With even professional drivers trying their hands in different motorsports beyond their specialties, it’s an intriguing concept then, what the creators of Gran Turismo have come up with in their reality series, which is viewable in Theater 6 (not to mention you can download for free all episodes available to date via the PlayStation Store). Can skills learned in a video game be used with success in the  real world? Can someone who has never been behind the wheel of a race car, but has raced cars in a video game so extensively they are amongst the best at that video game, become – with a bit of real-world training – a world-class professional driver?

Polyphony calls their masterpiece a “racing simulator” moreso than they call it a “video game” and this is a rather bold statement to make. Since 1997, the franchise has delivered an experience unlike any other; not only do they strive to deliver a racing game unlike any other on the market, but they also strive to recreate the cars themselves in painstaking detail, not only just in appearance, but in the way individual cars handle, too. It’s also interesting to note that Polyphony had a hand in creating the present generation Nissan GT-R and were contracted to design the car’s multifunction display. They also collaborated with French automaker Citroën to create the 2008 concept car – GT by Citroën – which was created exclusively for Gran Turismo 5. In other words, they aren’t just a collective of gaming geeks creating digital renderings of their dream cars; these guys – especially director Kazunori Yamauchi – are true petrol heads.

Lucas Ordonez

The Gran Turismo Academy had already been in full swing for three years in Europe by the time this American edition rolled out, with Spaniard Lucas Ordonez being the first and helping his Signatech-Nissan LMP2 team to a second place finish in the 24 Hours of LeMans this past June. To say that this is something of a big deal is bordering on understatement. And Ordonez is no basement-dwelling videogaming slacker, either – he was pursuing a master’s degree before winning the inaugural GT Academy.

Our candidates have endured a special Gran Turismo triathlon and already have some tracktime under their belts at the legendary Silverstone racetrack in the UK. In one episode, our remaining dozen are woken up at the crack of dawn with fireworks and shouting, then promptly get the ever-loving crap knocked out of them by a team of British SAS. I have a offline friend who has trained with the SAS and he can tell you firsthand these guys are harder than hardcore, and what they consider as a “normal” training regimen would make ordinary tough guys cry. One of the candidates – himself a former military man – attests to this in his comments on their “training.” There’s a lot of fainting and vomiting in this episode.

Let’s talk about these racers-to-be for a moment; they’re a curious cross-section – all male – with ages ranging from nineteen to mid-thirties. They have various levels of real world racing experience, and various levels of fitness. There are those you can tell that aren’t going to make it. Take the thirty-five-year-old with a business and a family, for instance – racing is a young man’s sport; someone who has no proper sense of mortality, not someone who has already made a life for himself. And racecar drivers aren’t overweight. While you don’t have to be a superhuman to drive a car, driving a car for twenty-four hours does require a modicum of physical endurance. Race driving also calls for consistency and smoothness; speed is nothing without it, so the drivers who display a deficiency of both are easy bets to be dismissed.

With all these seemingly obvious and predictable factors, you may well wonder what’s the point of watching it. After all, aren’t “reality shows” supposed to be filled with “unforeseen” plot twists and displays of human behavior at its most unfortunate? Speaking as one who has no use for the whole reality TV genre unless it is made of a two-ply and fluffy soft substance, this is actually a good thing. In this iteration of reality programming, the focus lies squarely upon the individual – both their skills behind the wheel and how each copes with the psychological stress of competition, and the progress in mastering both in order to make it to the next round. And that – in this writer’s opinion – makes for far more interesting viewing. It’s reality television with a documentary twist, and takes a rather unsavory genre and makes it watchable, and the fact that it does cover a favored subject certainly helps.

If you’re fond of Survivor, this show won’t be your cup of tea. There’s no factions, no double agents playing both ends against the middle. Just gamers pitting skills against each other, learned on the PS3 and tested in a real-world environment. Oh sure, you’re going to witness people’s reactions upon hitting the ceiling on their talent, not to mention their reactions when they get sent home, but there’s no excessive tantrums, no egregious arrogance. And again, as mentioned earlier, if you think the car is the greatest source of evil since some failed Austrian painter, you’ll also want to give this a pass.

However, if you’ve ever wondered how skills acquired through gaming translate into a real world application, this is undoubtedly one of the best examples to watch.

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