Volume 77 -- Feb. 1, 2008
In the Spirit of Superbowl Sunday...
By: Che Chou, Community Manager
...We hope you guys dig the Panoz Esperante cover image (see below) for this week's Pitpass Report, as designed by Forza livery maestro Special K. We're certainly gonna be kickin' back on the couch, refreshments in hand. Well, most of us anyway. For our friends across the pond over in Europe (where the word "football" has an entirely different meaning altogether) we suspect they may be contributing the lionshare of the hundreds of thousands of hours our community will spend playing Forza 2 this weekend. As a result, we're not just seeing pure Forza community "activity", but instead seeing genuine community "creativity". In fact, we're dedicating this Pitpass write-up to the energy folks have dedicated to making this an awesome place to hang out. Additionally, an extra thank you for the past couple weeks to the FM.net auction house clean-up crew, lead by Jerod and Snowowl. If you're violating Xbox Live terms of service on our auction house, you better watch out. Snowowl is on the prowl.
2005 Panoz Esperante GTLM by: Special K
But before we get to the creative show-and-tell, here are some random community bits we found to be pretty sweet. You all know that back in early January, Forza Motorsport 2 took home top driving game honors for Gamespot's Driving Game of the Year award. Yeah, that was a really flattering feather in our cap, so to speak. Well, now the reader results are finally in and it looks like Gamespot's audience have selected Forza 2 as the best racing game of 2007! The results, as you can see right here, are a bit of a landslide and we're pretty psyched. Again, thanks to everyone out there for their continued support of the Forza franchise.
The Aston Martin Rapide. Is a four-door Aston sacrilegious? Discuss it with us here!
Those of you who visit our blogs frequently will have noticed that we've kickstarted a series of articles titled simply the Turn 10 Car of the Week. So what's this about a Car of the Week series? It's pretty straightforward, really. Here at Turn 10, thinking about cars is more than just a job where we get to work on the best racing franchise ever made. Cars, and moreover, the culture that surrounds them, is an essence that courses through our veins. So much so that we often find ourselves in (heated) discussion about cars all around the office -- in hallways, meeting spaces, at our desks, in email threads.
Then it dawned on us: instead of keeping all this car passion (aka geeking out) behind the studio firewall, why don't we take these discussions out to the Forza community at large -- a community filled with gamers and car lovers alike who are buff in their knowledge of all things automotive. It would be a great way to not only engage other car lovers and get their thoughts on some of our favorite cars ever built, but also as a way to educate those who may not know a whole lot about cars and let them know why we love this particular hobby of ours.
Car porn courtesy of exoticcarsite.com.
Keep in mind, and we're going to be blunt about this, the Car of the Week series should not be seen as a sneak peek into anything Forza-franchise related, including future DLC. This is essentially after-work-hours banter from FM.net contributors, Microsoft car lovers, and even the Turn 10 design team. The whole idea being since we already talk about this stuff, we might as well expose it to the public and get them involved in the geek-out session too. The articles themselves are going to vary in style (but its short, quick-hit, springboard for discussion format will remain consistent) as we're getting a variety of folks to write them. In other words, if you've got a car you want featured and discussed, we're game to do it. Email your ideas and submissions to forzafb@microsoft.com.
At the end of the day, these Turn 10 Car of the Week articles are really just about chatting/debating/loving/lusting after them gosh-darned cars that we love so much. Isn't that what really matters? Yes. But those who do get involved with the discussion here in the comments section on our blogs may find themselves gifted with an in-game car or some in-game credits if we like what you wrote (hint hint). But c'mon, that shouldn't be the sole motivating factor to jump into the fray for those of you automotively inclined.
The top image is one of the many spot-on Team Seattle Porsche 996 replicas we received the past couple weeks. This one was submitted by JOQUE.
So onto Forza 2's user-created content and its community. We started a contest a couple weeks back asking all the car painters out there to basically re-create the Team Seattle Porsche 996 replica race car using the Forza 2 livery editor toolset. Having seen what the community was capable of, we knew the competition was going to be fierce. So we came up with what we felt was a tie-breaker that would most reflect the spirit of this contest. We asked these painters to also tune their replica race cars to the top of Class-S on Laguna Seca and the car with both the best paint job and handling was going to be the grand prize winner, a hefty package which includes 15 million in-game credits and 3 unicorn cars for the winner and a friend.
