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."