Last month VRFocus reported on Intel, ESL and Oculus announcing the VR Challenger League, a virtual reality (VR) eSports competition that involves players and teams from across Europe and North America competing in The Unspoken and Echo Arena. Today, the first online qualifiers are now open and the regional finals have been dated.
Insomniac’s The Unspoken is a spellcasting experience where players face up against opposing mages in 1v1 battles. Players cast powerful spells and utilize the destructible environment to gain an advantage over their opponents. While Echo Arena is a team-based, five vs five multiplayer where players have to score points by scoring goals. But the arenas all feature low gravity as well as obstacles to stop the disk and cause issues for the players themselves.
For those interested you can sign up here. There’s a prize pool worth more than $200K on offer for those skilled enough to make it all the way through.
The regional final dates and locations are as follows:
Oculus Connect, October 11 – 12
ESL One Hamburg, October 28 – 29
IEM Oakland, November 18 – 19
DreamHack Winter, November 30 – December 3
After the regional’s have taken place the main event will be held at IEM Katowice in Poland, where the Intel Extreme Masters takes place.
For further updates on the VR Challenger League, keep reading VRFocus.
It all started from a game jam. At least that’s the story behind Echo Arena. Ready at Dawn has been busy with Lone Echo but quickly realized that there’s more to their single player than meets the eye, and it’s all based on social virtual reality (VR).
Echo Arena is a multiplayer VR esport that most recently received the support of Intel, and will be playing at the Worldwide VR Challenger League. The finals are based in Poland, and with it, they hope to bring VR to eSports. Ru Weerasuriya tells VRFocus what he thinks the future of VR and eSports holds, whilst giving some additional trips to potential Echo arena competitors. Let the games begin.
Intel have announced a partnership with ESL and Oculus to launch an eSports league dedicated to VR gaming, featuring Oculus Rift titles The Unspoken and Lone Echo‘s multiplayer counterpart Echo Arena.
It’s official, sitting around watching other people play games is a big deal among hardcore gamers these days and while, right now, the vast majority of those games are played competitively using a monitor, mouse and keyboard, Intel, ESL and Oculus want to accelerate the progression of immersive eSports with their latest initiative, the “VR Challenger League”.
The new event, offering a prize pool of over $200,000, will comprise two VR titles that were both conceived with competitive play in mind. The first is Insomniac’s excellent magical dueller The Unspoken. The game is focused on 1v1 magical duelling and has the player use the Oculus Touch motion controllers to perform magical gestures to create and throw projectiles and cast special attacks.
Next up is Echo Arena, the multiplayer counterpart to the forthcoming Oculus Rift exclusive Lone Echo set in space, featuring some impressive contextual animation and zero-G locomotion which opens the door to some unique tactile gameplay opportunities. Road to VR’s Frank He went hands on with the multiplayer mode at last year’s Oculus Connect 3 event. Here’s a snippet of what he had to say of his experience:
We would move around in zero gravity either with thrusters, or by grabbing, pulling, or pushing ourselves on our way with the help of walls or floating geometry (or even teammates or enemy characters). We’d be vying for a glowing disc in the middle of the Ender’s Game Battle Room-style arena (though it wasn’t nearly as big). Then we’d have to grab the disc and throw it into the holographic goal at the end of other team’s side.
A final piece of the puzzle was a punch you could do only to opponents’ heads to briefly stun them, preventing them from being able to move and hold the disc. You could also grab and climb onto bodies, so a common maneuver would be to grab onto a limb, clamber up, punch them in the face, and snatch the disk right from their hands, then give yourself a shove off of their stunned body to head toward the goal.
You’ll be able to qualify for the offline events by taking part in the online competitions which are set to start on July 12th on ESL Play. As well as the VR Challenger League qualifiers, you’ll also be able to “challenge yourself in our weekly ESL Play cups”, where you can compete for weekly points and prize money.
If you’re interested in taking part, head over to ESL to create an ESL Play account so you’re primed and ready to take part when the league kicks off next month.
