The Stig speaks on games, Need for Speed, and the Top Gear test track

He may no longer be the figure behind the white helmet, but most people still refer to Ben Collins as The Stig; king of the Top Gear test track. Given that the racing genre is so popular in games today, and Collin's own work in advertising Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit, we thought he might be a bit of a hidden gamer himself. So we asked him as the GAME BAFTA awards.



"I love games," he said. "Getting time to play them is the hard part. But I worked a little bit on the Need for Speed game; we did a launch with Lamborghini's and Ferrari's and we were just doing crazy things around the track. The game is sort of similar but even more wild so it's good fun."

But has Ben played any of last years best racing games? "To be honest I haven't really. I do like them, but I was always into the F1 games for PC though I realise that makes me sound really dull. I was into those because they felt more accurate. We use simulators now in racing, they're kind of expensive. They're so accurately tracked to the maps that we used them now to set the cars up before the races.

"So gamers will soon be getting as real an experience as we get in the car. In the simulators you sweat, you crash; it all feels real. You're totally immersed in it, it feels like the real thing."

The Top Gear test track is available in two racing games at the moment: Forza 3 and Gran Turismo 5. We asked Ben how he thought he'd fare round a digital track. "I'd be the fastest," he replied through laughter. "Of course, with a bit of practice. It's a bold statement and I don't doubt the talent of full-time gamers but it would be interesting, assuming that the track is accurate of course. It'd be fun; there's a lot of places where it's faster off the track than on so if that kind of stuff is in the game I don't know."

Will Ben himself be involved in anymore racing games? "I hope so. I love working with EA Sports and I met Criterion [Need for Speed developers] and they had some very interesting things in the pipeline that I would love to work on so we'll see."

Check out the whole interview up top.