On 18 March 2007, Lewis Hamilton, British racing driver and childhood fan of Ayrton Senna’s Super Monaco GP II on the Sega Mega Drive, started his first Formula 1 race. He was driving for McLaren at the Australian Grand Prix, and he was 22 years old. He overtook his world champion teammate at the first corner, and ended up finishing third, which was eye-catchingly good for a rookie. He went on to finish in the top three at the next eight races as well, winning two of them, which was preposterously good for a rookie. He finished the season by losing out on the world championship by just one point.
Five days after Hamilton’s Australian success, Sony released the PlayStation 3 in the UK, and with it the launch game Formula One Championship Edition. It was developed by Sony’s own Studio Liverpool, i.e. the remnants of Psygnosis. It was the final F1 game for a team that had made everything from Formula 1 on the PlayStation in 1996 through Formula One 2001, the first PS2 exclusive to top the UK charts, to the rather less successful Formula One 06 on PS2. The latter was their basis for the upgraded HD experience of Championship Edition. That meant that their F1 swansong was based on the sport’s 2006 season, which meant no Lewis Hamilton. Formula One Championship Edition reached #7 in the UK chart.
In 2008, Lewis Hamilton was the biggest story in Formula 1. He was a prodigious and remarkable driver. He was also Black, mixed race and from an ordinary background in class terms, standing out in a privileged sport whose champions had been exclusively white up to that point. That year’s championship was once again settled at its final race by a single point, but this time in Hamilton’s favour. He won in incredibly dramatic circumstances, via a last lap, last corner overtake during which the family of his rival Felipe Massa were already starting to celebrate Massa’s assumed victory. New fans tuned in to watch Hamilton, and some old fans like me came back after years of lesser interest. The sport’s viewing figures in the UK had already gone up 40% in 2007, and they increased again in 2008. The increased appeal of the sport was not just a UK phenomenon, though. F1 hit a new global audience high of 600 million for the 2008 season.
Meanwhile, there was no Formula 1 video game for the 2008 season, either. Right before those audience increases, Sony had decided after more than a decade that it was no longer worth paying the ever-growing costs of the rights. The games had already served their purpose as part of establishing a huge European playerbase, and Sony had other priorities now. Perhaps Sony were also showing a little of the hubris that was rife in the early PS3 era, although they’ve got along just fine without those rights since. If it seems a bit odd that F1 was happy to just have no video games at all for two crucial years, there’s an easy explanation. That is, the sport was being run by a septuagenarian Hitler-admirer who felt that there was no point appealing to young people because they couldn’t afford Rolexes. “I’d rather get to the 70-year-old guy who’s got plenty of cash”.
The gap in Formula 1 video games would not last much longer. During 2008 a different developer announced that they had gained the exclusive rights to make them. It was Codemasters, the same British company I’ve been writing about since 1986’s BMX Simulator, which they incidentally followed up with the F1-based Grand Prix Simulator. Codemasters put out a very boastful statement to mark the occasion. “Formula One has gone with the best, the segment leader. It has gone to the home of the EGO Engine for quality; it has gone to the company that can host Formula One Online, to the company that is streaking away from the pack.” Appropriately named engine! The thing is, in the world of driving games, they were right.
Lewis Hamilton was not in contention for the championship in 2009, his talents being insufficient to compensate for his McLaren team failing to build a good car for new design regulations. A different British driver, Jenson Button, streaked away from the pack to win the championship. After a career of repeatedly leaving teams just before they became successful, Button ended up in the right place at the right time. He won for Brawn GP, a team which looked set to collapse when Honda pulled out of the sport, only to be saved at the last moment by a management buyout and improbably turn out to have designed easily the best car. UK viewing figures continued to rise, helped by a move back to being broadcast by the BBC.
