Late last year, it was reported that Driveclub was the most-played PlayStation 4 racer, sitting pretty at 10.5 million players. For comparison’s sake, GT Sport topped 6.6 million players at that time.
Then, last month, we received much less encouraging news about the cult-favorite arcade racer. Sony announced all Driveclub content will be de-listed from the PlayStation Store on August 31, in advance of the title’s servers going dark in March of 2020.
Those ultimatums marked the beginning of the end for Driveclub — a game that got off to a troubled launch in October 2014 before a series of phenomenal post-release updates transformed it into an experience many players remember very fondly. This week, Time Extend had the privilege of chatting with veteran racing game developer Paul “Rushy” Rustchynsky about his experience working on Driveclub, MotorStorm, and, most recently, 2018’s competitive combat racer Onrush.
We had an illuminating conversation with Rustchynsky, as he took us back to his first design role as part of the WRC: Rally Evolved team roughly 15 years ago. He spoke about the complexities and challenges of modern game development — both from a technical and business standpoint — as well as his transitions from Sony’s now-defunct Evolution Studios to Codemasters and, most recently, Slightly Mad Studios.
At one point, Rushy even shared one of his real motives for including MotorStorm’s iconic Wombat Typhoon buggy in Driveclub as April Fools’ DLC: a clever, though perhaps in retrospect not-so-covert attempt to gauge audience enthusiasm for a PS4 MotorStorm entry that sadly never came to pass.
Today, Rustchynsky is working on an exciting new project at Slightly Mad — one he fully refused to describe, despite our desperate pleas. But there are still lots of other delightful nuggets and stories in our nearly hour-and-a-half-long conversation that you won’t want to miss.
Time Extend is conveniently available wherever fine podcasts are found, including Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Play, Soundcloud, and Stitcher. We encourage you to follow us on Twitter @time_extend and share your thoughts on the show right here on GTPlanet’s forums. Credit for the photo at the top of this post goes to RL_23.
See more articles on Driveclub, ONRUSH, and Time Extend.
