As one of the most ardent critics of the New Forza Motorsport, this sheds a very bright light on why much of the game feels rushed or unfinished, especially with Microsoft not keeping devs around for more than 18 months and letting senior devs go that close to the deadline.
@FrieNDA_ I know a lot of people don't understand that outside of the select few full time employees, most of the forza devs are overworked and crunched to shit, meaning that even if they wanted to make significant improvements, it's near impossible with the structure and restrictions in place. I've also seen a lot of people saying Dan Greenawalt or Chris Esaki need to be sacked, and even if they had a key role to play in how FM8 turned out, getting rid of them wouldn't fix the ingrained problems T10/Microsoft has.
"As one of the most ardent critics of the New Forza Motorsport" Dude, almost your whole channel is " *insert new racing game* is bad". If only you stopped only to the actual bad ones.
Hey, FrieNDA, I'm also a former environment artist at Turn10, from a bit before your time (Forza 4, 5, and some stuff that landed between Horizon 2 and 6). There's a chance we knew and worked with some of the same people, and I'm almost POSITIVE that if you went back far enough in Perforce on some of the files you worked on, my old alias is on a few of them for checkins. Oh man, did everything you talked about sound familiar. Nothing has changed there in over 10 years. If you want, it would be a kick to shoot the breeze together and I can give you some stories about back in the day, especially shipping Forza 5 as a XBOne launch title. I've also got some behind the scenes insight from across the years into how Microsoft Games Studios approaches art content and artists, Turn10 in particular. I'm retired from gamedev so I have no qualms speaking my mind. :)
I'd love to hear more about insider game development stories. Especially racing games. I feel kinda bad because quite frankly there's so much trash out there now and you guys probably try so hard to put your heart and soul into it. I hope whatever you are up to now is more fulfilling!
@@Do.Christ Japanese studios are run way different. I interfaced with a couple in a later role as the US point of contact for their art outsourcing. Over there, job security is good but they act like they OWN you and expect you to behave like it. Hours can be brutal. There is no work-life balance, even the concept is treated with disdain sometimes. And, strangely, actual technical skills (art skills, software skills, pipeline skills) are not a key factor. I saw some absolutely shocking beginner-level mistakes right next to absolutely gorgeous work, and they either didn't see the difference, or culturally couldn't criticize it because it was their direct lead's work and over there, you *do not criticize uphill*. Japan is an entirely different beast.
As a developer myself, it was obvious that something not good was going on with the developers of this game, thanks for sharing your experience. The turnover explains why the game is such a mess. Turn 10 is shooting themselves in the foot, as do many studios that don't put their developers first.
It feels like this contract work for junior, mid and maybe senior artists is common in most AAA companies. Even if they dont mention the 18/6 rule to you during the interview it probably is implied. Some people I knew from college who went into various game dev companies as a junior and have made strides in their position, some even getting promoted have been thrown under the bus by getting layed off literally after that magic 1 year mark. Its really put a sour taste in my mouth to work at these big companies as a junior or mid because as the creator said, you are nothing more than an asset to these people. Im fortunate enough to work at a small indie company that gave me a permanent contract but I feel like im going to have to really gain far more experience so I can hopefully get into a much more senior role that has security, benefits & good pay because AAA juniors are in the trenches right now... I think its a horrible practice but maybe this is being done to prevent burnout from artists and keep production up so they can reach that quick game release cycle within acceptable margins... if they just keep feeding in fresh, new and impressionable artists, treating them as cannon fodder then they can keep this production house going.
Really appreciate the transparency, hope you're doing great! I overall can't understand the want to constantly cycle through new heads Vs being more efficient with keeping them longer for the sake of experience... finishing up the tracks so late is quite interesting too
From the POV of someone who's got a degree in business (this is not my POV, I'm an engineering student!) they would not know the difference between developing a racing game or developing an FPS game. Hell, even most gamers don't know this either.... Anyways, if Bob's good at 3D modeling cars, and he does it really fast because he's been modeling cars for 5 years now, the bean counter sees this and says "Bob we're transferring you over to our other project so you can model crates for our upcoming MMORPG game" and now the racing game dev team is screwed because a new guy comes in, even with the same talent he's gotta be bought up to speed on everything, and Bob's gotta learn how to model crates very quickly. If you don't know anything about modeling this doesn't seem like an issue, because you wouldn't have firsthand seen how much effort it takes to get that much detail. And these bean counters usually don't. But the shifting around of people makes sense if you are a manager trying to best utilize limited "talent" to optimize your company's bottom line. Off topic, but I used to watch your videos in high school lol, congrats on all the success since then
Man, this contract work to get around healthcare and full time benefits is so similar to the WWE philosophy of considering wrestlers "independent contractors". It's really worrying for the devs that this is the direction things are pointing, and it can't be a great thing to have looming over your head all the time. Based on the number of L's Microsoft has taken with releases in the past couple years, it seems to only be leading to worse products being pushed out. Unless it's cutting so many costs that profits are higher, but I can't fathom how FM has been a very profitable venture.
As a game dev who was also contracted, I was furious when I put everything into a project and got let go. I was just another number and my contribution went completely unappreciated by my team leads, despite a lot of the dev team I worked alongside said that they were approving all the work and issues I was finding. I've yet to get back into the industry and I'm really struggling to get my foot back in the door. It absolutely sucks. Sorry you went through the same thing I did. I am glad you were able to find other employment at a place that appreciates you!
While that may be true, I don't think they hired the right developers with racing games background and the ones they hired weren't given time to grow in their roles. No wonder the car models are poor by comparison to Gran Turismo.
@@Rob-gs8lq if they took the same quality over quantity that they do over t10 a single staff member would be responsible for a car start to finish before being let go, and in the case of tracks none of them would ever be done if they replaced people halfway through the creation of one at their current level of detail. turn 10 really just threw themselves into a very unsustainable practice at the hands of microsoft and its really sad to know that franchise wont ever be anything else than an asset flip until they hire people proper.
@@arixant I agree with the second paragraph, but I'm confused as to what you're trying to convey on the first. There's no "quality over quantity" at T10, (perhaps that's what T10 would like you to believe) as it's evident from the lackluster overall quality of Forza Motorsport. I want to be clear that I'm not to hating on this developer, but he wasn't the right dev for the job. He was inexperienced with sim racing games, but to his credit, he did the best job he could with the tools available to him. Both tracks and cars lack the level of detail and accuracy found in other racing sims. I place the blame on Microsoft for not hiring the right people for the job and limiting their time in development with the game. T10 should also have pushed Microsoft to provide them a bigger budget to allow for laser scanning of tracks, but unfortunately T10 continues using oudated methods for capturing data which is why there are inaccuracies with both cars and tracks in the game. Ironically T10 claimed to have used laser scanning technology for their tracks, but given that there are inaccuracies with trackside detail placement, elevation and even use the wrong pit lane exits on their tracks e.g. Daytona, I'd say T10 lied about laser scanning their tracks. I don't see any hope going forward for FM because they would have to literally scrap the entire game and start from scrach, like they said "built from the ground up".
@@Rob-gs8lq Unfortunately laser scanning is not perfect, despite what many love to claim. You can still get inaccuracies and inconsistencies, as there is no possible way for the lasers to hit every available surface. It also depends at what speed you move while doing the scanning, as anything faster than your average walking pace would result in aforementioned inconsistencies and inaccuracies. Only passing over the area once would also result in this. Lastly, even when done well, laser scans will sometimes result in a representation with poor graphics (and occaisionally messed up colours), so it can be hard to identify smaller details. This doesn't excuse the Daytona pit exit though. There's no explanation I can think of as to why they did that. In all, they probably used a low budget laser scanner (maybe not the kind you'd find on an iPad), as even small ones can easily cost over 40 000$. To be fair to this dev though, he was a terrain artist, and wasn't working on the cars or tracks directly. The scenery outside the track and in the distance actually looks pretty good for the most part.
I've been saying this for a while too, if the same level of details went into the cars as the things I'm racing past the game might've been decent. The sky and the scenery I'm looking at are almost too good, which seems out of place in a Motorsport title. What doesn't look great are the cars which is so obviously showed from the original photos of the game to what we actually received. This game looks best when standing still which isn't exactly what Motorsport is about, I hope the next horizon game isn't this full of oversight, bugs and game crashes.
I thought the same. The lighting with the scenary was too beautiful, while ground and car paint looks like a mess. It's almost like it's not developed by a car people.
