The pinnacle of player involvement in the Forza Motorsport creative community came when we had access to the storefront-- and we’ve fallen into a void of frustration and horrid user interfaces since its departure 10 years ago that has dulled the experience of discovering the talent amongst our designers, Forzatographers, and tuners. As a longtime FM creator, I’m going to outline as briefly as possible how incredible this former tool will be for the creative community (creators & consumers alike) if it returns. In my opinion, this is the most essential feature the next Forza Motorsport should have for a chance to resurrect the once-great creative community we all benefitted from…
1. Players can navigate the entire collection of a creator in one single spot.
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Players interested in a single file from a creator can navigate to the creator’s storefront (SF) and discover EVERYTHING they have to offer. The tabs on a player’s SF allow you to flip between all of their vinyl groups, designs, tunes, photos, and replays.
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Creators get way better exposure as people visit their full galleries of work all in one place. All it takes is an interested player finding one of their creations in a search result to discover all of their work.
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The existing system requires players to navigate to and search in multiple different menus to find this stuff. It’s surprisingly inefficient. The SF dramatically reduces clicks to flip between content types.
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Players who enjoy specifically themed content (e.g. NASCAR, Anime, drift) easily discover creators who dedicate all or most of their work to that specific interest.
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This was practically the same as an Instagram profile before Instagram was even popular-- and look at the power IG has for creators and consumers to connect in current times!
2. Players can search for what they want across all cars or filter down to specific makes and models.
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Search terms are not limited to the one specific car they’re sitting in if they don’t want them to be (e.g. a “JDM drift” search term will show you all relevant content that uses that term across all cars in game, or use filter options to show relevant results for only Nissans, or Subarus, etc.)
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Allows players to find content for repeat cars with multiple stock paint schemes all at once (e.g., being able to search for your paint job/tune across ALL of the V8 supercar Holdens, or ALL of the #24 NASCAR Chevrolets, and not just one that has a certain stock paint job).
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Takes pressure off of creators to have to figure out which of the repeat cars they will tune or paint to get the most exposure.
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Players will find tunes and designs so interesting that they will buy cars they don’t even have yet just to try the content out. Players will discover some of their new favorite cars this way.
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Current interface majorly discourages players from discovering content when they are stuck searching explicitly for the car they are sitting in.
3. Creators are easy to follow along with when you “favorite” their SF page.
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Favorites list allows quick navigation to creator.
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Players will discover specialists in the community that cater to their specific interests and will have the ability to easily check in on their latest work.
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Creators can better justify their time commitment and effort when they know it’s easy for players to actively follow along and consume their hard work.
I will end the main argument for the storefront to return here for the sake of not taking up too much of anyone’s time to go through all of this. I have been adamant since the day Forza Motorsport 5 came out without a storefront that the creative community is horribly affected and unrewarded for their work without the storefront feature. I hope my fellow creators and racers agree with me on this and remember to “vote” for this idea so we can get back on track. Happy tuning, painting, and photographing, my friends! Keep pushing the limits!!!
