We are late with our Monday Matchup today (sorry this is becoming a habit - I promise we will turn that around). We wanted to share some improved Physics videos with you but just didn't get them together in time - apologies for that. We will share them as soon as we can - as promised that's our focus right now - plus a few other fixes we think will be appreciated.
Instead we will share next part of our very old story.....
Back to the year 2000
Alex: The PlayStation2 had sent something of a shockwave through the industry. There was a ton of hyperbole about Sony’s so-called “Emotion Engine” being written. There seemed to be a lot of wild and completely unrealistic expectations being formed almost weeky by the Press as to what the machine was capable of. It was a heady time and to some it really was seen as some sort of magical new wonder machine.
We decided to get on with trying to find a publishing partner for our title and arranged a lot of introductory meetings. As someone who’d actually worked as an A&R person, it was all good experience for now sitting on the other side of the table. From meeting with a lot of developers during that time, few had ever had anything positive to say when it came to discussing how they had been treated throughout their various development projects. They were often treated poorly, not paid for milestones or royalties on time, and felt horribly disappointed at the path their games then took to market. This disrespect that was shown often to developers never sat well with me. The games industry is vast, but until the game team does its job - no-one else down the chain has a job. There simply would not be an industry without developers and they are its lifeblood.
As Criterion was backed by Canon, we were fortunate to be in a position where we didn’t have the same kind of pressure to rush into a potentially bad publishing deal and the Directors gave us space to continue making the game. Our sights were set firmly on working with either Sony, Microsoft of Electronic Arts.
After signing one deal with the company already, Sony weren’t too keen on signing a driving game. When we met with them, they weren’t interested “because they had another driving game coming called The Getaway.” That game was the talk of the town for a few months, especially after the “photo-real” cover of EDGE magazine the game had recently secured. I remember Alex Fry telling me “there is no way that game will look anything like that when it finally comes out.” That was good to know as like many others I could have fallen for the hype for that game.
In April 2000 I flew out to Tokyo to meet with Konami. We had a Japanese office there and Konami was a major Renderware customer. Yashushi-san set me up with a meeting to see if there was any interest in actually bringing the coin-op version of “Thrill Drive” over to the PS2. It was hard to follow along with everything that was being discussed. It wasn’t a yes or no, but a nod to follow up with their local staff in London. What I did learn though, was that they felt that “Thrill Drive” wasn’t a good game in their eyes, had never made any money and couldn’t really understand why that game was interesting to me. That was fine with me, I knew we could do something better and that just encouraged me even more. I flew home with renewed optimism.
In May 2000 E3 was held in Los Angeles for the first time. The Criterion guys had a big stand and we were all based in a motel in Santa Monica. The show provided a chance to see the titles that would form the basis of the US and European PS2 launches. I remember that “Timesplitters” was being talked about as one of the games of the show and it was behind closed doors on the Eidos stand. We had a short and disappointing meeting with the folks from Konami Europe and there was no interest in talking any further.
Signing with Sony had brought us to the attention of Microsoft’s brand new Xbox group. The Renderware team was already hard at work getting the RW tools ready for Xbox development at the end of the year.
Microsoft sent a small team representing their first party group to visit us in Guildford. Our pitch at the time was titled “Driving Hero” and consisted of a small seven page document outlining the cars and courses we were going to make. Mike Williamson had also made a small rendered movie showing a car weaving in and out of Parisien traffic and jumping down a flight of stairs in a narrow alley. Our first playable software was a small red sports car driving around on a flat plane, a very simple looking skidpan. At this stage everything we were doing was really focussed on PlayStation 2 and so not surprisingly Microsoft turned us down.
Fiona: The pitching process on Burnout was memorable for me because we pitched to every publisher in the world and they all turned us down, except Acclaim. We were very fortunate that Mike King and David Lau Kee supported us and in turn were supported by Canon in Japan otherwise the game would never have seen the light of day. We were a young, unproven team. There were at least 20 other driving games being pitched by other teams around the same time. To us the game was completely different to those other games but the publishers we met just couldn’t see it nor did they believe in us as a team. It was ironic that it was much easier to strike a deal for what Airblade, a hoverboard based adventure game that barely made its money back whilst the Burnout series went on to sell over 25 million copies and provide secure and stable jobs for a lot of people for over a decade.
