Why doesn't Polyphony hire more people?
- Thread starter Mr. Boy
- 165 comments
- 10,264 views
Exactly. They should hire the double of the current team just for modeling premium cars, photo locations and tracks and GT5 would become so much better in half the time.
And they need a new game designer. Gameplay in GT5 sucks.
- 687
A couple of possible reasons as to why the team isn't double the size:
- the advance from Sony wouldn't cover extra staff
- concerns over quality control
- lack of tallented anough staff (see previous point)
- they thought they could get the job done with the staffing levels they have
- their offices aren't big enough to accomodate any more staff and a move would be expensive
- tax purposes
We'll never know, really.
Just the one? I wonder how big the design team is at the mo? A fairly small, cheap PS2, Xbox and PC game I worked a few years back on had a team of four designers, which was about average.
And you may want to clarify that "Gameplay in GT5 sucks" a touch. The whole game or just certain elements?
And I maintain that more staff != better game.
Some point may be correct. But have a look at communities like smcars.net. There are modeling pros not even finished with school and as good as a paid worker. Finding qualified people to model cars and environments is as easy as eating cornflakes with milk. Most of them could work from home or an external bureau, the final ingame-development could be done by PD-workers at their headquarter.
That PD is too smal for such a big game was visible with GT5 at all. Turn10 has the double size and can do more stuff in half the time.
They need to think about it. I see problems in future, if they do not change things.
I should have say "lead designer". The design-team is of course bigger than one person.
Gameplay means for me the system, which directs you how to play the game. I mean not the handling and physics at all. It is great as it is (with some room for improvements as always).
But this Special Events, A-Spec, B-Spec-thing just sucks. This is no system to play a racing game. It is just a table of races, you can race one after another, if you want. There isn´t any context between the races at all, no carreer or something you are growing with. Pick a car, do the race, win it or not and it´s ok.
Also the superficial and inconsistent race limitations ruin every excitement for the race. Because mostly you can pick whatever you want.
If you play GT5, you feel like a secretary with a big stack full of documents that must be sequentially stamped and sent. Is the job done, you feel good because this monotonous and boring thing is finally over.
And they should learn to bring life to the game. Their game-trailers always have great stuff to show....truck trailers while unloading cars, sequences with living pit roads, flying jets-sequences and so on.
Do you see that in the game? No!
- 5,352
- United States
- kudos00
Zer0
(Banned)
- 1,624
https://www.gtplanet.net/forum/showthread.php?p=5427441#post5427441
https://www.gtplanet.net/forum/showthread.php?p=5429520#post5429520
https://www.gtplanet.net/forum/showthread.php?p=5429954#post5429954
GT5P as August 11, 2009
https://www.gtplanet.net/gt5-prologue-sells-nearly-4-million-copies/
GT5P as today: 5.3 million
I hope you understand how GT games works regarding total sales numbers.
- 646
- UK
It's funny Zero that in that post you linked to you said that "The increase in the EU sales are compensating the US and JP markets. EU is the most important territory for modern GT games"
Official Chart-Track and GfK numbers show that while Sony shipped 3.9 million copies to Europe by the end of 2010, only 2 million were sold through by the end of 2010.
Food for thought.
Official Chart-Track and GfK numbers show that while Sony shipped 3.9 million copies to Europe by the end of 2010, only 2 million were sold through by the end of 2010.
Food for thought.
Zer0
(Banned)
- 1,624
Chart-Track is a market research company that monitors music, videos and software sales in the United Kingdom, Ireland and Denmark
http://www.channelnews.com.au/Sales_And_Marketing/Research/L5V6X5M9
Those companies work with partially surveys and market analysis, not an exact science and not real numbers. Public sales grow every day and it's impossible to track every copy distributed and sold in every retailer. What matter are the official distributed numbers, so just wait until PD/Sony update them.. and don't worry they will do many times in the next years.
