The Russell Forza Experience
My relationship with the Forza franchise has been rather up and down. My first Forza experience was owning an Xbox 360 and missing my time on Gran Turismo.
Before the 360, I was very much on the PlayStation train. My dad snagged a console back in December of 1996. My dad got a bundle deal from the local Funcoland (Remember that place?!) where the PS1 came with a copy of Colony Wars. Not quite a racing game, but this lovely gem of the early PlayStation library really locked myself and my dad into the new generation of consoles.
Fast forward to summer of 1998. My dad and I are at Funcoland again, mostly because my dad was interested in a copy of Resident Evil 2. But over by the demo stand, there it was. The demo of the first Gran Turismo. My tiny, young autistic brain was blown away. My interest in cars at the age of 11 was already very apparent to my parents so seeing me utterly enamored by watching that iconic metallic blue Viper GTS with its white racing stripes was not a surprise at all. But what went in my favor for it all? My dad was captivated as well.
The rest of that year was the first time I was genuinely hooked on a video game. Despite playing so many hours of Sonic 1, 2 and 3 & Knuckles, it was merely practice for how much my mind latched onto Gran Turismo 1. As a double whammy, this game and its sequel pretty much solidified my obsession with cars and motorsport. Living in a small town in Massachusetts and talking about Mitsubishi GTOs, Nissan Skylines and obscure ones like the Mazda Lantis and Eunos Cosmo to my peers went as well as you’d expect around a bunch of 11-13 year olds that only knew the boomer muscle car culture and leftover 80’s and 90’s exotic popular cars of the late 90’s. But I didn’t care, Japanese cars fascinated me.
I played all of GT1, GT2, then got my hands on a PS2 for GT3 A spec and the legendary GT4. These weren’t just games, they shaped my taste and views on what I loved about cars themselves. It drove me to get out and explore watching actual motorsport in the late 90’s, the existence of Speedvision (later changing to Speed, RIP best motorsport channel ever) absolutely gave me what I was further craving.
2008, I bought my own Xbox 360 and from looking at the used games selection of a Game Stop, I found a copy of Forza Motorsport 2. Having played so much GT4 at this point and feeling like I explored it as much as possible (oh dear did I not lol) I wanted something new. Right off the bat, it gave me the same feeling when I booted up GT3 for the first time but now it was ordinary cars again. Cool little oddball Japanese cars were abundant, but also I noticed something else: the racecar selection. They had a large assortment of actual cars from the SCCA Speed GT World Challenge series. The Mustangs, the Vipers, the Corvettes I all remembered watching on TV. I was hooked.
The game itself was such a joy to progress and experience. So many tuner cars and racecars but the aspects Gran Turismo were lacking were here: customization. Different bumpers, wings, wheels, hoods, but even engine and drivetrain swaps? AND I can make custom colors and liveries? I loved it, even if my online experiences with FM2 were minimal. Sadly, I would be without an Xbox 360 for a few years as mine got the red ring of death and the local chain of video game stores from which I bought it from ended up going under from its owner just using it as a money laundering scheme. Sadly, my own money got taken from that as they took back my dead console and promised me it would be repaired for $125.
It wasn’t until 2011 I bought a 360 elite console after finding out my scammed out of my old console. This introduced me to Forza Motorsport 4, the game of the franchise many consider to be the pinnacle. I lived through the game’s rise and eventual fading as 2015 rolled around and the Xbox One was released. But my time on FM4 was a blast. I fully jumped into the online experience of it, I made friends that I ended up playing with on a near daily basis. Heck, a handful of those people I still keep in touch with to this day.
FM4 had its own ecosystem within the game’s online mode. People made liveries, decals, tuners shared their best builds/setups. People joined clubs and enjoyed sharing their favorite builds to club garages. For better or worse, it was very unrestricted but it also lead to so many people getting their own stuff stolen quite often. But I made my own fare share of liveries and shared them. This is where I got my start as a “Forza designer” I guess you could say. Learning how to make and trace logos and designs with the rather archaic shape vectoring that is the decal creator, I got a pretty good grasp of it. Sadly I didn’t get back into creating all my own assets until FM7, when I learned all I made on FM4 would not transfer to FM5 and onwards.
While everybody remembers FM4 fondly, it wasn’t perfect. That game also had a rocky launch (it’s a T10 tradition, let’s be honest) and had a lot of basic features missing. It wasn’t until a year after its release in 2012 the game felt finally grounded and sorted. Though it still wasn’t perfect. T10 never quite figured out why players who did lots of online play would always experience the game freezing and crashing after 7-8 online races consistently. Usually the hint you were on your last race before it would happen was you would no longer see custom liveries. The game even earned the nickname “Froza” from my friends because of how often it happened to us. There was also so many connection issues but that was more because of Microsoft’s finicky servers. Quite a hint at how online private races would end up going for future games.
I played FM4 pretty much until all my friends jumped ship to the Xbox One. I waited for the debut of FM6, even got myself a snazzy FM6 edition console that had the sound of a Ferrari 458 every time it booted up. But starting over in FM6 was bittersweet, I was put off by making all my decals from scratch again and just ended up downloading what I wanted. But I was still playing with my same friend group and while FM6 no longer had the built in Cat & Mouse mode, we still made do and played our games of C&M’s variant: Shepard. While it never felt the same, many hours were logged playing this. But it wasn’t until I found my first organized league that I really started to focus on racing competitively. The league was small, it was pretty isolated and unknown to most of the forza community, but what I learned from it pretty much changed my entire focus on what a Forza game meant to me. Organized leagues was the one thing I was missing all along.
