F1 2010: The Final Lap

Nothing too bad. Initially, they weren't very keen on the Live the Life stuff at all, the media stuff. I think the thought of AI drivers slagging each other off, or the player slagging AI drivers off, or the AI slagging the player off wasn't a concept that they were particularly keen on... So that was one that was a bit of a no, but we ended up turning it around.

Other than that it was just the multiplayer, really, we were quite late in the day and it was: you can't have 12 Ferraris out on the track. It's a licensing restriction... I'm hoping we can go back to them next year and say, "I know that's not real life, but guys are just going to want to go online and play as their favourite car." We just didn't have time to react to that.

We would have called the challenge between two team mates a Team Mate Battle. It sounds like a perfect rivalry. But they don't like the world "battle".

The only other one was that we wanted AI drivers to be able to switch teams in career mode. I think we were close, but ultimately it was a no. We were like, if we honour Lewis [Hamilton]'s contract then he's at McLaren until 2013 but in 2014, he can sign for someone else. I think the thought of Lewis Hamilton in a Ferrari was just too much for a few people.

We're just trying to push all those things. You can do it in football games, have players changing squads, and Formula One isn't doing that. It is very, very branded. But what we're hoping is that the success of this will enable us to push further.

We're not doing DLC, but... we might update the game after it's out. I'd love to be able to do that. DLC we're not planning to do with this one, because Paul and I have already started on '11 now... There are some other exciting things that we want to play around with.

Yeah, it just would have taken too much development time.. the dev cycle for a yearly iteration is so short when you factor in the sign-offs and all that stuff, anyway, that we just want to get our teeth stuck into it.

Certainly for 2011, that deal's done and dusted. I think the 2012 deal isn't a million miles away, it's not signed yet, but I guess it depends on the sales, review scores, that type of thing. After 2012... there could be 1.6 diesel engines, I'm hearing, and all sorts of stuff, and the teams need to sign up for that. It's certainly enough for us, anyway, to think one year ahead!

Yeah, timing's an interesting one because, obviously, everyone goes, "Why didn't you release it earlier on in the season?" We would have done if we could...

Some of the data that you get from the teams, not all of them, you get pretty early in the season, maybe January, February. But it changes so much from the first test to what they actually put on the track in the first race. So you've got to use the first or second race as your lock-off.

And then... it's modelling the cars and getting the sponsors right and getting them signed off by the teams. Then, track sponsors is very complicated, as you can imagine. They hadn't even signed half the 2010 sponsors by the time we were ready to place them all. It's quite a long process, back and forth, through that approval stage.

I'm fairly certain September's about the earliest you can have the game out if you want to have it accurate.

I'm going for Webber, now. I want him to win, as well. Hamilton's my second choice, but I feel like Webber's got the best opportunity. I see Monza as a blip. I'm really pleased for Webber, he's a really nice bloke as well, he's got this one chance...

Everyone says that, but he is a really nice bloke, he will speak to you in the paddock. Really nice guy. I think Hamilton will do it, personally, but I'm secretly rooting for Webber as well.