The impact of Virtual Reality in the gaming industry has opened new doors and opportunities for both gaming companies and the playing public alike. Hardware and software developers continue to come up with more new ways to take full advantage of the current and upcoming strides in the continues growth of VR.

Donning a VR HMD immerses the player in the game world in a way like never before making it's use in competitive gaming one of the most intense gaming experiences available in the industry today. Playing a game alone already places you in the middle of that alternate reality and having several other players with you or against you can give an experience way beyond multi-player gaming using the conventional mouse, joystick, keyboard and screen.

In competitive VR, the interface medium to the game is not only the controllers that you hold but the movement of your body itself. Using high-end VR equipment like the Oculus Rift or HTC Vive, user movements are tracked via external sensors and converted to equivalent movements in the game. A VR game application that fully implements 6º of freedom will have the player heading in different directions and performing a vast array of body movements like jumping, ducking, twisting, punching and whatever imaginary physical full contact sport translated to reality in VR within the restricted confines of the physical gaming space.

From it's formal inception in Germany in 1997, the Electronic Sports gaming industry has grown to such huge proportions that it has started to rival traditional sports. All over the world, patrons and fans come together in massive events to watch their favorite players or teams compete against each other usually through local area networked PCs or one on one and multi-player console matches.

This is the world of eSports, an intense digital gaming competition where games like FPS CounterStrike Global Offensive and RTTS League of Legends draw-in massive crowds of onlookers and supporters as players sitting in front of their computers participate in gut wrenching competitions viewed by the audience via massive screens. Though different from conventional athletic sports, eSports has become a worldwide industry with massive support from commercial sponsors and price offerings that can range all the way to millions of Dollars.

Enter Virtual Reality. Even eSports is not exempt from the influence of awesome full media immersion. VR today has two major uses in the esports industry. Though it can still be very much viewed as being in it's infancy, the technology is being adapted into the competitive gaming arena with great results. A good example would be the use of VR Headsets to view the eSport event without the need to be physically present at the games venue. Services like Sliver TV enable the viewer to witness the action in VR as if being right there in the middle of the game with the two teams trying to outdo each other. Sliver TV was very successful in conveying the thrill of the action in FPS games like CSGO.

Aside from watching an eSports event in VR, the best and obvious use of the technology would be to play the game itself in VR. The implementation however would of course deviate from the traditional eSports set up with seated players battling it out on a PC based LAN game. With the use of the VR HMD, players or teams will have to interact with the game the VR way. Traditional eSports require good eye hand coordination combined with quick and decisive thinking. VR eSports on the other hand require not only the eyes and hands but the whole body as well. It is a physical sport where the action happens simultaneously in both the real and virtual world.

One good example is the popular VR game Echo Arena where two teams of players have to battle it out in a combination space and disc throwing game. Instead of being seated, the players with VR headsets stuck to their faces stand on an assigned area on stage where they are given the freedom to move (of course) within the given confines. The result is both awesome and hilarious for the audience and completely immersive for the players. Again, what happens within the game is viewed on a huge wide screen by the audience and results as a thrilling spectacle within the confines of the game.

However, whenever the audience glance at the players themselves what they see would usually elicit grunts and giggles as the team members being in full immersion would perform all kinds of ridiculous contortions that most of the time would result in physical injury and outright laughter from the watching public. Using VR in eSports does give the extra non intentional albeit comical entertainment in the event.

Despite this unforeseen cause of laughter, VR eSports is growing! It's popularity has spawned an eSports league of it's own under the auspices of ESL, Oculus and companies like MicroSoft and others involved in the development of VR eSports titles for competitive gameplay. Most notable of this would be Echo Arena developed by Ready At Dawn Studios. The game as well as others has been used extensively in the VR Challenger League considered to be the VR arm of the ESL. The VRCL has already held eSports events in both San Jose California and Hamburg Germany with huge amounts of cash prices ranging in the thousands. VR in eSports is still quite new and a lot of issues have to be addressed and ironed out but industry analysts predict that it will soon catch on as the future of mainstream eSports.