sports car in the game and it's one that's going to be really set up to be upgraded in a really compelling fashion so with that extra golden extra credits you're getting a good jumpstart on building out your awesome collection of cars and of course the street tony morelan 12 55 you know, one thing that really stood out for me when i played the game, it was the art behind if it wasn't just straight cars and a beautiful road, there was a lot of intel put into the artistic approach to this game we talked a little bit about the art that was used to enforce the street andy beaudoin 13 10 yeah, absolutely so at turn 10, we've got this creative concept called the emotional core and so whenever we do a new product line, we spend time thinking about emotionally what do we want players to take away from the experience so if you look at motor sport, it's got a very different aesthetic from horizon, for example, and which is different from sports history and so we started that off and some of the terms that we looked at and for our emotional core was street were evocative and stylish from the beginning, we wanted it to kind of feel like a high gloss you know, red carpet, hip hop, music video where, you know, the streets are all wet, not for any reason other than cars just look great on wet streets so really trying to push that feel of this being a high production as opposed to motorsport, which is all about photorealistic down the track heat coming off, this needed to look like, you know, you had a film producer that was there trying to put everything just in the right place so we're trying to capture that bond so from there we started to think about, you know, what kind of aesthetic would look good, what kinds of environments would look good the game takes place evening and tonight just because it looks great with the neon and feels different from other titles as well and all that led us down the path of trying to think of what are the best locations that can try to encapsulate this, this type of look and feel and that's where we landed with miami tony morelan 14 37 so did you guys do any in person the photo research? andy beaudoin 14 40 i did not but yeah, the development team and our art director took a trip down to miami and really spent some time both looking at the amazing car culture down there there's some really high-end automotive shops down there and you know, it's a great place to drive it's a great place it's nice weather there's a great beach scene is a really cool edm kind of dance nightclub scene with a lot of that kind of cuban vibe mixed in so it's just a really cool it hits that emotional core of really being stylish and so i know that the team took away a lot of that a lot of the music that's in the game is kind of inspired by that trap, kind of edm meets hip hop type of vibe, which is just pulsing through the streets of miami, so i'm bummed i missed it but here's a pretty cool, pretty cool research trip tony morelan 15 28 yeah and i will say that i actually helped teach a course in design for samsung, in miami oh, cool this past year so having played the game after i was in miami, i totally recognize some of the streets that i was racing down as the streets that i was on when i was helping teach this course in miami, so ods did a great job with that cool will the game be adding any additional locations for racing or is it primarily right now just focused on the miami scene? andy beaudoin 15 56 right now we're focused on miami the game if the game is built to be a live operations game, and that means that we're intending to continue to invest in the game both from our resources standpoint as well as time standpoint to continue to change the game over time, every three to six weeks, we bring a new event into the game, so that players who play the game over a long period of time, we'll always have something new to do, there's, of course, a good story that you can play through that's got a significant amount of content there's a rivals mode, which has, you know, the ability to pit your car collection up against those of other players and in the world and then every month or so, we're going to release a new event with new cars, new content, new ways to play new ways to win so with that ethos of this is something that, you know, launching the game is just the start of the life of a mobile game and so, the future is pretty wide open, we're going to see what our players do, what they like to play and where they want to take the game and try to manage what we do with the game in the future accordingly tony morelan 16 58 got it getting back a little bit to the graphics are you able to leverage from any of your existing forza titles or with all the graphics or the created fresh new for forza street? it's a mix andy beaudoin 17 07 we have an amazing library of cars at turn 10 as part of the forza franchise, we're knocking on 1000 and so when we started with fort st, and one of the things we want to do is try to find a way to take advantage of all that hard work that went into making those cars amazing so the team created a new pipeline by which we could take cars that were ready for forza motorsport, and put them through a process to get them game ready into st so all the cars started off in motorsport they've gone through this process, there's some hand touching that has to go into make them as efficient as we want them to be on the mobile platforms but yeah, they've got the same cars you know, all the shaders are carried