I'm sure the scenery looks great on high graphics, unfortunately my computer can only handle low/medium, so often times it looks like blobs, even though it can run FH5 on ultra
Don’t worry. We dont hate the devs that worked on the game, rather the higher ups, those that only wanna please their shareholders for all the wrong reasons. Great video, great insight! I am however curious, if you can talk about that but…. How much more time would this game have needed to be released as an actual finished and stable experience? I know y’all were busting your asses off, and had to resort in re-using assets, but with the promise of “built from the ground up”, what would have been a realistic release date? Thats what i am actually curious. Sorry to hear about the 18 months contracts… that friggen sucks man :(…
Excuses… if I go to McDonalds and get a raw burger I’m not going to blame the CEO and act like the person who cooked the burger is completely innocent and did nothing wrong. The reason FM is bad is because of lazy/entitled devs and bad leadership. The average modern dev thinks they’re Jesus and can do no wrong. The reason gaming sucks so much now is because of devs who don’t take responsibility and don’t care and leadership who also don’t care. Stop making excuses for bad devs by just blaming it all on leadership. This video was a giant cope for “we sucked at our jobs and leadership also sucked so we’re just gonna blame it all on them because we devs are mere perfect being who can do nothing wrong it’s all the evil bigwigs and capitalisms fault. Absolute cowards who can’t take responsibility for their poor work.
@@zaiyas1408 wtf are you talking about? the major problems people have with this game have nothing to do with what the guy in the video was talking about/working on in his time at turn 10. you sound like someone with zero empathy.
I’ve been playing Nordschliefe for the last couple days. Fantastic work on the terrain. The game is steadily improving. As a Florida local, my home circuit is Sebring, so I laughed at the lack of mountains comment. I’m really hoping the bring back Sebring soon as it’s my closest real life reference point.
I said this on the 'Gran Turismo 7 vs Forza Motorsport' Digital Foundry video: "The new FM smacks of staff and budget cuts..." I don't hate it, I think the game looks good and performs well but some frustrating decisions spoil things, like dropping the option to increase career race lengths from FM7 coupled with having limited-time events with exclusive prize cars. This actually makes those short races a grind for me. (Would rather spend my time doing longer free play races) I sarcastically joked when Nordschleife was announced that I couldn't wait for 1-lap races and here we are. The bottom line is they need to keep people like you with a clear passion on the team moving forward if they want to win back fans.
@@jackiedaytona1017 Jesus Christ I’m so sorry. I completely avoid Reddit and all that just because of bad experiences too and I can’t even hang my copy of Motorsport like the other titles I have
This is one of the videos with an insight I thought we'd never get. I've been quite careful when criticising certain game features to blame management, time, and company decisions rather than the people on the ground working hard. It must be difficult to lose key members of a team, then pick up their role knowing you will suffer the same fate no matter how well you adjust to it. Eye-opening that all other teams will have suffered from similar constraints if they weren't full-time. On the plus side, the terrain and track environments have always felt solid to me in the new FM, so thank-you for your great work.
As someone going into this industry, its stories like these that make me question my decision to pursue my dream, but at the end of the day, it’s my passion - and good video games are built by passion and creativity, which I think is sometimes overlooked a tad bit. I hope you can find a place where you can create the art and games you want to about without fear of losing your job, because it’s clear you have passion and care about your work - so best of luck to you
Thank you for doing what you do! As a programmer myself in college, I couldn’t even comprehend the workload you had to go through. It makes me happy someone so dedicated to the game has been working on the beautiful landscapes!
ah, how did i miss this? we didn't directly interact much, but i loved working with y'all in environments as your frontline tester for those 18 months. for all that that time sucked, the people were always a pleasure. watching Hakone come together was such a joy and i am still SO FUCKING MAD that they cut the extended version which had some of my favorite curves in the entire game!
Thank you for your work on the game! A lot of what you shared is very relatable, Especially losing a senior engineer shortly after you start on a major project. That happened to me working in building design. I also have the same sentiment as an engineer to design the best product that I can but being limited by time and budget constraints. It really irks see Microsoft's cost saving policies really affect the quality of their products as its almost impossible to build any kind of continuity. This affected Halo infinite as well.
Thanks for the video. This explains so much about the quality of the game and MS products in general. Stapid thing here is the fact that this is not even so bad way to handle contractors. I mean it sounds like they were pretty honest about it to be very likely just 18 months long deal. This could have been done so much worse by dangling permanent Contract in front of you if you just do one more crunch... It smells like some higher ups have their bonuses set up so that it makes it very difficult to actually hire people. Even when contractor proves-to be exellent. Problem might be that it is very easy to calculate the cost of hiring a person, but very hard to calculate how much bad quality and reputation costs. In the end people get rewarded when they keep departments cost down by using contractors, but not penalized by poor quality and/or efficiency caused by constantly educating new contractors, losing tons of knowledge when they leave and generally not care so much, because they are there only for 18 months. What makes this specially stupid for FM is their live service model. Seems to me that it is kinda no-brainer that they will need knowledgeable, passionate and dedicated team to run the service for long run to keep quality high and even improving. l assume they have pretty long roadmap what they will release and when, which makes it rather easy to keep everybody busy all the time with productive work. So, very little need to use contractors. Well you probably want to use some, because it is very good way for the company to scout new talents to the team. And as longas they are honest about your chances toget hired for long term. it should not be bad for the contractor either. It probably is nice to have 'Hakone trackin Forza Motorsport' in your CV... Thanks for your effort to the game. The tracks in the game truly look great 👍
This isn't an uncommon corporate mess unfortunately. The 16-6 rule in spirit makes sense, but management is far to willing to just burn through the development workforce instead of investing in a fixed team. Not valuing institutional knowledge is what is killing a lot of industries
The 18/6 rule is crazy. Developers needed time to train, especially the game is not developed on a well-known engine like Unreal and Unity. When they get the hang of it, they only have like a year left. When the future is uncertain, people cannot focus on the current. In modern gaming development usually lasts more than 3 years. Sacking developers and hiring new developers before the project finish is insane.
Im sure you're under an NDA, but will we see maps like Fujimi Kaido, Bernise Alps, or Rio? I love my Nordschleife and Spa, but the fictional tracks have elevation changes that real-world tracks lack. The fictional maps tend to look the most beautiful because the artists aren't restricted by accuracy.
Your work on Nurburgring definitely hasn't gone underappreciated, it looks amazing. But if this isnt proof that game devs need to go on strike, especially at microsoft studios, i dont know what other proof there us. An 18/6 contract is insane thats just awful
Fun fact - Microsoft's 18 month rule is due to law. They are REQUIRED by law to hire a contractor after 18 months as full-time or end their contract. As each studio is its own legal entity, they allow contractors to 'bonce around' studios. I personally think the law is a good thing for employees as they can receive benefits and stability. Microsoft is just as greedy as every other company, hence the 3T market cap. Great video and very insightful!
That’s so cool that you’re actually one of the devs of this game!!!!! I’m liking it so far, I’d just like to see NASCAR and IndyCar come back, as well as more classic cars/trucks, and base model versions of all the high end cars be added in the game
Hey man great video. It realy helps to hear stories like that it really puts game development into perspective (I would never thought that things like moutains, level geometry and stage are handled by different people). Makes me apreciate games alot more knowing that even things that seem irrelevant most likely have alot of thought behind them. It is just so sad to hear how developers are still treated because you make it so clear how passioante you felt about the project. I honestly cant believe that someone can work so much on a project and not be considered part of it when its coming out (please tell me you are at least in the credits). Wish you best of luck in this godforsaken industry.
Oh most definitely im in the credits lmao. but my ideology is if we can make things more transparent to people outside of the industry we can push things in a much better direction and just make things better
Thanks for sharing. Fuck MS for treating developers like this, the should know better, especially after few bad launches of their games (looking at you Halo). Its sad, that motorsport feels so uninspired and stale. What was once a staple of technical edge now is riddled with issues. Even welcome screen and "car bay" look is somehow looking off, I did some comparision lately with FM6, and car refelctions, shaders on different textures on cars looked better in 6...
Thank you for trying your best to deliver a good product. The villain in this story is, as usual, capitalism and corporate greed. Game developers, as do other industries, need to unionise and finally get the job stability and respect they deserve. Best of luck
I'm so glad to hear that you said you wanted a drift track. It often feels like T10 leadership isn't listening to the fans, so the fact that there was at least a person inside pushing to bring back the tracks the fans really wanted means something.
