Chatty, market-savvy producer Ian Bell, who has guided development on titles like GTR 2, Project Cars and Need for Speed Shift, has assembled a new team with New funding and new staff, and plans to lug Simbin’s old GTR legacy. Many of us are of course curious about what the hell happened to the absolutely record-breaking horror Project Cars 3. At this point, Codemasters had acquired Slightly Mad Studios, and owner Bell was told to take a big step back and not interfere with development too much, as Codemasters with Project Cars 3 apparently wanted to try to appeal to more drivers with a more driveable and arcade-friendly focus. Broad “casual” audience. Something that doesn’t really work. He has now commented on this in a recent interview with Bale.
Ian Bell on the fiasco that is Project Cars 3：
“Project Cars 3 is one game where I don’t have direct input into the details. I’m directly involved with every race and will be driving the car constantly, giving constant feedback. But during the development of Project Cars 3, I took a step back and once We were taken over by Codemasters, and I was advised to stop getting involved in the micro details altogether. I’m not sure if that’s an overall positive. Besides, we didn’t want to call it Project Cars 3 at all. I sat at a table with twenty other people at Codemasters Aside, publicly stated that we wanted to call it Project CARS: Sideways, to give the community a signal that we were going in a different direction, with some sort of semi-open world area.
The idea is that we’re going in the direction of Forza Horizon compared to Forza Motorsport. I got voted down, and I got voted down, because I was told that the investors insisted that we call the game Project Cars 3 because that’s what would sell. This decision is completely against my terms of reference, completely against my advice, and with which I do not agree. So it’s not a game I’m proud of. This is not the way out either. I did my best to at least try to change the name. I did my best to try and position it more like Forza Horizon than Forza Motorsport. You know, we sometimes have to live with these decisions because investors are paying crazy money to make these things happen.
What do you think of Project Cars 3?
