Have you ever wanted to tee it up on a PGA Tour-host golf course like TPC Sawgrass, Quail Hallow, East Lake, TPC Scottsdale, or Riviera Country Club? Or maybe test your mettle against Justin Thomas, Tony Finau, or Ian Poulter?
Nova Scotia-based HB Studios wants to help you do just that, as the Canadian video game developer played a key role in the creation of PGA TOUR 2K21 – heralded as the return of the great golf video game fans have been missing.
HB Studios is the studio behind The Golf Club 2019 featuring PGA TOUR, and PGA TOUR 2K21 marks the evolution of The Golf Club franchise.
It will feature 15 licensed PGA Tour courses and 12 PGA Tour winners.
Shaun West, a senior producer at HB Studios, says the first iteration of a golf game the company made in 2014 was just a “small indie project.” Still, 20 people worked on developing that game and it was a project that took “several” years.
“Starting out from that process and gaining the traction of 2K and the PGA Tour it really puts all of the hard work into perspective and what we’ve been able to achieve with this product,” says West, who has worked at HB Studios since November 2010. “Drawing the attention of the PGA Tour and them wanting to put their name on our product is a huge accomplishment for us and the team that worked on getting us to this point.”
West – who says with a laugh he plays golf as often as he can but plays the video game mostly to dream about how good he could one day be on the real golf course – says working with the PGA Tour was a little surreal. He wasn’t part of the HB Studios team that got to ‘scan’ the golfers (to help make virtual versions of all of their swings) but from what he was told everyone enjoyed the experience.
The HB Studios team scanned a batch of golfers at The Players Championship at TPC Sawgrass and another batch at the Zurich Classic in Louisiana.
“The guys loved it,” says West. “There was a lot of excitement about being included in the product and the players are super pumped to see the game and get involved with a golf game on a console.”
Eight of the courses featured in the game are new for this iteration and HB Studios did a “significant” scan process for the layouts – one that West says is as close to 1:1 as users of the game can get.
“It would be interesting to see a pro play one of these courses and compare that experience to how they would play it in real life and how the ball would react,” he says. “We’ve been building off this game for four iterations now so it’s definitely built up from that foundation.”
West (who says his favourite video game of all time is NBA Jam on Super Nintendo) says the team built off all the different avenues for people to experience golf to create PGA TOUR 2K21. There have been a lot of golf video games created in the past (click here to read our blog on classic golf video games) and the whole team had their own perspectives from playing real golf or virtual golf.
“There were a lot of mechanics that influenced the direction of the product,” says West. “Our design team did a great job driving the product forward. Two years is a great timeline to have but it’s also very difficult to utilize that two years effectively. I’m very proud of what we were able to put together with that.”
The game itself is set to be released on August 21st and West says at that point the team will still support its post launch and can make minor tweaks if necessary.
“I’ve been playing the game almost every single day. It’s a tough job,” he says with a laugh. “Once we see people get their hands on it, I’ll be really excited to see that hard work pay off.”