Two meetings (both of which occurred early in 2001 when we had been making the game for about a year) stand out for me - for different reasons.
The first was a meeting with Electronic Arts in Vancouver. We had first established a connection with EA through John Schappert who at the time ran the EA Tiburon studio, the star developers of the Madden NFL titles. He liked some of Criterion’s early PC titles and we had met at a few E3 events. We’d made a list of potential publishing targets and along with the format holders themselves, Electronic Arts was at the top of our list. To have a smash hit, not only did you need a hit game you also needed the best distribution. And EA were the best in the industry in both sales and distribution. At the time they had close to 25% market share in the USA. Alex’s old Acclaim colleague Joe Bonar (who had run Croydon based Probe Entertainment) was also now over at EA Canada as a Producer on one of their NBA Titles . He set us up a meeting with Hanno Lemke, the Executive Producer on Need for Speed. Hanno is someone we quickly came to have massive respect for. A towering guy from Finland, he is a thoughtful, respectful guy and hugely talented. Over the subsequent years we learnt a lot from him. At this first meeting we showed him and NFS Producer Chuck Oseja what we had running. The game at this time was a race through traffic with crashing at 60hz. One of the questions they asked was, "You know, you race in traffic, but why do I need to do that because I don't get any reward for it."
That got us thinking and as we had been playing a lot of SSX which had come out the previous October we thought their ‘tricks to get boost’ mechanic could work really well. The more you drive like a maniac the more you get a reward - so that’s how boost made it into the game. Thank you Hanno.
Alex: When we flew out to see Electronic Arts in Vancouver, the game was looking in good shape with another seven or so months remaining to finish it. The “River City” track was about 75% complete and running at close to target framerate. The visual quality was excellent, and we knew we had something shaping up to be special. There was a good looking car driving through traffic and crashing on a pretty good looking track. Our meeting was at the huge EA Canada campus in Burnaby, just outside the city. Compared to any other development office I’d seen, EAC was incredibly impressive. I can still remember being amazed at the size and scale of the place. It was very easy to understand how some of the world’s best console games were being made here. Their entrance hallway and reception area looked slicker than most of the exhibitor stands I’d seen at E3.
We were ushered into a very well kitted out conference room. The room had a very high end AV system. To the right of the plasma TV there was a piece of custom shelving in wood that had PlayStation2 units attached to it - NTSC Retail, NTSC-J Retail, and PAL Retail. I could tell these guys were the real deal just by the attention to detail shown in how they’d configured their AV System. We’d booted our code and several different people all came in to take a look.
Out of all the meetings we ever attended this first one at EA really stands out. They were the only people who didn’t want to talk money. Instead, they just wanted to talk about gameplay. They questioned me at great length on why I was making this game, why did I want to make this game, what should driving games become in the future?
They watched me play the game and paid close attention to both what what happening on screen and what I was doing with the PS2 controller. They then asked a very poignant question. It was along the lines of “Alex, you just made the game look really good. You took all the risks, drove into the oncoming traffic and drove on the pavement. But what makes you think everyone else would do the same? You should think about that! You should reward the player for doing that!”
I replied with “what? So maybe we put a Boost system in then?” And Joe Bonar got very excited and animated saying “Yes! I think that really works - the more dangerously I drive, the faster I can go!!”
At this point the meeting was going way better than we were expecting. It was clear that they were genuinely interested in us, and liked what we had to show. Unlike a few other places we had been to, I felt that they weren’t just spying on us and then showing us the door. (Of course, they were EA - they didn’t really feel the need to be spying on anyone.) From the setup they had built over there, it was clear that their developers were being given everything that they needed to focus on making the best games in the world.
Other publishers only saw that we had a PS2 title that would be ready in six months time. Back then the industry was a 100% packaged goods industry, so nearly all of the sales people you’d meet were people who were good at taking packaged goods to market. When will it be ready? On what exact date? And then they start thinking through the steps to getting it into one of the locked glass cases that you’d see in Wal-Mart.
