During E3 2017, it was announced that Intel would be partnering with both Oculus and ESL to form the world’s first ever virtual reality eSports league. This league is called the VR Challenger League and will be holding a world championship in 2018.
To qualify for the world championships held at the Intel Extreme Masters World Championship in Poland (IEM Katowice) and the chance at the prize money pool of $200,000, players will have to make their way through online qualifiers, which start on July 12, as well as offline regional qualifiers held at future North American and European eSports events.
There will be two games on the VR Challenger League circuit: The Unspoken and Echo Arena. Insomniac’s The Unspoken is a game that has been described as Dr. Strange VR and is essentially a 1v1 magic-wielding dual-style game. In other words, two players go head to head throwing colorful magic spells at each other in an attempt to destroy the opponent. Ready At Dawn’s Echo Arena is a futuristic sports game with a Tron-style aesthetic. Players float around a three-dimensional space and attempt to throw a ball through a colored gate.
It may be too early to know what kind of success the VR Challenger League will sustain, but eSports fans yearning for some VR action do have a rather successful competition to look back on. On May 13, 2017, the first national VR eSports tournament in the US took place in 80 Microsoft stores across North America, and the response was encouraging.
VR fans should be encouraged that Intel saw enough promise in one tournament to co-sponsor an entire league. I, for one, am excited for the future prospects of a marriage of VR and eSports.
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