From playing a quick game of Pac-Man
on an arcade machine at the corner café, to becoming part of a hugely
sophisticated digital ecosystem, gamers and gaming culture have come a long way
over the past 40 years. Ford Motor Company, in collaboration with gamers, has
now designed an in-game race car, which will soon be debuted on the virtual
grid by Team Fordzilla, the automaker’s esports team.
The popularity of competitive gaming,
better known as esports (electronic sports), has skyrocketed over recent years.
What was once a niche gaming scene has been transformed into not only a
mainstream form of home entertainment, but also a legitimate sport, recognised
by the International Esports Federation’s (IESF) 60 member nations, including South Africa. In
fact, South Africa’s national esports team, competing over a number of games
and platforms, has participated in every IESF World Championship since 2009.
According to the Business Insider
Intelligence Esports Ecosystem Report 2020, “most projections put the esports
ecosystem on track to surpass US$1-billion in revenue for the first time this
year.” But with a surge in online gaming globally during the unprecedented
COVID-19 lockdowns, this projection may prove to be on the conservative side. Esports
could quite possibly become one of those industries which not only survives the
pandemic, but thrives in its wake, as a new generation of avid online gamers is
currently being born.
Ford enters Esports arena and designs brand new virtual
race car
Racing games have always been hugely
popular. But not all racing games are created equal. There are three main
categories, with varying levels of realism. From arcade racing games with
little regard for realism, to hyper-realistic sim racing (simulated racing)
games with a strong focus on physics and AI, and simcade (simulated-arcade)
racing games somewhere in between, which are more accessible to the average
petrolhead than full sim racing games.
‘Forza Motorsport’, which is
available for Xbox One and Windows 10, and ‘Gran Turismo Sport’ which is
exclusive to PlayStation 4, both fit into the simcade category, and are two of
the world’s most popular racing games. And it is for these two simcade games
that Ford Motor Company, in collaboration with gamers, has designed the
ultimate in-game race car, which will soon be debuted on the virtual grid by
Team Fordzilla, the automaker’s very own Esports team.
At Gamescom 2019 – Europe’s leading
trade fair for the digital games culture which takes place annually in
Cologne, Germany – Ford became the first automaker to debut a vehicle at
the fair, revealing that its Ranger Raptor performance bakkie would be coming
to Europe.
Ford
also took the opportunity to announce at the fair that it was recruiting gamers for Team Fordzilla. It has since established five Fordzilla national teams –France,
Germany, Italy, Spain, and the UK – and from these teams, it has assembled a
European all-star team, comprising the five team captains.
The two racing games in which Team
Fordzilla will initially compete are ‘Forza Motorsport 7’ and ‘GT Sport’.
And while there are already several new and classic Ford vehicles in each
game’s expansive roster, it’s the brand new and exclusively virtual race car,
codenamed #TeamFordzillaP1, which Team Fordzilla drivers are understandably
most excited about.
“We all love racing our dream cars
but ultimately these are usually painstaking recreations of vehicles that
actually exist in the real world,” says Angelo Bülow, captain of the German
Fordzilla team. “It will be an absolute thrill to get behind the wheel of the
#TeamFordzillaP1 for the first time knowing that not only have we helped to
create it but that no-one else has ever driven it before.”
Ford shares virtual race car with
launch of Team Fordzilla P1 Hub
Among those closely involved in
designing #TeamFordzillaP1 from the ground up were Ford of Europe’s Design Team
– which imagines and designs human-centric cars for the real world – and expert
gamers who lead the way in racing their virtual counterparts. This included the
five captains of Ford’s national Esports teams, as well as motorsport fans in
the wider gaming community whose input to Team Fordzilla was sourced via a
series of Twitter polls around key design attributes – from engine layout to
cockpit shape. Because this is an exclusively virtual race car, and not based
on an existing real world Ford model, it is not constrained by any real world
limitations like technology, practicality, or cost.
And now Ford has launched the
publicly accessible Team Fordzilla P1 Project Hub, a fun and interactive space for
budding car designers and gamers to find a few new ways of beating boredom or
the blues whilst self-isolating during lockdown. Along with personal recommendations
from Team Fordzilla captains on the latest video games you could try playing
whilst housebound, the hub is packed with DIY creative content designed to
unleash your inner Rory Byrne.
Follow Team Fordzilla updates on Twitter: www.twitter.com/teamfordzilla or Instagram: www.instagram.com/teamfordzilla
