There wasn’t really a strategic way of thinking of what the brand is and what it stands for."
“If you look at the last few games – Hot Pursuit, The Run, Shift, Rivals, Most Wanted – and you asked people, ‘What does Need for Speed stand for?’, you'd get a million different answers.“
“So we started establishing what we really think NFS stands for, asking 'What are the core values of the brand and the game?' As fans, 'What are you thinking about NFS, and what have we done right and what have we done wrong?' And that ultimately got us to believe in both the feature set and the style and tone of the game. So we have passion from inside the team and we have a desire for the ultimate Need for Speed title from the fans. We’ve got to a place where I think we are kind of resetting the bar what Need For Speed stands for.”And that's been the mission of Ghost Games all along, a new studio established specifically to guide the future of the Need for Speed franchise. The studio's first entry in the series – Need for Speed: Rivals – was released in 2013, but the studio didn't release a game last year. Asked if taking a year off was necessary to reset the series, Nilsson admits, "It wasn’t always the plan. Need for Speed has almost been an annual series for the last 20 years. But as we took ownership of Need for Speed we obviously saw the likes of The Crew, Driveclub, Forza Horizon 2, and we understood there’s a lot more energy in this genre than there has been for a long time. And now Project Cars has come out, and even though Project Cars is a different game to what Need for Speed, the focus is still on the cars […] we’re seeing an increase in the driving genre.”
We’ve got to a place where I think we are kind of resetting the bar what Need For Speed stands for."
The Need for Speed reboot isn't about forgetting the past, since it actively draws on them to consolidate a tradition that can be used going forward. “A lot of time has been spent looking into the older games, into what was really popular, speaking to the fans. A lot of inspiration has been taken from the Underground titles and from the Most Wanted games in different aspects.”“
But one of the main factors in taking the series back to the drawing board, according to Nilsson, was the desire to stay culturally relevant. “To be frank,” admits Nilsson, “in the last couple of years we’ve lost that cultural relevance. Need for Speed used to be culturally relevant, to move culture, rather than copy it. And I think we’ve really approached this differently, and working with car culture, we’re starting to address that issue.”
Need for Speed will be released this autumn for PC, Xbox One, and PlayStation 4.