over and there's a lot of similarities there the environments themselves were all custom built for street and to take advantage of again of how mobile devices work the footprint wanted to keep on the mobile devices and things like that so it's a really cool blend of both existing assets and art and new stuff tony morelan 18 07 you know, another aspect of the game that really stands out is music so is this music written specifically for forza street? or did you just license existing songs? andy beaudoin 18 14 now it was all written like i mentioned, we had really good inspiration from the music scene that is kind of alive and well in miami and we had a soundtrack that was created specifically for the game five of the tracks came from a team called heavy duty projects and their music production company based in la, and new york, and they've got some award-winning composers and music producers and so it was great to work with that team and then there was a sixth track, which was from pete international airport, which is a solo project of peter holmstrom and he's best known for his work with the dandy warhols so that's, that's great it's kind of this fun, different mix tony morelan 18 52 yeah, i'm a big fan of dandy warhols do you know anything about that relationship? and how did that come about? andy beaudoin 18 58 yeah, so our audio director for this studios a guy named mixer as well and he's phenomenally talented he's a great guitar player and he's also really gotten me into the rabbit hole of guitar pedals so i have him to thank for the board i have on my floor that i'm nowhere near talented enough to use, but i believe he's good friends with peter and they've known each other for years and work together and nick was in the music scene over in the uk a couple of decades ago, too so there's, i think a long-term relationship that is has led to that partnership tony morelan 19 27 that's great so let's talk a little bit more about how the team created the audio and the sound for the game were these effects that were pulled from other forza games or did you create any of these audio clips specifically for street andy beaudoin 19 39 definitely both new and harvested from existing forts of stuff so we've got probably 15 or more years of sound recording that's gone into the forza franchise, all the different cars, the different squeak, squeals turbos, you know, one of the cool things about forza street is that even though it's a mobile game, and it's a timing based game, rather than a full on, you know, track based steering game, it's still running for it's a physics and one of the cool elements of that is that we get to use all that physics data that's coming out of our physics simulation to drive the audio so all the audio for the cars, how they move how they sound comes from the original games, obviously, with some modifications to optimize them for mobile devices but you know, if you've got a turbo on the car, there's actually a part simulation running out of the hood that's saying there's a turbo that kicks off the turbo sounds and there's a lot of this nuance that that we get to pull out of our cars audibly because we're built on the back of that really rich and robust for it's a physics system andy beaudoin 20 43 so is the audio for the most part computer generated or these literally like you know, sound tech guy with a mic out in front of a, you know, chevy corvette recording the exhaust andy beaudoin 20 54 it sound tech guy out there, and with the chevy corvette, in fact, one of the funny stories i think that the audio team, too took a little bit of flak from our studio head, alan hartman because back in the day, i think it was his rs four he had it was really souped up and i think they put it on the dyno and ran it a little bit too hard to try to capture the sounds and might have done a bit of damage to it so we're all in as a studio and trying to make sure that the audio scape is the best it can be tony morelan 21 19 that's awesome so do you feel that you know, the realistic graphics that you have in the game that realistic sounds, you know, does that help users become more engaged? or do you think they want more of that sort of arcade style? andy beaudoin 21 32 yeah, i think there's a good overlap between the racing players that wants simulation and the racing players that want arcade obviously, there are little niches that just you know, some players that just want one or another but as you know, i've played in i've worked on racing games for over 20 years now and you know, need for speeds got a style that i think is really compelling and cool it provides one experience for us has got its own style there's the asphalt games on mobile that are great and provide a different experience we've tried to with street stay true to forza and to the fort's of brand, and that to us means, you know, we want to be a best in class experience with high quality, high quality graphics, high quality experience so that there's this immersive sensation to us we also want to be authentic so we want our cars to look and feel like the real things, they want to have weight, they want to have mass so those are those two things keep us from going too far down the over the top, because then we start to stray from what we think 40 is and what customers expect so even though we've created a racing experience with street, where you interact very differently, you're not steering the car down the track, you're really just focused it's a