FUEL Preview

VideoGamer.com: What about DLC? Are you considering it?

DB: Yeah. The mission editor is a great way of giving real longevity, but what we're really hoping for is to get enough feedback from the community to drive the DLC beyond that point. With such a free form approach that we've taken to the design, it's kind of been like let's not over design it, let's just give the tools to the players to be able to have fun. We've got some vehicles that maybe haven't made it into this iteration of the game. They didn't quite justify themselves. But if we get enough ideas from people that really lead it in another direction - it's going to be quite straightforward to blend in a new race structure, a new type of vehicle or a new suite of challenges. The other extreme would be an entire new world.

VideoGamer.com: Making it even bigger? Or a new world all together?

DB: What they pitched to us, and what we signed up was that there was going to be five of them. The technology can do that. I mean the actual rendering of the landscape. Because it was actually using satellite data and fully recreating it in real time. And it was like... (laughs).

VideoGamer.com: How do you fit all of that onto a disc?

DB: The tech does it. This is the thing. I wish I had a tenth of their brainpower to conceive of how they've done it. But generating the landscape is something we spent four years trying to figure out. Filling it with content? That's why there's not five more maps. That's why we thought, let's just get the best in.

VideoGamer.com: So it is conceivable that you could make available via DLC an entirely new map?

DB: Yeah. Because you're not talking about a 20 gig download. You can actually do it in an extraordinarily small amount of space, without sacrificing. Everything is pre-alpha, but you can see from the graphical quality on show, even pre-alpha, you put it side by side with another racing game it really holds up to it well. Whereas in the past, or even with an MMO you accept that the scale has a downside, and that is that you can't quite have as much animation. I honestly don't know how they've done it. To not have to make those sacrifices and to make it all seamless...

VideoGamer.com: When I looked at the map the first thing I thought of was an MMO racer.

DB: It was one of the original ideas. We kicked around an awful lot of ideas. With the console audience the thing about MMO is, and obviously at Codemasters we're running a few of our own, we've got a lot of experience of just how much it costs to support the infrastructure, the community support and all the rest of it is very intensive, and if you can charge a subscription for that you can do it. If you've got your Xbox and you're already paying for Xbox LIVE, we can't ask somebody to pay over and above that. We can't bank roll, much as we'd love to have a persistent online world, which already exists, there is actually a development server in Paris running that, that was what Asobo spent many years making, but to have data centres in America and here, and 24/7 support - huge amount of money. It's not something we could sustain without having a subscription. The console audience just wouldn't have it.

VideoGamer.com: Will the PS3 version support Trophies?

DB: Yeah. And lots of scope to really make it not an afterthought as well. There's just so much potential. With the guys talking about even finding a nice view, there's a reward for you. It's a really nice natural fit for Trophies and Achievements.

VideoGamer.com: Will the 360 Achievements be different to the PS3 Trophies?

DB: Well the market is 50/50. Unless you are Sony or Microsoft you can't really shove all your weight behind one platform. You want to give gamers the best experience that you can. Given that the approach is the game, the things that are fun about the game, there will be a lot of parity between the two. But where possible we'll try and get in something different.

VideoGamer.com: What about PS3 Home? Will the game support that?

DB: It's not in our current plans. We've not had enough information on it. That's not something that's currently on our road map. We'll see what happens.

Fuel is due out for PS3, Xbox 360 and PC in Q2 2009.