How the French gaming community is bringing a game back to life.

The most popular installment of the franchise

Trackmania 2 Stadium is a racing game available on Steam for 10 euros, or less than that when it goes on sale. It's a fun experience, with a solo mode that allows you to compare your best times with the rest of the world.

It has few mechanics other than you mastering your vehicle to perfection, and being able to adapt to the challenges introduced by the different maps.

You might think, "Is that it? Of course this game is pretty much dead, it came out in 2013, and it's a racing game, they don't last that long.

The game isn't just what it seems to be.

Here's is the twist, trackmania stadium does not have any progression system, only a ranking progress system, and a map creator with extensive tooling and options. You can not improve your car in any way, which means that new players have equal chances to get some crazy world records than the seasoned veteran, yet the skill and experience of the latter will allow them to finish races, find shortcuts and strategies to complete maps as fast as they can.

And here comes the french community 

Even with those cool features, if no one is creating new and fun maps, players won't stay interested and involved in the game. And here comes the French streamer and youtuber Zerator. A few years ago, he decided to go on and create a tournament on the game Trackmania Stadium, and with his following, managed to setup an event that had quite some success. Since then, pro players and famous variety streamers have joined in the hype, attracted by the shiny event, the innovative and great ideas introduced by Zerator and the stars of the game.

The tournament has every map being made by Zerator, and he streams the mapping process, involving the community in his livestreams. Player from all over Europe and the world have tried and played the qualifiers for the tournament, the last phase being a LAN event happening in France.

This event's impact is easy to see on the charts, as the average amount of players has been multiplied by 8 since the tournament was announced.

The tournament qualifications have already started, and we should see the hype growing in the next weeks !

So as you can see, just one streamer with enough dedication and following to a game, can bring it back to life, even if that revival probably won't last for long after then end of the tournament. You can bet that Nadeo is thrilled by these events, and maybe other publishers will see this miracle and try to cooperate harder with streamers to get their games more attention, (I'm looking at you Darwin Project, article coming soon !)

As usual, thank you for reading this article, do not hesitate to check out my other stuff, leave a comment, follow on social media, yada yada. Much love, Tisba.