Sony could have canned DriveClub for failing to hit PS4 launch
Sony could have pulled the plug on DriveClub for failing to hit PlayStation 4's launch last November, design director Simon Barlow has told VideoGamer.com, who says that the platform holder's decision to delay the game by an entire year was "unexpected".
"We've never been late before, we've never had to delay a game before, we've always delivered," Barlow told us, looking back over the struggles Evolution has faced with the game over the last 12 months. "And really, that was the reason why we delayed it because we've got this reputation to uphold.
DriveClub screenshot
"We've got our own pride in this experience, we believe in this title and we don't want to deliver something that's half-finished. We could have delivered it; it was a good game at the launch of PS4. It probably would have sold pretty well, people would have had a good time, but I don't think it would have quite been the experience we'd promised. It wasn't what we wanted to do."
The decision to delay "bought [Evolution] a lifeline," Barlow believes, "and we were so lucky that Sony allowed us to do that because they could very easily have said, 'You're releasing it or we're canning it'. They were the two options. The third option - we're going to delay it - was unexpected, I think.
"It's very rare that a major publisher, particularly a platform holder, allows a development team the time and space to deliver on that vision but they believed in the title as much as we did."
The extra time in development appears to have paid off, too, with Evolution substantially improving the game's visuals, tightening its handling and refining its focus.
DriveClub screenshot
"What the game was 12 months ago is not exactly what the game is now," Barlow adds. "We had a clear indication of what DriveClub was and we knew the vision that we needed to execute on. The issues were that there was so much content that we wanted to try and put in and so many ideas that we had it was picking and choosing the correct ones. And really that was the issue we had at the back end of last year.
"There was all of these systems that we were trying to integrate and they weren't quite integrating in the way that we wanted them to. For me as design director this is absolutely integral to my position and my ethos: If I ever employ any new designers or speak to a new designer on a project, the first thing I'll tell them is that design is a process of reduction. It's always about less. Less is always more in this instance. The more you take away, the more you refine, the better that experience is going to be.
"That's basically what my role has been since the turn of the year, to look at what we had and strip back all the extraneous layers that weren't working and expose that core nugget of game that is just so rewarding and so memorable, and that's the thing that people play."
