In games as in life, you often want to come first in whatever it is you happen to be doing but DriveClub developer Evolution Studios is trying to give people reasons to play beyond achieving pole position.
Speaking to the PlayStation Blog, game director Paul Rustchynsky remarked:
“I like the idea that you don’t have to be in first place. I want everybody to enjoy the thrill of racing.
“It’s demoralising when you make a mistake and it costs you the race. With DriveClub we challenged ourselves to design a better game that deals with this aspect of racing. What we’ve come up with is a racer that constantly gives you new goals to aim for, whether you’re way out in front of the pack or find yourself spinning out of control because you pushed your car a little too far.”
He said that DriveClub seeks to do away with the 'all or nothing' mentality which you find in most racers and to do this, they're adding challenges.
“With DriveClub, if you’re racing online and you make a mistake it’s not game over. You don’t lose everything and you’ve still got dynamic Face-offs to keep playing for."
Rustchynsky added that in Motorstorm RC Evolution tested out this system and while would eventually reach their limit they were surprised to find some gamers performing the same challenge hundreds of times a day despite the absence of any real reward. The challenges system has been fleshed out for DriveClub and bonuses added for doing well in the challenges which will include activities like maintaining a high average speed on a certain section of track, for example.
DriveClub will be released exclusively on PS4 on October 8th.