New scripts for work in progress video! 2. Why They Broke Gran Turismo 7 (Patreon)

Hello again!

So if you didn't see the last post (where I go into more depth on the situation), here's the TL;DR of what's happening right now: basically, I've been crunching on two videos simultaneously, trying to get them done in time for Patreon's month-end deadline for paid posts, so I have some income for the next month. That said, the crunching (combined with the rocketing scope of one of the videos) has left me exhausted to the point that I need to take an extra day or two to get them both completed, and so I hope you can understand that I'll be posting the scripts now just so I'm not freaking out about keeping the lights on for the next month.

Then, when the videos get posted in the next few days, I'll post the finished products here and importantly you won't be charged again. I always hate having to do this, but people tell me they're mainly just pledging to support me and to make things a bit more comfortable, so they don't mind waiting a day or two for the videos. That's a level of generosity I can never fully thank you for, and I sincerely hope you understand this mainly logistical situation. Now, on with the update and the scripts!

---

This one serves as a kind of follow up on my initial review of Gran Turismo 7—what I initially thought of as one of the best racing games of all time, only for the game to actually release and suddenly its hellish microtransaction/always online nature was revealed to everyone, pre-release critics included, in a way that catapulted any goodwill they'd built up into the sun. That said, given the statements made by the game's director, combined with the game's obsessive dedication to every aspect of the car ownership experience, there is a throughline to be drawn to where the game currently is now. To be clear, this is not a defence of this exceedingly stupid, broken economy, but to say the situation emerged from sheer money-grabbing malice might not be telling the whole story. Let's get into it.

Seemingly the paradigm on YouTube these days is to look backwards in the form of a Years Later style video (a style which I seem to remember Raycevick being at the forefront of but one that seemingly everyone else, myself very much included, has aped as time has gone on). These videos are often an enticing mix of “oh god, has it really been that long?” and a chance to look back on how the industry has inevitably shifted in the years and decades since a beloved classic or infamous trainwreck has released.

It's rare, though, for a game to have changed tact so drastically, so confusingly, so immediately that I now feel like a similar kind of reflection is warranted a mere two months or so after said game came out; by all accounts, what Gran Turismo 7 is now is very different from what it was when critics, myself once again included, emerged from our embargo-sealed hovels at the beginning of March to regale the world with tales of how triumphant a return this was for the long-suffering racing franchise… only to be met in the weeks since with talk of how busted this game actually was.

I had zero connection issues during the review window, and so of course when the game actually releases is when I find out you can’t play this game *at all* if that server goes down. And when it did, for a bafflingly long amount of time I might add, was when I found out about another, arguably even worse aspect to this whole debacle, one that I don’t think any reviewer had any context for—the dreaded microtransactions.

I was definitely curious as to how those in-game purchases would impact the overall game, which is why I mentioned in the review that it was disappointing that we had no info on them pre-release, but I don’t think anyone could have predicted the situation being as bad as it ended up. Not only were the credits available for purchase way pricier than I had anticipated, but they also afforded you exceedingly little for your money.

As a result, in desperation to earn as many precious credits as possible in-game, players started frantically searching and fixating on those races that garnered the highest payouts. And to make matters even worse, when the top brass got wind of these tactics being used, they shut down the servers for over an entire day just a week or two after launch, rendering the vast majority of the game completely unplayable, specifically so they could tweak the sliders to reduce payouts for those races.

To be clear, I absolutely stand by my review of that game in terms of how incredible I think this game is to actually play… which makes it all the more disappointing just how… suddenly that goodwill was catapulted into the sun. For one of the best racing games I’ve ever played, this was baaad.

Payouts were already pretty paltry, and now things were even worse. For context, the last menu book of the game sees you taking on five incredibly lengthy races in one go, including a mercifully, vastly shortened approximation of the 24 hour endurance race of Le Mans. All of this totalled almost a straight hour of driving to complete, and my reward for doing so amounted to maybe one-tenth of *some* of the higher end cars you can buy in the game.

Not even the highest-end cars, to be clear; I’ve certainly seen more expensive—cars in the six million credit range, for instance. That’s like, sixty hours of racing right there! That’s sixty real-world quid! That is mental!

Even with the million credits they so generously gave everyone for “enduring” the server blackout, you still wouldn’t be able to buy one of the legendary cars on sale unless you were to spend another 16 quid, where without a test drive function there’s little way to know (outside of the daft talking head history lesson) whether or not this will actually suit your current playstyle, whether you’ll actually get any use out of it in races, unless you’re the kind of player that knows exactly what all these numbers mean and can compare it to your current collection in your head.