Hanno and Chuck liked the game. They asked if they could keep the build we had, in order to show it to their Boss. That was a guy called Sam Nelson and at that time he headed up Racing games at EA. Normally we would have never left our code with anyone. My opinion was that if they wanted to play it then they’d have to pay for it - as that was our sole purpose of being there. But we took a calculated risk and figured it was worth going through the motions with EA as the potential upside was huge. But by the time we got back home, we got a very polite “NO” back from EA Canada. Apparently, their top man couldn’t understand why we had a game with car crashes in it. “It’s got stopping it in all the time! How can it be a racing game with so much stopping in it!” Looking back, he did sort of have a point. It was certainly different to say, the NASCAR or F1 titles they were putting out back then.
Fiona: The other meeting was at THQ’s offices in Calabasas, California, again in early 2001. The guys at THQ seemed really keen and we had what felt like a great meeting. However we were completely blindsided when after being there a few hours they asked whether we would consider turning the game into a Hot Wheels game. We said we would think about it and left. As we walked out the office I think Alex expected me to say ‘well look we have pitched the game to everyone and no-one wants it, we are going to have to sign whatever deal we can get’. But that’s not I was thinking so he was relieved when as we stood waiting for our cab to arrive when I said ‘F***ing Hot Wheels!?!?’ I remember we smiled at each other and resolved to fight on. There was a real feeling that this was our chance and we weren’t going to let someone take it away from us and make it into something we didn’t want.
Alex: Again, I can remember that meeting really well as we’ve laughed about it so much over the years. We met with a likeable guy called Gordon Bellamy who was their developer relations guy. (Gordon will come back into the Burnout story a few years later, so make a note of his name!)
We showed the game in a darkened boardroom and Gordon brought in all of their US sales and marketing people. We could have been a good fit with the people at Toy Headquarters back then - we were showing them something that they certainly didn’t have in their forthcoming PS2 lineup - a fast new racing game. But after going through our pitch and outlining the remaining time left with the development Gordon said “you’ve talked about what it isn’t, but let’s talk about what it could be instead…” He then went on to say that if we signed with them, they would let us finish the game and then wait to release it until a year later. They felt they had a lot of titles coming and they wouldn’t be able to focus on our game until the next year. But then the reason for their thinking was made clear. They wanted us to spend more time putting toy cars into the game and turning into an officially licensed “Hot Wheels” game. That was everything that we didn’t want to happen with our game. Everything we said had gone in one ear and out of the other. (Years later this all made sense to me when friends at THQ told me their mantra internally was “we sell what’s on the box, not what’s in the box.”)
Fiona: That meeting with THQ led directly to us signing the game with Rod Cousens at Acclaim Entertainment in Europe. He was someone we both knew and trusted and whilst we knew it meant that in all likelihood it would not get as much support in the US (as the deal would be signed by the European division) we also knew Rod would let us make the game we wanted and deliver the gold master only when we felt we were ready. Which was the deal we made. Rod and Alex actually met to agree the deal in principle on Easter Sunday April 15th 2001. Mike King and I met with him again afterwards to finalise the details but from that point on we were on a road to finishing the game.
Alex: Easter 2001 was a critical time for us on the project. We were going to be finishing the project over the Summer and we still didn’t have a publishing partner. I figured it was worth giving my former Boss Rod a call to see if they wanted to take a look at the game. We’d not really considered Acclaim because of how we felt they dealt with the “Trickstyle 2” cancellation.
