Driving for the dream

Image courtesy of www.usgamer.net

Hello you. The name is Luca but you can call me Luca, and recently, life has been on the up for me. If you harken back to a blog post about change that was coming in my life, you'll remember me talking about how so much change was happening and it was overwhelming me. For the few of you who care to know about it, feel free to read on.

I think I am getting a job in a library starting next week, which I have been looking forward to because it'll give me a chance to follow some kind of time structure and order, which I have been needing in my life. I also recently applied for and obtained a Cineworld Unlimited membership so alongside my bus pass, I can now go to and from the nearest Cineworld without it really costing me a penny. I am really looking forward to exercising that since I got my Cineworld Unlimited card today (Well, a couple of days ago now since I started writing this the other day).

Recently, I also started seeing a professional regarding the issues that I have been having. Namely, believing my life is relatively aimless and because I am not going to university, that I am heading nowhere and won't achieve something. It is very beneficial to me so I'm grateful that I can speak about all of the shit that has been bothering me. This isn't an excuse as to why I haven't been making articles regularly, but I do have some promising things in the works right now that I will be showing soon, but onto today's article.

Now what I want to talk about is a dream I have had. Aside from wanting to make a movie adaptation of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time with Taron Egerton as the main character and an array of other things, this one concerns competitive racing in an online setting, and like most of my dreams, it does originate from somewhere quite close to me.

I have always been a racer at heart, but if you want to be a racing driver then you have to have a shit tonne of money and be to a very particular extent, very physically fit. I don't have either of those going for me, my family do have an amazing income but that's for the house and a balance of things that keep everyone in the household happy, and as for physicality, I'm a tad tubby and I enjoy KFC too much in order to give it up, I really can't say much else.

For so long, I would live out my racing passion in the form of driving on my PlayStation console. It wasn't until Christmas of 2010 I believe when my parents bought me a PS3 steering wheel, and I held it on a small tea table with my knees holding it underneath whilst laid back on my very low down gaming chair. Much later on, I obtained a proper frame and I've had some amazing memories of driving and racing on mainly Gran Turismo 5 and 6.

However that screeched to a halt around November/December 2014 when I had just got my PlayStation 4 as an early birthday present, and I went back to my PS3 knowing fine well that I'd be able to change between my PS3 and PS4 dependent on if I wanted to play GTA or Gran Turismo, but for some reason my PS3 would not load up Gran Turismo 6. I panicked and tried to find a way but I gave up when it wouldn't do anything, and it kind of broke my heart.

What prompted me to write this also, a car became available on Gran Turismo 6 that I never got the chance to drive, it being the SRT Tomahawk X which can do north of 500 miles per hour and has taken the mantle of quickest and most 'OP' car in the game from the Red Bull X-cars. Seeing a video of that on YouTube, along with the incredibly soulful and exciting music, and memories of my friends who originated from Gran Turismo with the most incredible races, it does put me in a reflective mood and I just wish I could race like that again with my wheel.

Luckily, Gran Turismo Sport is around the corner and that is being released for the PlayStation 4, and my parents have promised me that they will be buying me a PS4 steering wheel so not only can I play GT Sport with it, but also the likes of F1 2016, Assetto Corsa and Project CARS. However I have ideas that I would like to see executed with Gran Turismo Sport, but for that I will have to provide a little bit of background.

You're probably asking "Why is it called Gran Turismo Sport? After Luca just said GT5 and GT6, would it not be GT7?" and to that, I don't blame you for thinking that. The reason why, the international racing regulatory body, the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile or FIA - who are responsible for Formula One, the World Endurance Championship, Formula E, World Touring Cars, World Rally etc. - recently certified the Gran Turismo franchise with the same highly prestigious licence for their main racing championships.

This means that Gran Turismo Sport will keep track of the progress of players and allow them to be recognised by the FIA, and put them into consideration for selection in the FIA Online World Championship. This is where my idea comes in.

The creators of Gran Turismo in partnership with Nissan and PlayStation are also responsible for GT Academy, where gamers from around the world would participate for a chance of becoming a racing driver for real and it has churned out some incredible talent. The inaugural winner Lucas Ordóñez finished 2nd in class at Le Mans in his first outing, the first British winner Jann Mardenborough went on to race in single seaters and won the All-Japan F3 championship this year.

