SBK: Superbike World Championship

Written by Charles Husemann on 9/10/2008 for PC   PS3   360  

Can you introduce yourself and describe your role on the project? How long have you been in the gaming industry and what drew you to your current position?
I’m Alberto Belli, Head of PR in Black Bean Games. I take care of all the activities related to communication on behalf of the European publisher and plan communication strategies worldwide, evaluating new products, too. Being a passionate gamer, I usually attend all the meetings in regards of new projects/IP in development under BB label and take care of acquisitions of new products to be published, studying game concepts/demos. I started in the industry in 2001 as journalist in Play Press Publishing, which publishes a bunch of games magazines here in Italy. I’ve been Editor in Chief of Xbox Magazine and Official Playstation Magazine before joining Leader Group in 2006 as PR Manager. I’ve been CEO of Pulsar Communication, the agency in charge for any PR activities for all the companies of the group, including Black Bean. After 1 year as international account for it, I joined the publisher full time starting from Jul

What separates SBK 08 from the other motorcycle racing games on the market? What's new for this year?
SBK08 is really the return of Milestone to the series that made the studio great 1999. SBK has always been the benchmark for any motorcycle game developed, and SBK08 is a new beginning on next-gen platforms. This is the title that every passionate player was waiting for since 2001 and it’s pretty different to any other racing game made until now. SBK is about the real sensations you can feel as a fan of bikes – the races, the speed and the glamour. Black Bean is building up the best racing franchise ever made under this point of view, with a genuine gameplay and passion above all

Can you talk about your design approach for the game and what the most important aspect of racing that you tried to capture in the game?
SBK is designed for everyone to enjoy. The ability to customize everything let us say that it is maybe the most versatile racing game of the last several years. If you’re not confident with bikes and tracks, you can quickly change game parameters to make it easier and more accessible. But if you’re looking for the hardest simulation available, you just have to set full sim parameters and it’s done. Everyone can find their own way to play SBK. Let me add that the game has been developed to offer both the best simulation and arcade-styled racing to gamers. The idea is to let the player practice and slowly deactivate the various "assists" until you're riding like a "real biker."

The same goes for the AI. Riding with bots is always great and for the most authentic sim gameplay, you can set them to "real", which will have them fighting for points and using same strategies that the real counterparts use


Other than the control scheme, are there any differences between the PC and console versions of the game? What kind of changes did you have to make for the PSP version of the game?
PC and next-gen versions are pretty similar but we did make some special changes for the PS2 and PSP version. We did a great job last year and fixed some problems we had with SBK07, following user feedback. SBK08 runs smoothly on PS2 and PSP versions and it’s graphically strong, with a solid framerate and a good engine running. And framerate is a core requirement in a racing game like this

What was your philosophy when it came to picking which tracks to include and were there any that you tried to get but weren't able to get licensed for the game? Do you have a favorite track or segment of a track?
My favorite track is actually Doha, maybe because while developing the game, we had long sessions of practice here and I finally found a secret formula to get the best setting here. I’m nearly invincible on this track, but is just because I’m playing on it since the early stage of the development. The difficulty working on a fully licensed game is that you always have to wait for approvals and you always have to double check your work with someone else. Liveries change lot of time when the championship is blocked, tracks too (for example FG Sport announced Portimao this year that didn’t exist when we started work on the game). With some luck, we could handle this situation using online downloads and patches in the future, adding wild cards time to time, new liveries and stuff

Did you have to make any changes to the real work tracks so they would work better in the game or does good track design transcend into the video game world? How do you get the track layout into the game and how accurate do you try to get them?
All the tracks included have been made using original CAD files and visiting all the original circuits to save data and study how they really are. We tried to reproduce all the tracks with full details, including atmosphere.Do you have any tricks or tips that you can provide people with in terms of how to setup their bikes? Do you have a favorite motorcycle in the game?
My favorite team is the official Ducati Xerox, because I’m a supporter of Michel Fabrizio, who, like me, is from Rome. There are no special tips to setup the bike, due to the fact that there are so many options to customize that anyone could really look for his own personal setup. There aren’t two equal settings in the game. Changing a parameter or two, you can try a different handling and you can check it using in-box telemetry and feel it directly while driving

The bikes have a lot of customization items in the game, how do you make that accessible to people who don't know their gearbox from their intake valves?
There are two different ways to customize your bike. With the Advanced settings you can change everything, including details. Using the Basic settings, you have just to switch between a “+” and a “-“ that let’s you change your setup without studying how a real bike works. As I said, SBK is really for everyone

Will you be supporting any SIXAXIS motion control on the PS3 version? Why did you decide to go that route?
We’re going to talk about PS3 version in a few days. Be patient :)

What kind of changes will be you be able to make during the game? Will you have to manage all of this or will the computer help out a bit?
SBK08 has been built with all the real rules included in the original championship. So you’ll have the exact number of options available for a race in-game as in the real-world. During a race, everything is up to you in regards of settings and strategies but you just have to drive and drive once you started a race. The computer will do everything to beat you. No helps at all. We included a lot of challenges to unlock, to add more fun

Can you talk about the multiplayer modes in the game? What will be the max number of players on each platform?
Multiplayer Mode will feature 8 players online on each platform and you can customize everything once you connected to the game.


There's been some talk lately that we're reaching the top end of the scale when it comes to realism in graphics, would you agree with that statement? Where do you think market is headed in the next few years?
I don't agree with this, I think there is still something to do with this hardware before reaching the top end. Photorealism is still far to be “playable” IMHO. The situation of the market is changing today, thanks to Nintendo above all. Years ago, it was not possible for a publisher like Activision or EA, thinking about a small publisher like Black Bean as a competitor. Today, development on Wii and DS is really cheap and you don't need much time to get a product ready and on the shelves and with casual gamer audience that will be the main target for everyone.

All the budgets allocated for underperforming next-gen projects will be used for low risk casual games and there is a chance for someone like us, to create a sleeper hit that will earn us a spot on the charts worldwide. On one hand this is really good because a new scenario with new competitors will be possible in the future. On the other hand, 2009 will see a super crowded market on the Wii/DS side, with a lot of low-quality games out, and a huge risk to miss something cool among tons of useless software

Is there anything important that we missed or that you think gamers should know about your game?
I think that playing is much better than listening to me talk about the game. We just released SBK demo on European market and we’re going to go forward with US too, so you'll soon get a good taste of the game. SBK is actually the best choice both for a casual gamer looking for a good arcade racing game and for the real biker looking for challenges that was waiting for the sequel of the most important bike saga ever made. This is the point