Its good to know that devs who actually had a passion for Forza were working on the game but its so unfortunate that suits who dont give a shit make the final decisions. I was so disappointed with FM2023. Im glad I didn't buy the top tier edition like I did for FM5 through 7.
it's one of those things where we jsut to have to accept cuts and things that we want and simply wont be able to exist and it hurts ALOT from both a developer and a consumer
I can't appreciate the detail of work you put into this game, being blind and all, but sounds like you busted your ass on this. And if it's worth anything, Hakone is one of my favorite tracks to drive. I just wish the accessibility team would have given us audio descriptions of the tracks. That would have been really cool.
Hopefully they'll implement a sort of intro to describe the scenery in like practice laps and what not just so you can get a sense of immersion. However the fact that you're playing the game makes my heart happy
I think you could work for Reiza Studios who work on Automobilista 2 now, their direction is insane and it seems up your alley if you want to ahah. But im happy to hear you have a job after leaving Turn 10, they should have treated you and the other dev's better, but they only care for themselves :(
The only ones I can criticize to the fullest is Chris Esiki and Dan Greenawalt. They sold everyone lies, and waited until they received that prized GOTY to actually do something about it. It's sad because people all over the media, including in the Forza forum tore this game up and started going over this with a fine tooth comb. It started showing cracks and inconsistencies of the message these two were portraying #builtfromthegroundup. Thanks for your hard work bro, but it seems it's all for nothing, because the state of the game is complete arse for a multi billon dollar company backing this game dev.
For me. Graphics and other things weren't the issue. But knowing this... wow. No my main issue and why i jumped ship. Player based. Noone care for wrecking. There was never a real punishment issue. I know Gran Turismo doesn't have one either but i felt players were respectful on there.
This makes the release of FM make SO MUCH MORE SENSE. The entire gaming industry needs to get out of this toxic employment cycle. All it leads to is shittier games and unhappy customers. I get that Microsoft wants to save money but I mean come on. There’s plenty of other things they can save money from. Developers, and the resources they need. Are paramount to game development.
I have always said Devs WANT to make good games but corporate heads BS always come in and destroy the hard works devs do, then release a dump of a game. This whole video helps prove the point its usually never those who worked on the game that push out games in a horrible state.
Sounds like a corporation... it's too eerie how similar it is to experiences I had with corporations. They fire people, get noobies, noobies do the same work as the senior guy but they loose their mind doing it... and are paid quarter what the senior guy had. These corporations save money on the cheapest shit, meanwhile giving all managers work cars and huge bonuses.,..... the same managers that doomed the studio
Thank you for this, you guys did an amazing job in those crappy circumstances. I'm having a blast with the game, it just sucks it took such a toll on all of you.
There ARE real race fans at T10! Maybe there's hope! The core of forza is still there. I love the tire model rework. Just the little things that need cleaned up, like replays.
Never forget when i got a 360 for my birthday, with fm4, played all night, i was prolly like 6? Or 7? I was always interested in cars, safe to say, i am obsessed, the forza franchise has ment so much to me, i was so excited by this game, tbh, i was veey disappointed by the initial game and i am still not super happy with it, but i really appreciate this insight into the development process. I knew something was uo when the cars we were getting in the car pass were like 5 to 6 years old (ignoring the outliers and vintage/classics), reguarless really appreciate it man
My first 360 came with call of duty WAW. Was die hard for that game until a friend came over with fm3 and it absolutely blew my mind. That's when I found out fm4 was coming out just a few weeks later to my luck! Fast forward to now and I've worked on and owned my own dream sports cars that I developed in that game as a kid. Even with this game being a bugged launch with missing content I'll always praise forza for getting me and my friends into cars.
This is heart breaking. I used to love Forza and this 2023 reboot killed my love for the franchise and Xbox as a whole. Shut my Series X off at the beginning of December and haven’t turned it back on, since. I don’t blame the developers, though. I blame incompetent and greedy management. Always great to see a fellow Initial D fan and I love the use of Eurobeat throughout the video. I hope that you do well in all of your future endeavors, dude. Take care.
@@OfficialParkit I didn’t mean to make it sound like that, I was saying I wish they would bring in formula drift maps and also real life drift tracks like the one in Japan called ebisu circuit 🔥🫡
Loved your insights. Wish there wasnt so many 18-6 contracts with larger tech companies. I was luckily converted from an 18 mo contract to full-time, but that seems rare. Glad to hear you found a landing spot elsewhere. Great work on Forza. I love the game, even with all the issues.
Hey man. This is the industry im trying to get into and its very much my dream (I'm 24). Its very scary seeing what the true reality of my dream job can look like, but im determined to get there regardless. This video honestly made me a bit sad and uncertain about my future, but I'm more than grateful that you came forward and gave insight on what needs to change. You've earned yourself a very loyal subscriber. Cant wait to see what the future holds for you.
From the community I say Thankyou for your hard work, there is allot wrong with the game but visuals and landscape is not one of them. Appreciate the effort you and your team put in to make this game beautiful.
It's just so unfortunate that devs are treated like this, especially from such a successful company with no doubt plenty of money to kick around. Well, of all the complaints I have/had with the game, the landscapes and vistas were certainly not one of them. Hopefully you're creating your work in greener pastures now. Thank you for the work you have done.
Yeah! Luckily the company I’m at now is very work life balanced focused and we’re making some cool stuff and thank you! I just need to find a way to keep voicing stuff like this in order to have people be aware of
I feel you brother. Doing race tracks all day can be exhausting and any other stuff in between feels so nice. I'm glad my company has different approach to it's employees because if we loose anyone from the team we'll probably cry and just talk shit and drink coffee for a week. And we finally know in what aspect Forza was "built from the ground up" it's vista and trees! 😉
@@FrieNDA_ I do wish that in the podium scene, the cars stay race damaged for a more "authentic" feel instead of the cars looking showroom ready. Just a personal suggestion.
I am a solo dev on my own game and I thought my crunch was bad; 8-10h in front of the pc, but I can imagine that your experience was much much more draining; I can barely remember january and february because I basically lived in front of the pc - but having the contract back in your mind? Working with new people and new tools you not exactly comfortable with? Oh my, thats the reason why I dont want to work at the big studios... but the IPs I hold so dear to my heart are there.
Thanks for letting us know at the easy end of gaming what goes on in these places & how they operate. Like you a long time fan of the franchise since day 1, gutting to see how it's gone since FM4. I just don't see how it can carry on like that, I naively thought it was a bunch of car & racing fanatics who were in on it from start to finish, kept thinking how could they make such a mess of this in those 6 yrs. Now we know why.
thanks man for shedding light on what used to be one of my go-to racing game franchises. I jumped ship to Gran Turismo because the menu music was way nicer... what the hell were the guys in charge of music on!?
@@FrieNDA_ Horizon apparently used an actual music DJ for the soundtrack for the first 2 games. Gran Turismo had some jazz legends compose a significant portion of the soundtrack. Racing game music nowadays rarely makes me want to drive. Which is a shame because there's amazing stuff out there.
Thank you for your hard work. ITs beautiful game even as I have dealt with some of the most frustrating glitches and bugs that made me have to put down the game and wait for updates that might fix it. When I play it I love it. I wish you the best and hope you get a great position in the future.
The environmental work in game is quite stunning, sucks to hear you crunched so hard to produce the result, but I hope you know that we notice and appreciate those details. Accounting for the Earth's curvature in anything that's not a 1:1 scale flight simulator is crazy cool! The vistas look like how I imagine these tracks would be IRL, that sense of scale really does add some intangible layer of engagement with the tracks themselves. Doubly impressive that you modelled the Nürburgring environment presumably before the studio had Nordschleife scanned in. (Which also looks fantastic!)
These are the guys I feel the worst for. Bright eyed passionate fanboys ready to create a quality product that honors its predecessors. …only for these to just be rapidly demoralized and eventually laid off to save costs. This is why AAA games have been so shit for so long. Thanks for sharing your story. I long for a future where this standard changes and guys like you are allowed to spread your wings and make the games that we want to play. T. Former Forza fanboy
My exact experience in the games industry. Just as soon as I was hitting my stride in the QA role, actually passionate about the series I was working on. My year contract was up and the choice was to be laid off for three months or find other work and I had to find other work.
the fact microsoft cant pay for full time employees is just shallow and sad, like you see other studios where they have people with 10-20 years in 1 part of the studio and they have a huge understanding of the game engine and work flow and everything to do with the studio and is shows, and forza just contracts people, im happy i gave up on motorsport back in fm7, i would have lost it if i spent full price for a game like that
Microsofts 18 month policy just doesn’t work with modern AAA development, no wonder Xbox first party games feel so disjointed. All the developers work very hard but this is completely out of their control
Thanks for making this video. The public needs to know the way these Microsoft companies, and a lot of AAA companies in general, are really run. Hardworking ordinary people getting screwed by the higher-ups who are effectively sabotaging the company and it's products. How the hell is this industry still profitable? Do we need another video game crash to reverse this?