For VRFocus’ weekly roundup of virtual reality (VR) related sporting goodness the NHL is celebrating 125th anniversary of the Stanley Cup and the recent Intel Extreme Masters Katowice 2017 saw VR broadcast popularity and engagement growing by 200 percent.
Intel and ESL Welcome 173,000 Fans to the Extreme Masters Katowice 2017
Last month VRFocusreported on ESL and SLIVER.tv collaborating on a virtual esports stadium experience for fans watching the Intel Extreme Masters (IEM) Katowice 2017 event.
The entire competition turned out to be a huge success, 173,000 fans attended the stadium event and surrounding festival over the course of two weekends, with more than 46 million unique online viewers, a 35% growth from last year’s event.
Intel and ESL partnered with SLIVER.tv and WonderWorld VR for the VR experience, delivering an immersive 360-degree space that included live stats, replays, and scores in real-time. The VR stream featured a 200 percent growth in peak concurrent viewers compared to IEM’s first VR livestream in Oakland, with 340,000 unique viewers tuning into the VR broadcast reports ESL
“Intel Extreme Masters Katowice shattered all expectations with record breaking attendance and viewership,” said Frank Soqui, General Manager of the Virtual Reality and Gaming Group at Intel. “The gaming community’s passion for esports was on display and Intel is proud to continue delivering the best gaming experiences to fans around the world, whether that’s with IEM tournaments, driving growth in VR content, or improving how people play with Intel processors and technology.”
The IEM Expo also included VR Games Festival and VR tournament, interactive demos including Intel’s Project Alloy merged reality headset, and VR viewing stations from SLIVER.tv.
NHL Fans Experience The Moment Of A Lifetime With The Stanley Cup
To celebrate the 125th Anniversary of the Stanley Cup, the National Hockey League (NHL) teamed up with advertising agency R&R Partners, creating two ad spots voiced over by Liev Schrieber, highlighting the iconic trophy and a VR experience that allowed fans to get up close to the cup.
Housed inside a 20-foot shipping container at PPG Paints Arena, home of the Pittsburgh Penguins and current holder of the Cup, the experience transported fans to a VR world compiled of historic Stanley Cup wins, clips of the Cup being hoisted by famous players and teams and a final moment with the infamous ‘Keeper of the Cup’ Phil Pritchard and an opportunity to virtually reach out and grab the Cup.
What the fans didn’t realise, the actual cup had been placed in front of them whilst in VR so when they removed the headset there it was in all its glory.
While traditional eSports aren’t going away, many companies are building the foundation for a virtual reality subset. The current eSports numbers are staggering. According to Newzoo, of the 1.3 billion gamers worldwide, 256 million are eSports fans today. That number will grow to 385 million by 2017. ESports generated over $493 million in revenues last year and are expected to jump to $696 million this year.
When you look at the gaming landscape, the only thing as “hot “as eSports is virtual reality. Newzoo forecasts global virtual reality and augmented reality will generate $569 billion by 2025. And gamers will be a big part of that revenue, with projections of spending $100 billion on VR hardware by 2018.
Record-Breaking Numbers
So it should come as no surprise that the world’s largest eSports company, The Electronic Sports League (ESL), and one of the giants in both the tech and gaming markets, Intel, are already laying the groundwork for virtual reality eSports. The eleventh season of the Intel Extreme Masters (IEM) eSports tournament just concluded in Katowice, Poland over two sold-out weekends this month. Over 173,000 people attended and another 40 million people tuned into the livestreams across Twitch, Twitter, and a dozen television networks globally. IEM Season 12 will kick off its year-long tournament tour schedule on May 6 in Sydney, Australia.
ESL and Intel partnered with Sliver.tv to broadcast IEM Katowice in 360-degree video as part of a 2017 contract that will include seven global eSports events across ESL One and IEM. At Katowice, the included a first-person virtual eSports stadium experience delivering an immersive 360 VR space that includes live stats, replays, and scores in real-time. The VR stream featured a 200% growth in peak concurrent viewers compared to IEM’s first virtual reality live stream in Oakland, with 340,000 total unique viewers tuning into the VR broadcast.
