Gran Turismo, PlayStation’s ultra-realistic racing simulator game, has found an unlikely path to the big screen. Instead of a conventional adaptation, it’s the “based on a true story” account of how a Nissan marketing exec, back in 2008, came up with the galaxy-brained idea of recruiting the game’s most skilled players and training them as real drivers on real tracks. Supposedly, it demonstrated the simulator’s realism, and several of these gamers-turned-drivers went on to achieve podium positions at the 24 Hours of Le Mans and Bathurst 12 Hour races. It was certainly a safer option than parachuting Call of Duty players into active war zones.
It’s an interesting footnote in Gran Turismo’s history. Gaming is still a stigmatised medium. Yet, the ease with which these console players acclimated to life behind the wheel makes the case that these simulators can, in fact, offer people a convincing simulacrum of experiences they’d never otherwise have access to. For a millisecond, Gran Turismo gestures towards the elitism of a sport that can’t exactly be practised in the average person’s back garden, and which has become simply another extension of the luxury lifestyle (in order to hammer the point home, the film’s rival team drives gilded, Moët & Chandon-sponsored cars).
