Following his statement about modern gamers being capable of handling more cognitive load in arcade racing games, Fuse Games CEO Matt Webster has further spoken about how games should challenge players more often. In an interview with GamesRadar, the head of the studio behind Star Wars: Galactic Racing said that players start tuning things out if they keep getting constant rewards.
“Games should challenge players,” said Webster before discussing how the Burnout games had the tendency to “throw rewards at you – dopamine hits of reward, reward, car, car, car! Eventually, if that’s just one note, then you start to tune it out.” However, with Star Wars: Galactic Racer, he said that “this game should challenge you. We wanted to front that up so you feel like, ‘a hard-fought fifth place – yeah I’ll take it.’”
On the subject of the general gameplay pacing of Star Wars: Galactic Racing, Webster said that it offers “light and shade” to players by giving them some reprieve after hard-fought races. “You’ve got the light and shade between the super high intensity racing and the lower intensity immersion in Star Wars.”
Just last week, Webster had spoken about how players have gotten better at handling more things happening than they used to be in the past. This is why Fuse Games designed Star Wars: Galactic Racer to have multiple elements that players need to keep an eye on, from their Afterburner to their Ramjet and ability cooldowns, and even the occasional need to quickly repair a potential malfunction.
“One of the things that’s really interesting for me is that modern gamers can manage a greater amount of cognitive load. We are asking way more out of players in this game than I think we’ve ever done in a racing game with multiple boost things, pressing more than one face button at a time, switching up the abilities, and thinking strategically and tactically at the same time whilst traveling at 700 kilometers an hour and your eyes are on stalks. It’s quite amazing.”
Webster’s statements come at a time when the gaming market is starved of high-quality AAA arcade racers. While the genre used to be quite common in the 1990s and the 2000s, more recently, it has largely been dominated by games like Forza Horizon 6, with a few arcade racers coming out every now and then without being able to catch hold of a larger market. The studio behind Star Wars: Galactic Racer is also made up of veterans of the industry who have previously worked on major franchises like Burnout. However, the last entry in the series was 2008’s Burnout Paradise, and following its 2018 remaster, the franchise is essentially considered dead.
Star Wars: Galactic Racer just recently came to PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S. In our review, we praised its racing mechanics, takedown system, and implementation of roguelite features, and ended up giving it a score of 9 out of 10. For more details about the high-speed racer, check out our guide that will get you ready to take on Kestar Bool and the other competitors.