Well, the submission window officially closed yesterday and we were astounded at the number of submissions we got, and of course, at the overall quality bar for these re-creations. In order to raise the stakes on this just a little higher, after Turn 10's design folks decide on 10 semi-finalists (who will send us their replica cars), we're going to gift these beauties over to the car maniacs over at our sister-site MSN Autos for further judging. Those guys will put these GT3 Cup cars through their paces on Laguna Seca and come up with the grand prize winner. The cool thing is that among the group of judges over at MSN Autos is Chris Pennington, an actual driver for the past two years on Team Seattle. Chris will definitely have the background on how the real thing handled and will pick the car that feels the closest in terms of tuning, upgrades, and laptimes.
We will announce the chosen semi-finalists sometime next week and show off choice pics from each. In the meantime, congratulations for everyone who entered -- you all get a gift car of your choice. Be sure to email us at forzafb@microsoft.com. Stayed tuned on more.
Risi #62 Ferrari F430 GT vs. Flying Lizard 911 GT3 by: goingtoooofast
Another mindblowingly righteous user-created video landed in our inbox today from the crew over at the Cyber Racing World Championship organization. I'm not totally in touch with who they are as a group, but their website, attitude, and how they handle themselves all feel uber-professional. Anyway, the video I'm referring to can be seen here, and quite honestly, it is hands-down the best Forza 2 community-created race footage I've ever seen (and several at Turn 10 who saw the video late Friday also agree). This is apparently just the first race of a 16 race season -- all of which will have their own videos, including commentary -- and it took mastermind Robert Whittington approxmiately 100 hours to piece this bad boy together. And it'll take you around 12 minutes to digest it all. But it's totally worth it so do give it a shot. Just as a reminder, if you guys are creating videos and posting them out there, drop us a note and if we'll check it out.
1998 Porsche #26 AG 911 GT1 by: sphilli22
Before I hand this over to Landin for him to do his thing, I just want to comment quickly on some subtle changes here at Pitpass central. Nothing dramatic or gestures of grandeur or anything, but as you can see below, we're going to do less of the regurgitated community summaries in Landin's section, and focus more on individuals and their stories. This week's dig on the Forza 2 painter community and one of our forum moderators Jerod is just the start, and it's probably not the best example of what we're talking about, but we hope you get the idea. If you think you've got something to say, a story to tell about how Forza 2 has changed your life, or just a cool car in real life, drop us a line at forzafb@microsoft.com and let's chat. It's casual, it's real, and it's all about you the community.
The nervous man vs. the shady onlooker by: Hadoq
Living For Liveries: A Look at Forza 2's Amazing Car Painting Community
By: Landin Williams, Community Moderator
Hello and welcome to this edition of the Forza 2 community update, the article that brings all of the news and stories from our community to the front pages of Forzamotorsport.net. In the past this report has been focused on the “what, where and when” of our community. Rarely do we ever dig deep into the “who”, and discover the people that make up the body of our community. What motivates these players to get so involved with our game? What drives these racers to spend countless hours running hotlaps in order to be considered one of the fastest Forza drivers in the world? These are some of the questions that pop into your head when you really start to consider what an online community is all about.
2005 Subaru Impreza WRX STI by: x Stouffers x
When speaking to our newest community Moderator “Jerod”, it dawned on me that the greatness of a community is based solely on the people that are a part of it. Jerod agrees; when asked what he thought was the best part of our online community, Jerod simply responded with “I like the people”. It’s the people that really matter and the stories behind those individuals who choose to be an active part of this online community. We have so many members who spend so much time racing, painting, tuning and drifting, that it is always interesting to see what motivates these players to get the most out of Forza 2. Jerod is one of those people who has dedicated large amounts of time to not only racing and tuning, but also to the painting community.
2006 Chevrolet Corvette Z06 by: Sternum
Besides his membership as an extremely active member of the FM.net painting community, Jerod also races his NA 5.9L Jeep in the SCCA, or drives off-road with his buddies in real-life when he's not spending his time organizing events and group initiatives for Forza 2. As mentioned earlier Jerod referred to the people who make up the community as one of the main reasons that he remains involved, but he also explained how the painting community never ceases to amaze him. “The other thing that constantly floors me is the amount of art that has come out. Every time I think the paint editor has been pushed as far as it can go someone comes out with something that I never thought was possible. It is exciting to watch.”
