Gran Turismo X

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Building My Dream Racing Game

UI/UX

As a huge fan of racing games, and specifically the Gran Turismo series since the late 90s when I was around 4 years old and playing GT2 with my family, I have been hooked on their gameplay and the fantasy of being able to drive both supercars and everyday cars that I could own myself in real life as fast as I could. The most recent edition at the time (Gran Turismo 7) launched to some negativity from myself and other fans of the game, as the game was lacking in certain elements from the beginning which would be slowly patched out over the years that followed; This left me with a question though. I noticed a lot of areas of improvement, as well as frustrations and outcry of other fans of the series and sought to redesign the game into what I feel would be a better experience for players, with the simple question;

“What would be my dream Gran Turismo game?”.

This passionate venture drew on nostalgic throwback design cues from older games in the series and reimagined them in a more modern way. I used my in-game photography, 3D modelling assets, and UI expertise to create something that I believe caters to the things that made Gran Turismo a pinnacle of the racing game genre. I proudly present "GTUI".

World Building

I began by posting a questionnaire on the Gran Turismo Reddit forum for feedback from fellow players to gather data on what the players deemed as their ideal Gran Turismo and any content that they would want to see; I received a large range of interaction and responses from hundreds of other players to form my content points and ideas to improve this theoretical game's creation and I got to work.

My starting point was what many consider to be the heart of Gran Turismo's UI; the World Map. It is the central access point to all the game's content, and I think it should be treated as such. The teasers for GT7 showcased a nightscape city 3D map originally, but the eventual outcome was a "GT Island", with more natural elements and open landscapes; something I felt did not capture the essence of the series as much. I decided to revert to the cityscape aspect, heavily inspired by Gran Turismo 2, to create a 3D world that I would be able to overlay the menu buttons on and create a panning isometric “flat-3D” world for the players.

To support this, I researched and created mood boards for the map icons from both GT2 and GT7, using the colour schemes of the vivid oranges and purples to bring more life and colour to the palette that had been lost for a modernised and sanitized approach in GT7. This was the first step in creating my Design System for "GTUI"

Garages & Dealerships

The garages and dealerships in Gran Turismo carry a lot of weight and nostalgia for longer-time fans, previously stocking secret high-powered race cars at cut prices if you were lucky enough to log in on any given day they entered rotation, and access your garage full of hundreds of personalised and beloved cars. There was not much to improve visually with this as it was quite succinct, however, it needed some Quality of Life improvements, which I improved via the implementation of hot buttons to allow the users to perform quick actions for the most popular features when selecting your cars, eliminating the need for unnecessarily lengthy user journeys in and out of levels of menus and feature environments.

Events

A large pain point from players with GT7 was the content, specifically a lack of events past a certain duration of gameplay; Gran Turismo as a series has always featured a well-built "Career" mode that would allow a progression for the players who are given a starter car and can work up the ranks, by either tuning that car to take on tougher events or winning and buying other cars to compete in specifically regulated events. In GT7, this was somewhat cast aside in favour of "Menu Books" where the players would aim to collect a set of 3 linked cars (for example; 3 cars by the same manufacturer) as provided by the game. This approach has not been looked upon favourably by the players, so I attempted to address that.

I also worked on creating a better-rounded approach to these events, which were currently very isolated from each other, and rarely felt like a championship or race series, the easy fix was to turn into exactly this; a Championship. I crafted custom event title cards for my fictional race series as examples and worked to make the process and user journey feel more like they were competing in a championship against the game's AI (and even other players online).

Gaming Community Upgrades

A common gripe with the Gran Turismo 7 was sharing tunes, sharing liveries and generally building community outside of the game's environment is rather difficult. Polyphony host their own website, but to share links to this is very difficult and even copying URLs is ineffective given Sony's login feature essentially redirecting away from the shared page unless a user logs on prior to pasting their link.

My proposed improvement is a "Tuning Hub" that user can discover a car, and load a tune of their choosing to be applied into their library and apply to their cars in the game.