I went through the same thing in the aviation industry being a contractor. After 12 month, id have to take a perdiem break for 1 month, regardless of how bad the operation needed you and your work. The other side of that was going full time...at a 30% pay reduction lol. No thanks. I bought Forza with a shit ton of excitement, but i ended up getting a refund after 2 hours in, due to various reasons. This video shed a lot of light on why the game just didnt give me an ideal experience. Thank you!
Thanks for this sort of an inside look into development. The game had potential, but because of it being rushed it turned out to be what we know today.
this makes so much sense and the game itself already reeked from higher up meddling,a shame that devs always get the worst of everything from criticism to harassment and unrealistic demands from higher ups
Agreed, it's stupid whenever you try to sympathize with how they deal with it all you get called a shill. Not every dev is out there just trying to get our money and run.
Why does Microsoft rotate and recycle devs/contractors after 18 months followed by 6 months off to avoid having to pay out employee benefits to them, since that was a major contributing factor as to why Forza Motorsport's development suffered so much?
@@joshbacon8241Microsoft notoriously only cares about small profit margins rather than anything of quality. Same thing with halo infinites development and so on. It’s why it takes so long between updates. It’s terrible practice from management
I just wanna start off saying you absolutely cooked on these viduals, they're great! I've been to Daytona at least 15 times now the last few years and you absolutely nailed it. This video really opened up how disfunctional the industry is and how the suits have lost all interests in making a good product instead want to please the investors as quick as possible. I'm sorry they put you through this and take back any shred of slander I put on the devs. Finally Florida is flat because nature decided us Florida men were too dangerous and didnt want to give us a shred of high ground advantage or we'd be ruling the world by now.
18-6 month rotation will make sure experience will never set in as it supposed to... If ppl come back after the 6 months then maybe, but i imagine many move on.. It also means like you said, for the ones filling the gaps, their workload will be huge. I am very critical on T10 and Forza Motorsports and as nice as some things looks, to me it is all about the gameplay. But i can say that because i come from before the NES (Arcade hall) I prefer the INDI mindset, where looks is not everything, but gameplay is. On the other hand if the gameplay is good, i really do appreciate the nice graphics and all those details. Thanks for sharing the insight. It helps understanding why it is what it is.. When goals, roadmaps and/or policies are bad, that is not the fault or to blame to the dedicated work ppl put in. Peace
I just got the game cause of game pass and feels just like the older forza (not sure if that’s a bad thing) but I like it haven’t seen any bugs besides the shaders for pc Xbox, but I think they just fixed that, only complaint is no Long Beach map! And probably vehicles that I won’t notice are missing, but it feels good to play it again
There is an old saying "none of us is as dumb as all of us", and that, I think, perfectly sums up the corporate decision making process. Rather than have a team that by the end of development would have 6yrs into knowing every nut, bolt, and line of code in the game, they decided to instead get the first 18 months of experience four times. I completely understand why there's a backlog of unfixed bugs and unresolved issues- because there are likely VERY few people remaining who actually know how the game really works- or are having to figure it out as they go. Corporate stupidity at its finest.
I'm really curious to know if Playground games have similar issues with hiring full time employees given that they're based in the UK where the company won't have to worry about providing health care benefits, etc. The 18/6 thing seems like a very American problem.
Sorry to hear about your job, and the way you were treated. I find it very odd that they would operate like that, I'd have thought they would try to build solid studio teams. But regardless, i love this game. I dont have any hate for it at all, i can see where this type of work practice has had an effect on some small areas of the game, but overall this game is cracking. You did a brilliant job on those maps, and hearing how much effort you put it makes me angry that people not in the know just fling out that they just reused maps etc. But thank you for your input on this great game, and i hope you have a stable happy future.
No wonder Forza is in the state it is. The developers should have been permanent. This 18/6 rule is whats killing the game quality. Too bad Microsoft will never change this policy. But they need to. I'm glad you found a new job elsewhere.
Microsoft can be *Forced* to change the 18/6 Policy, the Developers just need to have the Courage to *Go On Strike* ! As nothing destroys the Precious "Profit margins" faster than a Full Team *Strike* ! Industrial Action can *Literally Topple Governments* ! not just American Corporations who have gotten too big for their Boots! However, this is a good warning to the rest of the world. *Never work for the Americans* !
Hey I finally got round to watching this, and i just wanna say I'm sorry that's a work practice you have had to work through. Its so bizarre sounding and completely backwards. I find it insane that I work alongside people who have been in dev at the studio i am at who have been there for decades, i couldn't imagine the vacuum of valuable knowledge and talent if there was an 18 month maximum term. I feel like the bonds and friendships we make along the way help build the games too, but how can they even develop if everybody is on a timer. Very insightful video, thank you for speaking about this experience and I hope your future in games is less disjointed.
As one of the most ardent critics of the New Forza Motorsport, this sheds a very bright light on why much of the game feels rushed or unfinished, especially with Microsoft not keeping devs around for more than 18 months and letting senior devs go that close to the deadline.
It’s one of those things that’s almost so far out of our control half the time we just have to do what we can
And literally all the critique is valid and we just gotta go with what we can
@FrieNDA_ I know a lot of people don't understand that outside of the select few full time employees, most of the forza devs are overworked and crunched to shit, meaning that even if they wanted to make significant improvements, it's near impossible with the structure and restrictions in place. I've also seen a lot of people saying Dan Greenawalt or Chris Esaki need to be sacked, and even if they had a key role to play in how FM8 turned out, getting rid of them wouldn't fix the ingrained problems T10/Microsoft has.
@Fastminer07 Someone had to sign off on CarPG and the horrible career mode.
"As one of the most ardent critics of the New Forza Motorsport"
Dude, almost your whole channel is " *insert new racing game* is bad". If only you stopped only to the actual bad ones.
This is an unsustainable practice. No wonder games take 3x as long as they used to be made only to release in a lackluster state
That’s just games in general now
It explains Halo, Forza, and most of their other games at this point...
Hey, FrieNDA, I'm also a former environment artist at Turn10, from a bit before your time (Forza 4, 5, and some stuff that landed between Horizon 2 and 6). There's a chance we knew and worked with some of the same people, and I'm almost POSITIVE that if you went back far enough in Perforce on some of the files you worked on, my old alias is on a few of them for checkins. Oh man, did everything you talked about sound familiar. Nothing has changed there in over 10 years. If you want, it would be a kick to shoot the breeze together and I can give you some stories about back in the day, especially shipping Forza 5 as a XBOne launch title. I've also got some behind the scenes insight from across the years into how Microsoft Games Studios approaches art content and artists, Turn10 in particular. I'm retired from gamedev so I have no qualms speaking my mind. :)
please make a video sharing all about it. it is really interesting. I heard about microsoft bad management but didnt think it THIS BAD...
I'd love to hear more about insider game development stories. Especially racing games. I feel kinda bad because quite frankly there's so much trash out there now and you guys probably try so hard to put your heart and soul into it. I hope whatever you are up to now is more fulfilling!
I wonder if the GT7 developers manage the same way. Diff countries so tough comparison but isn’t this how most companies handle this job….?
@@Do.Christ Japanese studios are run way different. I interfaced with a couple in a later role as the US point of contact for their art outsourcing. Over there, job security is good but they act like they OWN you and expect you to behave like it. Hours can be brutal. There is no work-life balance, even the concept is treated with disdain sometimes. And, strangely, actual technical skills (art skills, software skills, pipeline skills) are not a key factor. I saw some absolutely shocking beginner-level mistakes right next to absolutely gorgeous work, and they either didn't see the difference, or culturally couldn't criticize it because it was their direct lead's work and over there, you *do not criticize uphill*.
Japan is an entirely different beast.
Would you be able to make a video on this? Id be really interested to hear!
Wow the only real transparency video I've ever seen from a Turn 10 employee.
It explains why the game barely works.