timing game, which we think is a really great match for how people play on mobile but it's still the cars have mass like i mentioned, they're still running forward to physics, they're still throwing up smoke when they lose grip and all that kind of stuff and if you hit your boost too late going into a corner, your car's going to go sideways and hit the wall all those things carry through that immersive sense of weight and that one would expect from a forex title tony morelan 23 04 yeah and i can i can attest to that as far as going into a turn too late and with my boost and ending up in the in the wall there and seeing myself crash so yeah, it's nice and realistic so obviously a huge collection of cars that you've licensed so tell me is it difficult to license these cars? i mean, obviously forges a big brand but is that something that's a challenge when you're trying to bring in new cars to the game? andy beaudoin 23 26 i don't know that's a challenge i think the biggest challenge we have is that we have an incredible list of partners in the forza franchise and these are partners brands that we've worked with for years and we have amazing support mclaren’s an example where we, right now we're running an event that's really celebrating the mclaren brand and that was a team that was really eager to work with us, and to get their name and get their brand in our game and also to co-promoter so it's been a really good partnership so i wouldn't say it's difficult i think the complexity comes in that we've got these long-standing relationships with partners and now we're bringing in a mobile game so we've got business structures and deals that are built upon console and built upon that type of business model and so a lot of the discussions or licensing team has been having with partners has been trying to give an understanding of how the mobile space is a bit different than what we've got in our existing agreements and it's not that the manufacturers are pretty used to working with mobile titles and you know, mclaren’s, and other in other mobile titles as well but to think about how we take existing franchise level agreements and make them work with now a mobile game as well has meant some just reeducation, i guess, in realignment of how we work with existing deals so it really the only complexity is that we have a whole franchise that we're licensing for, rather than a particular game, which just means we have a few more considerations, then, you know, some of the smaller teams working on a mobile game line tony morelan 24 53 i'm sure that you've got some updates that you can't quite share publicly yet but are there any anything that you can share? that we get for the straight users excited about andy beaudoin 25 03 i think the biggest thing is that, like i mentioned earlier, we're going to be releasing new stuff every month, every month and change so the game and how it looks today is not what it's going to look like in a couple of weeks it's not what it's going to look like in six months so you know, hop in now so you got a chance to win i think we had a few days left on the mclaren event so you can get some of those awesome mclaren's there's never a better time to win them and then following that, there'll be something else to win and the game is continuously growing we've been out on mobile for, you know, worldwide for just a little bit over a month, just shy of two months now so we've been learning a ton from how people are playing our game and we're going to take that information and continue to make the game better our goal is to make people that play the game feel like this is a place that they can have as a home for their mobile racing fix for months, years to come so that's our top priority is making it a place that people want to stay and enjoy staying and feeling your time is really well spent so that's a north star where you keep driving for andy beaudoin 26 05 yeah, i'd love to hear that, you know, it's kind of nice to because if it's a game that that you can set down for a moment, and then know that next time you pick it up is something new and fresh that just gives you a good reason to grab your device and get back into playing absolutely tony morelan 26 18 any other games coming from xbox studios that are coming to mobile that you can talk about andy beaudoin 26 22 nothing that i'm able to speak about, i can just kind of focus on what we're doing with forza i mean, you've seen gears has released a mobile game recently, which is great and, you know, we've got a couple of other titles mine crafts out there as well i think we're just speaking to the fact that a whole bunch of people play games on mobile and so with our goal of trying to entertain customers everywhere and meet people where they are and entertain them with xbox titles, i think that's kind of an indication of where we're at now and i would expect more things from us on the mobile space in the future tony morelan 26 56 so what advice would you give developers looking to bring their games to the galaxy store? andy beaudoin 27 01 biggest thing i would say is don't hesitate to reach out to the team for advice and support we were really impressed with the level of support we got from the tech support team over there in the in the uk when we're they were working with our partners that the guys came on site for a period of time helped us optimize helped us point out some ways that we can make the game better so i would reach out to the team earlier and