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Real Racing’s real challenge
Can Firemonkey’s jawdropping racer continue to hold the lead in mobile?
Real Racing’s real challenge.
© Firemonkeys Studios/EA
There once was a time when merely suggesting that a smartphone could provide a compelling racing experience comparable to console classics like Gran Turismo or Forza would have earned you the derision of your peers. 2009's Real Racing changed all of that.
Coded by Australian studio Firemint – now known as Firemonkeys after joining up with Melbourne neighbours Ironmonkey Studios in 2012 – this iPhone release delivered the kind of authentic driving experience that had been the exclusive domain of dedicated consoles. Since then, the franchise has spawned two successful sequels and remains one of the most popular series on smart devices.
The story of Firemint – and by extension, Real Racing – goes back a long time. Originally founded back in the 1990s as ndWare by Rob Murray, the company would specialise largely in contract work, creating games for other companies. "Rob was a programmer who had been writing games for a number of years and wanted to branch out and start his own company," Real Racing producer Ptolemy Oberin tells Red Bull.
"He had the opportunity to make a kart racer for the Game Boy, so he started ndWare and took the contract. After that, if it was a hand-held game, ndWare/Firemint would work on it." For the first decade of its life, Firemint was focused almost entirely on creating games for other companies. "Firemint was never hyper-focused on one type of genre or license," continues Oberin. "We would make anything for anyone if it made sense for us. Firemint also worked on many games for feature phones before smartphones arrived. Firemint's first mobile phone game was released in 2003, long before mobile games were well known."
But when Apple launched the iPhone and its groundbreaking App Store, things did change – and with its deep knowledge of mobile gaming, Firemint was perfectly positioned to ride the crest of this exciting new wave. The company's breakout hit was Flight Control, arguably one of the first smartphone titles to truly harness the power of the capacitive touchscreen. However, it's a little known fact that this devilishly addictive air traffic control simulation was in fact a practice run for Firemint's true smash-hit.
"We were working hard on Real Racing and just wanted to put out something to see how the App Store worked and get a feel for the whole process," explains Oberin. "Over the 2008 Christmas break, Rob decided to make a game for fun, and came back into work with the first version of Flight Control. Our Art Director Jess West then created all the art and visuals that everyone now loves, and in only three months it was live on the App Store. Its success was a big surprise to us and greatly helped the company. It allowed us to focus more on original IP instead of needing to constantly do contract work for other publishers."
With a breakthrough App Store success under its belt, Firemint pushed forward with Real Racing's development. The timing was fortuitous. "Some of the new phones at the time were powerful enough to really start ramping up the graphics quality," says Oberin. "We had experience with the genre and knew we could take advantage of the phones to create a previously unseen quality on mobile. Initially we were working on it for high-end feature phones when the iPhone came out. The power of the iPhone and the ease of self-publishing to the App Store presented us with a perfect opportunity to release original IP outside the traditional big publisher route."
What followed was nothing short of a revelation, for smartphone players at least. Real Racing offered the unthinkable; a console-quality driving experience on a device that could slip effortlessly into your pocket. "It was definitely a technical and artistic challenge to bring Real Racing to life at the quality we wanted," states Oberin. "Instead of coming from console or PC game dev and trying to cut down a game to work on the platform, we were taking the approach of making a normal phone-size game and making it look amazing on the iPhone. It was also a huge amount of luck that put Firemint with the right people at the right time with the right phones."
The critical and commercial reaction was enthusiastic, to say the least. Real Racing was heralded as one of the games of the year, and did a lot to change people's perceptions of smartphone gaming. "We were thrilled when other people liked our work and enjoyed the game," replies Oberin when asked how the overwhelming reaction affected Firemint as a studio. "Working on something that people clearly enjoy is a huge boost. It helped us create a number of updates for it, and spurred on the creation of the future Real Racing titles. We certainly never expected that Real Racing would still be under active development this many years later."
Right from the start, Firemint's developers knew the value of having full control over their game-making tools. The Real Racing game engine, for example, is entirely bespoke. "Our engine doesn’t have to be generic," says Oberin. "While things like Unity are fantastic off the shelf products and help a lot of games get up and running very fast, it has to be able to support any type of game so it’s not tailored to one specific genre. Our engine really lets us tweak and optimise to the device's limits, as we only have to make what we’re actually working on look fantastic. Real Racing has always prided itself on the being the top title in terms of graphics and we put a lot of time into making sure the tech can handle everything we want to push to the screen. The custom engine allows us the opportunity to eke out those extra few frames, or that one extra effect to keep us ahead of the pack."
However, as any developer will tell you, no game is every truly perfect. Oberin admits that when creating the first Real Racing, too much focus was given to the game's visuals – and this had a detrimental effect on the rest of the package. This was not a mistake that Firemint would make twice.
"We spent a large amount of time on Real Racing focusing on the graphics to make it look amazing," he says. "While we’re certainly very proud of how great it looked, it's actually a very small game in terms of content. It was also completely fictional with no real world content. While we worked on greatly improving the graphics in Real Racing 2, we also put more time in the game itself; adding more events for a longer career, real licensed cars from a range of manufacturers and more tracks. Real Racing 2 looks better than the original, but it was also a giant leap in terms of the amount of content and gameplay it offered."