The tech companies first experimented with 360-degree broadcasting across Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, League of Legends, and Dota 2 at ESL One New York and IEM Oakland last fall. More than 130,000 unique viewers tuned into the IEM Oakland VR streams. Sliver.tv has a separate deal with DreamHack to bring seven of its global 2017 eSports events to fans in 360. That deal kicked off with Dreamhack Vegas last month, which means eSports fans will be able to virtually attend 14 events this year using any VR headset.
Frank Soqui, general manager of the enthusiast desktop group at Intel, told UploadVR that Intel has invested in companies like Voke and Replay people fans of all sports want to look around and enjoy a 360-degree experience.
Redefining How Viewers Enjoy eSports
“We want to bring the audience into the immersive experience from a VR perspective through apps like Sliver.tv,” Soqui said. “Just because existing eSports games like League of Legends and CS:GO aren’t native VR games doesn’t mean we can’t use Sliver.tv to get people inside. We believe eSports will quickly evolve from watching competition from a flat screen perspective and will include virtual reality. I don’t know how many games will start taking existing designs and move to VR, but a lot more games will show up inherently designed with VR in mind.”
Intel actually showcased several of these potential VR eSports titles in Katowice, including a game being developed in Warsaw, Poland by HyperVR called Hyper Arena. While the game developer had a 1 vs. 1 version of the TRON-inspired disc-based HTC Vive game playable at the Intel Showcase at the Katowice International Conference Center, Lukasz Kur, founder and general director at HyperVR, said the studio is creating multiple additional levels that add new locales as well as a variety of weapons to the mix. The ultimate plan, according to Kur, is to release the game in 2018 with 2 vs. 2 gameplay. Beyond that, Kur would like to expand the gameplay into a 5 vs. 5 gameplay experience, which he believes will be perfect for team-based eSports. The game’s being designed to allow spectators to sit and watch the physical competition inside the virtual arena.
“Just imagine a full stadium of people who are watching gladiators rumble inside a virtual arena, when not only reflex and concentration matters but also physical muscle strength, agility, balance and creativity to finish off your opponent with style,” Kur said. “Hyper Arena VR is a perfect balance between sport and eSport.”
Intel is also showcasing a number of other eSports titles that could find a place into the tournament this year or beyond. Insomniac’s Oculus Touch spellcasting game, The Unspoken, made its second straight tour stop in Katowice (following its debut at IEM Oakland), alongside Ready at Dawn’s Lone Echo and Croteam’s Serious Sam. These games were featured in eSports tournaments open to the public in Katowice – complete with prizes.
“These games were developed with VR in mind and we’re starting to see the eSports angle emerge,” Soqui said. “Developers are starting to think about what kinds of VR games they should be creating that incorporate eSports fans into the experience. With Sliver.tv we at least have the audience inside of the game, but now we’re starting to see developers create games specifically for VR eSports.”
Intel also hosted VR games throughout the two-weekend event, which also featured a VR Festival Day on March 5. Vertigo Games’ zombie shooter Arizona Sunshine, Ubisoft’s Star Trek Crew Commander and Survios’ cooperative shooter Raw Data were among the titles playable for visiting eSports fans who attended from across Europe.
According to Ralf Reichert, CEO of ESL, two things will happen in the coming years as eSports evolves. One is that almost every game will have a competitive online aspect to it. And the other thing is there will be growth in the diversity of games.
“There’s a very small number of top games that people play today, but that will grow to include more games,” Reichert said. “And more professional eSports teams will be playing different types of games. Some of those games will be in VR, where you play standing with a controller and other input mechanisms that we haven’t even invented yet. The viewing experience could change as spectators wear VR headsets. It’s going to be fascinating to see how this all develops over the next 20 years. Like everything in gaming, it changes quicker than anything else does.”
Getting Active
Soqui said to succeed in eSports, VR games have to be really compelling from a viewing perspective like these giant tournaments that CS:GO, League of Legends and Dota 2 attract.
“I expect to see a lot of experiments and small local eSports things spring up,” Soqui said. “How fast it gets to that depends a lot on the fan base and how immersive it is. But you can see developers already interested. The great thing about VR is that it can bring new players into the market, and introduce a new audience to eSports.”
