Slothy

So as we all know, the move to more powerful consoles with most likely constant internet connections and hard drives has inevitably lead to periodic updates like we've seen in PC titles for at least the last 10-15 years. Now there are certainly upsides and downsides to this. Many people don't like the idea because there's always the potential for a developer to release a buggy game and fix it later. Of course, most developers realize this is a bad idea and will only hurt them in the long run. The more likely case is that they'll release a game with bugs they didn't know about and rush to try and get an update out to fix them.

And of course other great things can come from periodic updates. New maps, campaigns, weapons, items, etc. Not to mention improvements to the underlying game itself as you get feedback from the community. Many games have benefited from regular updates, perhaps the most obvious example being Team Fortress 2. But there are ways to do an update wrong and I want to look at one example that just happened this Thursday.

I don't really play Gran Turismo 5 much anymore because the lack of content late game and frustrations of the leveling system make it very hard to get much play time out of it once you pass the Extreme events and only have the Endurance races. So I mostly just pull it out lately to try some challenges I haven't polished off, get two cars I've been wanting to try since I got the game and do the seasonal races they occasionally release online. I do also like to keep up to date on the most recent patches and happenings with the game though, in large part because I'm just interested in seeing what they do to try and fix it, which is why I frequent the forum over at GTPlanet.net.

Now with the release of the most recent patch on Thursday, Polyphony removed the ability to gift cars to other players that were worth more than $1,000,000 in game. Before this you could gift any car you wanted to anyone on your friends list, but what was happening was people would back up their save file, send a car to someone while most likely receiving another car in return as a pretty large marketplace had developed around the gifting feature. Once they received the car in trade, they would in turn gift it to a secondary account they had, restore their backed up save game and then send the car back to their main account. This way they received the car they wanted without really giving up anything.

Now what followed amongst the community was something I didn't really expect. Half of the people were up in arms over this because they had been trading using the same methods to build up a collection of cars they wanted to use, or simply because they enjoyed collecting cars in the game, but couldn't afford (or worse, couldn't find since the cars that show up in the used car dealership are random the higher end cars rarely show up there). And in fact, with many of the race cars being anywhere from $4,000,000 to $20,000,000 you would have to run the higher paying races anywhere from 40-200 times to get a single high price car depending on what you wanted. This kind of grinding is boring as hell so I can understand the complaints people had in that regard, and they have every right to be pissed that this feature was handicapped without a reasonable substitute and they now are expected to play for a prohibitively long time and pray for a little luck to buy all of the cars they want.

That reaction I could understand, but what really surprised me was that there was a surprising number of people cheering this decision because they considered this practice cheating. This is a position I don't understand for a number of reasons. First the common trading practices had no bearing on their games and in no way affected them directly, so reacting negatively to it makes no sense to begin with. Second, it didn't do anything to belittle their own personal achievements within the game. In fact one of the big things people mention was that pretty much anyone could get the best car in the game without completing the absurdly difficult challenges required to earn it. But just because someone can get the car without doing it (and if you play long enough you'll get it without doing it anyway) it in no way takes away from the achievement of those who got gold or even bronze on these challenges. But really, I think why it was really considered cheating by some is simply because it let people bypass the natural progression in the game to some degree, and I think that may in the end have been why Polyphony limited it the way they have. But if that's the case then one has to wonder why they included gifting in the first place since you'd have to be blind or stupid not to guess how gifting and backing up save files may be used. Perhaps more importantly, Polyphony pretty much indirectly acknowledged that the natural flow of the game is broken in the last update when they increased the experience you gain from races by a full 200-300%.

The point that I really wanted to get at though was that there could have been better ways to handle this. Had they released an in game marketplace, or an full blown trading system the reaction may have been much less severe. Hell, with stories of some people getting scammed on trades it may have even been welcomed, even with some restrictions in place. Instead, many people were left with no way to complete their collections of high priced cars short of putting in literally weeks of play time, and there just isn't enough content in the game to support that kind of play time. Where Polyphony really screwed up here in my opinion is that rather than adding a new level to the game, they took away an aspect that let people better play the game the way they wanted to play it. And anytime you get in the way of people playing the way they want to play, especially when it doesn't harm the experience of anyone else you're asking for a massive backlash from the fans. Even if it's only a minority that's affected, you can count on them becoming the most vocal minority out there.

Which is why I think this is the wrong way to do an update. Any company about to release an update needs to ask themselves if it really improves the game. If it takes something away that was legitimately hurting peoples experience then great. But if it takes something away that gave people the option to play the way they want while hurting no one, then it isn't really improving anything. The more options you give people to dictate their play experience the better, and removing options they had for months on a whim is almost universally a bad idea.