As one of the most ardent critics of the New Forza Motorsport, this sheds a very bright light on why much of the game feels rushed or unfinished, especially with Microsoft not keeping devs around for more than 18 months and letting senior devs go that close to the deadline.

Hey, FrieNDA, I'm also a former environment artist at Turn10, from a bit before your time (Forza 4, 5, and some stuff that landed between Horizon 2 and 6). There's a chance we knew and worked with some of the same people, and I'm almost POSITIVE that if you went back far enough in Perforce on some of the files you worked on, my old alias is on a few of them for checkins. Oh man, did everything you talked about sound familiar. Nothing has changed there in over 10 years. If you want, it would be a kick to shoot the breeze together and I can give you some stories about back in the day, especially shipping Forza 5 as a XBOne launch title. I've also got some behind the scenes insight from across the years into how Microsoft Games Studios approaches art content and artists, Turn10 in particular. I'm retired from gamedev so I have no qualms speaking my mind. :)

Really appreciate the transparency, hope you're doing great! I overall can't understand the want to constantly cycle through new heads Vs being more efficient with keeping them longer for the sake of experience... finishing up the tracks so late is quite interesting too

This is an unsustainable practice. No wonder games take 3x as long as they used to be made only to release in a lackluster state

Wow the only real transparency video I've ever seen from a Turn 10 employee. It explains why the game barely works.

As a developer myself, it was obvious that something not good was going on with the developers of this game, thanks for sharing your experience. The turnover explains why the game is such a mess. Turn 10 is shooting themselves in the foot, as do many studios that don't put their developers first.

"Exhausting" doesn't begin to describe the development of this game. The 18/6 rule really hurt this game.

goddamn insane how they decided to not rehire one of the senior devs THIS CLOSE TO THE RELEASE. this sounds like hell to work on.

As a game dev who was also contracted, I was furious when I put everything into a project and got let go. I was just another number and my contribution went completely unappreciated by my team leads, despite a lot of the dev team I worked alongside said that they were approving all the work and issues I was finding. I've yet to get back into the industry and I'm really struggling to get my foot back in the door. It absolutely sucks. Sorry you went through the same thing I did. I am glad you were able to find other employment at a place that appreciates you!

i want to add, nobody has a problem with the scenery outside the track, one of the few things we all think looks great

Don’t worry. We dont hate the devs that worked on the game, rather the higher ups, those that only wanna please their shareholders for all the wrong reasons. Great video, great insight! I am however curious, if you can talk about that but…. How much more time would this game have needed to be released as an actual finished and stable experience? I know y’all were busting your asses off, and had to resort in re-using assets, but with the promise of “built from the ground up”, what would have been a realistic release date? Thats what i am actually curious. Sorry to hear about the 18 months contracts… that friggen sucks man :(…

Man, this contract work to get around healthcare and full time benefits is so similar to the WWE philosophy of considering wrestlers "independent contractors". It's really worrying for the devs that this is the direction things are pointing, and it can't be a great thing to have looming over your head all the time. Based on the number of L's Microsoft has taken with releases in the past couple years, it seems to only be leading to worse products being pushed out. Unless it's cutting so many costs that profits are higher, but I can't fathom how FM has been a very profitable venture.

Damn that's insane, higher ups do the equivalent of scrolling Twitter all day. The ones in charge couldn't wait to shove this out the door.

I’ve been playing Nordschliefe for the last couple days. Fantastic work on the terrain. The game is steadily improving. As a Florida local, my home circuit is Sebring, so I laughed at the lack of mountains comment. I’m really hoping the bring back Sebring soon as it’s my closest real life reference point.

I said this on the 'Gran Turismo 7 vs Forza Motorsport' Digital Foundry video: "The new FM smacks of staff and budget cuts..." I don't hate it, I think the game looks good and performs well but some frustrating decisions spoil things, like dropping the option to increase career race lengths from FM7 coupled with having limited-time events with exclusive prize cars. This actually makes those short races a grind for me. (Would rather spend my time doing longer free play races) I sarcastically joked when Nordschleife was announced that I couldn't wait for 1-lap races and here we are. The bottom line is they need to keep people like you with a clear passion on the team moving forward if they want to win back fans.