As a developer myself, it was obvious that something not good was going on with the developers of this game, thanks for sharing your experience. The turnover explains why the game is such a mess. Turn 10 is shooting themselves in the foot, as do many studios that don't put their developers first.
It feels like this contract work for junior, mid and maybe senior artists is common in most AAA companies. Even if they dont mention the 18/6 rule to you during the interview it probably is implied.
Some people I knew from college who went into various game dev companies as a junior and have made strides in their position, some even getting promoted have been thrown under the bus by getting layed off literally after that magic 1 year mark.
Its really put a sour taste in my mouth to work at these big companies as a junior or mid because as the creator said, you are nothing more than an asset to these people. Im fortunate enough to work at a small indie company that gave me a permanent contract but I feel like im going to have to really gain far more experience so I can hopefully get into a much more senior role that has security, benefits & good pay because AAA juniors are in the trenches right now...
I think its a horrible practice but maybe this is being done to prevent burnout from artists and keep production up so they can reach that quick game release cycle within acceptable margins... if they just keep feeding in fresh, new and impressionable artists, treating them as cannon fodder then they can keep this production house going.
Really appreciate the transparency, hope you're doing great! I overall can't understand the want to constantly cycle through new heads Vs being more efficient with keeping them longer for the sake of experience... finishing up the tracks so late is quite interesting too
shareholder capitalism is ruining western civilization
From the POV of someone who's got a degree in business (this is not my POV, I'm an engineering student!) they would not know the difference between developing a racing game or developing an FPS game. Hell, even most gamers don't know this either....
Anyways, if Bob's good at 3D modeling cars, and he does it really fast because he's been modeling cars for 5 years now, the bean counter sees this and says "Bob we're transferring you over to our other project so you can model crates for our upcoming MMORPG game" and now the racing game dev team is screwed because a new guy comes in, even with the same talent he's gotta be bought up to speed on everything, and Bob's gotta learn how to model crates very quickly. If you don't know anything about modeling this doesn't seem like an issue, because you wouldn't have firsthand seen how much effort it takes to get that much detail. And these bean counters usually don't.
But the shifting around of people makes sense if you are a manager trying to best utilize limited "talent" to optimize your company's bottom line.
Off topic, but I used to watch your videos in high school lol, congrats on all the success since then
Man, this contract work to get around healthcare and full time benefits is so similar to the WWE philosophy of considering wrestlers "independent contractors". It's really worrying for the devs that this is the direction things are pointing, and it can't be a great thing to have looming over your head all the time. Based on the number of L's Microsoft has taken with releases in the past couple years, it seems to only be leading to worse products being pushed out. Unless it's cutting so many costs that profits are higher, but I can't fathom how FM has been a very profitable venture.
As a game dev who was also contracted, I was furious when I put everything into a project and got let go. I was just another number and my contribution went completely unappreciated by my team leads, despite a lot of the dev team I worked alongside said that they were approving all the work and issues I was finding.
I've yet to get back into the industry and I'm really struggling to get my foot back in the door. It absolutely sucks. Sorry you went through the same thing I did. I am glad you were able to find other employment at a place that appreciates you!
Sending love to you especially right now with how the industry is. It’s kinda brutal I’m hoping if you join back in it’ll be better
"Exhausting" doesn't begin to describe the development of this game. The 18/6 rule really hurt this game.
While that may be true, I don't think they hired the right developers with racing games background and the ones they hired weren't given time to grow in their roles. No wonder the car models are poor by comparison to Gran Turismo.
@@Rob-gs8lq if they took the same quality over quantity that they do over t10 a single staff member would be responsible for a car start to finish before being let go, and in the case of tracks none of them would ever be done if they replaced people halfway through the creation of one at their current level of detail.
turn 10 really just threw themselves into a very unsustainable practice at the hands of microsoft and its really sad to know that franchise wont ever be anything else than an asset flip until they hire people proper.
@@arixant I agree with the second paragraph, but I'm confused as to what you're trying to convey on the first. There's no "quality over quantity" at T10, (perhaps that's what T10 would like you to believe) as it's evident from the lackluster overall quality of Forza Motorsport. I want to be clear that I'm not to hating on this developer, but he wasn't the right dev for the job. He was inexperienced with sim racing games, but to his credit, he did the best job he could with the tools available to him.
Both tracks and cars lack the level of detail and accuracy found in other racing sims. I place the blame on Microsoft for not hiring the right people for the job and limiting their time in development with the game. T10 should also have pushed Microsoft to provide them a bigger budget to allow for laser scanning of tracks, but unfortunately T10 continues using oudated methods for capturing data which is why there are inaccuracies with both cars and tracks in the game.
Ironically T10 claimed to have used laser scanning technology for their tracks, but given that there are inaccuracies with trackside detail placement, elevation and even use the wrong pit lane exits on their tracks e.g. Daytona, I'd say T10 lied about laser scanning their tracks. I don't see any hope going forward for FM because they would have to literally scrap the entire game and start from scrach, like they said "built from the ground up".
It's hurting other games like Minecraft as well, as that's likely the only thing stopping them from making good updates.
@@Rob-gs8lq Unfortunately laser scanning is not perfect, despite what many love to claim. You can still get inaccuracies and inconsistencies, as there is no possible way for the lasers to hit every available surface. It also depends at what speed you move while doing the scanning, as anything faster than your average walking pace would result in aforementioned inconsistencies and inaccuracies. Only passing over the area once would also result in this. Lastly, even when done well, laser scans will sometimes result in a representation with poor graphics (and occaisionally messed up colours), so it can be hard to identify smaller details. This doesn't excuse the Daytona pit exit though. There's no explanation I can think of as to why they did that.
In all, they probably used a low budget laser scanner (maybe not the kind you'd find on an iPad), as even small ones can easily cost over 40 000$.
To be fair to this dev though, he was a terrain artist, and wasn't working on the cars or tracks directly. The scenery outside the track and in the distance actually looks pretty good for the most part.
goddamn insane how they decided to not rehire one of the senior devs THIS CLOSE TO THE RELEASE.
this sounds like hell to work on.
It was hard but seeing people’s reactions keep me going both good and bad
i want to add, nobody has a problem with the scenery outside the track, one of the few things we all think looks great
*If and when it renders in properly, which most of the time it doesn't.
I've been saying this for a while too, if the same level of details went into the cars as the things I'm racing past the game might've been decent. The sky and the scenery I'm looking at are almost too good, which seems out of place in a Motorsport title. What doesn't look great are the cars which is so obviously showed from the original photos of the game to what we actually received. This game looks best when standing still which isn't exactly what Motorsport is about, I hope the next horizon game isn't this full of oversight, bugs and game crashes.
I thought the same. The lighting with the scenary was too beautiful, while ground and car paint looks like a mess. It's almost like it's not developed by a car people.
I'm sure the scenery looks great on high graphics, unfortunately my computer can only handle low/medium, so often times it looks like blobs, even though it can run FH5 on ultra
Don’t worry. We dont hate the devs that worked on the game, rather the higher ups, those that only wanna please their shareholders for all the wrong reasons.
Great video, great insight! I am however curious, if you can talk about that but…. How much more time would this game have needed to be released as an actual finished and stable experience? I know y’all were busting your asses off, and had to resort in re-using assets, but with the promise of “built from the ground up”, what would have been a realistic release date? Thats what i am actually curious.
Sorry to hear about the 18 months contracts… that friggen sucks man :(…
u do realize shareholders are how all these projects are reality?
Excuses… if I go to McDonalds and get a raw burger I’m not going to blame the CEO and act like the person who cooked the burger is completely innocent and did nothing wrong. The reason FM is bad is because of lazy/entitled devs and bad leadership. The average modern dev thinks they’re Jesus and can do no wrong. The reason gaming sucks so much now is because of devs who don’t take responsibility and don’t care and leadership who also don’t care. Stop making excuses for bad devs by just blaming it all on leadership. This video was a giant cope for “we sucked at our jobs and leadership also sucked so we’re just gonna blame it all on them because we devs are mere perfect being who can do nothing wrong it’s all the evil bigwigs and capitalisms fault. Absolute cowards who can’t take responsibility for their poor work.
@@zaiyas1408 wtf are you talking about? the major problems people have with this game have nothing to do with what the guy in the video was talking about/working on in his time at turn 10. you sound like someone with zero empathy.
@@zaiyas1408the leaders literally get rid of the good people to get around compensating them for shit and that’s somehow the devs problem?
