Today I'm playing some B3

CrashedAlex's picture
Submitted by CrashedAlex on Fri, 07/25/2014 - 13:22

Now that I keep my Xbox 360 at the Three Fields Office it will probably get fired up some more.

Not much to share right now - we're hard at work on our first two games and they are progressing.

We're a really small team so we hope everyone can be patient with us.

We're not currently making anything racing related - but we hope to in the future. It's been awhile, but I think I am interested again in doing something *more special* than B3 was.

Hope everyone is enjoying the Summer - the weather here in England has been nothing short of spectacular lately. Our office is very special - on a huge Estate of 80 acres, we're on the edge of woodland, so lots of fresh air and open space.

It's the perfect enivronment to make games really. Definitely makes a change from the corporate looking and feeling EA office we used to worked in. We certainly don't miss ID badges, security gates, security guards, and being surrounded by people who neither make or play games.

To the future then...

 

Alex

Comments

ZombieTron's picture

ZombieTron

Fri, 07/25/2014 - 20:27

More special than B3 might not be easy! That game is pure magic, good to know we aren't the only ones who still boot it up every now and then!

Glad you are having a good summer. It's been pretty spectacular at BurnoutAholics HQ too. Lots of barbecues and swimming.

Thanks for keeping us posted. :)

CrashedAlex's picture

CrashedAlex

Wed, 07/30/2014 - 13:06

You know - from my point of view - it would feel easier.

I spent the past decade of my life pretty much thinking about Burnout night and day.

When I think about all of the games I've worked on - the main issues were always

- the limitations of the technology. The hardware was always pretty underpowered. So it took a long time just to get things up on screen.

- interest - with technology restrictions, aged tools and big teams - with long developments, it was often hard, if not impossible to keep everyone interested. And if everyone is being really really honest, a lot of folks weren't.

- fixed release dates - when you start with the end date fixed on day one then that's where the compromises begin. The focus is about hitting that date and that starts most conversations  - rather than 'what do we do to make the best game."

- big teams - making games is just a chore with big teams. I honestly have no idea how Ubisoft do it so well. How do you feel any sense of ownership when you're 1 of 900?

To support more platforms, we had big teams and silo'd develoment groups. One group focuses entirely on putting cars into the game. One group just does the art or "the World."

- aged tools - Times change, but when you're cranking out the games year in and year out - the tools don't have time to improve. You need to be FAST to make a great game.

If we weren't called Three Fields Entertainment (and that's solely because I was reading "interstellar" the week before we could form) then we would have called ourselves Marathon Lightweight. We played a LOT of MW2 and being fast and light was always fun.

So all of that is the world we left behind. That we walked away from.

Now we have the freedom to do what we want, on the hardware we want, using the tools that we want. It's just such an incredible feeling to have the freedom again. And the last time I felt like this was when Criterion was developing *THAT* game.

I hope that Three Fields will become the English version of American Zoetrope, the film Studio that Francis Ford Coppola formed with George Lucas - it was about creating a place where talent film makers could go and be free to do their work.

Freedom - great ideas, great tools, powerful hardware, great people - it's a win-win for me. I hope to start about a year from now.