The Electronic Entertainment Expo taking place in Los Angeles this week is the usual over-the-top extravaganza of first-person shooters and high-fantasy video games, much of the action playing out on monstrous, full-color screens with music blaring.
And then there are the cars, like Ford’s ultra-exclusive GT, which lived up to the extrasensory spectacle that is E3 when it was lowered from the rafters of the L.A. Convention Center onto the carpet of Microsoft’s sprawling Xbox gaming console area. The carbon-fiber hypercar is one of 40 Ford vehicles that can be raced in the sixth installment of the popular video game franchise “Forza Motorsport,” unveiled to the public Monday, just days after Ford announced it would run the GT at next year’s LeMans.
“You may not be able to drive the Ford GT in LeMans, but you can drive it in ‘Forza’ at LeMans, and that’s pretty close,” said Henry Ford’s great-great-grandson, Henry Ford III.
In helping to introduce “Forza Motorsport 6,” Ford underscored the increasingly central role video games are playing in automakers’ marketing. “Forza’s” developers even learned of the GT before many of Ford’s senior staffers, he said.
The Detroit company wasn’t the only automaker with a physical presence at this year’s E3. Mazda had also set up shop in the lobby, parking its not-yet-available 2016 MX-5 before a pair of computer monitors that showed an animated version of the iconic roadster racing through Nice, France, and other exotic locales in “Forza Horizon 2.” Through the game, players can drive the car virtually before it’s available at dealers. The MX-5 won’t go on sale until late summer.
The thousands of cars that were otherwise on display at E3 were all digital – speeding across the pavement in racing games like “Need for Speed” and “Gran Turismo 6” and wreaking havoc in the barren post-apocalyptic landscape of pop-culture properties, such as “Mad Max.”
Whether it’s Audi or Ferrari or Porsche, Honda or Nissan or Subaru, automakers of every make and price point are brokering deals with video game developers, hoping to create a positive brand identity among future buyers who may not yet have a driver’s license.
“There’s a lot of discussion about millennials and the mobile phone being their source of freedom – not the car,” said R.J. DeVera, marketing leader of customer engagement for the Irvine car care product company Meguiar’s. “But what I’ve been seeing in the last two years is huge interest from the Gen Zs, the touch-screen generation. Through video games, young people have really gotten exposed to cars and the things they can do to them from a digital perspective.”
And they’re learning about them not only from playing the games themselves but also by watching YouTubers play them.
Almost 50,000 people, and 200 exhibitors, attended E3 this year. An industry trade show, it isn’t open to the public, yet millions of gamers tuned in to the convention’s press conferences and media reports online and through social media.
The cultural influence of video games isn’t lost on automakers, who are seeking to tap into the fastest-growing media sector. Globally, the video game business increased from $79 billion in 2012 to $93 billion in 2013. It is estimated to be worth $111 billion this year, according to the information technology research firm Gartner Inc.
Two-thirds of U.S. households play video games, according to the Entertainment Software Rating Board, with the average gamer being 34 years old. Twenty-five percent of gamers are under age 18, according to the ESRB; almost half are between 18 and 49.
The average age of a car buyer, meanwhile, is 52, according to the global information firm IHS Automotive.
“Ten years ago, we’d go to the manufacturer and they’d say you can have the car in the game. It really wasn’t a big deal. They thought of games and gamers as kids in a basement,” said Dan Greenawalt, creative director for “Forza Motorsport” developer, Turn 10 Studios. “Over the last 10 years, that has changed radically. Gaming has become part of mainstream culture and auto manufacturers are looking at ways to reach out to this new type of consumer. That’s what ‘Forza’ is – that nexus of gamers and car lovers.”
Through “Forza Motorsport 6,” players can customize and race 26 world-famous tracks in more than 450 cars. From classics including a $36 million Ferrari 250 to modern exotics such as Lamborghini’s Huracan, gamers have access to cars most of them will never see in real life, let alone drive – or crash. Yet in the game players can see every inch of the cars up close, rendered in painstaking and realistic detail. They can hear the exhaust and engine – even feel it via feedback through a handheld controller or more elaborate simulator that pairs gaming consoles and PCs with steering wheels, pedals and racing seats.
