How Insomniac is marrying VR and esports with The Unspoken

In this way, it’s actually different than most popular competitive gaming experiences. MOBAs like League of Legends, Dota 2, Paragon, and Heroes of the Storm are all about team dynamics, Counter-Strike and Overwatch are team-based first-person shooters, and other than the fighting game community, most esports — and physical sports in general — are all team-based. The exception is Hearthstone, Blizzard’s card game that’s a 1-on-1 experience.

This presents an opportunity for a game like The Unspoken.

By focusing on individual players, the core skill-based gameplay is able to shine more clearly: master your class, memorize the spells, and create strategies for moving around the maps, baiting opponents to open them up to your more powerful abilities, and more. The Unspoken, and other VR titles, become just as much about your physical endurance and coordination as they are your knowledge and ability as a gamer. VR esports are getting closer to, well, actual sports.

We’re approaching Tron-like levels of immersion and competition.

Identity through magic

“We have matchmaking features, you can invite friends to matches, and ranked matches,” said Dezern. “For single-player content, you can go into a practice mode with all the classes and spells to get the hang of things, as well as battle a very challenging A.I. opponent. It’s great for learning how to play the game.”

There’s a story as well, but it’s just not the focus. “The narrative is there to setup the game, we want everyone to be intrigued, its just the tip of a very big narrative iceberg, said Dezern. “We didn’t go all in on everything because we wanted to do one thing very well instead of sprawling ourselves across several modes. For us, that one thing is competitive 1-vs.-1 multiplayer duels.”

Rather than a traditionally fantastical or mythical world of magical creatures and forbidden lore, like you might find in The Lord of the Rings, The Unspoken features a much more grounded “What if?” scenario. This isn’t about a fictional world of witches and wizards, but instead asks a very Harry Potter-esque question: What if the world of magic was hiding just beneath our noses?

“Think about that feeling you have when you’re in a new city and you don’t know what’s going on just around the corner,” said Dezern. “How do we work that notion into a spell? We don’t have many straight-up D&D spells, for example, except for maybe the Fireball, because — come on, it’s a fireball.”

Time will tell whether games like The Unspoken, or even RIGS, are able to find footing in the competitive gaming scene as VR titles. In the meantime, developers should take a note from Insomniac’s book and focus on creating well-designed, fun, and balanced games that can stand on their own.

If Insomniac does this, an esports scene will form organically.

This post first appeared on UploadVR.