But that’s the thing, there’s a real disconnect for me here. I look at the statements made by the game’s director, Kazunori Yamauchi, in response to this whole debacle and, as frustratingly vague as they are, as much as they carry the same stern tone as the game’s demands of sportsmanship from its players, as if telling off a bunch of kids for getting into the cookie jar, I just can’t read the kind of malice you’d typically associated with money hungry publishers trying to get every last dime out of players. This doesn’t seem like the same kind of shakedown. It's more a kind of weird, pleading disappointment—that players have found a way to subvert the game’s vision while also begging them to take a look at the bigger picture, that there perhaps is a point to all of this.

And to be absolutely clear, I ultimately think that point is indefensible, and makes the game concretely worse… all I’m saying is that, for a series that adores every aspect of cars as much as Gran Turismo does, I can’t say I’m surprised as to how all of this turned out. The ways in which Gran Turismo was broken post-release seem remarkably consistent with the game’s larger view of the art of cars and car culture. Bear with me here.

See, for as much as the career mode gives you access to a huge variety of cars across its lengthy run time, when it comes to buying your own car, GT7 seemingly wants you to be sure you want it more than anything else. It expects that if you actually want this car, you’ll be invested enough to know what those numbers mean. If you don’t, move on, the game seems to say—you won’t up your pretty meaningless collector level I guess, there’s some miniscule missions you might not get immediate access to as a result, but… this car isn’t for you. It won’t mean anything to you the way we want it to mean something to you. Don’t just blow your money on a high price tag—you’ll likely regret it.

Gran Turismo’s unflinching adoration for every part of the driving experience is well documented through its campaign’s frequent detours to tell you, in joyful detail, all about the most seemingly mundane of cars. These aren’t mundane, the game declares—even the least flashy vehicles are still wonders of engineering; they all serve their own purpose, one that deserves to be carefully examined and appreciated, even if said purpose doesn’t line up with your immediate needs. Cars are pieces of mechanical art, symbols representing the triumph of humanity, and if you’re on board with Gran Turismo’s vision as it so demands in other areas, then you will respect these machines.

And hell, I don’t have that much adoration for real world cars but I can appreciate that passion, especially when it’s expressed in ways as earnestly goofy as this. The problem, and where things get really insane, is that this obsession has arguably extended into the commerce surrounding that art. It seems as if there’s a desire to simulate not only the beauty of realistic racing, but the wonders of luxury car ownership; the feelings of grandeur that come with going to a classy showroom to buy the car of your dreams and obsess over it in the way it deserves to be obsessed over, to show it off. You can’t just buy cars willy nilly, you can’t just earn currency and throw it away with equal abandon, because otherwise you wouldn’t have earned it. Again, that car wouldn’t be special to you.

All of this, for my money anyway, is consistent with the game’s vision—the issue is, well, this is a video game. I’m not actually buying a car here. I get the passion for driving, I do, I even get the desire to have you really care about each car you get given—it’s why the campaign has you gradually learn the ins-and-outs of every type of car over time, before methodically moving you onto the next—but I’ve also got shit to do. Real world money to earn, bills to pay—luxury car ownership is the last thing on my fucking mind. I just want to drive these amazing cars—the thing this game does really, really well!

Going by Yamauchi’s statements, valuing the actual cost of actual cars as part of the real world driving experience the game treats with such spiritual fervour reads, inadvertently, as a scathing indictment of car culture rather than anything to truly respect. You know, cars are a beautiful artform… one that we can’t have sullied by the poors!

Again, as much as the moves the devs have made have been obviously daft and inarguably terrible, I can’t say with any conviction that there was malicious intent behind them. This is by no means a defence of this dumbass economy or the way it was hidden from people pre-release. Rather, I’m merely asserting that given the obsessive philosophy that drove the creation of this game—the dedication to said philosophy that led to such a wild, charming presentation throughout the game’s races and menus—there is a logical throughline to be drawn to the point the game is at now, even if the implementation of these features conveys the opposite sentiment to what I believe was intended.

Because, from personal experience with the game, it makes a kind of sense. I partly used the payout from the server blackout and partly used the winnings I’d garnered to buy a Bugatti Veyron, purely based on name recognition alone. And, ya know, it’s… fine. It’s a pretty fast car. I have faster and slower cars in my collection I enjoy driving way more, and as soon as I took my new purchase out for its first spin, my thoughts started to turn to the numerous upgrades I could have made to those cars instead; how much cheaper that would have been for a more enjoyable experience. I blew my money on something I wasn’t sure I wanted, that I didn’t fully understand, and I regretted it.

I don’t think it can be disputed that Gran Turismo 7 is a game that wants you to love cars as much as it loves cars—it wants you to be sure of everything, to regret nothing, from your purchase of an expensive car, to your approach on a tricky corner. It’s just unfortunate that such grand philosophical musings on the holistic experience of cars as an artform, the economic mechanisms of ownership included, have led to the nuts and bolts of what is still the best feeling driving I may have ever experienced in a game, to suffer quite the way that it has.