Lee Machen, director of developer relations at Intel, said one role IEM will play moving forward is ensuring that everyone has a chance to experience VR around the world.
“People who try VR are usually blown away by the experience,” Machen said. “There are a few things that have limited the growth of VR to date and one of them is how to get more people have that first ‘Oh my God’ VR experience.”
Intel showed off its Project Alloy wireless VR head-mounted display to eSports fans. That technology debuted at CES 2017. Soqui believes Intel’s Y-Gig technology, which debuted at Mobile World Controller, will also find a place at IEM moving forward, while that tetherless VR tech could also free up more competitive eSports play inside virtual reality in the near future.
As ESL and Intel map out the global stops for the 2017-18 tour schedule, VR will be a mainstay for eSports fans to play games, watch livestream eSports from the arenas and potentially become the future of eSports competition – at least on the smaller tournament stages for now.
Next week the Intel Extreme Masters (IEM) World Championship will be held in Katowice, Poland featuring Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, StarCraft II and League of Legends. For the event ESL and SLIVER.tv are collaborating to launch a virtual esports stadium experience for fans worldwide.
With IEM Katowice 2017 expected to surpass last year’s 113,000 attendees in the Spodek Katowice stadium, many more fans will be able to watch the matches through live streams and via virtual reality (VR) head-mounted displays (HMDs). SLIVER.tv’s live interactive stadium is set to feature dynamic lighting that is synchronized and changes as the game is played, with viewers able see their avatars in the 360° VR stadium, interact with other live viewers through emoji’s, view each other’s gamer profile and access live stats, replays and scores in real-time.
Ulrich Schulze, Vice President Pro Gaming at ESL, said in a statement: “The IEM World Championship is one of ESL’s most prestigious events and is coming back bigger than ever in 2017 with competitions taking place over two weekends for the first time. We always aim to echo the passion and energy of our fans in the stadium with our online viewing experiences and are excited to extend the feeling of being in the crowd to the IEM VR livestreams.”
“We’ve had an amazing product development partnership with ESL thus far and are thrilled to bring to market the first virtual stadium experience in 360° VR,” said Mitch Liu, co-founder and CEO of SLIVER.tv. “We’re excited to take this first step towards making esports spectating into a highly social, live, and engaging experience to CS:GO and LoL fans worldwide. This is an integral part of our mission to transform the interactive esports entertainment industry.”
The Intel Extreme Masters (IEM) World Championship 2017 will take place from 25th – 26th February and 3rd – 5th March. For any further updates on SLIVER.tv, keep reading VRFocus.
In 2016 SLIVER.tv raised $6.2 million USD to promote eSports in virtual reality (VR), going on to partner with ESL to cover Counter-strike: Global Offensive (CS:GO) and League of Legends (LoL). Today the VR specialist has announced a broad-reaching 2017 partnership with ESL and DreamHack, which will see the company broadcast 14 tournaments this year.
ESL’s events like ESL One and the Intel Extreme Masters series, DreamHack’s DreamLeague, DreamHack ASTRO Open and DreamHack Masters bring together the best eSports teams and players in the world, for competitive games of CS:GO, LoL and Dota 2.
Over the past three months SLIVER.tv has been beta testing its VR Live Cast tournament platform in collaboration with ESL, at events such as ESL One New York and Intel Extreme Masters. Using the company’s patented Virtual Camera array technology, spectators can step into and experience top flight eSports games in fully immersive 360-degrees. Most recently, the IEM event in Oakland drew over 130,000 unique viewers across SLIVER.tv’s web 360, mobile and VR apps platform claims the company.
Mitch Liu, founder and CEO of SLIVER.tv, said in a statement: “We are thrilled to be working closely with two of the largest esports tourney organizers in the world in 2017. Our vision is to forever transform the esports spectating experience by providing new perspectives and insights into live esports streams. In partnering with ESL and DreamHack across these 14 global events, we have the opportunity to showcase our 360 virtual reality, live replays and stats technology to millions of esports fans worldwide.”
