Codemasters talks up F1 2011

By Wesley Yin-Poole Published 8 November, 2010

"We'll put a lot more into the game's design."

Codemasters' Formula 1 series will eventually feed times set by real life drivers to the player so they can compete with them in real time.

The beginnings of this will be seen in F1 2011, confirmed for release next year, Codemasters told Eurogamer.

"You're not going to see us on the next one just add a couple more tracks and a couple more drivers because it's the F1 2011 version," CEO Rod Cousens promised.

"We'll put a lot more into the game's design and we'll add more and more to it. They can start to almost really be the driver. They'll have to strategically figure out the pit stops, when to buy the fuel, what tyres to drive on.

"Eventually you'll go down the line where you will feed telemetry data in real time to the consumer to let them adjust their car because they get serious about racing against their hero, who could have posted a time two hours beforehand. And you've got the real track sat in front of you.

"It's our responsibility to keep the consumer engaged."

F1 2010 was a commercial and critical success for Codemasters.

It scored an excellent 8/10 in Eurogamer's review, and debuted in the UK all-formats chart at number one.

Cousens praised the development team for its hard work: "It's a lot more than it all fell in our laps," he said of F1 2010's success.

Cousens also discussed how Codemasters' Birmingham studio, which is responsible for the F1 series, is tackling the difficult challenge of making a new F1 game every year.

"On GRID and DIRT we don't annualise them, we do them every second year," Cousens explained. "But on F1 you have to annualise it, so to an extent you run parallel teams.

"They have that issue on FIFA. You have an overlap. The first six months, as they finish they come on and start the next one and it goes through. So you have a team and a half in many ways to annualise it. Otherwise your development time becomes six to eight months and you compromise the product."

In September Eurogamer exclusively revealed that Codemasters had begin work on the next instalment in the F1 franchise.

"[We have the most work to do on] Live the Life and multiplayer, just because we've had to invest that much time in the first one on the career, the meat and bones, the driving, the pit-stops, the weather," Senior producer Paul Jeal said.

"We had some great ideas which have been fairly well stripped back in development for both Live the Life and multiplayer."

Picture of Wesley.

About Wesley Yin-Poole

Wesley is Eurogamer's news editor. He likes news, interviews, and more news. He also likes Street Fighter more than anyone can get him to shut up about it.

Read more articles from Wesley by visiting the Wesley Yin-Poole archive page.

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Comments (31) Latest comment 2 years ago

Comments for this article are now closed, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • Jay-ITFC #1 2 years ago

    Sounds promising. F1 2010 plays much better after the patch. Just need AI retirements and safety cars in future...

  • clubnail #2 2 years ago

    Too early to start shilling the next version. At least let the dust settle on this season first.

  • Eraysor #3 2 years ago

    They just need to sort out the annoying pit-lane release glitch where the game casually lets every car behind you drive through...this happened to me yesterday >_

  • FreakyZoid #4 2 years ago

    on F1 you have to annualise it,
    Have to?

  • altitude2k #5 2 years ago

    Feeding real-time data to the game is a brilliant idea in theory, but in practice there's a big problem with it.

    Those who are keen enough to want to do that, are more likely to want to actually watch the race. Would be better to be able to download the stats post-race and then give it a go yourself.

    Also, it would be great to do a season in that way, but how would that work when it's released in September?
    Edited by altitude2k at 08/11/10 @ 12:22

  • I\'mListening #6 2 years ago

    anoyone else getting post patch freezing? (360 version). I have the game installed to my hard drive but every qualy session the game locks up for a second or two before resuming. Race seems fine however. Oh, and STILL no sector three times

  • Mkwone #7 2 years ago

    I'm near the start of career in my game at the moment and i'm enjoying it immensly, but i do have a few issues.

    Local multiplayer is a must, sure there's time trials but it's 1 lap at a time and the load times are a killer.

    More DNF's, especially in the rain - not seen one yet and the only non finisher so far was Vettel who got disqualified

    Safety Cars

    More rewinds (Let the player determine how many they want to infite) and with a longer rewind period

    Actually let us check out our team mates setup

  • metroid455 #8 2 years ago

    AHAHAHAHA LOL the 2010 version still needs fixing and yet there talking about 2011?
    honestly this sort of S**t should not be tolerated and yet it is,what a sad generation of gaming where in

  • AaronTurner #9 2 years ago

    When to buy the fuel???

  • banjo21 #10 2 years ago

    Moto GP had that "real times fed to the game" idea about 4 years ago - and that never made it into the game either afaik.

    I think they should concentrate on the game and not the fluff once off the track. Real risk this becomes a management sim and not a driving sim.

    Please CM, keep it on the track.

  • Vedfolner #11 2 years ago

    It's just silly to have all these annual releases. Don't they want people to get the most out of their games before running out and buying new ones (that they won't fully enjoy either)?

  • altitude2k #12 2 years ago

    I think it says a lot for Codemasters' first effort in creating an F1 game when everyone agrees that it was as glitchy as hell, but yet noone could put it down.
    Edited by altitude2k at 08/11/10 @ 12:53

  • Darren #13 2 years ago

    F1 2010 is a good game but it was clearly released unfinished as it had loads of bugs and issues which the recent patch doesn't quite fix. The PC patch actually breaks wet races as puddles and reflections mysteriously vanish as soon as the race starts and rain drops on the visor appear oversized and pixellated. There is a fix but it breaks SLI/CrossFireX support for the game and kills the framerate. For now, I've reverted to forcing DX9 with the fix proposed by Codemasters on Friday and so far it is working well.

