How Need for Speed Rivals Competes With Other Next-Gen Racers

July 01, 2013

“The Need for Speed brand is reaching some of the largest audiences it’s ever reached in its history.”

It’s a big year for racing games. At this year’s E3, every single press conference featured at least one driving game, and many seem to be boasting similar next-gen features. In a crowded category including Gran Turismo 6, Forza Motorsport 5, DriveClub and The Crew, EA showed off Need for Speed Rivals, the latest entry in the long-running series and the first title from EA's Ghost studio in Gothenburg.
In an interview with IGN, EA Labels president Frank Gibeau explained why he thinks Rivals stands out from the pack, plus commented on whether he thinks Need for Speed will continue to be an annualized franchise.

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A lot of the driving games we go up against are simulations. The way that we think about it internally is, that’s like going to the symphony. Ours is about going to a Jay-Z show.

“I think we do a really good job capturing the feel of driving and getting the chase-or-be-chased feature,” Gibeau told IGN about Need for Speed. “A lot of the driving games we go up against are simulations. The way that we think about it internally is, that’s like going to the symphony. Ours is about going to a Jay-Z show. It’s rock and roll. It’s in your face. It’s a lot more about the visceral feel of driving through a billboard, doing a jump, but doing it in an authentic car, a car that looks and feels like a 911 should drive. We like to tell the stories of cops and racers. We like to tell stories in an open world. We think that the racing category, it used to be like 20 percent of the business back on the PS2. Now it’s single digits as far as a percentage of the overall business. We think that there’s a lot of innovation required to continue to keep driving as a category expanding. We think it’s the open world approach. We think it’s the competition approach. We think it’s the multiplayer approach.”
“Unfortunately, racing games got to a point where you’d have 16 people ready to go, and after the first lap, 15 people didn’t care anymore,” he continued. “They’d crashed or they were far behind. It was like an F1 race with Michael Schumacher. There’s just no point. We think that having an open world where you can mingle racing, have quests and adventures to go jump through stuff and do different things, that’s the way to start re-broadening the racing category and bringing in a larger audience. We saw a lot of good feedback in that respect on Most Wanted. If you look at Rivals this year, it builds on the open world. It’s more of a country open world, as opposed to an urban open world, but we’ll look at how we create the experiences in a much more open world. It’s competition-based, but authentic to the cars. We like that idea.”

Gibeau believes that Need for Speed is a franchise that has a lot of room to grow, and while thus far the returns have made it worth annualizing the franchise, there’s no guarantee that will continue.

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We think that there’s a lot of innovation required to continue to keep driving as a category expanding.

“We take Need for Speed one at a time,” Gibeau said. “We’re going to see how Rivals does this fall. We’re very pleased with it. We think it looks great. It plays extremely sharp this early in development. We have a lot of cool features in terms of how you mingle single-player and multiplayer. We’re confident. There’s a lot of driving games out there this fall. There’s a lot of competition in the segment. But Need for Speed, I think, is now in its 15th year? Its 17th year? It’s still going strong. It’s still selling multiple millions of copies. It’s got great opportunities on the PC and mobile devices. The Need for Speed brand is reaching some of the largest audiences it’s ever reached in its history. We’re continuing to find ways to tell new stories and innovate. But if you look at Need for Speed this year, we’re going to learn from it, and we’ll come back with a future announcement of what we’re going to do next.”
Gibeau also commented on the upcoming Need for Speed film and its presence at EA’s E3 conference.

“For us, what’s important is to get to a movie that’s high-quality, and that reflects the world,” Gibeau said. “We don’t make that much money on the movies, so it’s not at all a monetary thing. It’s helping to build the brands and bring the experience to a larger audience. We always think about, in the case of Need for Speed, let’s get a great actor. Let’s get a director in Scott Waugh who knows how to do action and can deliver on the authenticity of driving.”
“From our perspective, whenever we partner on something like a Mass Effect or a Need for Speed – we have Mass Effect at Legendary Pictures – we go with the best,” he continued. “We try to create experiences that are authentic to the game world, but do tell different stories. It’s a linear experience, it’s a theatrical experience, but we don’t want to compromise on our philosophy. We want to deliver a high-quality movie.”
Need for Speed Rivals will be in stores this November, while the Need for Speed film hits theaters in February 2014. For much more on Rivals, be sure to read our hands-on impressions.