My point is, Gran Turismo is the definitive driving simulator and now that the FIA are backing this proven pioneering game franchise, it's the perfect transition into making competitive online racing not just a pipe dream, but an actuality. What I mean is, I am sure if you turn on Motors TV or if you occasionally watch a few Formula E specials on BT Sport, you will see such a thing.

On Motors TV, you will occasionally find professional gaming championships like iRacing and TORA, and there was even some serious consideration for the most recent Formula E season to have a video game based round to fill the vacated Moscow ePrix. Whilst that last bit was preposterous, to an extent, this highlights something that plagues modern motorsport.

There are countless examples of drivers who have had to give up racing professionally because of money and sponsorship draining, and because so many drivers can't continue racing, we have a shit tonne of crap drivers who make it to top line level racing that only have their government's funds from their country's oil industry powering them.

The money is needed to help the teams fund the repairs, the costs to travel and so many talented drivers have had to give it up and it is such a shame. But because a racing championship based entirely on a video game will require a lot less money since you won't have to repair the cars, or ship the vehicles from country to country. Plus with the FIA behind this, it would certainly attract a lot of attention, and since we have entered the era of eSports becoming popular, this is a perfect time to do so.

Football club West Ham recently signed 24-year old Sean 'Dragonn' Allen and in doing so, became the first FC to sign an eSports player, Allen was the vice-champion in the 2016 FIFA Interactive World Cup. You also have 'athletes' who play in tournaments on games such as League Of Legends, Dota 2 and Counter Strike: Global Offensive.

This is too much of a great opportunity for the motorsport world to miss out on. We could have incredibly competitive and highly contested races in many championships held on Gran Turismo, we could have incredibly well set up events with every entrant into a race based at gaming or motoring events, we could have live commentary and direct feed from the race on both any particular sports TV channel like BT and also a live stream on Twitch, YouTube you name it!

I got this idea when I saw a live stream by Rockstar on Twitch when the Last Team Standing update on GTA Online was released back in October 2014, when they pitched Lui Calibre, Mini Ladd, Daithi De Nogla and MissesMae against KSI and three other Sidemen in an LTS playlist. But along with the competitive gameplay, they were publicising the new outfits, weapons and the vehicles like the Lampadati Furore GT, the LCC Innovation and the Shitzu Hakuchou as well as the update to the content creator to create custom LTS maps.

Apply the same here, Polyphony and whoever else involved can use this to promote their product and with the 'athletes' that will spawn from this, sponsors will see this as a dream with all the possible demographics that this will reach out towards. Infact having spoken briefly about those YouTubers who were asked to be in Rockstar's livestream, you have so many big names on YouTube who could get involved, like I have said already there could be a shit tonne of actual drivers get involved, and pure gamers who see a chance to get into competitive racing, the possibilities are endless!

There is so much potential with this. Just thinking about it, if it was possible then we could have dedicated servers that could hold up to 64 entrants like on the Battlefield games. Which is incredible to consider when that Le Mans in recent years has had only shy of 60 entries, so there are such amazing possibilities with whatever racing we could have.

I'll stop waxing lyrical about all of this now and get to my point, I would like a hand in making all of this happen and when it does happen, I'd love to become a driver. I can see so much great stuff in this, and if I could become a driver for let's say, Fortec Motorsport - who compete in Formula 3 and Formula Renault - and that could lead us to competing at events like PAX or E3, or even Autosport International.

I will end it here but if anyone out there has any power, get me in a room with the people behind the FIA and Gran Turismo and hopefully, us racers at heart can race our heart out.

Alright! Hope you all have enjoyed what I have had to say here. If you like what you've seen and you want to see more, then if you see 'Follow By Email' in the top right, enter your email in there and all my next posts will be sent straight to you. Also, you can follow me on Twitter @TheLucaFormat and I'll always tweet out when my next post is live.

So that will be all for today, hope you're here again soon and until we meet again.
Luca.