Rod Cousens from Acclaim lived not that far away from me. He wasn’t at the office and was recovering at home with his leg in a plaster cast. He’d broken his ankle badly after an accident after a meeting in New York City. He’s a larger than life character and I always got on really well with him. He was one of the founding fathers of the UK industry, founding both Quicksilva and then Electric Dreams before heading up Activision in the UK. We sat in his living room at his massive mansion and talked for a long time as usual about the state of the industry. I had interrupted him listening to The Who on his very serious stereo system (which was a full Krell system with floorstanding Martin Logan loudspeakers if you’re interested.) I had a PAL PS2 TEST kit with me and after a quick tea I found myself on the floor disconnecting his TV cabling to his Sony WEGA widescreen and plugging in my PS2. I went through the pitch - (which after so many rejections - was exceptionally well rehearsed by then) and then played the game. I showed him a race on “River City” then “Interstate” and then “Harbour Town.” Rod loves the industry and really loves to discover new games and champion UK based developers. (Look up Sandy White, Mark Cale, Archer Maclean, Chris and Tim Stamper, and Mel Croucher to name but a few to whom Rod was a publisher) So he was very excited about what he’d seen and offered to sign it there and then. I think that was on Good Friday 2001. Rod fired off an email for Barry Jafrato to come to Guildford and see the game straight away on the Monday, which was a Bank Holiday in the UK.
Signing with Acclaim had a few advantages. One was that we’d get the chance to do the game on the new Nintendo hardware. If you know the history of Acclaim, then you’ll know that they had probably THE closest relationship with Nintendo with anyone outside of Japan. So bringing the game to Dolphin would be easy. The other was simply that I used to work there. I knew pretty much everyone in the European organisation. I still had the office phone lists. I knew all of the sales force, all of the PR people in all of the European territories, all of the marketing people in every office. Annie Sullivan, who handled what we called “DT” or “Distributed Territories” was also one of my closest friends. Through her - the game would go out to and be sold everywhere were Acclaim didn’t have a local office - the Benelux region, the Nordic regions as well as places like Greece, the UAE and Australia.
As I mentioned before, to have a hit game you needed to win over a lot of people. Once the development team has finished its job there were about 16 other people in the chain between the game being pressed as a Gold Master and it ending up in the hands of the player - taking the game home in a carrier bag from their local retailer.
You would start off by showing the work-in-progress Builds to the Executives and then the marketing team. They would need to get excited and start thinking and planning the launch of the game. The marketing budget would also be decided at this point. They would be supplying the Sales teams with everything they needed to “sell the game in” to the retailers. The Sales people would then be out on the road visiting all the distributors armed with positive early preview coverage of the game from specialist games magazines. This would then filter out across Europe, all through the different territories and then be repeated in the United States. There is a hell of a lot of work involved. It’s easy if the game is one of those games that is just destined to be a hit. It’s spectacularly hard work if the game is actually a dud. But that same process has to happen all the same.
On Easter Monday Barry Jafrato came in to the Criterion office and I met him in the boardroom.
Barry is now retired from the industry but he’s one of the friendliest and funniest people I’ve ever met. Like Rod he was a veteran of the game industry being one of the key guys who founded Sega in Europe working for Virgin’s Richard Branson, Sega’s Nick Alexander and going on to run Hasbro in Europe. He’s also one of the very few people in the world to wear a Sonic The Hedgehog Rolex watch - where Sonic’s thumb ticks around as the second hand. But that’s another story! (I’m sure that watch will be worth a fortune on eBay!)
After a quick demo of the latest build, Barry didn’t need much convincing. Rod had already called him up brimming with excitement. Barry had just spent a long month sitting through awful presentation after awful presentation every day so was really hungry to see something that he knew he could do well with. As Fiona mentioned Rod had outlined a deal for the worldwide rights to the game on three platforms.
In an industry that was FULL of people who shied away from making decisions and never want to put themselves on the line, Barry was a breath of fresh air and he could almost smell the success (and the money!) right after I showed him the first car crash!
This was exactly what we had been looking for. People who realised what we had, what we were going to have and who had the skills and experience needed to take that forward and make it as successful as possible.
We had a deal starting to come together, but nothing was signed at that point. Nor did anyone outside a few people in the inner circle at Acclaim in London. A few days later I was back in the Acclaim office, opposite Harrods department store in Knightsbridge London. It was my first time back there since I had left. Rod had told everyone I had a hot PS2 product and that he had pretty much committed them all to making the game a success. They had gone through a few rough quarters so the Sales folks were all hungry for success.
