Kazunori Picasso

For this week’s game, I started playing Gran Turismo 6 on the PlayStation 3. For those of you that have never heard of this game let me introduce you. This is one of the original driving simulators to ever hit the consoles dating back to the nineties. The team behind this franchise is Polyphony Digital as the developers, Sony Computer Entertainment as the publishers and Kazunori Yamauchi as the director and producer. It is clear that Kazunori is the artist in this game because of the way he has pieced this masterpiece of a game together from his own imagination. This game takes every car you could imagine and gives the player the opportunity to feel like an actual race car driver by the realistic sense of the cars, tracks and customizations to the car. Kazunori had the vision for this aesthetic which is very important because this is what has an influence on the player. The amount of detail that is presented while racing was all painted by Kazunori so that the player can get a better understanding of the object. That object being driving a car on a track with the goal of getting the fastest time. The game in a sense is an interactive painting by Kazunori that indulges the player by for the forms of interaction by what the controls are defined as and what telemetry info is shown. The player takes in all of the objects Kazunori wanted at every moment in the game to bring together the ultimate driving simulator.

In regard to Simon Niedenthal he states that “Greater descriptive detail fleshes out emotional response…climbing tall towers into the rarified atmosphere of Damascus establish quite different tones and play experiences”. I connect this back to playing Assassins Creed with the amount of detail and vivid colors really does bring an emotion out that indulges the player into the game to really feel like the character. While playing Gran Turismo I feel the same emotion that puts me into the seat of the car I am racing and rushes the adrenaline through my body. Our understanding of the game is definitely influenced by Kazunori’s vision for this game as he takes his own experiences of driving on race tracks into an art form so that others may see what he saw. Every aspect of this game has been a recreated through Kazunori’s sense of imagination which is why he is so important being the artist of the game. Other than Kazunori there really is not anyone else that could be a great influence on the aesthetic foundation of this game and its components. With the screen shot below we can understand how the player feels so immersed because how it real it feels. All important aspects of racing a car on a track are present and aesthetically pleasing .

I would like to consider Kanzunori as the Pablo Picasso of driving simulators because of what he has been able to accomplish with the Gran Turismo franchise. Many others like Forza have tried to replicate Gran Turismo but I do not think they come close because of the different dynamics they have had to use like the cars, tracks and telemetry so that they are differentiated from the original Gran Turismo. If you have a moment check out this interview with Kazunori http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2013-11-29-kazunori-yamauchi-profile. It really sheds some light on the inspiration and vision that he had for developing this game.