Still Codemasters didn’t fully capitalise on three years of pent-up demand. They did release a game based on the 2009 season, which I played and enjoyed. They chose to get Sumo Digital to develop it for only the PSP and the Wii, machines with lower graphical capabilities. It didn’t feel too rushed, and I was happy to enjoy the fresh novelty of driving a Brawn GP car around new tracks like Singapore’s Marina Bay circuit, but there wasn’t much else that stood out. It wasn’t a game I came back to a lot, but its release formats made clear enough that it wasn’t the main event, but a company in a strong position testing the waters and avoiding risks they didn’t need to take. F1 2009 reached #11 in the UK chart.
In 2010, Jenson Button joined Lewis Hamilton at McLaren, and this time the team designed a better car. Button and Hamilton were among five different drivers with a chance of winning the championship in an evenly matched season that had a lot of twists along the way. Eventually it was won by Sebastian Vettel, another impressive new talent. UK viewing figures stayed almost as high. And finally, in the right place at the right time, Codemasters released their big F1 game on Xbox 360 and PS3. As you may have already gathered from the fact you’re reading this, it reached #1 in the UK chart.
All of that F1 history is one explanation of the success of F1 2010. The other explanation is the history of Codemasters themselves, and it’s one I’ve covered much of before. Over more than a decade, they had made the racing game space their own, perfecting balancing simulation with accessibility across a range of different cars and events. They mixed innovations like second chance time rewinding with a commitment to keeping the driving experience central. F1 2010 was Codemasters coming full circle not just because of Grand Prix Simulator, but because the task of replicating a real sport most resembled their 1997 breakthrough with TOCA Touring Car Championship.
F1 2010 has rewinds, and it has some finely tuned player aids, including a dynamic racing line display that was the best solution so far to shortcutting learning circuits by rote. The constraints of being based on real championship mean its rivalries can’t come to life like those in Colin McRae: Dirt 2, but it does highlight your teammate in a similar way. It gives you well-structured chances to abridge the long hours of events for a quick fix, and it includes first person press conference sections which are a neat idea if rather limited.
Once again, it hits a great balance. It is friendly and approachable without ever hitting the identity crisis of some of Sony’s 1990s games, and it also feels properly like properly trying to tame a ridiculously fast car at extreme speeds. Through choosing the championship mode I started out with a practice session in Bahrain, about the least inspiring activity available, and I still found myself gripped, hefting the car about, repeating and repeating until I was fixed into a fast groove. Even before adding much in the way of stakes or interesting surroundings, F1 2010 looks and feels great.
What also becomes clear in races is how much it sounds great, and how well its elements come together when it matters. Pulling up towards another car is a ferocious and scary experience not just because of the snap reactions needed to avoid collisions at the speed, but because of the hellacious noise thrown up. By the nature of the cars, the racing can’t involve the level of scrapes and taking up the same space as in many of their other games. Much like the real sport, the compensation is in the intensity brought to the few moments when it does happen.
With a lot of racing game structure already in place for Codemasters to build on, F1 2010 is a game whose successful extra focus is intensity. For both new F1 fans and fans longstanding enough to have memories of Ayrton Senna’s Super Monaco GP II, it was a roaring vision worth waiting for. Plus you can play as Lewis Hamilton. And he and Codemasters alike were just getting started.
Top of the charts for week ending 25 September 2010:
WCRobinson
As you know, I’m a huge F1 fan, and I was a teenager when there was this huge leap from F1 2009 to 2010 (Wii to 360). This was the game that properly opened my eyes to the HD leap! I spent many hours on the games until 2016, when the amount of time these games require just became too much for me. Like FIFA, you can easily sink so much in and I wanted to share my time around more.
I have kept a vague track of how Codemasters have added more and more features, which is great. Features like F2 and creating your own team were a dream, back in 2010! Sadly it looks like EA are pushing in their microtransactions more and more now.
My favourite game was F1 2012. That game just felt right to me in terms of car balance.
iain.mew
Thanks for sharing! I had played Championship Edition so this wasn’t my first HD F1 game but it was much better. Looking at my achievements and trophies I can see that I played F1 2013 and F1 2015, and spent longest on 2010 and 2015, so I’ve been out of it for a similar period of time to you. I’ll have to try 2012, I won’t get to for this site since 2015 was the next one to get to #1. Since then they have mostly made it.