NFSDrew's Time On Need for Speed - The Producer Years

Submitted by Drew Hahn on Mon, 2009-10-26 16:04

 

In my previous "NFSDrew's Time on Need for Speed" post I wrote about my first couple years at EA and the first few titles I worked on.  If you haven't had a chance to read it, you can find it here.  I finished the last blog at Underground 2 so this time I'll start with Most Wanted.

 

Most Wanted was probably the Most Popular NFS title ever.  Whenever I ask anyone what their favorite NFS was, the majority of the answers I get is "Most Wanted".  MW really brought together all the defining elements of Need for Speed in that era.  It had an open world, lots of fast cars, deep customization and the return of cops:

 

 

 

It was also the first Need for Speed to feature full motion videos with actors & actresses.  The characters that appeared in Most Wanted were classic!  There was:

Razor Callahan (played by Derek Hamilton) & Mia Townsend (played by Josie Maran)

 

 

 

and of course the unforgettable Sgt. Cross (played by Dean McKenzie)

 

 

 

Most Wanted really set the bar for racing games at the time.  New games modes, tons of great cars and the Black List:

 

 

 

Little known fact for you all.  Most of the guys on the black list were actually producers and developers from EA Black Box.  For example, the character "Taz" was actually the cops producer Justin Wiebe who is still here at EA working on the Need for Speed franchise.

Need for Speed Most Wanted was the last product I ever worked on as a game tester.  I was the  QA Lead for Most Wanted, specifically focused on the online featureset of the game.  Most Wanted was a really fun project to work on.  We had a lot of very talented people working on MW.  

One thing that you may not know about NFS MW is that when you're playing in online matches, the best car to use is the Fiat Punto....only when performance matching is on.  The reason the Punto was the best in online matches with performance matching enabled is because of the way performance matching worked.  It would automatically upgrade your car's performance stats to just above the performance level of the best car in the race.  Because the Punto had the lowest performance stats in the game, it got the biggest upgrade from performance matching.  So next time you're playing MW online, choose the Punto and enjoy ripping past the Lamborghini like it's stopped.

So Most Wanted was my last project as a game tester.  After Most Wanted ended, I got an offer from the Need for Speed online development team to come on as a producer.  It was a pretty easy choice to make and I accepted the offer the same day it was offered to me.  After accepting the offer, I said good bye to all my coworkers in the QA department and moved off to production.  

Need for Speed Carbon was the first title I produced.  I designed / worked on features like the online game room, online registration, online game modes, premium unlockable content, dynamic advertising and other cool features.  Kind of redundant to say but being a producer is a lot different from game testing, however, there were a lot of aspects of game testing that made me a better producer.

Carbon was a successful Need for Speed product but not as successful as Most Wanted.  Carbon featured the return of the Sgt. Cross, who isn't a Sergeant anymore but a bounty hunter.  It also featured the introduction of a few new characters like Darius (played by Tahmoh Penikett) and Nikki (played by Emmanuelle Vaugier):

 

 

 

Carbon was essentially a territory acquisition game where you acquired territory by winning races.  It did feature full motion videos just like MW but the videos in Carbon had a very different style to them.  Carbon also marked the return to driving at night.  One of the biggest features in Carbon was the introduction of crew racing.  In all races you had a team mate racing with you.  There were different types of talents that crew members had:

 

 

 

Within the career there were 4 rival crews that you needed to "take down".  There was the 21st Street Crew who raced in muscle cars:

 

 

 

 

The Bushido Crew who raced in import cars:

 

 

 

 

The TFK crew who raced in exotics:

 

 

 

 

And final crew, Stack Deck, who is led by Darius in the Audi R8:

 

 

 

Carbon also introduced a great new innovative customization feature called Autosculpt:

 

 

 

Overall, Carbon was a fun project to work on in my producer rookie year.  After Carbon I moved onto Pro Street where I took on more responsibility than I did on Carbon.  I worked on game modes, career mode, in-game heads up menu, a bunch of online features, tumble physics and visual effects.  The biggest feature I worked on in Pro Street was vehicle damage.

It took up a long time to get vehicle damage up and running but even longer to tune it to where it was when the game shipped.  Producing damage was like golfing...it was equally the most fun and most frustrating feature I ever worked on.  Getting the damage to look right based on the hit took a long time and, in my opinion, we didn't get it as good as it could have been.  In the end I was happy with damage and was anxious to push it even further in Undercover.  Here is a cool video showing off damage in Pro Street:

 

 

 

Pro Street had a lot of cool things going for it but it wasn't received by the fans as well as I thought it would be.  I guess people were disappointed that there were no cops, no open world, or no cheesy career plot.  I thought it was a super cool game but it didn't end up being everyone's favorite.

Well...you've read for long enough.  I'll continue my story in the part three of this blog which I'll post later this week.  For now I'll just leave you with this cool video I found while searching for the videos above:

 

 

 

 

 

 - NFSDrew