Gran Turismo 's sixth Race Challenge with Nissan

By Bart Hufen – Player 1 @BrandNewGame

A great example of building a brand through an in-game tournament is Nissan’s search for driving talent through the game Gran Turismo. They have been organizing this event for six years now. The virtual talents have proven themselves on the real-life circuits in races like Le Mans 24, GP3 (the championship known as the predecessor for the Formula 1) and in some cases the drivers have moved on to Red Bull’s racing driver development team.

In the past six years more than 4 million people entered the GT Academy. They all fought for a chance to become the newest NISMO Athlete. The great results so far (mentioned above) have proven that in-game training for talent is successful, which is why Nissan continues to organize the online tournament. In 2014 new talents will be delivered to drive in competitions in Europe, US, Australia, India, Middle-Esat countries, Mexico and Thailand. After an intense Driver Development Program, only five international driving champions can win the ultimate prize: becoming a real race driver for Nissan in the 24 hours of Dubai next January (2015).

Like I mentioned in my book – Gran Turismo in my opinion is a ‘simulation-game’. It tries to be as accurate in creating a real-life experience. The fact that Nissan uses this game to find racedrivers around the globe proves that games can train people to become anything they want – provided that the game was developed by professionals.

You can enter the GT Academy through the game Gran Turismo 6 for PlayStation 3, but you can also check some real live events through Facebook… More information can be found via these links:

www.facebook.com/GTAcademy and http://gran-turismo.com.

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