Thank you so much for all your hard work. It’s insane how much you had to do. Big respect! ❤️

Thank you for doing what you do! As a programmer myself in college, I couldn’t even comprehend the workload you had to go through. It makes me happy someone so dedicated to the game has been working on the beautiful landscapes!

This is one of the videos with an insight I thought we'd never get. I've been quite careful when criticising certain game features to blame management, time, and company decisions rather than the people on the ground working hard. It must be difficult to lose key members of a team, then pick up their role knowing you will suffer the same fate no matter how well you adjust to it. Eye-opening that all other teams will have suffered from similar constraints if they weren't full-time. On the plus side, the terrain and track environments have always felt solid to me in the new FM, so thank-you for your great work.

goddamn, replacing workers every 18 months seems like a terrible way to develop games.

ah, how did i miss this? we didn't directly interact much, but i loved working with y'all in environments as your frontline tester for those 18 months. for all that that time sucked, the people were always a pleasure. watching Hakone come together was such a joy and i am still SO FUCKING MAD that they cut the extended version which had some of my favorite curves in the entire game!

As someone going into this industry, its stories like these that make me question my decision to pursue my dream, but at the end of the day, it’s my passion - and good video games are built by passion and creativity, which I think is sometimes overlooked a tad bit. I hope you can find a place where you can create the art and games you want to about without fear of losing your job, because it’s clear you have passion and care about your work - so best of luck to you

It warms my heart to hear your efforts toward drifting.

Thank you for your work on the game! A lot of what you shared is very relatable, Especially losing a senior engineer shortly after you start on a major project. That happened to me working in building design. I also have the same sentiment as an engineer to design the best product that I can but being limited by time and budget constraints. It really irks see Microsoft's cost saving policies really affect the quality of their products as its almost impossible to build any kind of continuity. This affected Halo infinite as well.

Thanks for the video. This explains so much about the quality of the game and MS products in general. Stapid thing here is the fact that this is not even so bad way to handle contractors. I mean it sounds like they were pretty honest about it to be very likely just 18 months long deal. This could have been done so much worse by dangling permanent Contract in front of you if you just do one more crunch... It smells like some higher ups have their bonuses set up so that it makes it very difficult to actually hire people. Even when contractor proves-to be exellent. Problem might be that it is very easy to calculate the cost of hiring a person, but very hard to calculate how much bad quality and reputation costs. In the end people get rewarded when they keep departments cost down by using contractors, but not penalized by poor quality and/or efficiency caused by constantly educating new contractors, losing tons of knowledge when they leave and generally not care so much, because they are there only for 18 months. What makes this specially stupid for FM is their live service model. Seems to me that it is kinda no-brainer that they will need knowledgeable, passionate and dedicated team to run the service for long run to keep quality high and even improving. l assume they have pretty long roadmap what they will release and when, which makes it rather easy to keep everybody busy all the time with productive work. So, very little need to use contractors. Well you probably want to use some, because it is very good way for the company to scout new talents to the team. And as longas they are honest about your chances toget hired for long term. it should not be bad for the contractor either. It probably is nice to have 'Hakone trackin Forza Motorsport' in your CV... Thanks for your effort to the game. The tracks in the game truly look great 👍

I'm so glad to hear that you said you wanted a drift track. It often feels like T10 leadership isn't listening to the fans, so the fact that there was at least a person inside pushing to bring back the tracks the fans really wanted means something.

This isn't an uncommon corporate mess unfortunately. The 16-6 rule in spirit makes sense, but management is far to willing to just burn through the development workforce instead of investing in a fixed team. Not valuing institutional knowledge is what is killing a lot of industries

Wow, man, you are amazing to handle all of that alone .I work in an animation industry, and I can understand your pain.

That’s so cool that you’re actually one of the devs of this game!!!!! I’m liking it so far, I’d just like to see NASCAR and IndyCar come back, as well as more classic cars/trucks, and base model versions of all the high end cars be added in the game

This is why I refuse to call devs lazy, point blank. "Lazy" mistakes more often than not comes from overworking/exhaustion.

