Interviews// Driver: San Francisco's Martin Edmondson

SPOnG: The game’s had a long history in terms of publishers, hasn’t it?

Martin Edmondson: Yeah, Driver’s first publisher was GT Interactive, which was bought by Infogrames. Infogrames then bought Atari and then changed their entire company name to Atari. Ubisoft then bought the Driver franchise off of Atari a few years ago.


SPOnG: Would you say any of that past has been particularly rocky as a result? What was the experience you guys had in developing this title?

Martin Edmondson: The last five or six years has been pretty interesting actually. Ubisoft is a good company to work with. They have plenty of money, they’re very focused on quality for their biggest products, and are quite happy to take the time that is necessary on achieving that. It’s quite a luxurious position for us to be in, for this game to be brought back in that way.

When I was asked to take part, the one thing I was absolutely sure of was that I didn’t want to be involved in making a quick cash-in on the Driver name. It had to be a substantial, innovative game that does something different. To get back to what it was in terms of fun and uniqueness. I think we’ve been able to do that. In the past, publishers have different situations - particularly financial situations that sometimes dictate a release. It can be a bit upsetting for a development team. But the last few years has been absolutely fine.


SPOnG: Were you guys worried of getting the Duke Nukem Forever curse with Driver San Francisco at one stage, given the amount of times it’s been bounced around and its long development cycle?

Martin Edmondson: No, because... I can’t speak for how those guys looked at their release schedules, but we knew where we were going on this from the start. It was planned to originally be a three and a half year development. And we got towards the end of that timeframe, finished the game and completed the work. But we kept thinking of all sorts of other things to do with Shift like new multiplayer modes and splitscreen. We had a few bits and bobs that we were looking at for DLC, too.

So we all came to the decision that we should extend the deadline by not just a few months, but give ourselves a big lump of extra time and incorporate all this stuff into the game, put the splitscreen stuff in there and finish it off. I don’t think we can now wrap up the project thinking that we didn’t manage to get anything in that we wanted to.


SPOnG: Do you think Shift will be innovative enough to be adopted by other games, driving or otherwise? Maybe even by Reflections for future titles?

Martin Edmondson: I think it’s too early to say. All I can say is that, when you play it, you really get it and it’s fun. It has the potential to be used - and I know that I’ve played other games and then kind of find myself wanting to Shift. It’s got to have a purpose though, and to fit into a story, obviously. There’s an issue there - it has to make sense. If you’re not bothered about story, and talking purely multiplayer games then of course there’s hundreds of other games that we could do that would work well with Shift.


SPOnG: There’s a massive eleven online multiplayer modes in the game too?

Martin Edmondson: Yep. Eleven online modes, and eight splitscreen. You’ve played Tag, Cops and Robbers and the straightforward Sprint GP modes, but we also have a Base Defence mode. That has two teams either defending or attacking a particular base zone. There’s Capture the Flag, a Relay mode where you pass a flag from one team member to another when your fuel runs out, and other races that involve using Shift to go through checkpoints in time. A whole range of games that only really work because of the Shift feature. You wouldn’t normally associate them with a driving game, but it’s Shift that’s allowed us to bring that stuff into play.


SPOnG: No zombie mode, then?

Martin Edmondson: No zombie mode (smiles).


SPOnG: You’ve mentioned a first person shooter influence before. Was that one of the reasons why you were able to go hell for leather with so many different kinds of multiplayer modes here, without feeling like you’re just tacking stuff on?

Martin Edmondson: Yeah, definitely. As soon as you have Shift and play with it, you immediately have ideas for ten games off the top of your head. We actually designed a lot more multiplayer modes on paper, but later whittled them down to the eleven that we have today. Those were the ones we felt were the strongest and worked really well. But we were able to tap into this big candy shop of opportunity that you don’t get with normal racing games.

Shift actually solves some of the problems that you get with traditional online driving games - that problem of crashing on the first bend and never catching up with the rest of the pack, for example. It sounds like you could just use Shift and cheat, right? But it’s not a cheat, because it’s built into the design of the mode and everyone has this feature. It’s not as easy as people would think, reading it on paper.


SPOnG: Finally, you’ve worked on the Driver series since its creation - what would you say has been the most memorable or defining moment, that you’re most proud of?

Martin Edmondson: Oh, that’s a good question! I think, in all honesty, it has to be the first Driver game. It was first of all that amazing transition into psuedo-3D, I know Destruction Derby came before it but it was still relatively new, the whole idea of driving around in a city where you didn’t have to go straight on, you could go left or right or turn around, traffic lights... just sit and watch the world go by.

It’s all totally taken as read now, par for the course, that aspect of games. But back then it just felt so revolutionary, and I remember the reaction when we showed it to people. It was like a game that came from another planet, and that’s a feeling, I suppose, that’s hard to ever get back.

But from a technical point of view it has to be this one, because I know what we’re doing is so challenging with the open world and the goal of getting 60 frames per second without any loading or slowdown. It’s a bit effort.


SPOnG: Thank you very much for your time.

Martin Edmondson: Thank you!

Don't forget to read our detailed Single-Player Driver: San Francisco hands-on here... and here for part 2.