At this point I just want answers.
Why is it that in the 25 years of this franchise existing, I haven't heard of a single person, from here or anywhere else, trying to get in contact with anyone at PD, or even getting a job at one of their studios? Why are they so insular and reluctant to communicate with the outside world?
Not a single person. There has to have been at least someone out there who decided to move to Japan and get a job at PD, taking in feedback from the wider community. But I haven't heard a single story like that. For the thousands of people who don't like the state of the game or its updates, not one has tried reaching out and sorting out those problems from within.
My only guess as to why communication would be so limited would be due to language barriers, but there is a sort of power that can be held by omitting information. Even with absolutely transparency, there is no guarantee that we wouldn’t just spit-roast the development team the moment we found out they were heading in a subpar direction. Shareholders take notes of things like that.
When the game first released, it was review bombed to hell, and that seemed to create enough incentive to do something about it. Do enough to protect their sales and reputation. We can rest easy knowing that we will probably always have that card up our sleeves.
But joining their team to work from the inside? Personally, the reasons I couldn’t do it would be because:
- No pipeline for college graduates or lower
- Not fluent in Japanese; Not culturally familiar
- Not an experienced C++ programmer; May be needed to be closest to a game designer
- Do not have specialized game development knowledge
- Professional connections would not lead me there
- Unlikely to work directly with design leads
Also an interesting screenshot from their
job posts:
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Mind dump (sorta)
I try to see the influencers and pro players of this game as the mouthpieces of the community. To get our ideas on Polyphony’s doorstep, we would have to somehow convince these people to carry our ideas directly to the developers. We have to convince these people that our ideas are good for
them, and that by adopting them, they will see success in their own careers.
One of the problems we are facing is a huge conflict of interest between the single-player playerbase and these people. Much of the livelihood of these influencers and top players comes from not just Gran Turismo being in the good graces of their fans, but also Sport Mode remaining popular. If the quality of the online racing suddenly falls off a cliff and their content isn’t diverse enough to take the hit, how will their channels survive? From what I have seen, almost every upload detail, from title to thumbnail to video length, is meant to take advantage of the recommendation algorithm. You can’t easily grow your channel from dead games, let alone dead video topics.
Online racing is an easily repeatable topic that, on paper, regenerates its novelty each time a new combo is released. For that reason, they need to sell that Sport Mode is good. They need to levy their criticisms towards it to make sure it remains good. Naturally, that means less resources can be put towards things the average player wants, otherwise PD runs the risk of getting bad press.
Top players are often bored with the single player offerings for being too easy, but they also have a huge incentive to participate in esports if they have the skill to do so. With programs like GT Academy having been done in the past, hanging at the top can give enough attention to their name to get noticed for real life motorsport seats. I doubt anyone that believe they are capable would be willing to pass that up. If they were to ever get paid for it, they could do something a lot more interesting than a typical 9-5.
PD pulling focus away from competitive play could take away those opportunities very quickly.
It is in their best interest that their esport, and by extension Sport Mode, doesn’t fall by the wayside in favor of less lucrative single-player gameplay.
Hopefully, I haven’t gone off the deep end just yet 😅
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Anyway, these are just my initial thoughts on it all. As always they are subject to change.
