14 DAY TRIAL // Driving games are quite popular because they offer the feeling of racing through some of the busiest cities or famous race tracks around the world in real-life cars. But even though there are many franchises based on this genre, not a lot of them offer a big dose of fun, instead focusing on delivering the most realistic experience, and thus losing a lot of players along the way.
This is the viewpoint of Jesse Abney, the producer of Need For Speed Shift, which will be one of the three racing games bearing the NFS brand announced to appear this year. We've already heard the developed talk about the fact that Shift will try to deliver a very original take on the racing genre and that it won't be like any other simulator. Now, he elaborates this subject while speaking with Gamasutra.
When asked why the game wants to differentiate itself from other simulators, he replies, “You know, unfortunately for the experience – and we all love racing games at Slightly Mad and DICE, who got their start building racing games for the first Xbox – we find them sterile. They're tech demos. They're plain. They're not cool and contemporary. They don't have all the components that typically a Need for Speed game has. There is a grind associated with them that punishes that entry level player and really tends to turn people off.“
He goes on revealing that the NFS brand has always been about fun in the first place: “There's a grind in the sterile simulation that we don't find to be fun, and fun is this defining factor that runs the course of every Need for Speed game. Good or bad, like us or love us, we're always after fun. We really want driving to be fun, and driving should be about fun in a video game where there are no real consequences. Shift is really bringing that fun aspect back to a simulation game – although we don't want "sim" to be what people take away from this. We want them to take away fun, authentic racing game that made them see and hear and feel what it was like to be a race car driver behind the wheel of a McLaren F1.
So even though the NFS brand hasn't been going through the best of times recently, it needs to be applauded for trying to bring at least a more different approach to video games. Up until now, NFS Shift is looking very good and will certainly impress a lot of people. Look forward to it at the beginning of fall this year.