Being known as “one of those gamer people” (actual quote) around the office of my non-video games related day job often means that, first thing Monday morning, someone will seek me out to excitedly tell me about what they played on the weekend. It’s one of the best parts of my week. Their eyes brighten and their voices jump as they passionately break down to me the best - and worst - moments of their weekend’s play, be it their progress towards gaining a platinum trophy in Horizon: Zero Dawn, or the moment they lost their favourite sniper in XCOM 2 to “some snake-like bastard”. Telling stories is just inherently a part of what people like to do, and video game stories are no different.
I’d love the comments section of this feature to be a celebration of those stories. I want you to share the best of your great gaming stories. I want to hear about the time you nailed the winning headshot from a no-scope across the opposite side of the map. I want to hear about the World Cup Final or the Superbowl you won against your friends because you launched the wildest of Hail Marys and miraculously made it work. Whatever it is, if it made you feel great, then it’s a story worth sharing.
To get things started, let me tell you my greatest gaming story. It happened a few weeks ago now, but remains fresh in my mind like it was yesterday.
iRacing is the only way I’ll ever get to 'drive' some of the best racetracks in the world, and the only way I’ll ever get to do so competitively.
As a player of video games for over 25 years at this point, I’d like to think my tastes are as varied as ever. Recently I’ve been playing a stupid amount of Splatoon 2 and Pyre. Before that I’d just finished NieR: Automata and Prey. But when I look at the kind of games that I spend the most time with, it’s overwhelmingly dominated by racing simulators. You know, the kind that crazy people - like me - spend hundreds, even thousands, of dollars on hardware just to be able to drive them the way they were intended.
One of those simulators is iRacing, which is known for its accurate representation of both the race tracks and cars in it thanks to its laser-scanning technology. It’s one of the reasons it’s cited by countless professional drivers as a way to get up to speed before they visit a new track. For me, it’s a bit more than that. It’s the only way I’ll ever get to “drive” some of the best racetracks in the world, and the only way I’ll ever get to do so competitively. Racing sims are the online games that I feel truly competitive in, and online racing is arguably more competitive than real life because it’s more accessible to more people, so a win always feels special.
Back in June, iRacing held its annual 24 Hours of Le Mans - a 24 hour long, multi-class endurance race where teams of two or more drivers take turns to race their team’s car. The multi-class element throws even more variables into the mix, as there are effectively two races happening at the same time, on the same track between faster and slower classes of cars. It also happens to be my favourite race of the year along with the Indy 500, so driving an inch-perfect, bumps-and-all, version of its almost 8.5 miles of tarmac was already appealing.
My team elected to run the faster LMP2 class and got to work on our preparation almost a month out from the drop of the green flag. Everything from running laps in different weather conditions, trying different things with the set-up to practicing running in slower-class traffic. We left no stone unturned.
On race day, we were all nervous. There were five of us in our team - four from the United States and myself in Sydney to cover the U.S. night time shifts. We prepared a driver schedule, which was laid out to make sure we covered the approximate time it took to empty the tank and have to pit for more fuel and tyres. We were ready to go.
In the 2016 event... we’d been punted off the track and into the wall, putting us out of the race after a mere 45 minutes. I didn’t want the same to happen again.
Our qualifying time meant that we’d start in 15th position on the grid out of 60 cars, and as the race started at midnight my time, it would be my teammate’s job to start the race, keep everything clean and make sure we could settle into a good rhythm before anything went wrong. This made me very nervous, as in the 2016 event I woke up to find that we’d been punted off the track and into the wall, putting us out of the race after a mere 45 minutes. I didn’t want the same to happen again.
From what I heard, the start was clean and our starting driver was killing it, putting us up into P2. It didn’t last long though, when on lap 34 a widespread technical glitch knocked our car from the server. Disappointing, but it happens. That’s sim-racing. Thankfully he was able to log back in and restart the car, but by now we were five minutes behind the leader, a lap and a half down. Things were looking bad.
By the time I woke up and got ready to jump in the car we were just over eight hours, or 129 laps, into the race, sitting in P6, still a lap and a half behind the leaders. I was determined to make up time, and I set about doing so by trying to time my passes in traffic as perfectly as I could. Aside from dealing with exhaustion of spending hours behind the wheel, the next hardest thing about multi-class racing is dealing with traffic. If you time your passes wrong or drive too aggressively, you risk losing even more time, or worse, damaging the car. If you’re not aggressive enough, you lose time behind the slower cars. Finding the best place between aggression and patience was key, and it paid off. By the time I finished my first stint, two and a half hours later, we were back in P2 having made up almost an entire lap on the lead car. They were now only 2 minutes down the road.
‘We might actually do this’ I thought to myself as I pulled into the pits and handed the car over to another teammate.
The hours go by. After 16 hours and 258 laps, I’m back in the car. We’re still P2, still 2 minutes off the leading car, but up against a different leader now. The team who had been dominating tapped the wall through the super-fast Porsche Kurves and had to stop for major repairs. We had a few near misses of our own with some slower traffic, the most heart-stopping involving another LMP2 car spinning off a couple of GTE cars right in front of me, but I somehow managed to thread the gauntlet unscathed with some quick braking and a flick of the steering wheel.
The car surged on, chipping away at the lead until, on lap 285, we assumed the lead.
The car surged on, chipping away at the lead until, on lap 285, we assumed the lead. I’d closed the two-minute gap down to nothing, making the pass on track, but our pit cycle was off sequence with each other. It felt immense, but I couldn’t afford to get excited, because there was still eight hours to go. By lap 310 I had been in the car for three hours and needed a rest before taking on the final three hour stint to the chequered flag.
My teammate, for whom it was 5 o’clock in the morning, jumped in the car and held his nerve, driving brilliantly to retain the lead. As he pitted for his final time and handed the car over to me, I had the final three hours ahead. It was 9pm my time, I was running on five hours sleep and had been up since 6am, but it was go time.
We were never challenged again. Drained and exhausted, I drove as hard as I could until there was about thirty minutes remaining. We had increased the lead over P2 to over three minutes, so I took to opportunity to back off the aggression. As I started the final lap, I could feel the excitement welling up inside. We were so close. I’d personally driven for 8 ½ hours at that point - 142 laps, just shy of 2000 kilometres. But we were about to do it.
All that hard work and effort had paid off, culminating in one of the greatest experiences of my sim-racing career...
And we did. We crossed the line and I fist pumped the air as my teammates shouted down their microphones. We actually did it. We just won the iRacing 24 hours of Le Mans. I felt an incredible sense of relief and satisfaction. All that hard work and effort had paid off, culminating in one of the greatest experiences of my sim-racing career, and in video games. From a lap and a half down we fought our way back, and we won.
That’s how achieving something amazing in video games can make you feel, like you’re totally unstoppable. And that’s the story I want to hear from you. In the competitive world of games we’re in, whether it be a single or multiplayer game, the times we have that make us feel empowered and strong are the times best shared. So please, share your stories with me, be they long or short, in the comments below.
James Swinbanks is a freelance games writer and wannabe race car driver who never had money to buy a real race car. Instead he spent thousands on pretend race car bits so he could drive pretend race cars. Go figure. He's on Twitter.
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