Need for Speed: Most Wanted Community Day: Day 1 Recap

Added 09/30/2005 by Colin

Two days. Two days of gaming bliss. Two days of playing an unreleased game. Two days of talking to game developers. Two days of being whisked around Vancouver in a leather adorned luxury bus that would feel at home in Pimp my Ride. How was I able to do this? Believe it or not, I managed to actually go to EA’s Need for Speed: Most Wanted Community Day, and it was an experience not soon to be forgotten. An EA Community Day is truly a sight to behold, from my experience at this one and the stories told of others. At Community Day, select community sites, such as TalkXbox.com, are invited to visit an EA development studio to preview an upcoming EA game, and then are spoiled completely rotten for two days. As this was the first event I’ve been lucky enough to attend, I wasn’t sure what to expect. Needless to say, I had the good fortune of seeing and experiencing amazing things while there. Over the next week or so I will be covering both days of the event, as well as a full, in-depth, hands-on preview of Most Wanted, including some awesome video of the game in action. So, let’s bring an end to the rambling and move onto more interesting things. Without further ado, here’s Day One.

Like most great trips, this one began in an airplane. After an incredibly short 30 minute flight from Seattle to Vancouver, I ran into the bane of all travel, the sheer, focused, twin evils of Customs and Immigration. After a lengthy hour wait in line at Customs, I was sent to Immigration to have my information verified. With only 3 groups ahead of me, this should have been quick and easy. Unfortunately, the groups consisted of Asian families and none spoke English. At this point I was cutting it pretty close on arriving at the hotel on time to meet Jon (my EA contact) and the rest of the people heading to the Community Day. Still, I figured I was fine. So, next I headed to the curb, taxi voucher in hand, ready to find a ride to the Sutton Place. Alas, it was not meant to be. None of the taxis present were of the taxi company the voucher was good for, so I wound up waiting another good 30 minutes or so. However, all was well, as the girl manning the taxi booth was awesome, and we were able to talk due to it being a slow time for the taxi cabbers. It also didn’t hurt that she was pretty cute. Anyways, after a while the necessary cab arrived and I was finally on my way to the Sutton Place hotel.


The hotel was very swanky, the kind of place a business executive or a celebrity would stay. Or, apparently, the kind of place one stays if EA is flying you out for Community Day. Unfortunately, I’d missed the group, so I checked in as quickly as I could, ran upstairs, dropped my stuff in the room, and called up Jon. From there I procured a cab over to EAX, and met Jon in the lobby.

First of all, EAX is the downtown EA office, home to many EA executives as well as the Need for Speed team. It’s also known as EA Black Box. It’s situated on the top three floors of a big office building. Moving on, we rode the elevator up to the 17th floor. My first impression was of a very modern, very nice, extremely expensive office building. Kind of what you’d expect Ion Storm to look like back in the day, except these guys make games that actually ship. Exiting the elevator, to the left is displayed the EA logo doused in a slowly changing swab of color. To the right is a set of glass doors through which only those possessing a special keycard may enter. Jon swiped his keycard, and in we go. From here, directly ahead, there is an absolutely awe-inspiring spiral staircase, enclosed in a glass, in the middle of which a one million dollar bamboo tree is nurtured. It was air lifted in by helicopter during the original construction. We went through another door into the stairwell, and up a floor. There I signed in at the security desk, received my badge, and entered the conference room.


People were gathered all around the table, sitting and gaming. There were about 10 of us, representing sites from XGP Gaming to Xbox Solution to NFS Unlimited. I was shocked that the guy from NFS Unlimited was still standing, as he actually flew in from Slovenia. There were a couple of people standing and watching, but not many as we all wanted to get our hands on the game. To my right were two large flat screen HDTVs, one right on top of the other. To the side of those was a huge hi-def projector display, and in the corner a touch-screen console for controlling the entire room’s audio and video displays. Beneath the two flat screens was an Xbox devkit, a GameCube devkit, and a PS2 devkit. In the center was a very large conference table, on which were a bunch of TVs, each connected to a console. On one side of the table were Xbox debugs, on the other PS2 debugs. All were running the Need for Speed: Most Wanted demo. As there were no Xbox’s available, I sat down at the PS2 and commenced playing. Hard to admit, but….I sucked, and I’ll just blame it on the controller. After about 5 minutes it was clear no one else was going to show up, so we all headed off just down the block for dinner at Steamworks.

We went down to the bottom floor, where a nice long table was set up. Everything was on EA, so drinks were flowing freely. I had the good fortune of having Justin Wiebe, Associate Producer, sitting right in front of me; Raquel, Most Wanted marketing, sitting to my left; Jon across and to the left; and Katrina, Most Wanted marketing, to my front and left-left, so I had plenty of opportunity to pick their brains.

A couple of interesting things I found out:

• Most Wanted actually began development as an Xbox 360 title, at least in preproduction. They originally planned the title as a next-gen game, but after much deliberation, they decided to make it multi-console to ensure more people would have access to it.

• Production has had everyone building up a current-gen version of the game, then a whole separate set of tweaks and features and art is added to that version to create the Xbox 360 version.

• They've known that the Xbox 360 would have an optional HD since 6 months into preproduction.

