This is a translated summary of the following original Finnish article: Malinen, Ville. 2025. “Ayrton Sennan kuolinonnettomuutta käsittelevät pelivideot kulttuurisen muistin muotona ja välineenä”. Lähikuva – Audiovisuaalisen Kulttuurin Tieteellinen Julkaisu, 38(1), 52–73. https://doi.org/10.23994/lk.160194

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Three-time F1 world champion Ayrton Senna’s death during the 1994 San Marino Grand Prix is regarded as a global sporting event tragedy that has since evolved into simulated reproduction of cultural memory via simulative racing games. Reasons for this development have been his status and legacy as a racing driver, and the charm of thrill or F1 racing that has been mediated over the years from simpler racing games into highly detailed simulation games for players and fans. I set to analyze what kind of simulation game videos have been made from this accident, what they express about the event, and recount about the need to remember it.

Cultural memory is understood as institutionalized, and associated with symbolism, control, rites and even mythology, that range from the use of language to memorial places and physical objects. It is at the same time open for conflicts and surrounded by interests. Senna’s position in popular culture has been established with other media texts from documentaries to literature, and thus game videos appear as a new form and tool of this process. However, crashes and provocative games about collective tragedies have remained a debated niche in popular imagery, mainly due to their graphic nature, associated meanings (that are often contested and taboo-like), and in broader context tangled with moral media panics regarding atypical and explicit content.

For this research, seventeen YouTube game videos were chosen for analysis based on their typical imagery and recognizable framework, in this case the original televised content and documentary material regarding the accident. Content analysis and reflective media text narrative analysis were applied. Continuation and informativeness were underlined features along with mise-en-scéne.

Videos varied in games and genres, popularity, style, aesthetic, recording form, and age. Most were roughly two minutes long. The oldest game used was from 1996 and newest 2024, whereas the oldest video was from 2012 and latest 2023. Videos were divided into three categories: 1) Detailed and authenticity driven racing simulation game videos 2) Playful open game videos 3) Experimental videos made with simpler racing simulation games. Each category had variation in content detail, truthfulness and realistic execution. The first were mostly done with highly realistic simulation games like rFactor (2005) and embraced details and credible physics. Some of them enabled new angles, but some also provided distorted false depictions. The second category consisted of Roblox (2006) videos that were noted for their simplicity and atypical, lacking execution, exemplifying how well-known the tragic crash is as general cultural imagery. The final category with licensed F1 franchise simulation games from the 2010s and 2020s was riddled with anachronisms and superficial realism; they were low-effort experiments of testing the limits of games and servitude of cultural memory.

The limitations of chosen game, skills, and player-made choices affect greatly to the outcome, the first including the game’s source code, licensed content, amount of detail, and graphic engine. The used game predicted the execution of the video: modern simulation games were most technically detailed, and loyal to original content and broadcasting narration, but the latter applied to almost all the videos. As such, racing and notably sports games remain near inseparable from the generic visual language of paragon media sports. At the same time, strive for realism, avatar-based playability, and this inseparability from actual events narrow player liberties in terms of expression. All games appeared to test and express both the limitations of the game and players skills, whether sim racing or open world games. The role of a separate narrator was minimal, often relying on televised video content on-board or by the track. The videos varied in explicit (or background) informativity and contextualizing narration, most forming a cohesive story structure. The most popular videos were loyal to original televised event and resembled film-like narration. In general, all these YouTube videos made by player-users indicate a way to produce and maintain cultural memory in a new virtual form.

In sum, most high-quality videos of Senna’s accident seem as replays of it, providing an interesting tool to vividly repeat, mediate, and experience this past event. Games offer variably possibilities for loyal replication but also simultaneously creative yet limited freedom to reconstruct the accident. The videos depicted skill, motivation, emotion, and possibilities given by the games, and/or lack of them. Numerous issues regarding the relationship between adaptation, subjective expression, and authenticity of source material became evident. The event seems to have been turned into detailed simulations, narrated tributes, and playful, experimental turning points of cultural memory. The position of viewers and their ability to read the events and context become emphasized.

Instead of graphic content, the urge to reconstruct simulations of tragic events radiates the need to repeat mediated events that are felt to have historical relevance and emotional charge. Simulation thus links production and consumption of media and cultural memory in a new form with games via repetition and reconstruction; it is more of a new dialect than a language. However, this process simultaneously maintains the memory and distances it from the original event and its power, if loyalty to source material is regarded as probative value. Likewise, the ways to transmit and narrate events and memory to people, and their foreknowledge, are in constant change.

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