When it comes to videogames, there’s an audience out there for many different kinds of esport. Whether it be card games, real time strategy, or first person shooters, there’s many different genres that people like to watch. Virtual reality is a very new medium, and with it comes the genre of virtual reality games. This just begs the question, “what will be the first VR esport?”.
Dueling
Virtual reality brings an immersive first person perspective and precise movements with certain controllers. With players being put into a virtual space, where they can mimic movements in real life that couldn’t be mimicked with controllers or keyboard and mouse, this allows us to do things we couldn’t do before.
Duels are always something that seem cool. Whether it be the shoot-outs in the wild west to archery battles, or jousting, duels are an interesting activity to watch. Many of these types of activities are much too dangerous to emulate in real life but with VR you could pull off these things with no danger whatsoever. Fencing, jousting, sword battles, etc, there are many types of dueling that you could emulate in VR and people would certainly want to see the best of the best go at it.
Dog Fights/Vehicular Combat
One of the best genres of games that can be emulated in VR are games with driving. And games like World of Warplanes, World of Tanks, and World of Warships show us that vehicle combat games are popular.
In real life the practicality of smashing planes, tanks and ships together for the sport of it is impractical, but this isn’t the case in VR. From airplanes, to tanks, to ships, to spaceships, VR allows us to drive complicated and expensive machines and destroy them as we please. Everyone loves a good dog fight and some of the coolest moments we remember from our childhoods may be those dogfights in space like in Star Wars. We could see one on one dog fights or squads duking it out.
The idea of thousands watching as ace pilots battle it out in the skies or in the depths of space is something that should excite anyone.
Conclusion
Much of esports depends on what is enjoyable and exciting to watch, as well as the complexity of the esport. Viewers want to see players play a mechanically complex game and compete at the highest level of skill against one another. With Dueling and Vehicular Combat, we could see these things. Both would require high levels of mechanical skill, and at the highest level of play people would see how minor movements or choices affect the outcome of the game.
VR is inherently a high intensity medium with it being so immersive, so everyone wants to see VR being used to the fullest. With these one on one or squad vs squad battles, everyone would see VR at it’s fullest potential.
