Scania Truck Driving Simulator
The fact that we are working on another truck sim game in addition to
ETS2 was one of the worst kept secrets. It was supposed to be under
wraps until the very last moment, but such is the life of the games
retail market. The publishing and distribution people need to work with
retail chains to position any game in the development pipeline way
ahead of release, and so the information and speculative release dates
kept leaking left and right.
So what is this game and why does it even exist when you could argue that we should focus 100% on Euro Truck Simulator 2?
The project is the result of a very productive dialogue we have started with the great guys at
Scania CV AB.
You could have read our grumbling repeatedly here on this blog about
how difficult it is for the company our size to even get noticed by the
big guys, be them truck and trailer manufacturers or logistics
companies. The "serious" industry too often considers games as
something controversial and unimportant anyway, and even marketing
departments are usually too conservative and concentrated on
traditional media to grasp the ideal that the thousands and thousand of
people playing truck sims are in fact an idea audience that they could
approach through our game.
Fortunately, when we approached Scania about licensing their trucks for
our games, this was not the case. In fact we immediately moved on to
another stage - discussion on how we could work together on something
deeper. And when such an opportunity appears - you just don't want to
let it pass. This is a chance for us to learn a lot, and also a chance
to get our production recognized in the transportation industry in
general. We are in this for the long run (or at least so long as we
have enough paying customers), and building industry contacts and
experience is crucial for us in our quest to build an ultimate truck
simulator combining best of both words - interesting for a gamer as
well as a professional driver.
Scania Truck Driving Simulator is only about three times the depth and
scope of Truck & Trailers, so still a relatively small game, but
the variety of activities available in the game makes it way more
balanced product. There are driving-school type of tasks in the game
for a warm up. There is a big segment devoted to emulating the hard
challenges in Scania's
Young European Truck Driver
competition (BTW you should really check out what the masters behind
the wheel are capable of, just watch a bit of the previous
YETD finals).
But there is also a lot of fun-to-drive realistic-looking scenarios
included, plus a sizable map just for free roaming deliveries. This
games is packed with hours and hours of interesting driving for sure.
Plus our very first step towards making our games networking-enabled,
with the possibility to compete (and see other people's driving
performances) over the Internet.