Virtual Reality Esports League for students arrives in Europe!
The CVRE, the Collegiate Virtual Reality Esports League had 3 successful seasons in North America, soon we will provide tournaments in Beat Saber and Echo Arena to students all over Europe.
To give you more ideas on why it’s worth it to explore XR, read here our interview:
Hey, my name is Manuel, or also virtually known as “Manello”. I am 21 years old and currently studying aerospace engineering in Stuttgart, Germany. Besides that I am a professional VR esports player, software developer and the founder of an academic VR esports league.
What is the CVRE EU League about?
The CVRE, is the Collegiate Virtual Reality Esports League. We had 3 successful seasons in North America, soon we will provide tournaments in Beat Saber and Echo Arena to students all over Europe!
Anyone can participate, solo or as a team, as long as they are students and have access to any PC-VR equipment which is able to run the games mentioned above. For Beat Saber even the Oculus Quest works! So make sure you sign up for this season!
Come in and compete for the title of the best school in VR esports. If you are interested have a look at our website or join our Discord server and have a chat with us. Registrations are open,if you have any questions feel free to text me until the 15th of February!
Is VR esports common? How big is it?
Yes, esports has been around in VR for several years now. There are many tournaments happening each year, even annual worldwide championships with offline finals are being held. Over the past 12 months more than 1500 players participated in VR esport leagues and won over 290.000 dollars through VR esports, which also shows the huge interest of sponsors in the growing market.
How did you get into VR?
To be honest, a few years ago I’ve been a VR critic and simply thought it is a gadget nobody needs. That was until I had my very first VR experience at a games fair where I played Space Junkies. It was so stunning and immersive, I instantly bought my very own Oculus Rift the next day. And for that I took a 5 hour car trip to the next market offering VR!
Do you compete in VR esport tournaments?
Yes I do, I started to compete in February 2019 in the arena shooter Space Junkies. In this game we were unbeaten for the whole Season 3 of VR League and made it up to the world championships in England. During the semi-finals we had to take our first defeat of the year but scored 3rd, winning about 2000€ each while all costs during this travel got covered. Fun fact, at the time of the finals I have been on vacation with a friend in the USA for 2 days. Then had to fly to Europe to play on the stage, just to return 3 days later back to New York. I mean yes traveling that much tired me a lot, but I couldn’t let my friend down on our long term planned holidays.
Other than that I’ve played tournaments in games like Final Assault and Viro Move and always stuck to the top 5 players worldwide. So my expertise is quite wide when it comes to esports, I just love to compete in games.
How does studying and training for esport work along?
Training for normal esports is quite a time consuming task, attending a university and training at the same costs almost all of your free time. Thus we found the CVRE League, a league which suits the schedule of students. We will restrict our official matches to one tournament day every 3–4 weeks, each will last up to 4 hours. It is up to the players how much they want to train, but as everyone is a student here you can score high even with only moderate skill levels.
What drives your activities in VR?
Whether as a player, developer or influencer, I am driven by the thought that VR will once be important in everyone’s life. It can be used to learn, work and research, it’s not only made for gaming. Thus, I want to support the growth of VR as much as I can and push forward innovation and push the boundaries of VR esports.
I am not the only person that thinks this way. Many of my VR colleagues are working towards the same direction to make VR’s future a reality and help where they can.
Besides people building communities many others start their own businesses such as VR Arcades or work for VR production companies. For example, Donell Perez, one of my colleagues who plays Onward is now running his very own VR arcade on the Canary Islands. Another example is Sonya Haskins, she played in the very first VR esport leagues and is now a well known writer covering VR.
Even though VR esports can involve a lot of physical movement, it is still very inclusive when it comes to disabled or old people. At the VR League championships in England one of our opponents went on stage in a wheelchair and was still able to score 4th worldwide!
A lot of VR players are involved in game development in some way. How do you explain this connection?
Many developers include players in their early development process and use tournaments to attract professional esport players. These see their games more critical and know which features can be successfully integrated in VR, most of those players are happy to help.
The exact thing happened to me as a player. Many developers asked me about certain ideas and features so I tried to give them advice based on my VR gaming experience. I’ve also discovered many flaws and unbalanced features in games and helped their creators to find a way to fix them.
Some players even started to develop their own applications in order to enrich the VR software market, trying out new concepts and designing new innovative ways to interact with the virtual world.Tim McGuinness is a good example, formerly a pro player he founded Virtex Studios. He has been testing new, experimental use cases for VR in classic work environments, such as events, exhibitions and architecture already years before they became common topics.
Would you like to be a VR developer by yourself?
In fact I am one! Later in 2019 I started developing my own game which may be released during 2020. I can’t talk much about my game yet, but it will incorporate a yet unseen gameplay concept in VR and is very experimental. If you are now interested in it, I am sorry as you still have to wait a bit for more information :P. As I’ve been employed as a software developer before I haven’t had big problems in learning how to make VR games.
But even if you can’t code yet, I highly recommend you to start developing VR apps, as it is so easy I couldn’t believe it when I started.
How and where can we follow you and find out more about how you continue your career?
The best way to keep track of my work is to follow me on Twitter! Otherwise you can have a chat with me on LinkedIn.
If you use neither of these platforms you can of course contact me via mail: me@manellos.online
