It’s almost been a year now since Forza Motorsport was released to a lukewarm reception, but to developer Turn 10’s credit, it’s consistently listened to player feedback and improved the game since then. It’s taking things to a new level though, giving you a direct route to help shape the development of the game.
Forza Insiders is a new program launched specifically to give players a direct point of contact with Forza’s developers, and most excitingly, test game updates and offer feedback ahead of official launches.
It sounds like surveys will be the most prominent way of providing feedback on the game, although those who join the programme will also have access to a private forum which it’s promised includes devs.
Sounds a bit like free work, right? In a sense, yeah, but at least there’s some remuneration by means of in-game credits and other unspecified rewards on offer to compensate for your time. The real value here is having the rare ability to directly offer your opinion on in-development features.
Signing up for the Forza Insiders programme is free (and you can do it here), but will require you to have an active Microsoft account. However, you’d need that to play Forza anyway, so it shouldn’t really be an issue. Oh, and of course a copy of the game or at least a Game Pass subscription to play it with.
From what we can gather, you also need to agree to an NDA, so you’ll need to be comfortable with not leaking anything – or at least accepting the punishment for doing so. We’d probably advise the former.
It’s unclear when Turn 10 will begin rolling out playtests for Insiders, but it could start very soon. The developer has been consistent with introducing monthly updates since the game launched last October and with September on the horizon, we’d anticipate it won’t be too long before another comes.