Unempathetic as fucking hell.........@@zaiyas1408
I’ve been playing Nordschliefe for the last couple days. Fantastic work on the terrain. The game is steadily improving. As a Florida local, my home circuit is Sebring, so I laughed at the lack of mountains comment. I’m really hoping the bring back Sebring soon as it’s my closest real life reference point.
I said this on the 'Gran Turismo 7 vs Forza Motorsport' Digital Foundry video: "The new FM smacks of staff and budget cuts..."
I don't hate it, I think the game looks good and performs well but some frustrating decisions spoil things, like dropping the option to increase career race lengths from FM7 coupled with having limited-time events with exclusive prize cars. This actually makes those short races a grind for me. (Would rather spend my time doing longer free play races) I sarcastically joked when Nordschleife was announced that I couldn't wait for 1-lap races and here we are. The bottom line is they need to keep people like you with a clear passion on the team moving forward if they want to win back fans.
Damn that's insane, higher ups do the equivalent of scrolling Twitter all day.
The ones in charge couldn't wait to shove this out the door.
Thank you so much for all your hard work. It’s insane how much you had to do. Big respect! ❤️
just stories from the industry but im glad you enjoyed it!!
Worked at Turn10 via contract back in 2014-2015. I still get anxiety attacks when looking at Forza 6 at game stores.
@@jackiedaytona1017 Jesus Christ I’m so sorry. I completely avoid Reddit and all that just because of bad experiences too and I can’t even hang my copy of Motorsport like the other titles I have
@@FrieNDA_ A lot of us went into the meat grinder and got spat out, I am glad that someone like you put a very needed spotlight on it.
I got the same Forza Motorsport 3 bundle! Let me know if you'd like to chat for a video 🙃
This is one of the videos with an insight I thought we'd never get. I've been quite careful when criticising certain game features to blame management, time, and company decisions rather than the people on the ground working hard. It must be difficult to lose key members of a team, then pick up their role knowing you will suffer the same fate no matter how well you adjust to it. Eye-opening that all other teams will have suffered from similar constraints if they weren't full-time.
On the plus side, the terrain and track environments have always felt solid to me in the new FM, so thank-you for your great work.
Slavery was never abolished they just added new colours
As someone going into this industry, its stories like these that make me question my decision to pursue my dream, but at the end of the day, it’s my passion - and good video games are built by passion and creativity, which I think is sometimes overlooked a tad bit. I hope you can find a place where you can create the art and games you want to about without fear of losing your job, because it’s clear you have passion and care about your work - so best of luck to you
There's no room for passion on AAA anymore, make your indie and try to market it with streamers.
Thank you for doing what you do! As a programmer myself in college, I couldn’t even comprehend the workload you had to go through. It makes me happy someone so dedicated to the game has been working on the beautiful landscapes!
It warms my heart to hear your efforts toward drifting.
ah, how did i miss this? we didn't directly interact much, but i loved working with y'all in environments as your frontline tester for those 18 months. for all that that time sucked, the people were always a pleasure. watching Hakone come together was such a joy and i am still SO FUCKING MAD that they cut the extended version which had some of my favorite curves in the entire game!
Thank you for your work on the game! A lot of what you shared is very relatable, Especially losing a senior engineer shortly after you start on a major project. That happened to me working in building design. I also have the same sentiment as an engineer to design the best product that I can but being limited by time and budget constraints. It really irks see Microsoft's cost saving policies really affect the quality of their products as its almost impossible to build any kind of continuity. This affected Halo infinite as well.
Thanks for the video. This explains so much about the quality of the game and MS products in general. Stapid thing here is the fact that this is not even so bad way to handle contractors. I mean it sounds like they were pretty honest about it to be very likely just 18 months long deal. This could have been done so much worse by dangling permanent Contract in front of you if you just do one more crunch...
It smells like some higher ups have their bonuses set up so that it makes it very difficult to actually hire people. Even when contractor proves-to be exellent. Problem might be that it is very easy to calculate the cost of hiring a person, but very hard to calculate how much bad quality and reputation costs. In the end people get rewarded when they keep departments cost down by using contractors, but not penalized by poor quality and/or efficiency caused by constantly educating new contractors, losing tons of knowledge when they leave and generally not care so much, because they are there only for 18 months.
What makes this specially stupid for FM is their live service model. Seems to me that it is kinda no-brainer that they will need knowledgeable, passionate and dedicated team to run the service for long run to keep quality high and even improving. l assume they have pretty long roadmap what they will release and when, which makes it rather easy to keep everybody busy all the time with productive work. So, very little need to use contractors. Well you probably want to use some, because it is very good way for the company to scout new talents to the team. And as longas they are honest about your chances toget hired for long term. it should not be bad for the contractor either. It probably is nice to have 'Hakone trackin Forza Motorsport' in your CV...
Thanks for your effort to the game. The tracks in the game truly look great 👍
I was on the UI team. A slightly different experience but you guys do/did amazing work. MS treats it's contractors like disposable trash.
This isn't an uncommon corporate mess unfortunately. The 16-6 rule in spirit makes sense, but management is far to willing to just burn through the development workforce instead of investing in a fixed team. Not valuing institutional knowledge is what is killing a lot of industries
The 18/6 rule is crazy. Developers needed time to train, especially the game is not developed on a well-known engine like Unreal and Unity. When they get the hang of it, they only have like a year left. When the future is uncertain, people cannot focus on the current. In modern gaming development usually lasts more than 3 years. Sacking developers and hiring new developers before the project finish is insane.
Im sure you're under an NDA, but will we see maps like Fujimi Kaido, Bernise Alps, or Rio? I love my Nordschleife and Spa, but the fictional tracks have elevation changes that real-world tracks lack. The fictional maps tend to look the most beautiful because the artists aren't restricted by accuracy.
I cant say for sure but I pushed for them simply because i loved those maps alot
Loving Nords n Spa and worrying about Rio etc ?
@chilli-soup I was just pointing out I love real tracks but also like the Forza tracks, not sure what your getting at?
Your work on Nurburgring definitely hasn't gone underappreciated, it looks amazing. But if this isnt proof that game devs need to go on strike, especially at microsoft studios, i dont know what other proof there us. An 18/6 contract is insane thats just awful
Fun fact - Microsoft's 18 month rule is due to law. They are REQUIRED by law to hire a contractor after 18 months as full-time or end their contract. As each studio is its own legal entity, they allow contractors to 'bonce around' studios.
I personally think the law is a good thing for employees as they can receive benefits and stability. Microsoft is just as greedy as every other company, hence the 3T market cap.
Great video and very insightful!
That’s so cool that you’re actually one of the devs of this game!!!!! I’m liking it so far, I’d just like to see NASCAR and IndyCar come back, as well as more classic cars/trucks, and base model versions of all the high end cars be added in the game
Wow, man, you are amazing to handle all of that alone .I work in an animation industry, and I can understand your pain.
Hey man great video. It realy helps to hear stories like that it really puts game development into perspective (I would never thought that things like moutains, level geometry and stage are handled by different people). Makes me apreciate games alot more knowing that even things that seem irrelevant most likely have alot of thought behind them. It is just so sad to hear how developers are still treated because you make it so clear how passioante you felt about the project. I honestly cant believe that someone can work so much on a project and not be considered part of it when its coming out (please tell me you are at least in the credits). Wish you best of luck in this godforsaken industry.
Oh most definitely im in the credits lmao. but my ideology is if we can make things more transparent to people outside of the industry we can push things in a much better direction and just make things better
Thanks for sharing. Fuck MS for treating developers like this, the should know better, especially after few bad launches of their games (looking at you Halo).
Its sad, that motorsport feels so uninspired and stale. What was once a staple of technical edge now is riddled with issues. Even welcome screen and "car bay" look is somehow looking off, I did some comparision lately with FM6, and car refelctions, shaders on different textures on cars looked better in 6...
Very interesting, it doesnt make sense to run a project and then change people before its completed. I guess older Forza's didnt have this issue.
i believe the law and system is fairly new within the last like decade or so simply because of the business practices
Thank you for trying your best to deliver a good product. The villain in this story is, as usual, capitalism and corporate greed. Game developers, as do other industries, need to unionise and finally get the job stability and respect they deserve. Best of luck
Damn, tough times at t10. Hopefully the higher ups will allow the game to be good before it dies completely. And good luck on the new job.
I'm so glad to hear that you said you wanted a drift track. It often feels like T10 leadership isn't listening to the fans, so the fact that there was at least a person inside pushing to bring back the tracks the fans really wanted means something.