The very next day I was on the train to Bath with UK PR Jeremy Chubb to test the water with the game down at Future Publishing. This was the beginning of April 2001, and E3 was only a few months away.
Jeremy is a very likeable guy. He loved games and always seemed to be smiling and positive about everything. Before Acclaim, he’d worked at the UK head office of retailer Electronics Boutique. Now he was working for probably the best PR guy in the European games business at the time, a guy called Simon Smith-Wright.
Acclaim definitely didn’t always have the best games as part of their lineup - but they were No.1 in one area - and that was getting coverage for those games in the Press. If you go back at look at the UK games scene in the mid 1990’s - you’ll see Acclaim pretty much dominating it. Turn on the TV to watch any of the youth oriented shows that featured videogames - GamesMaster, Live and Kicking, SMTV - and they regularly featured pretty much every single game Acclaim put out. Simon worked closely with all of the Editors across specialist and lifestyle press day in day out. He understood the timelines and deadlines they worked to and was able to supply the materials they needed, often at the drop of a hat. When I worked there I often got roped in to help him out - getting footage of a new game captured onto the formats the TV companies needed and then hand delivering it to BBC Television Centre so that our games would be on TV the following Saturday. When other games companies let the TV producers down at the last minute, they knew they could always rely on Simon at Acclaim to deliver the goods and help save their day.
We had a full build of the game on a DVD-R and a TEST PS2 in our bags. The first people we went to see were the guys at OPM - the Official PlayStation Magazine. Mike Goldsmith, the Editor at the time was unavailable, so in their cramped office we set up the kit and showed Sam Richards who was their Deputy Editor and a new writer called Tim Clark.
At that time, the big game on everyone’s lips was “Metal Gear Solid 2” coming from Konami in Japan. It was probably the biggest game in the world at the moment in time in the eyes of the Press. Our pitch was something along the lines of, “we’re a small team based here in the UK, we’ve got a new game and we’re going to show it to you. We know you’ll be busy writing about MGS2 in a month or so, but here’s what we have and keep us in mind. We’re not too far away and we’re happy to get you everything you need if you’re interested in covering our game.” And with that said, we showed them what we have and tried to gauge their reaction. Which, to be honest wasn’t much. They didn’t really give anything away and didn’t seem to be interested or excited in the slightest. Jez was a bit miffed at their reaction and started to ask about what sort of coverage would be good for the game. Sam Richards said that it looked OK, but it wasn’t something OPM would be really interested in. To him, the game would be coming out soon. He told us to pop next door and maybe get the balling rolling with their sister PS2 magazine PSM2. Again their magazine was going to be full of all the bigger games such as Metal Gear or The Getaway.
So that’s what we did. We walked through a narrow landing that connected all of the offices (Future back then was a bit of a rabbit warren) and went to see Marcus at PSM2.
A year or so later, Tim filled me on what happened as we left. He couldn’t believe Sam’s stance but as the new guy on the mag wasn’t going to contradict him. He said “why aren’t we putting that into the next issue of the magazine? That’s easily the best thing we’ve seen running in ages and we should be writing about it!”
The PSM2 guys gave us a warm welcome and all took turns playing the game. I sat with their writers and took them through the build. Jez went off and started to agree a few things with Marcus.
We finished up that session down in Bath by going in to see the EDGE team. Founded by ex-Zzap!64 writer Steve Jarratt, EDGE was a very respected specialist magazine. Getting into the magazine wasn’t always easy. Their office space was the smallest of all and the place was piled high with magazines, games and consoles. There was stuff everywhere. Most of their team was in a conference but there were two people around. Wasting no time, we set the game up and started showing these two EDGE staffers. If we couldn’t show Jason or Joao then these guys would do fine. They seemed pretty interested and Jez was suddenly feeling very pleased. It was only after they had both played the game and Jez talked about potential coverage that we found out that one of them was an accountant at Future who just happened to be sitting in their office that morning, and the other guy was a contract cleaner. Oh well! We’d gone all that way and we were ready to show anyone who’d listen!
Fiona: Worth pointing out , we didn't have a name for the game at this point - we'll share the next part of the story soon - Naming, Press, Finishing and Release.