It’s been over a year since we last spoke to Criterion at the launch of their latest title, Burnout Paradise. But with no new projects announced since, nor any mention of the studio during EA’s E3 press conference last night, the world is left wondering; what are Criterion up to? We caught up with Burnout Paradise’s Lead Producer Pete Lake to find out how successful evolving the Burnout experience has been for the Guildford-based studio, and what they’ve got in store for the future.

D+PAD: Criterion adopted a pioneering business model for Burnout Paradise by deciding to continually improve the Burnout experience via major title updates and deliver regular, free content in the months following its release. Why did you decide to adopt such a model?

Pete Lake: As with everything we do in Burnout we want to continually change people’s expectations. With our DLC we wanted to go beyond just another car or piece of track. We wanted to offer people new experiences within the same known world, alongside continuing to build our community and develop even stronger ways of communicating with them.

Do you think that giving away so much content for free was a success, and do you think such a model is sustainable?

I believe it was a success. How many other games are people still playing and getting excited about a year and a half after their original release? Our numbers back this up too; we can see that when we released Bikes (our free content upgrade) last September, we had more people playing our game online than we did at launch.

After having offered free content for so long, why did you decide to start charging for DLC? Will you be offering any more free content in the future?

As you stated in the previous question, at the end of the day this is a business model. We have to find the right balance between free content to reward our community and premium content which expands the game in incredible new ways. Who knows if this will continue into the future, I really hope it does. Games deserve to live longer than their box life.

Has the premium content been as successful as the team expected? Are you able to talk specific figures?

I can’t talk specific figures with you but the content has been an incredible success. I’m really proud of our decision to continue to offer variety in every downloadable offering we have created. The Boost Specials appeal to some of our more hardcore community while the Toys and Legendary Cars are there for the people who just want to have fun. Spreading our ideas like this allows us to offer something for everyone who loves Burnout.

Some critics may argue that some of this content – the pass-the-pad multiplayer incorporated into the Party Pack, for example – should have been included in the game originally, and that these regular updates, as well as the Ultimate Box rerelease, may suggest that Criterion weren’t happy with how Paradise was in its original state. Is that the case?

Absolutely not, the whole studio here at Criterion was incredibly happy with the original product we shipped. What you see over the next year is us continuing to develop the product live. Most of the ideas we have developed could not have been thought about until we had shipped the game and seen how people like to interact with it. Videogames are an interactive, live media which needs to react to its audience. We’ve had a great opportunity to do this with the DLC we have created. It has not been about ‘fixing’ the product but evolving it to entertain an ever changing audience.

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