• The design philosophy is to create a game that is enjoyed by the masses, but has features that the hardcore will also take to. For instance, the rap sheet and bounty scores. The casual gamers can have a blast being chased by cops and dodging roadblocks for hours on end, but the hardcore gamers can look up their rap sheet to find out their stats in a multitude of categories, and by trying to get acquire bounty points (the points that add up as you elude police and commit more felonies during pursuit).

• To the people that say that EA is ruining the industry by spitting out bad games, that’s not really the truth at all. It's that they create great games for the 90% majority of casual gamers, which makes millions upon millions of people happy. You can’t make everyone happy, but these people try. They make games that have a core game that is enjoyed by casual gamers everywhere, but has more in-depth features for the hardcore to enjoy.

• Most Wanted has been in development for 2 years

• Everyone there at EAX seems to love their job. You really don’t get the faceless suit vibe that you get from reading EA_spouse and such, everyone there is a gamer from the executive producer on down. They’re all there to make the best game they can, and put in the hours to do that. The team leads are often the last ones to leave every night. They want to create games that they can be proud of. They have a great work environment, tons of perks, and the long hours are just a by-product of that. Yes, some of that can be avoided by extra planning, and they are definitely working on that.
• When I asked about EA_spouse and the reaction amongst EA employees, Katrina said that the main thing was a sense of introspection, with the company, and industry, looking at what they do better. Most of the complaints that EA_spouse were not EA specific, but problems with the industry as a whole.
• I asked why they don't do more to show EA in a positive light, by being more active in the community by posting on forums and such. The answer is that it just isn't feasible. Justin tried for a while, but no one listens, they have their mindset and just want to bash EA. But, the dev team does listen to criticism. One of the main things that people wanted after Underground 2 was cops, and that's something that they added right off the bat. Also, even though the open world was nice in Underground 2, that open world was really a grid with set paths that felt almost like a rail racer, one way everywhere. They decided to fix that by creating a larger, more interactive world, with more ways to get places, like freeways and side streets.
• Another complaint was that there wasn't enough to do between races, so in NFS MW there are more things to do while going from point A to point B, such as dodging cops trying to haul you into the station.
• Unfortunately, they have no plans for putting in a hot coffee-esque hidden code to boost sales. However, Justin has a pretty cool idea for a flux capacitator that warps you to the 50’s, but there’s something about copyrights and trademarks that makes that a little difficult to implement.

After dinner, we all headed back to EA for some more quality time with the game demo. This time I was able to use an Xbox version, and, funny thing, I actually knew how to use the controller. Also, the graphics were spectacular and the gameplay a total blast once I found the nitro button.


After a while of that we went on a tour of the building. The first thing I noticed was that there were Xbox 360 debugs everywhere. As someone who has never seen a 360 or a 360 controller before, I probably stared like an idiot the first time I caught sight of it. The controllers look downright sexy.

Workspaces were sectioned off by cubicle-type walls, but they are all divided into large areas where whole teams and groups of people work together. It’s all very open-air and non-claustrophobic. There were a bunch of small conference rooms people could go to brainstorm or hang out, and a couple of huge exhibition rooms where the project leads could go over the latest builds from every possible angle, from 4 different TVs, so they can see what we, the consumers, will see from our living room. Justin described it as a bit anal, which is probably pretty accurate, though it’s great to know that they put that much effort in their work.

TThe project producer is a huge gamer himself, and in fact plays every single build to death, and gives direction as to how to proceed on things. If a track design has you going off a jump directly into a wall, he'll point that out and have it corrected. Everyone at EA seemed very happy with their job, intent on finishing the project, and genuinely interested, engaged, and focused on what they are doing. This isn't the bleak post-apocalyptic game industry painted by EA_spouse. No, this is a group of gamers looking to make a great game. Many desks have very nice Sony HDTVs, and a separate regular TV, along with a large monitor, or even two in some cases. Equipment is all top of the line at EAX.

Sound is incredible; they actually get each car, in real life, and take it to a sound recording studio to record the sounds. They get the sounds for everything, and then tune it IN REAL LIFE and get the sounds for that as well, from the real life tuned version. These guys are hardcore about sound.

The snack room is absolutely sprawling, they have hot pizza, snacks of every kind, candy, pop, soda, caffeine drinks, and the espresso machine from the Jetsons. It's crazy. From the snack room we headed out to the balcony where we could take pictures. The view was gorgeous, you could see the Vancouver Harbour Centre Lookout right over a building across the street, and we could see the moon literally coming over the horizon, brighter than you’ve ever seen. You could also see two cities across the water. It was truly a beautiful sight.

We then went back to the heavenly conference room, where we were given a presentation from Larry LaPierre, the Senior Producer.

From there we went back to the room, played some more Most Wanted, and headed back to the hotel in a luxury bus. Now, when some people talk about luxury busses, they mean a really nice bus. No. No. No. Think BIGGER! This wasn’t just a luxury bus, this was the pimped out van you’d see on some MTV special about awful spoiled singers being carted around. In other words, it was really nice. Leather seating everywhere, cool lighting, it was great. Too soon, the day came to an end as we arrived back at the hotel, each and everyone of us eagerly anticipating what tomorrow could bring.