Interview: Ivory Tower’s Ahmed Boukhelifa on The Crew

While at the EB Expo, Stevivor had the chance to sit down with Ahmed Boukhelifa, Managing Director at Ivory Tower and Producer behind The Crew. Below we discuss the new capabilities that the new-generation consoles have made possible, the challenges of creating such a large map and the process in designing the physics model for the game.

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Stevivor: What was the inspiration behind creating The Crew?

Ahmed: We go a long way back with the team and we’ve been doing racing games for a long time (the V-Rally games and Test Drive Unlimited) and I think each time it has been a huge step towards trying to make new things with racing games. We have always loved the games we have created, but it felt a little bit complacent where we’d have the same game but just bit better, then the same game but just a bit better. What we wanted to say was there was so much between what we are doing and what we could do with what a car represents. So we made this huge shift towards bringing into our game what every car could be.

With Test Drive Unlimited it had this huge merit of bringing this fantasy of having a collection of supercars and trying them out and driving wherever I wanted, and if we saw another player we could flash our headlights and race. It was super cool and rich, but everyone was requesting to go off-road and were saying, “why don’t we have rally cars or a much more diverse driving experience? Why can’t we do this together with our friends?” Of course, it was about expanding the experience itself but it was also relating to everything we can do in real-life.

With The Crew, we already knew we had this rich experience, but we knew there was so much more we could do – like a much bigger and meaningful environment, which is why we went for the US, and to have this adventure of driving as I like to call it. I’d like to have all the diversity of cars and be able to do everything from circuit racing to driving off-road and to rally, and to be able to make it your own and to be able to tune and customize your cars.

Stevivor: Something I’ve been interested in seeing in a racing game for a long time is the ability to drive across all of North America. It was therefore great to see that The Crew has done this. What challenges came up in making a game on such a massive scale?

Ahmed: I would say the biggest challenge is to make a huge world interesting. You have all the technical issues of how do you push so many polygons, but all that is a measure of time and effort. In order to make such a huge game though you can’t do everything by hand anymore, it’s just too big. So you need to find ways to help the artist and designers so that they can focus on where the added value is and where the talent is, and how to create this world faster. The quality really comes from polishing the game again and again and again, and it’s true for the quality of the game and also for the development design – every single mission for example requires the mission designer to work with the world, and in doing so will start to change things to make sure it all works well – such as changing objects and adding ramps and shortcuts.

In order to make all of the US work as it does today, first we had to set quality objectives for ourselves. This was in terms of player experience that ensured that no matter where you are, you have two to four meaningful objectives within a minute of driving. This was a key level design and work restriction rule to make sure we had the right density. We wanted our world to be as big as possible because it is part of the road trip and the experience. Once we had that we had to give the tools to the artists and designers to be able to create the world, including all the vegetation, the landscapes and the man-made structures like buildings.

Stevivor: Have the capabilities of the new generation consoles helped in the development of The Crew? What features wouldn’t have been possible with the last generation hardware?

Ahmed: It definitely helped. Initially we were developing the game for PC, but when the dev kits for the new consoles came in it was a relief.  This was because we knew we could now finally make the game for the Xbox One and PS4 and really deliver the experience on par with what we had in-mind for the PC. Those technical elements such as geometry, better graphics, shadows and elements on the screen definitely would not have been possible on the last generation consoles. Pushing all the graphics would have been impossible. It’s more than just pure power however but also the online components. One of the biggest evolutions with the consoles is the improvements to the online experience, such as the one we’ve been trying to do for the past few years. With this always-online connected experience, we have really moved a huge step forward compared to what we managed to do on the Xbox 360 and Test Drive Unlimited where you could always be online but it was free-drive only. Now our goal has really been to make an MMO framework where you are always online in what you do, whether it be missions or PVP. We can get the game to evolve by pushing content from the servers. All of this online framework has really been possible thanks to the new generation consoles.

Stevivor: One of the great features about The Crew is the ability to customise each part of your vehicle. Did this present any issues with licensing when it came to getting different manufacturers to let you use their cars? If so, what limitations did you have to work with.

Ahmed: Actually it was not only the licensers. We wanted to push the customisation for the cars we liked, and also to our and the players’ taste, but we had to define what we wanted to do and what we did not want to do, what is possible and not possible, and what is our limit. For us, we wanted to go for what is out there and what exists. Yes, we want the player to customise their cars in extreme ways, but we wanted to make it believable, so that was the limit we set for ourselves before going to the manufacturers and explaining what we wanted to do.

We looked at what exists now and in the past. We took inspiration from there to either replicate what already exists or to create similar and believable when it didn’t. When it didn’t exist and didn’t seem believable we didn’t do it. For example, there is no tuning for Ferrari or Lamborghini because they will never do rally or Dakar, so it wouldn’t make sense. So once we set those rules and limits we went to the manufacturers and it made our life that much easier because we both spoke the same language. For example, “you guys have rally cars and we’d like to use them.” So it worked with the personality and ethics of each brand as to what way we went with them. This is why we have a variety of tuning depending on the various models.

