It’s a theme of my time at EA, that - at least in my opinion - I came up with a bunch of ideas and opportunities that could have been significant for the company. But in most cases, I couldn’t persuade the company to place those bets. Let me say that I don’t hold any grudges about the games I wanted to get made that never did. I’m hugely disappointed and will whine about it for as long as you will allow me - but I respect that its not my money or house on the line if it doesn’t work out, so those charged with the responsibility to make the final call need to be allowed to do that. It’s just that they could have so much bigger houses if they had listened to me…! :-)
When Tiburon put me in charge of the NASCAR franchise, I identified that we were making an OK simulation racing game (because EA SPORTS’ mantra was ‘If its in the game its in the game’ and Tiburon was about simulation 101), and yet the market data shows that in terms of videogames, only 25% of the buying NASCAR public were ‘gear-heads’ - i.e. interested in the actual racing. The majority of the NASCAR gaming audience were interested in NASCAR as an event - the tailgating, the rivalries between the drivers and teams and, of course, the crashes! More NASCAR fans bought EA’s Burnout game than EA’s official NASCAR racing game.
Now, I had my problems with the racing simulation I inherited - when I offered criticism the game team told me, “You’re too used to F1 and arcade racing games, this is a technical simulation, in the real-world you couldn’t drive 3-wide at 180-miles-per-hour on the turns”. I agreed. But I damn well could drive out of pit-row without spinning out, which I couldn’t do on the official EA simulation! But those were problems we could solve (and indeed, I think we went a long way to doing so on NASCAR 08).
No, I thought that we needed to think differently about NASCAR, and I proposed an online sanctioned racing league as a serous racing simulation, taking in NASCAR, F1, Indy Cart and more, to appease our EA SPORTS mission. I also proposed an arcade racing game, NASCART. Essentially, a NASCAR version of Mario Kart: add storylines for drama and allow personalization for users and league play.
A few people on the NASCAR and JDGROUP teams rallied around the idea and drank the cool aid, especially the genius that is Paul Kashuk, who created some awesome concept art.
If I say so myself, it was a brilliant idea :-) NASCAR loved it. EA SPORTS… not so much so. It went against the whole ‘If it’s in the game…’ mantra. It was never to be.
After I had left Tiburon, my friends at EA North Carolina - who I would later have responsibility for but at that time were part of EA SPORTS and who were previously on the NASCAR franchise at Tiburon - were asked to come up with a filler game that was essentially a watered down version of NASCART. They developed and published NASCAR Kart Racing. It was a fun game but - at least in my mind - it lacked the personality and stories that NASCART promised.
