Turn 10 Studios: Impressions

I meant to post this about 5 months ago, but I’ve had a lot of difficulty coming up with more to say than a strictly emotional impression, nevertheless, I thought I’d punch it out.

In November I was fortunate enough to have some lunch-time conversations with Bill Giese and Korey Krauskopf from Turn 10 studios. While I can’t speak to the specifics of much of the things we talked about, I spent a lot of the time talking to them about what it’s like to work in the studio.

I’ve found that many of the people at Microsoft have a gleam in their eyes, the kind that comes from doing something you love. Turn 10 has this gleam in spades, but moreover they have a tremendous amount of energy.  I’ve never really had the chance before to speak at length with people who have been developing games in full blown professional studios for a large tract of time.  If Turn 10 is my only datapoint, it’s probably a good one.

Turn 10, if you’re not aware, are the developers of the Forza Motorsport series.  This series is essentially Microsoft’s answer to the Grand Turismo series, and they’ve done a pretty amazing job.  Walking around in their studio, you can see why.  Every scrap of wall that isn’t spackled with design plans is brimming with racing gear.  They even have a test setup with full on racing bucket seats.

When Korey and Bill talk about their game, I was struck by how excited they were about it.  I guess on reflection I’ve always seen this happen, in interviews with game developers, even transcripts of those interviews, you can tell from the text how much they love their game.  It’s a spectacular thing to be able to do what you love for a living, and this industry demands it, because that love gets channeled into passion for the game and hopefully into something that will excite gamers just as much.  I think Turn 10 has done a pretty decent job at this so far, and I’m looking forward to their future offerings

If you want the opportunity to talk to Korey, or one of several others at Turn 10, they’re holding a promotion where you can play Forza 2 against them, tomorrow night.  Check it out here.