My Diaries

A Lurid Tale of Obsession, Depravity, Wits and Attempted Wit

Thu June 17, 1999

Psychology of Gran Turismo, a Modern Video Game

Newsgroups: rec.games.video.sony

Well, I had quite liked the Gran Turismo Demo in the demo disks which came with my Playstation, and so, based almost entirely on that, I decided to buy it.

The racing simulator (using the term loosely) I had most frequently used most recently prior to that was SuperBike Challenge on the Commodore 64. It was a nice little game. A joystick used in the obvious fashion, although you needed to "change gears" by pushing the fire button while leaning the stick forward or back. You soon learned the quirks of controlling the bikes with the stick. Learning the tracks became a case of remembering the speeds you could corner at, with a little bit of road positioning. Gear-changing was useful only when restarting after a crash. You could race two players and two AI bikes, or (as I always did) one player and 3 AI bikes. Twelve tracks could be raced as single races, or as a combined season. I got so I could very reliably win the season, though I never swept it--I'd usually make a couple of mistakes. That took about two hours, and was a relaxing way to spend an evening.

The graphics were probably not quite up to the 64's potential, but were adequate. Secondary scenery was non-existent; a ribbon of grey road with white-and-red markers slithered quickly towards you from the horizon, like an agitated serpent.

So, perhaps I did not expect too much more from Gran Turismo. I mean, the Arcade mode is similar to the above with all the well-known improvements--better scenery, realistic vehicle handling, excellently co-ordinated sounds, etc. Taking a "new" arcade mode and unlocking it entirely is now a somewhat amusing way to spend two hours or so. Granted, it originally took me several days to completely unlock all of it, but with the training of playing the game a lot, arcade mode now seems a manageable game.

But then there's simulation mode. Days (a few real, many simulation) before I got the "License" I needed just to make a reasonable amount of money. But eventually after some absurd late-night (even all-night) sessions I got the A-license to unlock the most fun elements of the game. And a while later I really did get the IA license I had at one time though unattainable.

So I would race and race and race. I began winning those prize-cars. Then I discovered web sites which would tell me exactly which prize-cars I had yet to obtain.

But somehow, some of those prize cars seemed very elusive. I noticed that new prizes from the "specialized Series" (FF, etc.) seemed to appear when I raced new cars there, especially if I raced those cars in lots of other races first. (Sunday, Clubman, and maybe GT cups).

But the International Prize Cars. It seemed in each series I would get one of two cars only. I would keep racing and racing those series, and, in the back of my mind, I would be hoping to get a new prize car.

Eventually one day I did. A tuned (not race-modded) GTO'95MR managed to win JPvsUS, and I got a white Viper with not blue, as had become all too common, but *green* stripes. The GTO won the All-Night II I had been preparing for, and then the Tuned (aka Abnormal) Car Contest, and then went back to JPvsUS and won a black FTO LM--yet another new prize car!!! These extra cars really did exist!

Strange you know. After that point, I really didn't race JPvsUS much any more. I wanted a grey-and-purple Cerbera LM, and a yellow Concept Car. But they really did not seem to appear until I consciously did various things to try and get them.

I bought more cars (at this point I had to save my prize cars in a separate game, frozen at day 2855 specifically for that purpose), and raced them as much as possible. Although I read things which said the prizes were awarded randomly, it sure seemed to me that cars which had won more and lost less (in other series) had a better chance of getting more cars than others did. The purple ConceptCar, for instance, seemed to turn up three of four cars in USvsUK.

Yes, eventually, a race-modded Griffith 500, first winning almost everything it was eligible for (all of GT League, plus FR), turned up the elusive grey-and-purple Cerbera LM after competing in the UKvsJP five times. (Would you believe my garage was full for one race--whew!). But it would not get the yellow ConceptCar from UKvsUS.

To get the yellow ConceptCar, I got really desperate, and started a "second" game. A prize ConceptCar in that game won a white-and-blue Viper five times in five USvsJP. (I entered that car in no other races, as a deliberate experiment; two other cars entered in a variety of races (but not GT-I) won a black FTO LM). A race-modded Viper GTS which won all of GT League, plus FR, in that game turned it up in three UKvsUS, although it did not appear to be about to turn it up before that. (In a fourth UKvsUS it turned up another yellow ConceptCar--have you ever heard a PlayStation giggle?) And soon after that, I followed a similar routine with the same car in my "main" game, and sure enough, I got a yellow ConceptCar "legitimately".

The "other colours" of the other two cars in question, the del Sol LM, and RX7 Aspec LM, both sort of appeared without a lot of conscious effort.

All right, it became time to complete my collection. And, you know, I really have not raced any of the International Series Races very much since then.

Different cars, with good racing histories, thrown at the various series with holdouts (FR, Mega) turned the missing cars up relatively easily. The two colours of the enduro prizes appeared very easily without any effort.

This left the two long series, the Normal and the Abnormal (okay, they call the second "Tuned", but I think 900+bhp mid-class Japanese sports cars are fairly abnormal). The prize-cars for these appeared in better-than-random time, perhaps because I would change the car I was using to another one which had a reaonably good history (or else create a history for it). 9 wins for the Normal, and 10 for the Abnormal. You think that's not better-than-random? All right then, try rolling a die several times and see how long it takes you to "collect" all six numbers. Try that experiment several times, and see how often it usually seems to take you.

Furthermore, to get the last Abnormal prize, I bought my first ever Viper RT/10 (I had used only the GTS before). Now, before I raced in a bunch of other races, it got duplicate prizes, but after I raced and won with it in A-level GT League, and the FR Series, it got the remaining car on the first try.

So I got my yellow Skyline, added it to the collection of cars in the "prize car garage", and got rid of some more of the cars in my "real" game.

At that point I realized, I would find it somewhat difficult to keep racing the races with no new prize cars to get. The knowledge that there were new cars to get had been a more significant motivating factor than I had realized. Sure, I've gone back and won some of the series with cars I was a little unsure about using in the serious pursuit of prizes, but, after a little of that it's difficult to think of interesting things to do. (Hmm. Maybe if I win the Normal with the right car, that mythical '67 Corvette will appear--not likely).

Allegedly, I can now concentrate on getting my license test cars. But, as an honest personal self-evaluation, I don't think I have the consistency of co-ordination for doing that. And, now, suppose I was that good. Well *then* that would make the rest of the game seem even more pointless, as I would be in even more complete control of many of the series. (Presumably). (Besides, on the weekend I finally found and bought the GT download CD (From Zeller's, for those who might benefit from that information).

When I was in the middle of all this, I began thinking "There is too much in Gran Turismo. Sony is actually marketing a product which causes consumers to buy fewer other comparable products than they might otherwise." (though I did buy a lot of memory cards ).

But now I'm beginning to think that the complexity of the game helps to create a desire for ever-increasing complexity, and for continually new rewards. Whereas I would pick up Superbike Challenge after a few months break for the pleasure of relearning it, and the simulated competition, there was never the excitement (okay maybe I have a dull life) of acquiring new prizes.

That last paragraph is really the reason for this entire rambling post. I'll probably post it as a separate thread.

Some GT players might be interested in my personally observed "tricks" for acquiring the prize cars. And, FWIW, I do not believe the cars are awarded randomly with uniform distribution, under the influence of buggy use of buggy pseudo-random number generators, as is implied in some FAQs. In the presence or absence of apparently correlated actions, the cars appear either more or less often than random.