Over the years we´ve been in this discussion about hardcore x casual, and to me racing games evolved as a whole and they are complicated, to a point where there isn´t really a market for casual racers.
I´ve always thought Gran Turismo underestimated how much they taught us about cars and about racing in general. Many in here were teenagers or kids when the first game came out, and people were drawn into motorsports because of Gran Turismo.
What i mean is, there was only so much technology could do back then. Gran Turismo was a sim because it had the principles right, it was what you could do with the tech available.
Yes, we had Papyro games, but even those were not really advanced. I remember playing Network Q Rally with a wheel and i was just amazed at how realistic that felt. Playing the same game today on emulation, it hit me at how limited we were, how silly and uneducated i was on motorsports back then.
But Gran Turismo games always pushed me to know more, to go after information. The passion for cars is a highway to become a hardcore sim racer, i can´t see it any other way.
The series kept evolving and most of us kept asking for more, because deep inside we all wanted to feel like race car drivers, like the competent and skillful guys we admire on TV.
I don´t buy the theory that introducing realistic features drive casual people away from the game. In fact, i think in some cases it´s the other way around, i could never figure out how to play Driveclub or Forza 6 Apex because those games are so far away from real life that you just don´t understand them.
People like cars, and usually anecdotal evidence tells me that they adapt to the level of realism that´s thrown at them.
I´m writing all of this because in 2014 i had the chance to meet Kaz and Translator san and asked about hardcore features, and i got the now common answer that "technically we can do that", but in reality they just don´t want to do a number of things, things we are getting on AC, Pcars, RaceRoom and others.
It´s sad that i learned to race "the right way" in Gran Turismo, but i became a much better sim racer when i switched most of my time to other sims. GT stopped pushing the envelope and now they are in this quicksand where it´s not hardcore enough for some, but it´s not accessible enough for the millions of casuals claimed to exist out there.
I might be totally wrong, because i go on the premise that racing games in general are more complex and difficult, but i feel deep down inside that developers should not fear going for realistic features because people can adapt to it, everybody drives a real car in real life, at worst casuals would just be slower.
It´s a huge block of text and i don´t know if i expressed myself well enough, but all of this is to say that i don´t understand where Gran Turismo is going, kind of stuck in this in-between line that doesn´t help any camp.