Its good to know that devs who actually had a passion for Forza were working on the game but its so unfortunate that suits who dont give a shit make the final decisions. I was so disappointed with FM2023. Im glad I didn't buy the top tier edition like I did for FM5 through 7.
This is why I refuse to call devs lazy, point blank. "Lazy" mistakes more often than not comes from overworking/exhaustion.
it's one of those things where we jsut to have to accept cuts and things that we want and simply wont be able to exist and it hurts ALOT from both a developer and a consumer
I can't appreciate the detail of work you put into this game, being blind and all, but sounds like you busted your ass on this. And if it's worth anything, Hakone is one of my favorite tracks to drive. I just wish the accessibility team would have given us audio descriptions of the tracks. That would have been really cool.
Hopefully they'll implement a sort of intro to describe the scenery in like practice laps and what not just so you can get a sense of immersion. However the fact that you're playing the game makes my heart happy
I think you could work for Reiza Studios who work on Automobilista 2 now, their direction is insane and it seems up your alley if you want to ahah. But im happy to hear you have a job after leaving Turn 10, they should have treated you and the other dev's better, but they only care for themselves :(
The only ones I can criticize to the fullest is Chris Esiki and Dan Greenawalt. They sold everyone lies, and waited until they received that prized GOTY to actually do something about it. It's sad because people all over the media, including in the Forza forum tore this game up and started going over this with a fine tooth comb. It started showing cracks and inconsistencies of the message these two were portraying #builtfromthegroundup. Thanks for your hard work bro, but it seems it's all for nothing, because the state of the game is complete arse for a multi billon dollar company backing this game dev.
For me. Graphics and other things weren't the issue. But knowing this... wow. No my main issue and why i jumped ship. Player based. Noone care for wrecking. There was never a real punishment issue. I know Gran Turismo doesn't have one either but i felt players were respectful on there.
This makes the release of FM make SO MUCH MORE SENSE. The entire gaming industry needs to get out of this toxic employment cycle. All it leads to is shittier games and unhappy customers. I get that Microsoft wants to save money but I mean come on. There’s plenty of other things they can save money from. Developers, and the resources they need. Are paramount to game development.
I have always said Devs WANT to make good games but corporate heads BS always come in and destroy the hard works devs do, then release a dump of a game. This whole video helps prove the point its usually never those who worked on the game that push out games in a horrible state.
Good JOB SIR. Take care of yourself & thank you.❤❤❤❤
Sounds like a corporation... it's too eerie how similar it is to experiences I had with corporations.
They fire people, get noobies, noobies do the same work as the senior guy but they loose their mind doing it... and are paid quarter what the senior guy had.
These corporations save money on the cheapest shit, meanwhile giving all managers work cars and huge bonuses.,..... the same managers that doomed the studio
Thank you for this, you guys did an amazing job in those crappy circumstances. I'm having a blast with the game, it just sucks it took such a toll on all of you.
There ARE real race fans at T10! Maybe there's hope! The core of forza is still there. I love the tire model rework. Just the little things that need cleaned up, like replays.
Never forget when i got a 360 for my birthday, with fm4, played all night, i was prolly like 6? Or 7? I was always interested in cars, safe to say, i am obsessed, the forza franchise has ment so much to me, i was so excited by this game, tbh, i was veey disappointed by the initial game and i am still not super happy with it, but i really appreciate this insight into the development process. I knew something was uo when the cars we were getting in the car pass were like 5 to 6 years old (ignoring the outliers and vintage/classics), reguarless really appreciate it man
My first 360 came with call of duty WAW. Was die hard for that game until a friend came over with fm3 and it absolutely blew my mind. That's when I found out fm4 was coming out just a few weeks later to my luck!
Fast forward to now and I've worked on and owned my own dream sports cars that I developed in that game as a kid. Even with this game being a bugged launch with missing content I'll always praise forza for getting me and my friends into cars.
@@OfficialParkit hell yea man, that's what its all about, congrats on getting your dream car dude alongside ur friends, that's my goal
This is heart breaking. I used to love Forza and this 2023 reboot killed my love for the franchise and Xbox as a whole. Shut my Series X off at the beginning of December and haven’t turned it back on, since. I don’t blame the developers, though. I blame incompetent and greedy management. Always great to see a fellow Initial D fan and I love the use of Eurobeat throughout the video. I hope that you do well in all of your future endeavors, dude. Take care.
Ping me when the hakone mountain drops with more online game modes. love ya man appreciate what you've done!
Great video bro, I’m really enjoying the game at its current state! I love all the tracks and graphics. ❤
You telling your supervisor had to leave, and having you alone to figure it out sounds legitimately terrifying
it was one of those situations where i just sat back and saw how much work needed to get done and was like "oh im about to not sleep for a while"
Would have been cool to have formula drift tracks like in real life😭 especially the one in Japan up in the mountains. Hopefully they will one day 💔
FD doesn't have a track they compete with in Japan. Its all north America I'd assume
@@OfficialParkit I didn’t mean to make it sound like that, I was saying I wish they would bring in formula drift maps and also real life drift tracks like the one in Japan called ebisu circuit 🔥🫡
Loved your insights. Wish there wasnt so many 18-6 contracts with larger tech companies. I was luckily converted from an 18 mo contract to full-time, but that seems rare. Glad to hear you found a landing spot elsewhere. Great work on Forza. I love the game, even with all the issues.
Thank you so much for sharing. This needs to be on the front page of every gaming news sites.
Hey man. This is the industry im trying to get into and its very much my dream (I'm 24). Its very scary seeing what the true reality of my dream job can look like, but im determined to get there regardless. This video honestly made me a bit sad and uncertain about my future, but I'm more than grateful that you came forward and gave insight on what needs to change. You've earned yourself a very loyal subscriber. Cant wait to see what the future holds for you.
From the community I say Thankyou for your hard work, there is allot wrong with the game but visuals and landscape is not one of them. Appreciate the effort you and your team put in to make this game beautiful.
It's just so unfortunate that devs are treated like this, especially from such a successful company with no doubt plenty of money to kick around. Well, of all the complaints I have/had with the game, the landscapes and vistas were certainly not one of them. Hopefully you're creating your work in greener pastures now. Thank you for the work you have done.
Yeah! Luckily the company I’m at now is very work life balanced focused and we’re making some cool stuff and thank you! I just need to find a way to keep voicing stuff like this in order to have people be aware of
I feel you brother. Doing race tracks all day can be exhausting and any other stuff in between feels so nice. I'm glad my company has different approach to it's employees because if we loose anyone from the team we'll probably cry and just talk shit and drink coffee for a week. And we finally know in what aspect Forza was "built from the ground up" it's vista and trees! 😉
The realest gaming channel
I try my hardest
Despite the issues I'm quite enjoying the game. Keep up the good work.
I’m glad you enjoy it!!!
@@FrieNDA_ I do wish that in the podium scene, the cars stay race damaged for a more "authentic" feel instead of the cars looking showroom ready. Just a personal suggestion.
@@jdmweeb8663 hes not responsible for car damage, he focuses on terrain.
@@Petrolhead55823 right. Probably not the right suggestion then. My b
@@jdmweeb8663 haha you definitely didn't see the video
You did an absolute great job, can't talk about the other departments though...
I’ve heard from other folks it was brutal on all sides but I appreciate it nevertheless
I am a solo dev on my own game and I thought my crunch was bad; 8-10h in front of the pc, but I can imagine that your experience was much much more draining; I can barely remember january and february because I basically lived in front of the pc - but having the contract back in your mind? Working with new people and new tools you not exactly comfortable with? Oh my, thats the reason why I dont want to work at the big studios... but the IPs I hold so dear to my heart are there.
Thanks for letting us know at the easy end of gaming what goes on in these places & how they operate. Like you a long time fan of the franchise since day 1, gutting to see how it's gone since FM4. I just don't see how it can carry on like that, I naively thought it was a bunch of car & racing fanatics who were in on it from start to finish, kept thinking how could they make such a mess of this in those 6 yrs. Now we know why.
thanks man for shedding light on what used to be one of my go-to racing game franchises. I jumped ship to Gran Turismo because the menu music was way nicer... what the hell were the guys in charge of music on!?
I miss the banger music in all racing games ngl. idk what's happened with the music industry or vice versa but its something i miss
@@FrieNDA_ Horizon apparently used an actual music DJ for the soundtrack for the first 2 games. Gran Turismo had some jazz legends compose a significant portion of the soundtrack. Racing game music nowadays rarely makes me want to drive. Which is a shame because there's amazing stuff out there.
