This article turned out to be a walk down memory lane for SHIFT when tracking down the origins of both projects and discovering the coincidence in the projects sharing the same name.
- May 18, 2006 Korge hopes to create a racing game and discovers Half-Life 2 modding. He joins Mod DB to become active in the community. Work begins on AfterHours Racing privately with a small team of artists. Moddb.com
- Dec 12, 2006 AfterHours Racing is officially announced in its small community. Forum.nfsunlimited.net
- Dec 30, 2006 Korge talks with Hypersonic Source Raceway's leader and coder Neo. He agrees to code for AfterHours Racing in 2007. Forum.nfsunlimited.net
- Jan 4, 2007 Assets for AfterHours Racing are continually being worked on and production is under way. Moddb.com
- Jan 4, 2008 Blimey Games reveals Ferrari Project pictures to the public. Computerandvideogames.com
- Feb, 2008 School friends convince Korge to change name from AfterHours Racing to SHIFT. He informs the SHIFT webmaster and asks him to secure a new web domain to reflect the change when the current one expired.
- Mar, 2008 EA's European division privately contracts Slightly Mad to work on an upcoming Need for Speed game with the help of Black Box management. At this time, Slightly Mad was working with Blimey on what can be assumed was Ferrari Project. Gamasutra.com
- Apr 14, 2008 AfterHours Racing is canceled and the SHIFT overhaul is worked on privately. Korge begins consulting graphic artists for an official SHIFT logo. H3ad3ad.deviantart.com Forum.nfsunlimited.net
- Oct 22, 2008 The AfterHours Racing development team secures the domain name "theshiftgame.com." Dnsstuff.com
- Dec 8, 2008 AfterHours Racing publicly reemerges as SHIFT: AfterHours Racing. The subname is kept for reference (It was the name of the project for 2 years and people still called it this).
- Jan 12, 2009 Current Need for Speed developer Slightly Mad Studios buys Blimey (GTR, GTR2) and acquires a majority of the art team as well as all of their assets (including Ferrari Project, which becomes the engine on which Need for Speed: SHIFT is created). Look familiar? Simracingworld.com Mobygames.com Virtualr.net
- Jan 30, 2009 Need for Speed: SHIFT development officially announced. SHIFT: AfterHours Racing development team is surprised at the name choice. Slightlymadstudios.com
- Feb 18, 2009 Original GTR and GTR2 developers at SimBin/Blimey who were not acquired by Slightly Mad react negatively to Slightly Mad's claims of being the team which worked on the original GTR games. Joystiq.com
- Mar 14th, 2009 SHIFT: AfterHours Racing makes its first major news post after overhauling the design for the first time. It gets attention from Podcast17. Korge gets exclusive usage rights to the current SHIFT logo from its artist. Podcast17.com
- Jun 3rd, 2009 SHIFT ditches the AfterHours Racing subname after Neo joins the development team full time. Moddb.com
- Aug 21, 2009 The official SHIFT (Half-Life 2) logo is created. Moddb.com
- Sept 15, 2009 Need for Speed: SHIFT is released worldwide. En.wikipedia.org
Information on Ferrari Project, the SimBin/Blimey purchase, and the exact details of the Slightly Mad Studios/Electronic Arts contract are extremely sparse so the information provided is using the best sources available. This article may have unreliable sources and therefore is subject to change if necessary.
What would be *really* interesting is if there had been a comment made by an NFS:SHIFT developer had been made about the name of the game and the mod. Would have been interesting to know if they knew about the mod or not.
All I can say is that your logo is much more creative and more badass then nfs.
I was surprised reading the above article. I thought that this project is the direct copy from NFS: Shift, and it didn't look promising to me, but it was totally reverse. Now I understand that SHIFT is fully original in content and name. Sorry, keep up with your work guys!
Your logo is way awesomer then their lame boring logo!
Yeah, your logo is rly kickass! Better than NFS.
But I always thought your name was stolen from NFS^^
No, need for speed "Shift" stole the name from this.
This mod was already in development before they think of putting Shift in the final of Need For Speed (which made me go rage mode and now I hate all nfs games).
Also, I wouldn't be surprised if the Shift development team releases SHIFT and make it way better than the nfs one, as this new one sucks and these updates are just teasing!
Now, keep up this work, it's awesome and you own the rights of the name, go **** EA for copying it.
Really? The word "Shift" was stolen?
Tsh, should've patented the word while they had the chance .. >_>
Agree on the logo though, but it doesn't surprise me for a second. I have yet to see any big-time developer be more creative than us little modders here on the floor.
Awesome article! and +1 for everyone for their awesome comments =) (especially that Shift's logo kicks more *** for sure!)