Man i wanna give all the devs hugs

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I think you could work for Reiza Studios who work on Automobilista 2 now, their direction is insane and it seems up your alley if you want to ahah. But im happy to hear you have a job after leaving Turn 10, they should have treated you and the other dev's better, but they only care for themselves :(

Good JOB SIR. Take care of yourself & thank you.❤❤❤❤

Thank you for trying your best to deliver a good product. The villain in this story is, as usual, capitalism and corporate greed. Game developers, as do other industries, need to unionise and finally get the job stability and respect they deserve. Best of luck

Thank you for this, you guys did an amazing job in those crappy circumstances. I'm having a blast with the game, it just sucks it took such a toll on all of you.

Well I have a BLAST every time I play the fucking game. People complain about the physics, but I think they make gaming and racing on a controller against people online fun as fuck! I also constantly marvel at the graphics and specifically how "in the environment" I feel and it's a combined effort of the entire team who worked on the ENGINE! LOVE THE GAME! I'm not even done with the video and I wanted to thank you!

The 18/6 rule is crazy. Developers needed time to train, especially the game is not developed on a well-known engine like Unreal and Unity. When they get the hang of it, they only have like a year left. When the future is uncertain, people cannot focus on the current. In modern gaming development usually lasts more than 3 years. Sacking developers and hiring new developers before the project finish is insane.

Fun fact - Microsoft's 18 month rule is due to law. They are REQUIRED by law to hire a contractor after 18 months as full-time or end their contract. As each studio is its own legal entity, they allow contractors to 'bonce around' studios. I personally think the law is a good thing for employees as they can receive benefits and stability. Microsoft is just as greedy as every other company, hence the 3T market cap. Great video and very insightful!

Im sure you're under an NDA, but will we see maps like Fujimi Kaido, Bernise Alps, or Rio? I love my Nordschleife and Spa, but the fictional tracks have elevation changes that real-world tracks lack. The fictional maps tend to look the most beautiful because the artists aren't restricted by accuracy.

Hey man great video. It realy helps to hear stories like that it really puts game development into perspective (I would never thought that things like moutains, level geometry and stage are handled by different people). Makes me apreciate games alot more knowing that even things that seem irrelevant most likely have alot of thought behind them. It is just so sad to hear how developers are still treated because you make it so clear how passioante you felt about the project. I honestly cant believe that someone can work so much on a project and not be considered part of it when its coming out (please tell me you are at least in the credits). Wish you best of luck in this godforsaken industry.

Like I always say, Always blame the company, never the devs

Very interesting, it doesnt make sense to run a project and then change people before its completed. I guess older Forza's didnt have this issue.

Your work on Nurburgring definitely hasn't gone underappreciated, it looks amazing. But if this isnt proof that game devs need to go on strike, especially at microsoft studios, i dont know what other proof there us. An 18/6 contract is insane thats just awful

As someone who got laid off recently in the game dev space, the bit where you said the higher ups are just reaping all the benefits that all the lower employees whilst making terrible deadlines is so true. I hate employers who make broken promises about a job, how you'll rise up the ranks and stay there forever cause we're a "family". It's all bullshit. They'll overinflate numbers for investors and continue to make bad budgeting decisions, while still telling you the budget is great and you'll keep working for a long time. But when shit actually comes time to release and after a few months of the investment not returning, they will throw you out like no tomorrow. They do not care about you, they do not want to see you grow, they couldn't care less about your job performance, all they care about is how much money you cost them as a company.

Never forget when i got a 360 for my birthday, with fm4, played all night, i was prolly like 6? Or 7? I was always interested in cars, safe to say, i am obsessed, the forza franchise has ment so much to me, i was so excited by this game, tbh, i was veey disappointed by the initial game and i am still not super happy with it, but i really appreciate this insight into the development process. I knew something was uo when the cars we were getting in the car pass were like 5 to 6 years old (ignoring the outliers and vintage/classics), reguarless really appreciate it man

Damn, tough times at t10. Hopefully the higher ups will allow the game to be good before it dies completely. And good luck on the new job.