see if there are any ways that they can kind of partner earlier on we had a great experience working with samsung on pre-registrations and a lot of people that pre-registered the game, which meant that as soon as we launched worldwide, we had a really big cohort of folks coming in, which is really valuable for us, you know, to climb the charts and make sure that we're in a good position to drive organic acquisition so yeah, i think reach out early try to engage the team as much as possible early on, and don't discount the amount of pre-registrations you can get from a really good partnership with samsung tony morelan 27 59 it's great to hear why would you say that it's important that developers do offer their game on the galaxy store? andy beaudoin 28 04 again, it's another surface area that, you know, again, i'm biased because the galaxy device, but it's yeah, it's a hugely popular device, hugely popular suite of devices the galaxy store sits on every one of those devices you know, it's also if i remember correctly, we had really good product placement as well, when the game went live i think the team did a really good job of promoting forza street, which not only gave us the strong registrations that we had when we went live, but we also got some really good organics installs when the game went live as well so i think that the format of the store is really good to promoting the visuals of the game it's really focused, and we had a great experience with it so tony morelan 28 45 excellent all right so tell me in forza street, what is your favorite car to drive? andy beaudoin 28 51 my highest rated cars the boss 302 that is my highest pi car okay it's a tough question i've got the 99 spider which is my epic supercar that it's taking me a little bit longer to upgrade because it's hard to get those epics and you need to duplicate cars in order to upgrade them but andy beaudoin 29 11 yeah, it's passion versus functionality that's a challenging one tony morelan 29 15 all right so in real life, what would be your favorite car to drive? andy beaudoin 29 18 so i've got an s for now it's 2013 so it's a little bit longer in the tooth i've been pining after an rs five sport back for many, many years, but i've not yet gotten to the spot where i can i can make that transition but my wife and i have a plan and someday in the future, i hope to have an rs five sport back i'm a father of two i like we've discussed mountain biking, i like to ride mountain bikes my bike in the back of my house for having that sport back would make it even easier to throw my bike in the back of the car and go out for a ride afterwards so that's my current, my current object of my desire tony morelan 29 54 yeah so as you'd mentioned, we both are big fans of mountain biking you obviously being up there in the northwest you've got some beautiful trails to ride me being in california we've got a lot of great trails out here so i'm going to ask you, when you're not doing your day to day job with turn 10 studios, what do you like to do for fun? andy beaudoin 30 12 for fun, i got to kind of primary hobbies and that's music and mountain biking and probably equally skilled at both, which means i'm not particularly skilled at either now i love i play with some guys at work i play some really poor guitar and sing it mediocre lee for them but that's a lot of fun we just do a bunch of covers and get together every week or two and get together and jam but yeah, mountain biking is kind of the biggest passion right now and i started that a couple years ago, just looking at what's in my backyard up here in the northwest and how many amazing trails are to ride and i grew up in the bay area and so i grew up kind of in the bmx and skateboarding era in the 80s and so you know, in my now mid 40s, to discover that there's this awesome thing where you can take bikes and go off jumps and, and you don't look completely silly at my age doing that was pretty captivating tony morelan 31 01 now i will say andy is currently wearing an arm brace so it sounds like you're having a little too much fun maybe out there on the trails andy beaudoin 31 09 yeah, i need to learn to slow down i've had a couple of crashes over the past six months i'm nursing a broken collarbone right now, which doesn't hurt that much, but keeps me off the bike for a couple of months so looking forward to getting healed and maybe going slightly slower off jumps next time tony morelan 31 24 nice nice that sounds fine why are you going to take that passion and then bring it into the video world forza street? andy beaudoin 31 30 that's cool yeah, i know it's a little bit less dangerous to racing horses straight than it is on a bike so but yeah, they both they both hit the same endorphins for sure tony morelan 31 38 that's wonderful okay, andy, want to absolutely thank you and appreciate you taking the time to join me today on this podcast, tons of fun love what the guys are doing over there turn 10 studios and forza street super fun game to play so go download it have a blast, and we'll talk to you soon awesome thanks so much tony's a pleasure outro 31 55 looking to start creating for samsung download the latest tools to code your next app or get software for designing apps without coding at all sell your apps to the world on the samsung galaxy store check out developer samsung com today and start your journey with samsung the pow! podcast is brought to you by the samsung developer program and produced by tony morelan