The jazz composer makes alot of sense especially in that opening for GT@@MidnightGreen4649
Thank you for your hard work. ITs beautiful game even as I have dealt with some of the most frustrating glitches and bugs that made me have to put down the game and wait for updates that might fix it. When I play it I love it. I wish you the best and hope you get a great position in the future.
Please tell me you're not the one who misspelt 'Welcome' at Spa Francorchamps 😂
NOPE NOT ME LMAOO
The environmental work in game is quite stunning, sucks to hear you crunched so hard to produce the result, but I hope you know that we notice and appreciate those details. Accounting for the Earth's curvature in anything that's not a 1:1 scale flight simulator is crazy cool! The vistas look like how I imagine these tracks would be IRL, that sense of scale really does add some intangible layer of engagement with the tracks themselves. Doubly impressive that you modelled the Nürburgring environment presumably before the studio had Nordschleife scanned in. (Which also looks fantastic!)
These are the guys I feel the worst for. Bright eyed passionate fanboys ready to create a quality product that honors its predecessors.
…only for these to just be rapidly demoralized and eventually laid off to save costs. This is why AAA games have been so shit for so long.
Thanks for sharing your story. I long for a future where this standard changes and guys like you are allowed to spread your wings and make the games that we want to play.
T. Former Forza fanboy
appreciate you Lefty!
Seeing large batches of job classifieds popping up like clockwork makes more sense now. Kind of figured something like this was going on.
holy hell, im shocked this game made it to market.
My exact experience in the games industry. Just as soon as I was hitting my stride in the QA role, actually passionate about the series I was working on. My year contract was up and the choice was to be laid off for three months or find other work and I had to find other work.
I’m finishing up a video on my experience as a QA tester in like a week or two at Treyarch and I wonder how much overlap we’ll have experience wise
I worked for Raven, I bet we worked on the same series! That was a good while ago… 2016-2017
@@SHADOSTRYKR I started In 2018!! So it probably was the same thing
@@FrieNDA_ I worked on Call of Duty Online (the one for the Chinese market) MW Remastered, And Infinite Warfare
@@SHADOSTRYKR dammit I was on blops 4 and modern warfare 2019
the fact microsoft cant pay for full time employees is just shallow and sad, like you see other studios where they have people with 10-20 years in 1 part of the studio and they have a huge understanding of the game engine and work flow and everything to do with the studio and is shows, and forza just contracts people, im happy i gave up on motorsport back in fm7, i would have lost it if i spent full price for a game like that
Bro thank you for being so honest this is answering so many questions I was thinking bout
Like I always say, Always blame the company, never the devs
Microsofts 18 month policy just doesn’t work with modern AAA development, no wonder Xbox first party games feel so disjointed. All the developers work very hard but this is completely out of their control
Thanks for making this video. The public needs to know the way these Microsoft companies, and a lot of AAA companies in general, are really run. Hardworking ordinary people getting screwed by the higher-ups who are effectively sabotaging the company and it's products. How the hell is this industry still profitable? Do we need another video game crash to reverse this?
goddamn, replacing workers every 18 months seems like a terrible way to develop games.
This was interesting, insightful, and informative. Thanks for sharing your story.
of course!!
I went through the same thing in the aviation industry being a contractor. After 12 month, id have to take a perdiem break for 1 month, regardless of how bad the operation needed you and your work. The other side of that was going full time...at a 30% pay reduction lol. No thanks.
I bought Forza with a shit ton of excitement, but i ended up getting a refund after 2 hours in, due to various reasons. This video shed a lot of light on why the game just didnt give me an ideal experience. Thank you!
This was incredibly insightful and makes a lot of sense. Such a bummer to hear how they treat devs. How much of this is Chris Esakis fault?
Thanks for this sort of an inside look into development. The game had potential, but because of it being rushed it turned out to be what we know today.
this makes so much sense and the game itself already reeked from higher up meddling,a shame that devs always get the worst of everything from criticism to harassment and unrealistic demands from higher ups
Agreed, it's stupid whenever you try to sympathize with how they deal with it all you get called a shill. Not every dev is out there just trying to get our money and run.
Why does Microsoft rotate and recycle devs/contractors after 18 months followed by 6 months off to avoid having to pay out employee benefits to them, since that was a major contributing factor as to why Forza Motorsport's development suffered so much?
@@joshbacon8241Microsoft notoriously only cares about small profit margins rather than anything of quality. Same thing with halo infinites development and so on. It’s why it takes so long between updates. It’s terrible practice from management
I just wanna start off saying you absolutely cooked on these viduals, they're great! I've been to Daytona at least 15 times now the last few years and you absolutely nailed it.
This video really opened up how disfunctional the industry is and how the suits have lost all interests in making a good product instead want to please the investors as quick as possible. I'm sorry they put you through this and take back any shred of slander I put on the devs.
Finally Florida is flat because nature decided us Florida men were too dangerous and didnt want to give us a shred of high ground advantage or we'd be ruling the world by now.
Well man, I just wanna let you know that I really enjoy the game you put all that hard work in. It is not nearly as bad as everyone says.
18-6 month rotation will make sure experience will never set in as it supposed to...
If ppl come back after the 6 months then maybe, but i imagine many move on..
It also means like you said, for the ones filling the gaps, their workload will be huge.
I am very critical on T10 and Forza Motorsports and as nice as some things looks,
to me it is all about the gameplay.
But i can say that because i come from before the NES (Arcade hall)
I prefer the INDI mindset, where looks is not everything, but gameplay is.
On the other hand if the gameplay is good, i really do appreciate the nice graphics and all those details.
Thanks for sharing the insight. It helps understanding why it is what it is..
When goals, roadmaps and/or policies are bad,
that is not the fault or to blame to the dedicated work ppl put in.
Peace
I just got the game cause of game pass and feels just like the older forza (not sure if that’s a bad thing) but I like it haven’t seen any bugs besides the shaders for pc Xbox, but I think they just fixed that, only complaint is no Long Beach map! And probably vehicles that I won’t notice are missing, but it feels good to play it again
There is an old saying "none of us is as dumb as all of us", and that, I think, perfectly sums up the corporate decision making process. Rather than have a team that by the end of development would have 6yrs into knowing every nut, bolt, and line of code in the game, they decided to instead get the first 18 months of experience four times.
I completely understand why there's a backlog of unfixed bugs and unresolved issues- because there are likely VERY few people remaining who actually know how the game really works- or are having to figure it out as they go. Corporate stupidity at its finest.
I'm really curious to know if Playground games have similar issues with hiring full time employees given that they're based in the UK where the company won't have to worry about providing health care benefits, etc.
The 18/6 thing seems like a very American problem.
Sorry to hear about your job, and the way you were treated. I find it very odd that they would operate like that, I'd have thought they would try to build solid studio teams. But regardless, i love this game. I dont have any hate for it at all, i can see where this type of work practice has had an effect on some small areas of the game, but overall this game is cracking. You did a brilliant job on those maps, and hearing how much effort you put it makes me angry that people not in the know just fling out that they just reused maps etc.
But thank you for your input on this great game, and i hope you have a stable happy future.
No wonder Forza is in the state it is. The developers should have been permanent. This 18/6 rule is whats killing the game quality. Too bad Microsoft will never change this policy. But they need to.
I'm glad you found a new job elsewhere.
Microsoft can be *Forced* to change the 18/6 Policy, the Developers just need to have the Courage to *Go On Strike* ! As nothing destroys the Precious "Profit margins" faster than a Full Team *Strike* ! Industrial Action can *Literally Topple Governments* ! not just American Corporations who have gotten too big for their Boots!
However, this is a good warning to the rest of the world. *Never work for the Americans* !
Hey I finally got round to watching this, and i just wanna say I'm sorry that's a work practice you have had to work through. Its so bizarre sounding and completely backwards. I find it insane that I work alongside people who have been in dev at the studio i am at who have been there for decades, i couldn't imagine the vacuum of valuable knowledge and talent if there was an 18 month maximum term. I feel like the bonds and friendships we make along the way help build the games too, but how can they even develop if everybody is on a timer. Very insightful video, thank you for speaking about this experience and I hope your future in games is less disjointed.
id be careful about using the initial d music, avex entertainment gets really pissy about people using their music for some reason
Thanks for the heads up! I got a notice on the last song but the rest are ok for copyright but I’ll try and avoid it for now
Man i wanna give all the devs hugs