Changing 126 years of practice

    This week we decided to remove the Co-Op aspect of our game and decided to make it a single player, free-for-all racing game. Some people would say that I did not try hard enough while designing the levels, mechanics, and player experience. It seems that way when you first look at it, but from my perspective it felt like I was put in charge of adding a whole new aspect to this sport that has been around for centuries. I based the way we treat racing in out game on the spot of auto racing which has been practiced since 1887. The first auto races in history began when gas powered cars started to become more main stream. Most humans are by nature competitive, almost everyone wants to be considered "the best" at one point in their lives. Racing was born from new car owners wanting the the title of fastest driver and soon there were dozens of small racing competitions. In present day we almost 40 different types of auto racing but all of them share one common aspect, each type of auto racing has each participant racing for only themselves. With the huge emphasis on competition most forms of racing have stayed a non co-op event.

   And this is the reason why I, as well as the rest of the team decided to make our game a single player game. Even when forced to work as a team, people who are really competitive will act for themselves out of their passion/habit to be the best and to grab that first place spot. This has been scene in QA sessions since we have started. The first few maps where more open and as soon as the race started the players would pick their own path and completely forget about their teammate. When I created a map that put the same team members on completely different sides of the map they still would just run off by themselves in the hopes of winning by themselves. With the deadline for Capstone quickly approaching I had to either continue with the co-op and most likely present a broken game that misses the mark completely or change what the game is and create a better quality racing environment that also provides a hook.