【Love Conquest】

It's only been a little over a week since the first national virtual reality esports championship took place in New York,Love Conquest but the public's response to the event has led Intel, Oculus, and ESL to double down on VR esports with the VR Challenger League.

The new, larger competitive gaming series will feature a number of VR esports around the world, with $200,000 in a general prize pool for players.

SEE ALSO: How I lost the first national VR gaming tournament, but saw the future of esports

To kick off the series, the competition will focus on just two games, The Unspoken, the immersive game that lets you become a sorcerer, and Echo Arena, which doesn't come out until July 20, but can best be described as Ender's Game(as seen in the 2013 film) meets Tron(in terms of visual aesthetics).

The series of events will include online and offline competitions beginning July 12, ending with a final championship event at the annual Intel Extreme Masters gaming event in 2018.

Mashable Top Stories Stay connected with the hottest stories of the day and the latest entertainment news. Sign up for Mashable's Top Stories newsletter By clicking Sign Me Up, you confirm you are 16+ and agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Thanks for signing up!

And while existing hardcore VR gamers will welcome the news, without a confirmed hit VR title out there (neither Insomniac games, the maker of The Unspoken, nor Oculus will reveal user numbers), it might seem a bit early to begin building entire leagues around VR esports.

Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable

Yes, The Unspokencommunity is passionate and appears to be growing, and the response to the recent 80-store competition was encouraging for VR fans, but there seems to be a ways to go before we see legions of fans clogging up Twitch's bandwidth to watch a VR tournament.

But that's the ever-wary realist's point of view.

New technology platforms (which VR still is, despite years of development) require optimism and experimentation from developers and hardware makers to grow and thrive, and that's exactly what the VR Challenger League represents.

Now that the competitive series has been announced, it's just a matter of letting esports history unfold to see if VR is really ready to compete with traditional console and PC gaming.

---

Featured Video For You

---

Fitness meets VR gaming with this badass flying machine

---

Topics Esports Intel Oculus Virtual Reality

• Social Good
• Digital Culture
• Science
• Deals
• Tech
• Games
• Shopping
• Life

• Fredric Jameson’s Never-ending Story
• In Praise of the Photocopy by Alejandro Zambra
• Cyber Monday Kindle deals: Kindle Scribe at its lowest price ever
• The most badass Latin phrases
• East of Dreaming
• Paramount+ Black Friday deal: $2 per month
• How to prepare for career success in an AI
• Body and Blood by Brit Bennett
• Redemption Arc
• The most badass Latin phrases

• Quiz: Can you find the end of Donald Trump's sentence?
• Europe's Mars lander is lost on the red planet
• Inside a weird and wonderful costume geek's paradise
• UN urges Bangladesh to scrap coal plant near world's largest mangrove
• Giants owner just made the Josh Brown domestic violence fiasco even more nauseating
• Rocky Horror Picture Show: Fox version isn't live, and it's a problem
• Queen Cersei gives her verdict on the debate with one resounding tweet
• Hilarious hashtag on how Trump interprets classic literature
• Trump and Clinton square off again tonight — this time with jokes
• This app wants to be the SoundCloud of podcasting

• Hollow City
• Cyber Monday Apple Watch deals: Get an SE for $179
• Five Hundred Faces of Mass Incarceration by Maurice Chammah
• The best TikTok food trends of 2023 (so far)
• Without Them
• Elon Musk can't run for U.S. Vice President
• Hulu's $1 Black Friday deal is still live for Cyber Monday
• Dashiell Hammett's Strange Career by Anne Diebel
• Infra-ordinary People
• Elon Musk can't run for U.S. Vice President

• Goodbye to All That
• Schiele, Shoes, and Kavanaugh by Larissa Pham
• Five Hundred Faces of Mass Incarceration by Maurice Chammah
• The most badass Latin phrases
• Rat Kings of New York
• Obligatory Readings by Alejandro Zambra
• Writers’ Fridges: Olivia Laing
• Deana Lawson: A Preview by Deana Lawson
• A Deal with the Devil
• New AI trend is 'expanding' classic art like the Mona Lisa: The internet reacts