Matt Webster looked set to be a lifer at Electronic Arts. He joined the firm way back in 1990, and spent nearly two decades working at Burnout and Need for Speed maker Criterion, which EA bought in 2004.
But in early 2023, along with Criterion alumni Steve Uphill, Pete Lake, Andrei Shires, and Alan McDairmant, he broke away to form the independent UK studio Fuse Games. Now, three and a bit years later, the studio is on the cusp of releasing its first game, Star Wars: Galactic Racer, published by the newly independent Secret Mode.
Galactic Racer is launching some 24 years after the last Star Wars racing game – 2002’s Racer Revenge – and the intervening years have seen racing titles fall out of favour more generally. Amazon recently pulled out of a publishing deal with UK studio Maverick Games for its upcoming driving title Clutch, with Amazon games head Jeff Gattis saying “we didn’t see a real fit in the market for that game.” Criterion, meanwhile, has switched from producing racing games to working on Battlefield.
But Webster is convinced there’s a market out there. “Clearly we think there’s an audience for a Star Wars racing game,” he tells GamesIndustry.biz. “We don’t think we’re the only ones. And I would attest from people watching our videos and reading articles that we might not be alone in that.
“Look, genres are cyclical in many cases. And of course, we went through a phase of shooters eating the world, but that’s clearly not the only genre. And as more and more people play video games, even the tiniest of niches find a bigger audience.”
He thinks that players are looking for “fun, interesting, compelling new experiences that they haven’t seen yet,” and he reckons Galactic Racer fits the bill. “We’ve got a vision to do something fresh and new.”
Standing out
Webster says that Fuse wanted to embrace the instant gratification of an arcade racing experience, as well as to explore “what things are possible once we are decoupled from tyres and tarmac.”
“For instance, we’ve got tracks that reach up the side of an active volcano,” he says. “It’s a roller-coaster sometimes.”
But beyond those arcade thrills, he says Galactic Racer is challenging genre conventions. “The structure in most racing games is car collection – I mean, that hasn’t changed for probably 20 years. So let’s rip that up, let’s steal from other genres.”
He says Galactic Racer is built around consequential decision making, giving the example of crashing. “In racing games, it’s hard to have consequences when you’ve got a rewind button. So let’s bring that consequence back, and make it mean something.” He says the structure of the game is inspired by roguelikes such as Hades, Returnal, and Slay the Spire: “games that are built and designed for infinite replayability. And I think that plus racing is a match made in heaven, because racing thrives on replayability.”
Crashing too many times sends the player back to the start, says Webster, although you “carry some meta progression back with you, and you start from a more powerful position. But that crash has a consequence, and when you’re on your last crash and you’re in systems critical, you lean forward and you’re starting to think about the risk that you’re taking.”
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It’s a bold step away from the handholding we’ve become accustomed to in AAA games, but Webster is aware of the need to stand out in a crowded marketplace, and particularly in a year in which GTA6 is set to arrive. Galactic Racer is launching on October 6, a generous distance from GTA6’s due date of November 19, although not too far after some of the year’s biggest releases, like Control Resonant and Silent Hill: Townfall on September 24.
But Webster says we’ve seen even more crowded pre-Christmas release schedules in the past. “Someone was saying, ‘Oh, September looks busy’, but I remember making games years ago and people talking about ‘murderers’ row’ – and October was full of stuff.” He acknowledges that the market is competitive, but says Fuse Games has “a healthy sense of confidence,” tempered by a “realistic view on how things may turn out.”
“I was always told good games will find a way,” he says. “So we’re hoping.”
Calculated risk
This is a theme Webster returns to when reflecting on the current wave of industry layoffs. He’s been in the business a long time, and remembers the previous spate of layoffs a decade and a half ago. “A recurring thing through this is great teams make great games, and great games find an audience,” he says.
“When you’re looking more broadly at the industry, I think what we’re seeing is a lot of aversion to risk,” he continues. “I think it delivers opportunity for people that are willing to take those calculated risks and push out. If you’re bringing those constraints in, you’re not wanting to risk too much, or not making the bets that perhaps you were, that potentially limits opportunity.”
