Race Driver: GRID Does User Gen
CVG had a great interview with Peter Shea, Creative Director at Firebrand Games, talking about the forthcoming DS version of Race Drive: GRID. (See IGN UK's preview for a more general overview.)
The interview really focuses in on what Firebrand is doing differently for the handheld version of the game. It sounds as if they're really doing a great job in taking the special capabilities of the DS into account when it comes to track creation, as well as tweaking gameplay to match the handheld experience. I'm glad to see that more and more developers are taking this approach. Shoveling out ports helps no one.
Perhaps the most interesting bit for me, though, was Shea's discussion of how they're taking all of the user-created content the track editor is going to spawn to really make GRID something special:
Shea: It's very straightforward. You can save six different tracks on your Game Card, and then by connecting to Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection, you can upload any of these tracks to your own space on the Gamespy servers.
You can then tell your friends about it, and they can look for your tracks online using your Friend Name, and download them to save on their own copy of the game. They are then free to race or edit the track, or upload it to their own bit of the server.
There's a wealth of great content out there that people are creating every single day. The hardcore folks know to head over to FilePlanet and look for the latest maps or mods on the PC. The more mainstream gamer, and those on the console, aren't necessarily going to want to jump through those hoops. What they need is a dead simple means of sharing that content from directly within the game.
That, my friends, is exactly what we built Sake, our Persistent Storage system, to do.
We saw a similar approach taken in Mini Mario vs. Donkey Kong 2, a single player title, and the first game to ship with Sake. The additional content spawned a thriving, if small, community and gave the game huge legs. You can read more about it in my presentation from last year, Breaking the In-Game/Out-of-Game Barrier.
I'm excited to see Sake put to great use again on the DS, this time by Firebrand. We'll definitely be doing a case study on this bad boy when it hits shelves later this year.
Quickly…