- 687
You'd be surprised, you know. I worked in games for 12 years and a lot of my friends still do, it's always been hard to find decent artists who can produce consistantly quality assets in a reasonable amount of time.
Again, this is all a matter of control. If you have someone working out of house, it's really hard to get them to deliver what you want, when you want it. Once you start multiplying the number of freelancers, that difficulty increase exponentially.
Yes, but is what they produce actually better than what PD do?
But this is the way GT has always been and GT has always been popular, so why would they want to deviate from the formula?
Last time I played one of the TOCA games, I was intrigued by the career mode, which was something closer to the path a real racing driver would take, but I found it quite restrictive. Essentially, I just wanted to jump into the car I wanted and run the races I wanted. Which GT has (pretty much) always allowed me to do.
See, I just think all that stuff is completely superfluous and a waste of time. I just want to play the game. Which is why I also fail to care about the standard / premium car thing.
So, then you are right. I do 3d- and 2d-stuff in freetime and job, too. And I know, how hard it is, especially when it´s all about time. Accepted!
Freelancing is hard for companies, when the freelancers are not local. So I accept that point.
Not always better, but equivalent. Some things are better...especially now in FM4.
And here it starts to become a problem. It is the same as it always has been. The GT-gameplay system is totally out of date. Look at other racing games, how they let it happen to chain you to the gameplay. GT is stiff like a stick. You have no "Whoohoo, that was awesome, let´s do it again." Maybe you have, I haven´t (in other games I do).
Yes, you are right. I often want the same. But not as the only option. I want that as a "feature" like time trial or quick race. But not as a carreer mode. A carreer mode should blow you away as a singleplayer feature. It needs to tell something about, what you have to do and what your mission is.
Let´s talk about NFS Hot Pursuit (2010). I love this game, even if it´s an arcade racer. Even if the carreer mode has a similar structure like GT5 (do several races one after another), it feels completely different. You need to lock up stuff. A story teller has informations about new feature, tipps and special things. The story teller even tells you infos about every car (which is ten times better than to "read" it, because you can listen so somebody). The menus are really stylish and fit perfect to the main theme.
But the biggest plus is the atmosphere. If you race as a racer, you feel like a racer, if you are a cop, you feel like a cop. The races are intense and really deep.
And you get awesome intro- and end sequences, which let you step into the race and give you special moments to mentally prepare for the action....a bit like "yeah, let´s get start it"
In my opinion, GT5 has nothing of those points.
I don´t really care about the standard/ premium thing, too. I have more standards in my garage than premiums. And most of them are lovely.
But for me, GT starts to get a waste of time, because it has nothing to offer than driving a car. It doesn´t suck me in anymore (like it does before). I realised, that I need more than driving cars to have fun. There is no "everything about the game", there is just "driving". And that´s what every other racing game has to offer.
- 2,822
- Espoo
- GTP_Raitzi
As long as GT sells as it does, Sony has no interest to further increase PD team. However they should try outsourcing some of the work to be able to build games faster. Other thing is to make and sell more meaningful DLC. Turn10 is much further in taking advantage on online sales. I also think that most people think that t10 listen customers more, although it closely related to fact that they are making games much quicker than PD. For example how hard would be to make standing starts to enable top gear power laptimes competition or the star in reasonable priced car thing.
- 674
- M.I.A
Not sure why PD doesn't employ more staff, but I found this article which could be relevant to GT5, and well worth a read.
Kojima: Japan must use foreign talent
Would that have been a wise move for PD, GT5 and us? I personally think it would have added more to the game than just man power, some may think "added the wrong things"
Kojima: Japan must use foreign talent
Would that have been a wise move for PD, GT5 and us? I personally think it would have added more to the game than just man power, some may think "added the wrong things"
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That´s a really interesting article. I would say it is important to have western influence in your team to pass the asian borders and reach the global market.
Because everybody of us knows, what a really unique culture and way of life asian peoples have and it differs a lot from western cultures. And this influences the asian game industry a lot.
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