My focus shifted after joining this league, which went by FRX. It started with a fantastic idea: rally cross cars. FM6 had an engine swap option that sparked this idea: the 1.6 turbo four that was very much a race spec engine. The original leader of FRX crafted an initial car list and what cars should get the rally engine. After joining, there was a month of testing and tuning. I got to make new friends and learned quite a bit about the jank that is Forza tuning logic. All I had ever done up to this point was simply play with friends for Cat & Mouse and hop in online lobbies when I wanted something else to do. But this? Having a car list, a specific build sheet, livery regulations? I loved this.
Sadly, the league only did one season of the rally cross cars. The original "founder" of FRX got very busy with life things and after showing so much interest in managing the league with builds, tunes and liveries, the league itself was rather quietly handed off to me. In this time, I invited most of my Cat & Mouse friends to the league. We worked on more ideas and ended up having a GT3, V8 Supercars and Touring Cars series. But while working on a retro Trans Am series idea, I got burnt out. Managing all the drivers, livery regs, build and car lists, doing dev work to make sure the cars were all balanced, to put it simply was a lot. But also around this time I had taken up streaming on Twitch already, putting my burnt out desire for FRX behind me, I focused on my new stream channel and did more public lobby races than anything. Then of course in 2017 Microsoft acquired what was then known as "Beam" and integrated that fancy new streaming platform with it's lightning fast latency times into the OS of the Xbox One. Streaming directly from your console was now easier than ever. I jumped over and got my first few years in as a streamer with nothing more than the charm of my voice and my unique liveries seen on screen.
In 2019, I was focusing mostly on streaming and public lobby things as Forza Motorsport 7 was pretty well into it's life cycle. But during my streams, I was approached by somebody with a team though at the time I didn't realize it. He popped in more regularly and actually stuck around for my streams. Wasn't until fall that this person reached out to me personally asking me to join their team. For the sake of not drudging up old drama and whatnot, I won't be naming them here. Because while the experience at first seemed pleasant, what made me leave was absolutely a mess. I was only there for about a half a year but most importantly it got me into a league I never really knew how to jump into: TORA, The Online Racing Association. The biggest organized league for Forza Motorsport. My first experience of TORA was an eight hour endurance race around Suzuka Circuit with the theme of early 90's GT1 and GT2 cars. Me being me, seeing the SN95 Mustang Cobra on the car list, I ended up racing in GT2. But choosing teammates ended up being interesting. Another new to the team driver paired up with me, though their interest in my car and livery seemed very low. But I wanted to have a third driver and that's when I contacted another driver who liked being in my streams.
At the time he was apart of the now defunct MEX team, Platinum showed big interest on helping me out. He helped me dial in the car and gave me advice on what lines to take around Suzuka. He even put down a time in rivals for me to chase and pick up my pace. The whole experience was like the beginning of FRX again but felt far larger. My excitement and nerves were high, but after qualifying we ended up in the 2nd split (There was only two) and I did two stints. I had my first taste of not only a proper TORA enduro, but competition I'd never see in a public lobby. The racing was tough but quite fair and clean. Heck, we were even on the way to finish in the top 3 of our split but sadly Platinum suffered a disconnect at the end of his stint, tanking us to 10th in our split. But it was the start of my newfound spark of life for Forza. Public lobbies were getting stale and boring, but this? It felt like a whole new game within FM7 I had been missing.
During my time on this first team, I did a few more TORA series and enjoyed my experiences for the most part. There was one mishap with another driver calling me a slur but luckily I managed to get a clip of the chat audio to TORA staff and quite quickly that driver was banned permanently. My hat went off for how quickly they handled it and didn't make any fuss about the "what if's" about what he said. TORA still holds itself professionally like this to this day. From another driver in TORA, I also joined another league that went by r/FM4. A long running league that specifically does spec racing and is far more laid back than TORA. I still race there with them as well, as they are currently in their 61st season!
Sadly, my time with that first team came to a very abrupt end. Again, not to drudge up old crap about it, I had to leave the team after seeing an internal issue be resolved terribly. But my second team and one that I still associate with would be Scrubs Go Racing (SGR) and really feels like the home I will never get away from [affectionate]. I continued to do various series in TORA and r/FM4 as well as a handful of other places. Though by 2022, I was burnt out from FM7 in general. I shifted focus to Forza Horizon, with FH5 dropping in fall of 2021. Out of all the FH games I did play along side FM, it was the first one I found rapid pace in. That game held my attention as FM7 became too stale and boring with organized events. But after the new Forza Motorsport game was announced and teased, I didn't want to get my hopes up while simultaneously getting my hopes up.
While I don't need to add to the massive pile of rants, video essays and memes about how badly Forza Motorsport 2023 launched, I still sort of stuck through it and raced. I wanted this game to succeed, I still do in fact. But the first few months were rough. But I stuck to my guns, making liveries and helping out friends in events I would do. I even ended up joining a new team to really enjoy experiencing organized league events as a team as SGR pretty much abandoned FM as a whole. Currently, the game is much better than when it released a year ago. There is a lot it still needs now as well, but there just isn't anything else that does what FM2023 does for Xbox users. Until a genuine new competitor comes up (and this goes for Gran Turismo as well, I saw just as much anger for GT7's shenanigans over in the world of Playstation) I feel like this massive franchise doesn't have any genuine motivation to make FM2023 the best it really could be and that is a dang shame.
Here's to hoping FM2023 can succeed, I really need my stubbornness to pay off, dude. >.>