A bizarre new Sony initiative is offering PlayStation fans the chance to be scanned into a video game, but you’ve got to prove your fanaticism first.
PlayStation’s 30th anniversary was technically in 2024, but Sony is still tenuously milking the celebrations to justify a new project aimed at putting its fans into its games.
As such, Sony has announced The Playerbase, which is essentially a competition where you can win the chance to have your likeness scanned into a PlayStation game, starting with Gran Turismo 7.
It appears to be relatively innocuous, but in the age of deepfakes and actors licensing their likenesses to AI companies, there’s certainly a dystopian whiff around it.
To actually get yourself into a game involves the equivalent of a two-stage job interview. You first have to send an application via the Playerbase website (you need to be aged 18 or over with a PlayStation account ID) and fill in some basic details, along with answering the dramatic question of how PlayStation impacted your life.
As outlined on the PlayStation Blog, a limited number of finalists will then be chosen to participate in video interviews to ‘learn about them and their connection to PlayStation’.
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In a Q&A about what will be evaluated during the interview process, it lists a combination of ‘how much your interview expresses an authentic love for PlayStation’, your ‘authentic love for Gran Turismo 7’, and whether your interview includes ‘shareable and entertaining content’ [shudder] while ‘demonstrating that your story is suitably interesting to make further compelling content’ – which sounds like they’ll mine your emotions for social media engagement.
Thekicker is all this jumping through hoops is only to win a limited time appearance in Gran Turismo 7 as an in-game character portrait – so you’re basically worshipping at PlayStation’s altar so you can become a static JPEG… for a short while.
The winner, however, will have some long-term impact on the game. They will also be able to design a custom Fantasy logo and a vehicle livery which will be permanently added to the Showcase menu, as part of a paid trip to a visual arts studio in Los Angeles.
As noted in the Q&A, the winner will be selected in summer 2026, with the person’s likeness rolled out as part of a Gran Turismo 7 update later this year.
Sony doesn’t state what other games this Playerbase will be used for, but it is planning to incorporate fans into future titles – presumably in a similar format. Let’s hope we can double as Mimir’s disembodied head in God Of War Ragnarök soon.
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