YankeeJim:
If they had that talent would it just be a matter of creating the avatar and then packaging it with the files that are uploaded when you open the game? Or is that an oversimplification?
That's a bit more complicated. Couple of ways that can be done, with games that are 'installed' most of the game files reside on your computer, in fact pretty well all games are like that. Even in games that are MP, your player files are on your computer. You'd mostly be getting game play data from their servers, things that you interact with in the game which would need to be streamed to each player in the game, weather, wind, other player interactions. Could be a pretty long list.
The best way would be to have the avatar and player config files on your computer, but this would be hard in the current game.
WGT's problem is that the game still is using a lot of the original game platform. It's still using browser protocols and formatting, as well all the game assets are simply data streamed to you.This is still very much the old game, more than some people think, visually it's different in some areas obviously.
I'm actually surprised at this, I really thought with the new game and using Unity, they were creating a standalone game, perhaps even with some offline capability as well. Having the courses and game files on their servers is no biggie, they'd need to given that they using the same courses etc. But the rest of it, avatars/characters for example, that's ridiculous and quite frankly just lazy. I don't know what they're reasoning is for it all, money[?], can't all be just money, because even though they've made this new version, it's quite handcuffed as far as where they can go with it, in it's present state.
In a perfect world they should have made two versions.... A TopGolf version, coin games, apparel etc for kids and people who want the real arcade games, and a WGT version, with none of that and a much more enhanced and simulation approach to it, some physics engines, decent 3D assets, better swing and shot options... The game would be a bigger install and there would be some sort of cut-off point as far as your computer goes, but not insane. I could see even charging money for the game, if it was worth it, maybe like even just $19.99 on Steam or something.