Games
With this year's game almost due, we caught up with MotoGP 19's developers to discuss the challenges of an annual title, their advanced AI, the trouble with the Switch and what the next-gen may bring.
It can’t be easy to keep a yearly game fresh. Cast your mind back to the era before high-definition gaming, when titles like EA Sports’ FIFA would be castigated for 'updating the roster' every year. As the industry grew, budgets got bigger, but the audience became wiser and expected more. Thankfully, there are developers like Milestone out there delivering, it’s fair to say, niche racing experiences year on year, but working hard to make each new title better than the last.
MotoGP 19 is not Milestone’s first rodeo; not by a long shot. The Italian developers have been going strong since 1996 (though technically 1994, under the name Graffiti), with Screamer 2, and although the Superbike series came in around in the late '90s, 2007 saw MotoGP 07 hit PlayStation 2 and the rest is history. We had the chance to speak to Michele Caletti, the game’s producer, who gave us hints about the future of gaming, the development process itself, as well the difficulties of making a Switch version of their game.
“It's not that hard, if you love the sport, namely MotoGP”, he starts. Caletti is referring to making a new game every year, and he continues, “Going frequently to the races there's a tonne of detail behind the scenes that you'd like to capture and so inevitably you finish every year with a game you're proud of, but you've already got a wish list for the next year.” It’s perhaps an obvious statement, but one that, if you’re not in the mix making these games, you might not consider.
Milestone, as developers, work on a huge amount of racing games. Aside from MotoGP, there are the Ride games, the MXGP series, but there are also new games like Gravel, or more specific entries into the genre like Sébastien Loeb Rally Evo, or Valentino Rossi: The Game. We were curious as to how it works in-house at Milestone. "There's a core team on each project, while other people move from game to game during the development cycle,” Caletti explains, “we think this is the best trade-off between vision, integrity and efficiency."
Switching gears
Those teams must have grown a few years ago, too, since Nintendo’s Switch was released to widespread acclaim and it became a platform all developers needed to appear on. “Switch is a challenge within a challenge,” says Caletti. “The CPU and GPU power, but also the controls impose some limitations”. So perhaps MotoGP 19 on Switch is a different game, then? Not so, says Caletti: “We don't make an ‘alternative’ game, it's the same MotoGP, but we have to make it run on the hardware and make it fun to play. So expect the same content and the same overall experience.”
Indeed, the Switch itself poses an issue in that you simply cannot know how people are going to play it. The whole modus operandi of Nintendo’s hybrid console is that you can play on a rooftop with friends, or solo on a 65 inch 4KTV. “The main issue is the lack of analogue triggers on the Joycons,” says Caletti, “but it's not a huge deal, since you can remap throttle and brake to an analogue axis. The game works surprisingly well with different control schemes.”
Speaking of control schemes and alternative ways of playing, Sony’s PSVR is incredibly popular these days and Caletti confesses he’s a fan of VR, but that doesn’t quite mean we’ll be donning the virtual motorbike helmet just yet. “It'd be a dream,” he says, “but there’s a long way to go; we’ve more than 30 bikes on console and tha's a challenge even without VR. Let's look forward to the next generation!”
Future AI
That next generation isn’t too far away, either. With Sony already giving us hints about the PS5’s ultra-fast loading time thanks to SSDs, Xbox leaning towards being able to play games anywhere, and Google heading towards a streaming future, what would Caletti like to see from these consoles: what can the future bring? “We can expect some obvious improvements: 4K 60fps, but also more CPU power will be welcome,” he explains. “Our neural AI is extremely powerful but has a huge impact on CPU, so I’m sure we'll find a way to make effective use of the increased power.”
One of the big features of MotoGP 19 is neural AI, but what exactly is it? “It's not an AI based on rules: if this happens, do that,” Caletti explains, “It's an AI that has learned by itself with a huge number of attempts to be fast, reactive, consistent.” He continues, “So, it's more adaptive to the player and more performing. It's a small digital brain that has control of the bike and 'sees' the world, but all he can do has been developed independently with just some rewards to push positive behaviours!”
So with that in mind, we were curious as to how far this sort of AI can be pushed and what’s the impact on the game in the long term? “It's faster if you want a challenge,” says Caletti, “it shaved around two seconds off a lap from the previous AI system. It's more consistent and realistic, more adaptive to the player's actions. In perspective, we can not only improve this particular application, but also invent some new uses for it applied to graphics, animations... in five to 10 years it will just be everywhere.”
Hardcore roots
Caletti ensures us that while the team have creative freedom, they also know what the fans want. “Our core audience wants realism, a game faithful to the real MotoGP and there's a lot we can do in that direction,” he says. “All MotoGP games that have veered away from this path have failed, for a good reason.”
While technology is roaring forwards at tremendous speed, part of MotoGP’s appeal is also the option to delve into the sport’s history. Historical Challenges offer up the chance to race against some of the greats and while new events are in every new game, there are still those that Caletti dreams of. “There are many riders from the 500cc era that I’d like to include,” he explains, “but anything before 1992 isn't under the Dorna licensing and so is extremely hard to secure. Well, we're left with 27 years of competition, so I think we're covered!”
We’ll be there on the starting line when MotoGP 19 is released for PS4, Xbox One, PC and Nintendo Switch on June 6, 2019.
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