“Our partnership with SLIVER.tv at ESL One New York and IEM Oakland last year exceeded our expectations, and our fans, teams and players were blown away by the first-ever live broadcast of CS:GO and League of Legends in VR,” said Stuart Ewen, Product Manager of ESL. “We are delighted to partner with SLIVER.tv this year across 7 events starting with Intel Extreme Masters in Katowice, Poland where in 2016 we saw over 100,000 attendees and nearly two million peak concurrent online viewers. With the help of SLIVER.tv we hope 2017 will be even bigger and better.”
The full rundown of events and dates can be found below. To watch any of SLIVER.tv’s events, visit the company’s website or download the SLIVER.tv app for Android and iOS to view in 360 video or on Google Cardboard. For the best experience, download the app for Samsung Gear VR, Oculus Rift or HTC Vive.
SLIVER.tv – DreamHack 2017 Events
DreamHack Masters Las Vegas – Feb 15-19
DreamHack Masters – Q3 Date and Location TBA
DreamHack ASTRO Open Austin – Apr 28-30
DreamHack ASTRO Open Atlanta – Jul 21-23
DreamHack ASTRO Open Montreal – Sep 8-10
DreamHack ASTRO Open Denver – Oct 20-22
DreamHack ASTRO Open Winter – Nov 30-Dec 2
DreamLeague Season Seven Playoffs – Dates and Location TBA
DreamLeague Season Eight Playoffs – Dates and Location TBA
SLIVER.tv – Intel Extreme Masters 2017 Events
Intel Extreme Masters Katowice, Poland – Feb 25-Mar 5
3 Addtl IEM Global events – Dates and Location TBA
SLIVER.tv – ESL One 2017 Events
ESL One Cologne – Jul 3-8
ESL One New York – Sep 1-15
ESL One Addtl event – Date and Location TBA
Global esports company ESL will host the world's first virtual reality gaming tournament broadcast later in November, giving fans an immersive view of the action through VR headsets.
In September VRFocusreported on eSports company ESL partnering with 360-degree broadcaster SLIVER.tv to transmit the Counter-strike: Global Offensive (CS:GO) tournament in virtual reality (VR). Today the companies have announced they’ll be combining efforts again, this time for the Intel Extreme Masters being held later this month.
SLIVER.tv will be live-streaming CS:GO and League of Legends (LoL) in VR, as well as integrating augmented live stats into the stream. By watching the tournaments in VR, spectators will get a enhanced viewing experience being able to get a birds eye view of the action, alongside first-person viewpoints. And with the new stats feature they’ll also be able to get real-time info on player KDS’s (kill-death-assists), event timeline with bomb plants, defuses, kills with various weapons and ‘key moment’ stats when players hit 2k, 3k and multi-kill streaks in a round.
Mitch Liu, co-founder and CEO of SLIVER.tv said in a statement: “We’re thrilled to work with ESL to showcase our VRLiveStats technology. Our vision is to transform the eSports spectator landscape forever, and incorporating augmented live stats into our VR 360 live-streams of CS:GO and LoL is a nig step towards this vision. Fans around the world can now access valuable game stats and information in real-time, all within a natural, immersive VR experience.”
While George Woo, eSports marketing manager at Intel commented: “Each season we push the boundaries of innovation by adding new elements to make IEM more exciting and immersive for fans. This year you can experience IEM for the first time in VR through SLIVER.tv. Powerful and thrilling VR experiences like SLIVER.tv demand a high performance PC – and that is where Intel excels with its latest Intel Core I7 Extreme Processor. With SLIVER.tv IEM is going to be even more exciting for gamers and create new VR fans.
The Intel Extreme Masters will take place from 19th – 20th November 2016. The tournament will be viewable through a variety of media on SLIVER’tv’s platform. On mobile devices download the company’s app for iOS or Android, to watch in 360-degrees without a headset or use Google Cardboard. For the best experience download the app on Samsung Gear VR, Oculus Rift or HTC Vive.
For all the latest VR eSports news, keep reading VRFocus.
