History of MotorStorm
We look at its evolution since launch, and chat to Evolution about it.
MotorStorm's gameplay producer Jed Ashforth answers a few of our questions about the game's DLC support.
We feel that downloadable content has the potential to be much more than a new console feature, it deserves 'Triple A' values and attention by itself as opposed to seeing it as a follow-on. We felt that the best way for all of us to benefit was with a very clear and major investment. Having said that, the picture some people have of us all working on it is somewhat off the mark. We're a multiple-project developer now.
Before the launch of any of our downloadable content we'd already gone through numerous revisions and brainstorm sessions. We didn't have to reconsider, but it clearly made sense to gauge reaction and tailor future content accordingly. Even with plenty of success in the bag now it's still 'frontier' time with downloadable content; we're figuring out what will work and what won't.
A mixture. The majority of MotorStorm downloadable content has been new ideas. We do scour the web looking for feedback though, and use focus groups. Nothing was culled from the boxed game and deliberately saved for later. We put all we could onto the Blu-ray in the timeframe.
We don't have any plans for this at the moment.
The level of ambition was planned. When we were indies we promised SCE that we would spearhead the field of downloadable content, and that's what we're still trying to do. We set up a bespoke team and no other projects have been affected.
We have done a lot and been successful with it, but again we'd be the first to say we're still learning. Now we're part of the Sony family, we're exposed to some great cross-studio collaboration and have been sharing ideas and recommendations about downloadable content, Home, and loads of other stuff. Perhaps unsurprisingly this is most often with Studio Liverpool and BigBig Studios, but the dialogue is a global one. Really exciting times for us.
This question goes way beyond downloadable content. We have the aim of turning our launch-window title into a sustained, massive brand. We plan to dominate reaction racing for a long time. We'd never aim any lower.