This was interesting, insightful, and informative. Thanks for sharing your story.

Ping me when the hakone mountain drops with more online game modes. love ya man appreciate what you've done!

Thank you so much for sharing. This needs to be on the front page of every gaming news sites.

Microsofts 18 month policy just doesn’t work with modern AAA development, no wonder Xbox first party games feel so disjointed. All the developers work very hard but this is completely out of their control

I can't appreciate the detail of work you put into this game, being blind and all, but sounds like you busted your ass on this. And if it's worth anything, Hakone is one of my favorite tracks to drive. I just wish the accessibility team would have given us audio descriptions of the tracks. That would have been really cool.

From the community I say Thankyou for your hard work, there is allot wrong with the game but visuals and landscape is not one of them. Appreciate the effort you and your team put in to make this game beautiful.

Thanks for sharing. Fuck MS for treating developers like this, the should know better, especially after few bad launches of their games (looking at you Halo). Its sad, that motorsport feels so uninspired and stale. What was once a staple of technical edge now is riddled with issues. Even welcome screen and "car bay" look is somehow looking off, I did some comparision lately with FM6, and car refelctions, shaders on different textures on cars looked better in 6...

I went through the same thing in the aviation industry being a contractor. After 12 month, id have to take a perdiem break for 1 month, regardless of how bad the operation needed you and your work. The other side of that was going full time...at a 30% pay reduction lol. No thanks. I bought Forza with a shit ton of excitement, but i ended up getting a refund after 2 hours in, due to various reasons. This video shed a lot of light on why the game just didnt give me an ideal experience. Thank you!

I have always said Devs WANT to make good games but corporate heads BS always come in and destroy the hard works devs do, then release a dump of a game. This whole video helps prove the point its usually never those who worked on the game that push out games in a horrible state.

You telling your supervisor had to leave, and having you alone to figure it out sounds legitimately terrifying

For me. Graphics and other things weren't the issue. But knowing this... wow. No my main issue and why i jumped ship. Player based. Noone care for wrecking. There was never a real punishment issue. I know Gran Turismo doesn't have one either but i felt players were respectful on there.

I got the same Forza Motorsport 3 bundle! Let me know if you'd like to chat for a video 🙃

Sounds like a corporation... it's too eerie how similar it is to experiences I had with corporations. They fire people, get noobies, noobies do the same work as the senior guy but they loose their mind doing it... and are paid quarter what the senior guy had. These corporations save money on the cheapest shit, meanwhile giving all managers work cars and huge bonuses.,..... the same managers that doomed the studio

Higher ups dont care about making a good game sadly

Loved your insights. Wish there wasnt so many 18-6 contracts with larger tech companies. I was luckily converted from an 18 mo contract to full-time, but that seems rare. Glad to hear you found a landing spot elsewhere. Great work on Forza. I love the game, even with all the issues.

Love this insight from a AAA game creator.

Would have been cool to have formula drift tracks like in real life😭 especially the one in Japan up in the mountains. Hopefully they will one day 💔

No wonder Forza is in the state it is. The developers should have been permanent. This 18/6 rule is whats killing the game quality. Too bad Microsoft will never change this policy. But they need to. I'm glad you found a new job elsewhere.

Slavery was never abolished they just added new colours

This makes the release of FM make SO MUCH MORE SENSE. The entire gaming industry needs to get out of this toxic employment cycle. All it leads to is shittier games and unhappy customers. I get that Microsoft wants to save money but I mean come on. There’s plenty of other things they can save money from. Developers, and the resources they need. Are paramount to game development.

This is heart breaking. I used to love Forza and this 2023 reboot killed my love for the franchise and Xbox as a whole. Shut my Series X off at the beginning of December and haven’t turned it back on, since. I don’t blame the developers, though. I blame incompetent and greedy management. Always great to see a fellow Initial D fan and I love the use of Eurobeat throughout the video. I hope that you do well in all of your future endeavors, dude. Take care.

