The lights are on
Codemasters revives its Dirt off-roading franchise on June 6 (PS4, Xbox One, and PC) with Dirt 4, and recently we had some hands-on time with the game, not only checking out its racing gameplay but also finding out about its career mode and new rally stage creation feature. Here are a handful of details I uncovered about the title. Also, stick around as Codemasters' executive producer Clive Moody discusses the company's approach to its racing titles in the future.
Your Stage
Career Mode
Gameplay, Locations, Cars & More
CODEMASTERS' CLIVE MOODY TALKS ABOUT THE RACING DEVS' FUTURE
Executive producer Clive Moody is an integral part of Codemasters' racing operation, serving in senior roles over the Dirt, Grid, and Pro Race Driver series for the company. I recently sat down with Moody to discuss where the company goes from here on many fronts. And, BTW, I did ask him about what the devs from the former Evolution Studios (Driveclub) are up to within Codemasters, but apart from saying they're working on an original racing IP, there are no updates...yet.
Will Dirt Rally and a regular, numbered Dirt entry be split into separate titles from now on?We don't consciously have a strategy to split Dirt out in that way. I think what we do want to do, though, with Dirt as a franchise, is try and get it to be the definitive off-road experience in as many forms as that takes. There are so many forms of off-road out there we're not even touching at the moment with that franchise. There are a lot places we could go with it, and places we actually do want to go with it.
The Dirt series has changed from iteration to iteration, whether that's including or dropping aspects like gymkhana or destruction derbies. Do you want to keep Dirt's feature set malleable, or would you like to keep it consistent from year-to-year and build upon a foundation?I actually could think Dirt 5 could be different again, but that's not to say that we want to be different again. Coming back to some of the stuff you've seen today with the Your Stage feature and technology, there's a huge amount we can do with that. Right now we know where we want to take it. We need to see how well it resonates with the audience once it's out there to form some of those decisions, but I'm really hopeful it's well received.
To your point about features coming and going, I do think Codemasters...we hate standing still. We kind of hate making the same game over and over, but we could do. We could milk it and keep going, but I think the audience is smarter than that, and that fatigue starts to set in if you don't innovate or bring something new to the mix. That's why you've always seen a lot of change... Sometimes we get a hit, sometimes a feature will miss, but you learn from misses.
Does the Grid series have a future at Codemasters?Definitely got a future. I'd love to say more, but I can't! I love Grid – I worked on all the Grids, actually, and they were great games to work on. The first one clearly resonated massively with the audience, it shook up the racing market a little bit at the time trying to do some different stuff, trying to engender some personality and soul into racing, which I think has been sadly missing. So if we were to bring it back – I'm saying "if," right now – it has to have that soul. It has to do something that nobody else is doing. So, yeah, watch this space, I suppose.
The F1 franchise made its mark last year after underperforming before that. Can fans expect the team to build off of last year, because previously there have been stretches where the franchise was fallow.You should have no fears of it going fallow, that's first thing I can say and do know about it. Those guys I'm sure recognize they kind of ticked a lot of boxes with the last one, they're not going to throw that away with the 2017 title. I know they're building on it rather than going back to the drawing board. I'm not close enough to know all of the details behind that, but it's an interesting license, shall we say. It comes with its own challenges. Obviously right now there's a change of ownership, so who know where it can go. I think right now there's more opportunities than ever for Formula One, both as a motorsport series and a game that represents that motorsport series.
Codemasters' online Racenet infrastructure is in Dirt 4, and do you have larger plans for Racenet in other titles and through the future?We do, big plans, but not all to go public at the moment. What we want to do now with Racenet is make sure it can play a part in all of Codemasters' titles, whether that's common functionality or whether that's functionality that's unique to each of them. I'm really interested in how we can expand it out so that there is crossover between titles in some way shape or form. So guys that really engaged with Dirt, for example...something which can hook into Formula One or what Evolution [Studios] are doing, or something to reward your loyalty, I guess, more than anything. And maybe even some sort of universal meta-game or currency, or call it what you will that brings it all together. So, I'm talking sort of long-term plan here...yeah, Racenet is really important to Codemasters' plans.
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