DIGITAL CROSSOVER

NZ Performance Car : Hi, Simon. You’ve been around the world competing in e-racing and are currently the number-one-ranked Gran Turismo player in New Zealand for the 10th consecutive season. Can you tell us about how you initially got into gaming?

Simon: Hey, NZPC. I always had an interest in gaming as a kid and the first game I ever played was Gran Turismo 2 — on the PlayStation [PS] One, back in the ’90s. Growing up, I liked cars but my family were never really car people, so I didn’t have the opportunity to tinker with the real thing. Naturally, I gravitated towards premium racing games. I’ve played most of the titles such as Need for Speed, Forza, etc., but it’s mainly been Gran Turismo [GT], and I’ve played each subsequent game in the series. That has led to today where I play Gran Turismo Sport. Other than racing games, I’ve played all the main stuff like Call of Duty [COD], Crash Bandicoot, and one of my favourites of all time is Final Fantasy VIII — I played a lot as a kid [laughs].

When did you start thinking that gaming could be more than a simple pastime?

It would have been about 2017. There was a programme called ‘GT Academy’ where Sony — the games developer — had partnered with Nissan to run a competition where the fastest player would win a year’s racing in real life. I had a crack at it and didn’t quite make it, but from there I started to realize you could move into the real world of racing from e-racing. Obviously, this kind of stuff was happening overseas before it reached New. You learn how racing works and the characteristics of the cars. When the GT World Tour launched in 2017, competitive e-racing became a lot more accessible, and you don’t have to be the very best player in the world to win these things.