Stevivor: Nothing compliments a racing game like a great soundtrack. Does The Crew feature a soundtrack and what process is involved in deciding which songs get into the game?

Ahmed: We have a lot of radio stations in the game. There are five main stations with 10-15 tracks each. I love this part when we need to determine the soundtrack, but everyone wants different music and no-one can decide which tracks to use. Everyone goes insane. In the first step, everyone brings their ideas, and then we try to find a way to include those tracks. Using the entire US and having five main cities, we looked at it as, “lets’ have five main radios, and try and find the essence of those five main cities. We can then define the sound/flavour/topic and find tracks that would fit into it.”

It involved collaborating not just with our team but with the music team, and asked them that based on the general flavour and essence we’d like to push onto the player, what would you recommend. It becomes very interesting because they start suggesting songs we never would have thought of and that would have suited. After a few months we have our final playlist.

Stevivor: The physics model for The Crew can be described as ‘arcade’. What kind of factors are considered when creating the physics for a new racing game, and what process is involved in actually developing that physics model for it?

Ahmed: I would say we have an accessible but deep physics model for The Crew and in order to do that we need to have a realistic physics and behaviour model, which you can access if you go into the settings and remove all the assists. If we weren’t working with a realistic model then what’s the point of having all these cars and specs to tune them up? So for us, at the core, when we try to create a physics model for a full-stock Camaro, we try get the DNA of the car and the same happens for all the other vehicles. When we then tune them, they all evolve into off-road, rally and circuit, so that they are all different but still maintain those core specifics. If you play without any assists you should feel it very well, but even with the assists you should be able to notice it. For this reason, before buying cars in the game we always recommend people test drive them, because not everyone will be at ease with all the cars. When you then finally buy it you’ll want to stick with it for some time and tune it.

We have all these realistic bits, but because it’s open world we have traffic and obstacles. If you go fast you need to be reactive, if you are doing a circuit race you need to learn each corner. So because there are so many elements we have introduced the assists to help with them. We want the player to have fun from the start rather than have a model that you need to master in order to enjoy the game. We have the complex model there for those who want to use it, but we want everyone to have fun as fast as possible and after some time, if you want to drive without assists or with a wheel, it’s all on you and you can change the options. We like giving the freedom to the player.

Stevivor: What is your favourite thing to do in The Crew?

Ahmed: You know, I’ve played the missions and the story so much, I just like driving. Whenever I have the time, what I like to do is jump in somewhere, select a point in the map, and try and be surprised along the way. I like to drive fast amongst the traffic and looking for new things – places I’ve never seen or been to or find shortcuts. If there is a mountain I want to drive on-top of it. It was something I loved to do in Test Drive and even more so here. As long as you have the right vehicle spec, you can drive where-ever you like.

Stevivor: In what ways has the game changed during the course of its development, and are there been any features which have been removed or evolved while the game was being made and refined?

Ahmed: The game we have today is pretty much the vision we had six years ago when we started. I think it is one of the reasons why it is here and so solid, because it’s such a complex framework to deliver on such a huge world with all the tuning, progression and online aspects with a relatively small team. We are here because we were able to build progressively our racing vision. The main difference between the vision when we started and the game we have now is that we have next-gen. Actually, I think were a bit naive when we started and we might have gone ‘next gen’ from the beginning, but actually we were fooling ourselves that we would finish faster or earlier. When we officially got our next gen dev kits and starting porting the game over, it was a relief and a time for us to do a massive push to really fit the next-gen power into the game.

The other part, especially compared to Test Drive, was it took a long time to develop the technology and polish the game, working on the fundamentals, the behaviour and all the gameplay mechanics. I think the big difference with working with previous studios and now working with Ubisoft is that they have a very strong editorial direction on our games, they are driven, demanding and pushing for quality, so we spent a lot of time going back to the drawing board. This wasn’t to change ideas or our direction, but to make it better. It all started with behaviours, car cameras and really focusing on the gameplay experience – driving, game mechanics, missions and PVP . All this time spent on technology and the gameplay experience is the huge achievement we had with this game.

Stevivor: Of all the cars in the game, which is your favourite and did you get to drive it during the development of The Crew?

Ahmed: It’s a tricky one. I’ve been driving the 350Z raid vehicle, because it’s very agile and responsive. I used to drive the Ford Mustang performance car because it had killer looks, a huge real spoiler and an aggressive front spoiler. The 350Z I haven’t had a chance to drive in real-life but I do look forward to it.

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The Crew is set for release on 2 December 2014 for Xbox One, Xbox 360, PS4 and Windows PC.