaluation leads me to think it's not toxic at all, it's simply a curated process. Certainly if it takes months to develop a game asset and they're only releasing five to ten per month, we're not going to get every car that everyone wants, so some curated decisionmaking is expected.

Edited by user Thursday, July 9, 2015 10:40:59 AM(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

VW, Seat, Skoda, Audi.....one the whole the same cars just different skins

But there's also nothing to indicate that it's any more difficult, meaning that my point still stands.



The interview I'm referring to occurred in the early stages of FM5's marketing. It was with Matt Farah, I'm pretty sure.

"Curated decisionmaking"... what kind of doublespeak is that? At the end of the day, the dev team greenlights the things that go into their games.

And how are you supposed to determine what concept cars have "lasting relevance" when most of them are never made? At least machines like the Nazca C12 are functioning prototypes and are real cars. Now, I'm using the Nazca C12 as an example here because it's the car Matt Farah himself called out by name in that interview. I'm not trying to demand that Forza adds a bunch of concept cars (interestingly, the only real concept car I can think of being in Forza is the Saleen Raptor, which had completely fictional stats, and now Saleen has gone belly-up. So much for "relevance".) But I am pointing out that T10 doesn't like obscure marques or cars as much as some rival developers, and in the games by some of those rival developers, the obscure marques are highly appreciated and regarded as defining aspects of the game.

But, at the end of the day, all I'm arguing for is seeing more of what I want (weird stuff), which really makes my point no more valid than the people who complain that every DLC doesn't feature the Hellcats.

That comment does not mean cars not in the game are meaningless, it means the cars in the game are meaningful.

They can not put every car in the game so for a car to get in the game there must be a good reason. There will be many worthy cars that miss out simply because they can not or choose not to put 2,000 cars in the game.

It all gets back to personal opinion about what cars are worthy.

Chysler ME-12,was a concept right? In FM2.

100% agree with you. I have nothing against Skoda, there decent cars and I quite like the Octavia VRS however there are more desirable and more fan requested manufactured than Skoda. They can't have every manufacturer in the game so they pick the ones they think will benefit their game the most. For Holden never made it into Forza Horizon 2, but I'm sure 95% of the community, myself included,.would prefer to see Holden rather than Skoda. Skoda isn't really even that requested amongst the community and there's no point bringing in cars that most people didn't want and won't drive.

I came up with "curated decisionmaking" as cars picked according to a planned theme, rather than decisionmaking driven by financials or headlines or current game trends. It sounds like doublespeak because I couldn't come up with a better term. Maybe Dan explains it better in his own words.

Here's the transcript of a portion of the Car Stories podcast on the topic, fwiw:

"I imagine now whereas in the first Forza you guys were probably begging to get cars into the games, now there's probably a lot of turning away - I mean I imagine outside of the major manufacturers you have race cars, you have offroad cars, you have concept cars - are you guys just bombarded with hot rod builders "Hey you wanna put my car in the game?" or places like a museum "Hey would you wanna put our collection in the game?" Is that just a constant ask coming your way of submission of cars?"

"Absolutely, and it's great, we love cars so it's great having people in a sense beating down our door to get their cars in. The thing that we're always asking is "Will this car be relevant in ten years?" And not all cars we put in are, but it's the first question we ask. And that also makes concept cars a little bit more of a difficult subject, because some concept cars become famous in their own right. But some concept cars really just hit the cover of a couple magazines and they sort of die on the vine. Especially when the production car comes out and it's similar enough that the concept car really is just no longer relevant. A lot of the builder cars, for SEMA or something like that, these are great cars, but they're made redundant within months. They're really built over the course of nine months, a project car, and then the car is really no longer a big deal. So we don't have any issue with those cars, but that's the first question we have to ask, "How relevant is this going to be?"

I wouldn't say we turn away a lot, it's just an open dialogue: "Hey, this is what we're working on" "That sounds cool, sounds interesting." We listen to the fans a lot, and because we have such an international fan base that's another layer to put on top of it, which is "how regional or how global is this car's footprint going to be when it actually hits the stage." So that will make some cars seem a little less relevant."

"You guys are releasing a few more cars each month, and it's constantly grown, and I think that's one of the neater things of this new technology - you don't just have to put in a disk anymore, and everything is on that - it's constantly being updated with tracks and cars. Take us through the process of, you agree that this one-off car, not just the Ford Mustang but this Shelby Mustang, or any example. Take us through the steps from real car and you've decided it's going in the game, to actually getting it into the game."

"Well I think there's a spectrum so I'll just paint both sides. When you're looking at a car like, let's say a 250 GTO. Super rare, very expensive, we're probably going to go get this car from a collector or maybe from a museum. And we're not going to be allowed to, let's say, disassemble. it. They may not want us to put in on the dyno and rev it out near redline. There are a few conditions they're going to put on it. And also there's no CAD data, because the car was hand built by two guys in a garage maybe even in Ferrari where the two sides are not quite equal, there's pieces of wood that are holding the car together. So what we have to do is research that car. We take thousands of photographs, we take videos, we take parked cars that are similar but less valuable and we work with collectors to understand what exact parts were in here. So we do all this research to reconstruct it. It's kind of like forensics. And we build up the car. That can take upwards of nine months to build a car that way. We have a lot of these classic cars, but they're a lot of work. And they're the simulation is the part I love. Today's modern cars - a 458, a Ford GT, an Audi R8 - these cars are so amazing that they're just fast on their own right. I mean, it's the technology going in... The simulation of these classic cars is incredibly difficult because they have such a-typical parts, they've got things that are asymmetrical for no very good reason, they've got chassis flex. You can have two cars that are the same weight, width, and wheelbase and everything else, but for some reason one drives really differently. And it's not suspension, it's something like chassis flex, or tire size or what have you. Now, on the opposite end of that spectrum for capturing a car is a car like the Ford GT. This car was designed on a computer, so they have incredibly high resolution CAD data, and they can send that over to us so we're able to import that straight into the game. We also take photographs and we take video and we need to dyno engines, and some of these engines aren't built yet. "