Real Racing 3.
© Firemonkeys Studios/EA
It might seem like an obvious choice – especially when console racers like Driveclub and Forza Horizon all boast proper cars – but introducing real-world vehicles was a seismic shift and played a big role in Real Racing 2's popularity with petrol-heads.
"The original Real Racing did not have any licensed cars at launch – the content was all fictional," explains Oberin. "Once it became successful, we were able to license a car for an update almost a year after launch. The rest of the game, however, remained unlicensed. The initial splash that Real Racing made definitely allowed us to add licensed content, both to Real Racing in updates but also then for the seocnd an third games. Once we could show manufacturers how many people would play the game and how good we could make their cars look, it really opened the door to the real world content."
It wasn't just car makers who were sitting up and taking notice of Firemint's talents. In 2011, publishing giant Electronic Arts acquired the studio for an undisclosed sum, turning the company into an in-house studio. Oberin explains that while EA's purchase has been incredibly beneficial, it hasn't completely changed the firm.
"The weight behind the EA brand is immense," he says. "The amount of people who will now return our calls has certainly helped out a lot in terms of getting the best content for our players. The content we’re able to deliver and the opportunities we’re now able to chase have definitely opened up. On a day-to-day level though, things are almost exactly as they were before we joined EA. Even the staff are mostly the same as they were – there are four people who have hit their 10-year anniversary, with a few more in the six-to-nine year range. The team has certainly grown over the years, but the people making Real Racing 3 under EA’s logo are the exact same people who made Real Racing and Real Racing 2, and work in much the same way as they always have under the Firemint logo."
More changes came in the following year, with EA combining Firemint with IronMonkey Studios to form Firemonkeys Studios. "The merger really allowed the two studios to share knowledge and people," explains Oberin. "For the first few months after Firemint joined EA, it was a weird situation with two studios, owned by the same company working only kilometres apart. We’re also making the same kind of games – HD quality free-to-play mobile titles. Sharing the same office space and trying to figure out a lot of the shared problems together just made sense, and has helped out immensely."
Real Racing 3 features real world cars and tracks.
© Firemonkeys Studios/EA
Some critics will claim that EA's influence has been a negative one, however. Real Racing 3 upset a lot of fans by adopting a free-to-play model which encourages players to consistently cough up real-world money. Despite the criticism the game received at launch, Oberin is adamant that the right course of action was taken.
"We want our games to be played by the most amount of people possible, and to be the best game possible," he says. "Going free and being funded by in-app purchases allows us to do both of these things. Many more people have played and enjoyed Real Racing 3 than all of our previous games combined.
"The free-to-play aspect also allows us to keep releasing content for the game; with a premium game, you make all your money on week one and then you move on to a new title after an update or two, if you're lucky. With a free-to-play game, you lose a lot of that day one spike, but you get a much longer tail, which allows us to keep adding and improving the game as we go. The improvements aren't just small updates either. We launched with 46 cars, and now have almost 110. We launched without real-time multiplayer, without car customisation, without race teams, without limited time events, and without tracks like Monza, Dubai and Nurburgring. The free-to-play model has allowed us to add all these things and more so that the game constantly gets better the longer it's out."
Indeed, Real Racing 3 has been supported in emphatic fashion since launch (the game first launched way back in Spring 2013, an aeon in mobile development), with regular content updates ensuring that player interest remains high – a key concern when you consider that the game is free to download and play, and relies entirely on in-app purchases to turn a profit.
"We put out an update about every six weeks and have been for over two years," Oberin says. "This content has kept the game going and we still have a huge number of players engaging with the new content. If people weren't playing and enjoying it we'd stop making it – but while everyone is still hanging out for more cars, tracks and features we’ll keep putting them out.
"It's really great to work on a title like this as you can take a lot of the player feedback and give the players what they want. Our community has asked for tracks such as Monza and Nurburgring, and because we're still working on the game we can give them that. The team working on Real Racing 3 currently is virtually the same as the team that was working on it the week we launched. We all had ideas of cool things to add, or things that didn't make the schedule initially, so when you combine that with the amount of feedback and suggestions we get it really gives us an almost unlimited number of things to work on."
With smartphone triumph assured, it's tempting to ask if Firemonkeys have considered bringing the Real Racing series to platforms where it can be tested against the best console titles in the business. "It's been talked about, but the conversation always ends up at the same place: the entire team is still working on Real Racing 3 updates as hard as ever," replies Oberin. "Other platforms wouldn't really allow us to keep the same six-week update schedule where we can continually provide new content. It's certainly an interesting idea, but it's not something we're actively exploring."
Even so, it's logical to assume that sooner or later, Firemonkeys will move onto a new project – and while Oberin refuses to rule out next-gen consoles or PCs, he's keen to stress that the studio is laser-focused on the sector it knows the most about.
"Our goal always has and always will be about making really great games that players love," he says. "Our future hopefully holds more of the same. We'll never count out the possibility of working on other platforms such as consoles or PC, but our focus right now is still really on the smartphone and tablet markets since that's the most exciting space at the moment. You can get an insane level of quality on the top devices these days, and if you're at home you can often also output that to your TV. It's really exciting and we're looking forward to see where it goes and how far we can push the newer and newer hardware to make our games look and play even better."
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