WHO WORKS HERE

People Staff Interview

• As a child, I was always around cars

  My father loved cars and racing, so I've always been around and admired cars since I can remember. The first car I ever rode in was my father's beloved Porsche and I remember watching his WRC video when I was in kindergarten. You could say I was a slightly unusual child.

  When I entered elementary school, my father bought me a copy of Gran Turismo 2 with the steering wheel controller, but I was unable to save any data as the PlayStation® console at home didn't have a memory card. Every time I switched on the console, I had to restart the game! Still, I enjoyed attempting the races from the very beginning each time with my favourite car the Eunos Roadster.

  

• A desire to work on the game I loved as a child

  I continued to play through the GT series and around the time I entered high school the series had moved into the online era. I started to get involved in online races with the friends I met through open lobbies, and by the time I was at university, I was organizing my own online events.

  At university, I enrolled in the Foreign Languages Department and intended to get a job at the airport, but some part of me still kept wondering if I could work on GT. It was at this time that I was fortunate enough to come across a job opening on the Polyphony Digital (PDI) corporate website for staff to be involved with online events and I decided to take a chance.

• Working on Sport Mode at the very heart of the game

  After joining PDI, the first responsibility I was given was to help manage the 'Gran Turismo 6' Season Events. My job was to input certain data for race conditions and prize money, implement it into the game and then check the event would run without issue. I joined in 2016 and around this time PDI was in the latter stages of development with 'Gran Turismo Sport' and so I gradually got moved over to the online production aspect of the new title.

  I was responsible for Sport Mode which was a brand new mode for the GT Series and also the main mode in Gran Turismo Sport. It consisted of "Daily Races" where players would compete in periodically updated events, a "Nations Cup" championship where the players compete as a representative of their home country, and a "Manufacturer Series" championship where the players compete on behalf of their favourite automobile manufacturer.

  Besides the data entry and verification work I was doing for events, I also became more involved in other fields such as working with ex-GT drivers to gain feedback and verify results and I began to work more with the engineers who build the game system. Gran Turismo Sport then successfully launched the following year in 2017, but post-release is when all of the events begin so it was a busy time for the whole Operations Team. When any live events were hosted overseas for things like the Nations Cup, we'd travel to the venue to take care of the settings for the race feed, or we might be dealing with event preparations and checks for events at the studio. It was a hectic time.

  

• Looking for ways to provide a more enjoyable user experience

  In 2018, I received some good news. I had been offered a full-time position at PDI. I was still at university at the time, but working on GT had been a life-long dream for me and it felt really good being part of the team that was building it, so I had no hesitations about accepting.

  As recognition for all of the work I had done in my support role on Sport Mode, I was given a far wide-ranging set of duties after becoming a full-time employee. For Gran Turismo 7, I was appointed the main lead for Sport Mode, so I need to utilise my planning skills a lot now. To improve your project planning skills you need to have a clear understanding of user psychology, and to gain an understanding of that, you first need to analyse a wide range of data.

  For example, by calculating and analysing the cumulative data we get from online events, things like changes in the number of users according to the type of race, or what the player skill level balance was like, we can use this information to better plan our next events. We also make sure to monitor social platforms as much as possible, so that we are aware of what our users are saying.

  While Gran Turismo Sport focused heavily on the e-sport component, Gran Turismo 7 is a more all-encompassing title with a wide range of users from newcomers to veterans who have been playing since the early days, so the expectations of our userbase will understandably begin to vary even more than before. It's then really important that we look for and catch the things our users are requesting, while at the same time continuing to monitor data from a variety of different angles. Once this process is complete we can then consider how to implement these requests. I imagine the work of the Operations Team is going to get increasingly more difficult, but I think it's a truly rewarding mission.

• The type of people I want to work with

  In the Operations Team, we currently have an active racing driver, an ex-GT top driver, a race report specialist and a data scientist, so it's a rather broad range of people. We all join a bi-weekly meeting where we exchange opinions and provide thoughts on improvements for events, and most of the ideas for new events come up here. When I first joined the company I had no specialist knowledge at all, but with the help of all the experienced guys, I was able to acquire the knowledge and experience needed for the job.

  All of the skills required to be a part of the Operations Team can be learned on the job. The only requirements for those aiming to join PDI are a willingness to learn and the motivation to keep on doing so, and of course above all, a love of Gran Turismo and car culture.

• Race Event Planning Assistant Job Description
• Online Events Staff Job Description