[Ford partnership discussion snipped]

"The demographics of who use cars... I'm sure, not Ford, but any manufacturer wants to know what the cars I download are or what the cars you download are, or what the cars a kid in Dubai vs a kid in China... is that something that gets seen? Is it something that gets shared? Is it a useful tool for auto manufacturers to decide, "Maybe we should start building these types of cars" or "Maybe it's time to rebrand this image"... Is the user data relevant for cars being made three or four years in the future?"

"Yes and no. We have a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy because we are making a game, and the game is meant to stoke car passion. Which means I need to introduce people to cars, and get them excited about the cars. And that means I can't give them total free choice. I can offer them free choice, but, there's sort of in design the tyranny of free choice. And that means if I give you thirty things to choose from, most people will look through four or five, maybe eight, and they're just going to kind of lose their will and make a choice. So we tried to, when you're given a choice, order it so it's in an order so it makes logical sense. But that means we're creating a positive reinforcing cycle, where you choose it and that puts it in the front of the order because it's popular. And that would mean reporting data that actually is not real because they players didn't really choose it. So we're always fighting that. Because it is interesting data, but it's not actually as relevant to my thing. "What's the most popular Ford gonna be?" Well if the game starts you off in Sport Compact cars, you're not going to be driving a Mustang, because it's not a Sport Compact Car. And so it's not going to be the most popular Ford. But that doesn't mean that among Sports Cars the Mustang might be the most popular car. It's hard to parse the data that way."

"Is there any overall theme or an overall car in the past few games where everyone goes, "That's the one we're picking"? Are you ever surprised at what you see people picking and driving?"

"First off there are some hidden gems. I would say that the class that gets the most usage globally is just GT cars in general. So you're looking at things like the Audi R8, the Ford GT will be in that group, the 458, the 12C, the the 650S, these are the bread and butter of sports car racing, video games, Forza Motorsport. Everything else gets a little more niche. We've got people who will stay in Sport Compact. Or maybe they'll stay in two-liter vintage cars. They get really, really into them, so an individual group may spend most of their time in those cars, but they will at least play a little in these GTs. The ones that have really jumped out at me are the Ford Raptor. The Raptor's been incredibly popular in our game. Now is that because the F-150's a popular truck? Maybe. Is it because the F-150 Raptor is a bit of a beast and so it's kind of fun when you're playing online you can wreck other cars? Maybe that's why, maybe it's all those reasons. But it's been very popular."

"I would assume it's so far from what you would expect on the track, and it's just so ridiculous over the top, someone goes "Well I gotta see what this is going to be like at Spa" because you're never going to experience that anywhere else."

"That's one of the things people love in Forza in particular. We've added the Ford Transit van... Sabine Schmidt drove one on the Nurburgring, that's been a popular car in our game as well. There was... the A-Team van, that was popular. So there are some that are popular because they're sort of pop culture icons, and some because it acts exactly like you're saying, they're so not expected. ... There was an old muscle car station wagon we had in the game was also very, very popular."

"Do you have any sort of Dan Greenawalt personal bucket list cars you'd love to, you know one-offs or rare things, that you'd love to include in the game? Maybe a '70s Corolla?"

"I absolutely do, and here's the thing I take very seriously. We try and get a lot of data and feedback on which cars to add. As I mentioned, globally, and how's it going to last in ten years and what have you. And my worry is that whenever I say I like that car, it's not a +1 on a car it's a +10 or a +100 on the car and I fear that. So yes, I've always had cars that I really wanted us to do, and I try and keep my, kind of, presence, out of it. I want to keep my passion in there and my passion for the fans. So there was one for example, the Shelby Daytona Coupe. The Daytona Coupe came in pretty late into our franchise considering it's one of my favorite cars of all time. So we had Forza Motorsport 1, it wasn't there. Forza Motorsport 2, it wasn't there. I think it came in in 3 or 4 and I had this kind of like secret party inside of myself ("Yes! It finally showed up!") when it kind of passed all of those gates, knowing this was the right time to add this car."

2 reasons:

Licencing

There isn't one Skoda that is worth putting in the game, except maybe the Fabia vRS....but nobody would really care.

1) You honestly have no idea if it's to do with licensing or not. Seeing as VAG holds the license and every other product they own the license to is in the game to some extent (even Porsche now) saying they don't have the license should they chose to use it is a stretch. In the end, we don't know.

2) That's not a reason, that's simply one person's opinion and it will differ from person to person. The same could be said about plenty of cars that are in the game.


For the time being the only actual reason that Skoda is not in the game is either because Turn10 does not want it in their game or because Turn10 does not believe there would be enough marketability and profit in the decision to include it.

Yep.

As were the following cars in FM3-FH1: Devon GTX, Joss JT1, Saleen S5S Raptor, Lamborghini Miura Concept.

Interesting to note that none of those cars came back.....

Anything new here? :D I don't want to create a new topic but was wondering about Skoda several times. It's nothing special but some older cars are pretty cool and could be great to have it in Forzas.

Yes. Here are your answers for both, FM and FH

https://forums.forzamoto...eft-out-of-the-game.aspx

Wow, thanks! I missed that.