"It was pretty good at [PS4] launch. It was something we could have released. The initial vision was super ambitious, and we knew we needed a bit more time to get it right.
"Because we designed this as a service, we wanted it to last a long time. If we'd have released it at launch, we didn't feel it would have that. You'd have played it, enjoyed it, gone 'oh, that was pretty good', and then done something else."
A service? Like Facebook? Top Gear with buttons?
"This concept originally started about 10 years ago," Barlow explains with a smile. "We didn't really know what it was, but we wanted a place for gamers and car enthusiasts to come together, race together, share together and hang out."
Barlow says the Driveclub concept pre-dated social media and online gaming as mainstream interests, and the infrastructure to support the concept didn't really exist a decade ago. So the team "parked the concept" (a common term in business, but TimeOut appreciates the pun) and had a good time developing the MotorStorm series for PlayStation.
Then the game changed, and opportunity knocked.
"The PS4 came along, [Sony] were talking about connected experiences, collaborative experiences, shared experiences. That's what we wanted to do with Driveclub. They loved it because it synced-up with all the things they were trying to get across. We said we wanted to make it a service, and they had to put a certain amount of trust in us."
Trust in the service is paramount. Driveclub, which since its launch has had a staggering share of connectivity issues, is a lot like a fledgling social network - experiencing a massive rush of interest and groaning under the weight.
During our interview a week before launch, Barlow said Driveclub was something out of the ordinary.
"For Sony in general and for us as a developer, this is an experiment. Destiny is the only other game out there that feels like it had the same idea as us, where we want to create something that's bigger than the boxed product, something that's going to grow with the community."
The collaborative approach to setting the service in order is a reflection of Barlow's comments, with players being informed across traditional social media platforms and via an in-game newswire.
Looking down the track, Barlow says success from his team's point of view won't be primarily measured by the amount of units sold at launch, or what the Metacritic score is. If he's still talking about Driveclub in a year, then it means Evolution succeeded in building the community it always dreamed of.
"It will mean the experiment worked."
So what does all this talk about gaming-as-a-service mean for a sequel? Is that idea dead in the water?
"I think so," Barlow muses. "We've talked to the business directly and said, 'what do we want to work on next?' We've got 12 months of content planned out, and there are gaps in the schedule for us to respond to what the community wants. We've left that fairly flexible."
Barlow explains that, really, he didn't know what the future held for Driveclub. That's how flexible the concept is, but what he does know is that Sony and Evolution are prepared for anything.
"For us as a developer, if we were told Driveclub is going to last the lifetime of the PlayStation 4, maybe we even preload it in the future and it becomes synonymous with the platform [as] a driving service - that would be great for us because we've got so many ideas.
"We built this engine with the lifetime of the PlayStation 4 in mind. If all we do for the rest of the PS4 is Driveclub, we've got plenty to do."
- nzherald.co.nz
