GT Manager, a mobile game by The Tiny Digital Factory, released on the 18th of September into early access on steam. The release marks another player in the field of racing management games after Motorsport Manager and more recently F1 Manager. The game, however, has only released to “mixed” reviews, featuring a 44% positive rating on Steam at the time of writing.
GT Manager’s Content Promises Great Potential
Starting with the positive, GT Manager promises management fun in 5 different car classes, coming from 3 different championship structures.
WEC, IMSA SportsCar Championship and GT World Challenge provide the game with Hypercar, GT2, GT3, GT4 and GTE categories. While the content might be focused in a GT direction (as the name promises), the offering is whole. This is the first big differentiator from Motorsport Manager, which focuses on the separation between Endurance, Formula and GT racing. 12 original circuits are featured in the game where each one reminds the player of real-life locations.
The management system itself, financial and team-wise, is functional as well, having received a UI-update when comparing to the mobile version. However, when looking at the Steam reviews, we can see what this game currently is.
It’s a Mobile Game
GT Manager doesn’t beat the allegations that other developers porting mobile games to PC have faced in the past. Many players feel this game is a disappointment, being merely a port. The original game, being free-to-play with microtransactions, now dropped that payment form for a pay-to-play alternative.
Reviews complain that the game is not much more than a port with slight updates to the UI. Strategic elements of the race are felt to be barebones, truly feeling like a simple mobile game. The same situation occurs when talking about driver stats. It’s not as in-depth as many management game fans on PC hoped it could be.
The real tragedy here is how this renders one big question unclear.
Who is GT Manager For?
If the game has the depth of a mobile game while charging upper-range indie game prices, who is the target audience for this?
The answer really boils down to how a person might feel the worth of a video game. If you are looking for some quick enjoyment you can have while watching YouTube videos, this might be for you. Play the game on one monitor and watch a TV series or YouTube gameplay videos on a second monitor. GT Manager can deliver the ideal enjoyment, provided you prefer playing a game on monitor to doing the same on a mobile screen.
If you are looking for an in-depth management simulation that simulates a healthy amount of realistic data, this is not for you. And it seems like this is what people are looking forward to playing. Arguably, this is only the thing people want until they try it, but we cannot know for certain until a truly realistic simulator comes to market.
For better or for worse, management simulators usually have aspects of gamification. Worse for chasers of realism, but better for the average crowd.
In the end, GT Manager delivers what fans of mobile games want, but fails to take into account that PC Gamers expect a different experience. However, since GT Manager is still in Early Access, certain course-corrections can still be taken by the developers.
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