Yet he acknowledges that starting out with a new studio hasn’t been plain sailing in the current climate. “The access to funding has been a real challenge,” he says. “People were like, ‘you’re brave doing an independent studio in 2023’. And it’s like, shit, really? I spent 32 years at Electronic Arts, I was in a bubble. This was new, it was all new to me. But you go to your principles you’ve learned and understood, which is build a great team, refine a creative vision, have the discipline to create a plan around that – knowing that the plan is always wrong, but it’s the best version you’ve got today – and review, adapt, and stay true to your values. And that’s how you construct a team. Engaged and motivated talent makes great things, so it’s your job to engage and motivate the talent.”
But it’s a relatively small team for a AAA title, numbering around 75 people. Webster says this is deliberate, as the studio wanted to avoid the rapid scaling up and scaling down of teams we so often see in the industry, with Fuse instead relying on external development to plug the gaps. “We’re not doing that grow, shrink, grow, shrink process. And what we’ve done with this game is prove that is probably the model for AAA going forward, where you have a much smaller core team permanently, and then you use trusted partners that share your values to scale your capability and capacity.”
“You can make a AAA video game in terms of its scope, scale, and fidelity for a more sustainable budget”
He notes that the various forms of external development Fuse has utilised range from outsourcing, which is “more transactional asset creation,” right up to co-development, where the external studio is “pretty much an extension of the team: They’re in our stand-ups, they’re in our Slacks, they’re in our code base.”
He adds that the UK in particular is a great location for co-development because of its mature game development industry. “In the past it used to be other companies would help you out on your game almost through gritted teeth. They really wanted to make their own thing, but they needed to keep the lights on, so they’d work with somebody to do that. That’s changed dramatically now, where you’ve got companies that are hiring people that are motivated to work on different things with different teams, and that keeps them fresh and excited.”
Webster is convinced by this new model of balancing a small team with external development. “From our perspective, you can make a AAA video game in terms of its scope, scale, and fidelity for a more sustainable budget in this manner. And we’ve learned a shitload doing that.”
Fast work
The rapid time scale for Galactic Racer’s development is testament to the fact that this new model works. “We started Fuse in January 2023. Three and a half years later, we’ve built a studio, we’ve built a team, we’ve built a video game on an engine [UE5] that none of us knew. It feels like an achievement. And we’ve done it in a healthy, sustainable way.”
It’s notable that in addition to the Criterion veterans, Fuse has brought in many younger developers to make Star Wars: Galactic Racer. Indeed, one of the producers has never worked in games before. “We are thrilled with the young talent that we’ve got,” says Webster. “I’ll tell you what, they are smarter and more effective in many ways than certainly I was at that age. It really is quite extraordinary. And in fact, I would suggest we’ve had a greater success with our young developing talent than we’ve had with some explorations with more senior talent that have come in from other places.”
He says that if you speak to “a wise, seasoned developer,” they tend to want senior co-workers who can do the job and don’t need a lot of interaction. “That’s not good for them. They might want that, but actually nurturing and developing young talent engages and motivates them as much as it does the other person. And we have discovered that, and actually we pivoted some of our talent searches because of that.”
In the future, he’d like to set up an intern program to encourage young talent, but it’s still early days. “We haven’t made any money yet,” he reminds us. “We are pre-revenue, as they say.” Still, he points to the great success Criterion had with its intern programs. “I hope that we get to that point,” he says. “But I think you need to go into [it with] eyes wide open and recognise the cost to develop that talent.”
“Some people in the industry had a bit of a fixation on the singular creative visionary. Which is fucking bullshit”
Reflecting back on a time five or six years ago when the industry was flush with money, he recalls how “people who were attached to a game that did really well” got funding to create their own studios, but soon found out it was “harder than they think.” He says that the money should have gone to great teams rather than superstar developers. “It’s largely gone now, but some people in the industry had a bit of a fixation on the singular creative visionary. Which is fucking bullshit. It’s never been true.” Unless you’re a solo developer, he says, “games are made by collaborations of individuals.”
As for what’s next for Fuse Games, that’s somewhat up in the air at the moment. “We’ve talked about how the launch is just the start for us on this game. But I think that, much like anybody, we will be interested in talking to people about potential opportunities. And we’ve got an idea of where we want to go next and things that we’d like to do, but I think for an independent developer these days, you’ve got to be flexible and adaptable.”