I still feel you're dismissing the influence 'the game' had in the sales pitch too lightly.
I don't think that the sales and marketing manager at the FIA, or at Mercedes, is particularly interested in the quality of the game. I'd be surprised if many of them have played it. I suppose they do care, but probably only to the extent that they don't want to be associated with a poor quality product. But mostly they care about perception and numbers. As long as Joe Public thinks it's good and buys it, that's their job done.
There's also the likelihood that Kaz's personal influence may have had quite a lot to do with it, which was why I mentioned the "Kazunori Yamauchi" brand. Kaz is kind of well known, he probably knows a lot of people directly and others probably know of him indirectly. He certainly has relationships with several major car manufacturers, and once you've got a few on board for something like the VGT program it's probably not hard to convince more than they need to keep up with the Joneses.
When the pitch is "We're adding fantasy cars to our multi-million selling racing game. We've already got Nissan, Volkswagen, Ford and BMW on board. All you have to do is give us you design. You want in?" it's probably not that hard to get them to say yes.
The FIA thing is probably more based on history, simply because it probably sprung from the GT Academy. Relationships develop as these gamer-turned-racers make their way onto the scene, and eventually Kaz and Jean Todt are drunk in a titty bar one night and Kaz is telling him about his next great plan.
I suppose now that I think about it, that's probably more or less how it came about, so it's certainly more about the game in that instance. Had Gran Turismo not done GTA, it probably wouldn't have happened. Or at least would have been much harder. iRacing is the only other game that can sensibly claim a link to real motorsport and motorsport bodies, but they could never give the FIA the level of publicity that they would probably want.
