Virtually Driven
The topic of “best racing game franchises” would be remiss if the conversation never shifted to Gran Turismo. For the uninitiated, the series has been the backbone of developer Polyphony Digital for the better part of 25 years and is ubiquitous to the Sony PlayStation line of consoles as its flagship simulation racer. The original Gran Turismo earned its tagline of “The Real Driving Simulator” on its 1997 release with its groundbreaking in its approach to car physics and endlessly replayability. Polyphony Digital continued to build upon the foundation set by GT1 in the decades following, eventually branching out where no racing had ever gone before at the time: real-world motorsports.
Competition reality shows are a dime a dozen in today’s television market. Best chef, tattoo artist, obstacle course runner, you name it there’s probably a show for it. Esports have achieved similar widespread coverage in recent years. Entire leagues for League of Legends fight and battle over prizes in the millions and host their finales in 10,000+ seat arenas. It was near unheard of for the time in 2008 when Sony partnered with Nissan to produce GT Academy, a reality series that saw Gran Turismo players go from couch-bound racing enthusiasts to bonafide professional drivers. Eligible players would compete to post the fastest virtual lap-times around selected circuits with the best players then being tasked with driving real Nissan cars to test their capabilities as potential racing drivers. Those deemed worthy would progress to Race Camp, located at the real-life Stowe Circuit in the UK. The competitors would then be divided by region and be put through the paces of even more rigorous challenges including various forms of auto racing, triathlons, and written tests to find the champion. The season’s winner would then receive an invite from Nissan’s Driver Development Programme, giving them even more advanced training along with having them compete in professional racing series before culminating in a 24-hour endurance race.
Just reading all of what encompasses GT Academy is as gripping as the tires of the racecars driven on the show. It’s mindboggling to imagine yourself going from simply playing a video game to being a legitimate athlete competing in professional events. Even in most other reality shows, the competitors have likely been honing their craft at a professional or near-professional level for years prior to getting on the show. Nobody can simply spend around $400 on some ingredients and kitchenware and suddenly find themselves being trained by Gordon Ramsey to be on deck at a Michelin Star restaurant. Yet in GT Academy’s case anyone freshly 18 could feasibly purchase a PlayStation 3 along with a copy of Gran Turismo 6, spend hours a day practicing their virtual driving skills and — in comparatively less time — end up under the tutelage of one of the world’s largest car manufacturers. The show thus highlights the capabilities of video games both as technological marvels and as educational tools as I’ve previously written about. A game with enough accuracy to make the transition from driving in-game to driving in real life somewhat feasible deserves merit. It also brings up the possibility of other games being applied in similar manners.
To use a bit of a hamfisted metaphor, GT Academy and its usage of Gran Turismo are more reminiscent of the transition from high school to college and beyond than the run-of-the-mill reality show. If “racing” were a major, then the online qualifiers would be the show’s SATs and extracurriculars, Race Camp as a general undergrad education, and the Nissan Driver Development Programme as grad school. The pacing is of course far faster on the television show (and students don’t generally get “eliminated” from their colleges) but the overall formula treads a similar path. The experience again begs the question: if video games have the power to put those on a path towards a professional career, then why are they not more widely used in secondary education?
