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.