In “Need for Speed,” which is getting a major reboot in November despite racking up more than 120 million players through almost 20 annual updates, players can customize cars ranging from a Subaru BRZ to a Porsche 911 Carrera RSR with paint, wheels, spoilers and other accessories available in the real-world aftermarket. They can adjust the brakes, suspension and handling. And they can drift or race more traditionally through the make-believe city of Ventura Bay that was patterned after L.A.
“We’ve really gone back to car culture,” said Marcus Nilsson, executive producer of “Need for Speed,” developed by the Swedish company Ghost Games. “It’s authentic customization on the cars that people can relate to, not only high-end cars.”
Ghost Games is owned by the Southern California gaming company Electronic Arts, which also owns the enthusiast auto blog Speed Hunters, with which Ghost’s developers worked to keep its fingers on the pulse of customization trends. The new “Need for Speed” will include popular body kits from the Japanese company Liberty Walk, for example.
“As car companies see their future market go down, they want to find ways of showing the joy of cars again, and I think we can absolutely be a vehicle toward that,” said Nilsson, who worked with dozens of automakers to place cars in the new “Need for Speed.”
Mazda’s RX-7 sport coupe is among the many cars that have appeared in various “Need for Speed” titles. Still, “Forza Horizon 2” is the first time Mazda has sponsored a car inside a video game, said Nick Beard, spokesman for Mazda North American Operations in Irvine.
“It’s a way to launch the all-new 2016 MX-5 and to really get it out to enthusiasts and racing game players,” said Beard, adding that Mazda was the first company to introduce a car to the world through a gaming system.
In 2013, it revealed its 2014 Mazda3 on Xbox Live.
During this year’s E3, it played a different sort of game that fused online play with the real world. Mazda invited the two gamers with the fastest race times in its virtual MX-5 on “Forza Horizon 2” to race face to face on the floor of the gaming convention. Wednesday’s winner was rewarded with the real-life version of the 2016 MX-5.
Earlier this month, Fiat Chrysler Automobiles announced its SRT Tomahawk Vision Gran Turismo concept would be part of a free, downloadable addition to the popular racing game “Gran Turismo 6,” this summer. SRT’s single-seat hybrid sports car joins 1,200 other cars that can already be raced in the game, including other concepts from major automakers, such as the Chevrolet Chaparral 2X Vision Gran Turismo Concept unveiled at the L.A. Auto Show last November and built exclusively for the “Gran Turismo 6” game.
“Gaming, particularly in the space related to driving simulation, whether it’s GT6 or others, is a way to get people excited about vehicles, and it’s an important part of the marketing mix,” said Tim Mahoney, chief marketing officer for Chevrolet.
The single-seat Chapparal 2X Vision Gran Turismo Concept that Chevrolet created for the game isn’t anything that would be built for consumers. It’s a halo idea designed to increase Chevrolet’s cool factor by “showing the outer bounds of what’s possible,” Mahoney said.
Like SRT’s and Chevy’s “Gran Turismo 6” concepts, video game cars aren’t always literal representations of what can be purchased on a showroom floor or customized through the aftermarket. Unveiled at E3, the highly anticipated “Mad Max” game, based on the latest installment of the legendary post-apocalyptic film franchise, sources its cars from the scrap heap. Gamers play as Max, whose journey is to put together a wasteland war machine.
“At the start of the game, they take your car, your clothes, everything, so in the wasteland, without a powerful and sturdy vehicle, you have no means of survival,” said John Fuller, senior producer and project lead for the “Mad Max” game that will be available Sept. 1.
Players source one of six chassis styles from the vehicle graveyard, then work their way through the wasteland, finding allies to source parts and weapons that include flame throwers, shotguns and harpoons that can be used to extract a tire, door or even driver from an enemy vehicle.
Players can make hundreds of thousands of vehicle combinations, said Fuller, and drive them in a world populated with more than 50 authentic “Mad Max” vehicles.
“Cars,” Fuller said, “play the most central role.”
At this year’s E3, they did, too.
Contact the writer: scarpenter@ocregister.com On Twitter: @OCRegCarpenter