Despite the issues I'm quite enjoying the game. Keep up the good work.

Well man, I just wanna let you know that I really enjoy the game you put all that hard work in. It is not nearly as bad as everyone says.

Thank you for your hard work. ITs beautiful game even as I have dealt with some of the most frustrating glitches and bugs that made me have to put down the game and wait for updates that might fix it. When I play it I love it. I wish you the best and hope you get a great position in the future.

Hey man. This is the industry im trying to get into and its very much my dream (I'm 24). Its very scary seeing what the true reality of my dream job can look like, but im determined to get there regardless. This video honestly made me a bit sad and uncertain about my future, but I'm more than grateful that you came forward and gave insight on what needs to change. You've earned yourself a very loyal subscriber. Cant wait to see what the future holds for you.

Bro thank you for being so honest this is answering so many questions I was thinking bout

The environmental work in game is quite stunning, sucks to hear you crunched so hard to produce the result, but I hope you know that we notice and appreciate those details. Accounting for the Earth's curvature in anything that's not a 1:1 scale flight simulator is crazy cool! The vistas look like how I imagine these tracks would be IRL, that sense of scale really does add some intangible layer of engagement with the tracks themselves. Doubly impressive that you modelled the Nürburgring environment presumably before the studio had Nordschleife scanned in. (Which also looks fantastic!)

Its good to know that devs who actually had a passion for Forza were working on the game but its so unfortunate that suits who dont give a shit make the final decisions. I was so disappointed with FM2023. Im glad I didn't buy the top tier edition like I did for FM5 through 7.

The only ones I can criticize to the fullest is Chris Esiki and Dan Greenawalt. They sold everyone lies, and waited until they received that prized GOTY to actually do something about it. It's sad because people all over the media, including in the Forza forum tore this game up and started going over this with a fine tooth comb. It started showing cracks and inconsistencies of the message these two were portraying #builtfromthegroundup. Thanks for your hard work bro, but it seems it's all for nothing, because the state of the game is complete arse for a multi billon dollar company backing this game dev.

There ARE real race fans at T10! Maybe there's hope! The core of forza is still there. I love the tire model rework. Just the little things that need cleaned up, like replays.

thanks man for shedding light on what used to be one of my go-to racing game franchises. I jumped ship to Gran Turismo because the menu music was way nicer... what the hell were the guys in charge of music on!?

That’s crazy hearing this after listening to the Xbox podcast with the big 3 preaching about how much they care about the developers and blah blah blah. Alllll bullshit

Thanks for letting us know at the easy end of gaming what goes on in these places & how they operate. Like you a long time fan of the franchise since day 1, gutting to see how it's gone since FM4. I just don't see how it can carry on like that, I naively thought it was a bunch of car & racing fanatics who were in on it from start to finish, kept thinking how could they make such a mess of this in those 6 yrs. Now we know why.

holy hell, im shocked this game made it to market.

There is an old saying "none of us is as dumb as all of us", and that, I think, perfectly sums up the corporate decision making process. Rather than have a team that by the end of development would have 6yrs into knowing every nut, bolt, and line of code in the game, they decided to instead get the first 18 months of experience four times. I completely understand why there's a backlog of unfixed bugs and unresolved issues- because there are likely VERY few people remaining who actually know how the game really works- or are having to figure it out as they go. Corporate stupidity at its finest.

Thanks for this sort of an inside look into development. The game had potential, but because of it being rushed it turned out to be what we know today.