    I do hope that Codemasters play test the sequel more thoroughly though; I really do hate this "release now, patch later" attitude that many publishers have adopted. It's not fair to make your customers wait a month for a patch to address issues that should not have been there in the first place had the game been properly tested.

  • secombe #14 2 years ago

    Have to annualise?! Financially or contractually, I presume they mean.

    Surely we must be at or near a point with interweb connections where they can profit from releasing a full retail game one year then do a 20 quid DLC the next to update for the next season (tracks, drivers, liveries , rules etc)

    Due to the nature of F1 it would still need to be mid season at the earliest. They could then concentrate on the real big changes every two years in the full retail release.

  • chasejamie #15 2 years ago

    The best of the best.

  • gribb #16 2 years ago

    "when to buy the fuel," this guy knows nothing about F1. He may be a CEO but I'll wait for word from Codemasters Birmingham before a feature set is confirmed.

  • themorganator #17 2 years ago

    @Ap3xx - no need for the abuse - he's made a reasonable comment.

    Loving F1 but would like to see the following (including the points made by others):

    1) way to fiddly racing others in TT mode. I shouldn't have to jump through tons of menus just to find my mates time, load it, then race. Look at Trials HD and you'll see what I'm getting at.
    2) Safety car would be cool
    3) when you adjust to dry/ max downforce (engineer pre-set) and then edit the car manually, why does your engineer spec return to dry/ medium on the pre-sets (360 version)?

    Other than that, loving the game and can't wait for another. Wish it wasn't every year though...

  • FooAtari #18 2 years ago

    @snedwan
    For instance my best time around Interlagos is in the 1m08s which is 6 seconds quicker than race time yesterday

    I guess physics is the first problem. Not only does the car physics have to be extremely accurate (and F1 2010 sure as hell isn't), so does the environment, correct grip level for the circuit for a start.

  • Antaios #19 2 years ago

    Love F1 2010, will probably buy F1 2011 is there's much of an improvement. :)

    That being said: "In September Eurogamer exclusively revealed that Codemasters had begin work on the next instalment in the F1 franchise." Do you have to keep sticking feathers in your own cap all the time, EG?

  • JimWest #20 2 years ago

    @freakyzoid

    Yes have to. It'll be the contract that they have with the FIA that states a version must be released every year. Hence the PSP and Wii versions of F1 2009 to fulfil that quota.

  • metalangel #21 2 years ago

    @Ap3xx: it wasn't like they'd never made a racing game before, don't make excuses for them.

  • Turrican #22 2 years ago

    I think that Codemasters have made a good looking fun game in F1 2010 and I hope they can make it even better with 2011. However my worry is that what they are building on is a quick fix modification of the Dirt Ego engine and as such the shortcuts they've had to take to make it work will not last them through multiple iterations of the product.

    If they are studying how other studios do yearly game churn then at least provide the support SI give to Football Manager with patches than the commercial two fingers EA give to fixing each year's Fifa.

  • Shikasama #23 2 years ago

    Sp why the fuck should I buy the first one

  • Cronan #24 2 years ago

    Ah, so it's to be an annual franchise then? I hope it works out for all the fans ...

  • Rodchenko #25 2 years ago

    Despite the many issues I find this game extremely addictive and well-balanced, particularly for a first outage. For me it's the best F1 racing game in existance and strikes a perfect balance between sim and playability.

    Like everyone else said, safety cars and more retirements would be welcome, though. I want to see stuff like Hamilton blowing the championship in the pit stop entry's gravel trap, or Vettel being taken aback by a blown up engine. I'd also welcome an implementation of a proper TV-broadcast-style replay (without stupid music in the background) and the ability to follow other cars besides one's own during practice and qualifying sessions.

    And to moaners like metroid455: the world (or Codemasters) doesn't owe you anything. If you don't like it, then don't buy it. Simple as.

  • HyperShadow #26 2 years ago

    I would like to see some mechanical faliures in the races, on both my cars and the AI, it gets boring when the car is bullet proof. I want to tell stories of how I heroically drove to a podium despite not having 3rd or 4th gears or soething like that.

    I also want some telemetry, so I can adjust my setup based on data rather than seat of my pants guesswork.

    Other than that, I enjoy F1 2010, and look forward to the next one.

  • Subdominator #27 2 years ago

    I just hope the next one fixes all the glitches and bugs and comes out early in the season. April/May would be nice.

  • Bigmac1910 #28 2 years ago

    Sold, if they make it better and more engaging they will get my money next year as well, really enjoying F1 2010, wouldn't mind if they could release it earlier in the season though.

  • tiny_Ash #29 2 years ago

    awesome stuff. really glad this is going to be an annual thing and i would really like to see FAILURES and SAFTEY CARS for the next game.

    nice to see the price coming down now aswell. more people to play online :) - Bought mine from Amazon - http://amzn.to/axrhlN

  • secombe #30 2 years ago

    No chance of an earlier release from what I understand. Many things in F1 are unconfirmed until the absolute last minute (so mid March), then they have to away and code all the changes. On top of that, teams have to sign off every minute detail (this time around it took a month just to get confirmation back iirc)...and for the second season in a row we will have a circuit which doesn't exist yet.

    September is fine by me, more time to play games in the motorsport off-season.

  • Jay-ITFC #31 2 years ago

    The annual release is more to do with paying for the (very expensive) F1 licence than anything else...