The Gran Turismo franchise has changed a lot over the past 25 years. From breaking ground as a “the real driving simulator” with realistic cars and driving physics to growing into an esports platform, the series has come to attract a wide range of people for many different reasons.
Gone are the days where the game has a core set of features designed attract a type of player. Today, car collectors, Photomode photographers, livery designers, tuners, single-players who avoid online racing, private league racers who race online almost exclusively, and competitive esports players all have different opinions on what “Gran Turismo” should be.
How does Kazunori Yamauchi manage all those expectations? It’s something we asked him about during a recent interview at the GT World Series Finals in Barcelona.
“That’s a good question, because there really is a huge variety of players in Gran Turismo,” he acknowledged. “There is of course a lot of traditional Gran Turismo players who have been playing since GT1, and those players prefer to play offline. And then we have a new group from Gran Turismo Sport, who may not have as much time to play as others, but prefer to play online.”
“To try and cover all of their demands and needs is very difficult, actually,” Yamauchi-san explained. “Gran Turismo has always been very experimental and avant-garde, but to convey a lot of different values, it takes time.
“For example, when Gran Turismo 7 first released, there were a few critics saying that Gran Turismo is created under a different rule set, or a different set of motives, and that was a compliment. What that represents is that it takes 25 years to get that concept across to people.
“Vision GT is celebrating its 10th anniversary this year, and across 10 years there are close to 40 cars that have been created through that. And by doing that, people are starting to realize the value of that activity and project.
“We are taking on new challenges and new undertakings, but we are also keeping the heritage alive as well. I think we just have to go step by step and we have to have the players understand that.”
The franchise made one of its biggest shifts with the launch of GT Sport in 2017, but — as its name implied — it was a title focused on competition. With the launch of Gran Turismo 7 in 2022, it marked somewhat of a return to the game’s classic structure while integrating the online features and competitive framework introduced in Sport.
Nevertheless, not everyone was happy, with complaints of both a shallow singler-player mode from one group of players, and complaints the online functionality that had not evolved enough from another.
As GT7 continues to evolve and Polyphony Digital continues work on its next title, it will be interesting to see how Kazunori Yamauchi and his team are able to keep their increasingly diverse player base happy.
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