It only takes one look on our forums to see how much incredible artwork is released on a daily basis by those players who use Forza 2 as their own personal canvas. Some painters love to spend their time replicating real life cars, while others enjoy creating cars that feature images from popular media. The amount of time, patience and skill that is necessary to create these works of art is astounding, when you consider the fact that these lifelike images and graphics are created with simple shapes and layers.
1999 Pagani Zonda C12 by: Hermanzini
Recently there has been an influx of “creation videos” where users will create a time-lapsed video that shows the creation on a design from start to finish. These videos are absolutely astonishing to see, as the design progresses from simple shapes and colors to a full out piece of art. The first few videos showcase the designs of “D1M3NSION”, one of them being the “Original Bruce Lee” design, and the other one being his “America Eagle” design. Links to both of these videos can found in THIS thread posted by none other than Jerod himself. Once you reach the Youtube videos make sure to check out the “Related Videos” link as there are some other amazing creation videos for your viewing pleasure. I spent about an hour today scrolling through the related videos to watch some of these designs come to life, and for me being able to view this process really solidifies the idea that there's very little difference in how you define a piece of art and the canvas on which it exists. It just so happens that these canvases are digital cars in Forza Motorsport 2.
1994 Nissan Silvia K's by: dedmonwakin
We would love to hear from any artist (or anyone that plays Forza 2 for that matter) who feels that they have a unique story, so if you have something you want to share with us feel free to send an e-mail to Forzafb@microsoft.com! Include a short description about your experiences with Forza 2, and anything else that is unique about your story!
Onto another popular aspect of our community: The Hotlap Challenge. The second iteration of our very popular Hotlap Series is now underway, and much like last season all of the fastest racers in the world have submitted times in hopes of gaining points towards the overall individual and team leaderboard. So without further ado here are the point’s breakdowns from our first week of competition.
2005 Mercedes SLR by: JerodR & Indy-SRT
Hotlap Series 2: Individual Top 10:
1st - R2P KimiMatt 185
2nd - IPR BackONE AbS 170
3rd - III LATTY III 165
4th - IPR Driver E76 160
5th - NF1 I Fullspeed 155
6th - SqR LukeJS 150
7th - R2P ChemicaL 146
8th - R2P KoRn 142
9th - R2P x42x 138
10th - RBR In Ya Chops 138
Hotlap Series 2: Overall Team Leaderboard (Top 5)
1 - R2P 761
2 - IPR 699
3 - SqR 668
4 - VVV 522
5 - TRC 503
As you can see the overall team leaderboard is already heating up with only one point separating SqR from the reigning champs IPR. Racing to Perfection (R2P) came out strong with four drivers in the top 10, securing the number 1 spot after the first week of competition. The rivalry between R2P and IPR seems to be heating up, and week 2 is no different. Both teams were able to get 4 drivers into the top 10 this week, securing huge points towards their overall team totals. It will be very interesting to see how the points add up, as well as how this season plays out considering how consistently fast all of these team drivers have become. R2P's KimiMatt secured the number one spot again this week with IPR's BackONE AbS hot on his trail. We will be calculating points this weekend, so make sure to check out the Tournaments section on Monday for a complete breakdown. For now here is a sneak peek at the top 10 from week 2.
Hotlap Series 2: Week 2 Top 10
1st - R2P KimiMatt
2nd - IPR BackONE AbS
3rd - IPR DriveR E76
4th - R2P Vevezo
5th - R2P ChemicaL
6th - R2P SVS NL
7th - VVV ChilledHeat
8th - IPR Revolution
9th - SPDN Crunchy
10th - IPR Hagarr
For Week 3 we have created a B Class (Max PI 600) challenge on the Nissan Speedway. We are pretty positive that we will see the muscle cars come out for this challenge, so get out there and run your fastest B Class car!
2003 Mini Cooper S by: CoSnipe
Alright that’s it for this week’s update! I hope you all enjoyed this week's Pitpass Report, and make sure to post your thoughts in our discussion thread. Have a good weekend and thanks for reading!
Peace
Landin
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