These are the guys I feel the worst for. Bright eyed passionate fanboys ready to create a quality product that honors its predecessors. …only for these to just be rapidly demoralized and eventually laid off to save costs. This is why AAA games have been so shit for so long. Thanks for sharing your story. I long for a future where this standard changes and guys like you are allowed to spread your wings and make the games that we want to play. T. Former Forza fanboy

the fact microsoft cant pay for full time employees is just shallow and sad, like you see other studios where they have people with 10-20 years in 1 part of the studio and they have a huge understanding of the game engine and work flow and everything to do with the studio and is shows, and forza just contracts people, im happy i gave up on motorsport back in fm7, i would have lost it if i spent full price for a game like that

id be careful about using the initial d music, avex entertainment gets really pissy about people using their music for some reason

I just got the game cause of game pass and feels just like the older forza (not sure if that’s a bad thing) but I like it haven’t seen any bugs besides the shaders for pc Xbox, but I think they just fixed that, only complaint is no Long Beach map! And probably vehicles that I won’t notice are missing, but it feels good to play it again

It's just so unfortunate that devs are treated like this, especially from such a successful company with no doubt plenty of money to kick around. Well, of all the complaints I have/had with the game, the landscapes and vistas were certainly not one of them. Hopefully you're creating your work in greener pastures now. Thank you for the work you have done.

I feel you brother. Doing race tracks all day can be exhausting and any other stuff in between feels so nice. I'm glad my company has different approach to it's employees because if we loose anyone from the team we'll probably cry and just talk shit and drink coffee for a week. And we finally know in what aspect Forza was "built from the ground up" it's vista and trees! 😉

Please tell me you're not the one who misspelt 'Welcome' at Spa Francorchamps 😂

You did an absolute great job, can't talk about the other departments though...

I just wanna start off saying you absolutely cooked on these viduals, they're great! I've been to Daytona at least 15 times now the last few years and you absolutely nailed it. This video really opened up how disfunctional the industry is and how the suits have lost all interests in making a good product instead want to please the investors as quick as possible. I'm sorry they put you through this and take back any shred of slander I put on the devs. Finally Florida is flat because nature decided us Florida men were too dangerous and didnt want to give us a shred of high ground advantage or we'd be ruling the world by now.

very good insight

Worked at Turn10 via contract back in 2014-2015. I still get anxiety attacks when looking at Forza 6 at game stores.

this makes so much sense and the game itself already reeked from higher up meddling,a shame that devs always get the worst of everything from criticism to harassment and unrealistic demands from higher ups

I heard that they scrapped the whole game 3 years into development and started over and thats why its not truly "built from the ground up". This 18/6 rule should be illegal.

Hey I finally got round to watching this, and i just wanna say I'm sorry that's a work practice you have had to work through. Its so bizarre sounding and completely backwards. I find it insane that I work alongside people who have been in dev at the studio i am at who have been there for decades, i couldn't imagine the vacuum of valuable knowledge and talent if there was an 18 month maximum term. I feel like the bonds and friendships we make along the way help build the games too, but how can they even develop if everybody is on a timer. Very insightful video, thank you for speaking about this experience and I hope your future in games is less disjointed.

Thanks for making this video. The public needs to know the way these Microsoft companies, and a lot of AAA companies in general, are really run. Hardworking ordinary people getting screwed by the higher-ups who are effectively sabotaging the company and it's products. How the hell is this industry still profitable? Do we need another video game crash to reverse this?

18-6 month rotation will make sure experience will never set in as it supposed to... If ppl come back after the 6 months then maybe, but i imagine many move on.. It also means like you said, for the ones filling the gaps, their workload will be huge. I am very critical on T10 and Forza Motorsports and as nice as some things looks, to me it is all about the gameplay. But i can say that because i come from before the NES (Arcade hall) I prefer the INDI mindset, where looks is not everything, but gameplay is. On the other hand if the gameplay is good, i really do appreciate the nice graphics and all those details. Thanks for sharing the insight. It helps understanding why it is what it is.. When goals, roadmaps and/or policies are bad, that is not the fault or to blame to the dedicated work ppl put in. Peace

This was incredibly insightful and makes a lot of sense. Such a bummer to hear how they treat devs. How much of this is Chris Esakis fault?

I thank you from the bottom of my heart for your days & nights of tireless effort. I am beginning my career in IT & I can relate to what you said. But the difference is you have created or been a part of a project which brings happiness & JOY to so many people around the world. The virtual world you guys create is stellar beyond imagination & I am thrilled to immerse myself in it. So, for all you do man, you have my thanks & my salute!