Even after all this time, I still contend that the Virtual Reality industry is undergoing a revolution, albeit, an infuriatingly slow revolution. I can remember sitting in class 5 years ago, clamoring about the Oculus Rift and how true virtual reality was just around the corner. Now, at the tail-end of 2017, it still feels like VR is just around the corner. We have decent technology. We have a passionate community. But what I feel like VR is missing is an excuse. An excuse to really step out of our comfort zone and embrace itself as the next step in media. And I believe Echo Arena is a game that takes that next step.

More Than An Experience

That sounds more dramatic than I actually mean it. What I mean by “more than an experience” is that it goes farther than feeling like a demo, or an advertisement for virtual reality. It actually feels like a game where it just happens to require VR. I could honestly imagine the game outside of VR, sans the fact that the control scheme would be absolutely terrible.

Something that you quickly learn when trying out games and other virtual reality software is that things tend to fall into two categories. Either VR serves as some extra peripheral to add a little extra to the experience (e.g. Euro Truck Simulator 2 or Minecraft) or they are gimmicks. I don’t mean gimmick as an insult to the product, just that do not do much more than serve as a way to try out VR. This category includes things like Google Earth VR or even some more popular games like Robo Recall. Robo Recall is an incredibly fun game, but that is almost solely because of the VR environment. Once the excitement of shooting objects in your Oculus Rift starts to fade, the game is quite bland. It reminds me of when the Nintendo 3DS first came out and most games were just games that happened to include some 3D graphics. They were interesting, but after the novelty faded, they were just normal games that needed to hold up on their own.

Echo Arena is different. The sport within the game is genuinely fun, and it is fun despite the virtual reality. It’s hard to describe the game through text, but I like to call it “Rocket League: Ultimate Frisbee Edition”. You play as a rocket-propelled robot floating in zero-gravity in a 3v3 match, where you try to get a disk into the other opponents goal. It is a game that must be experienced to be understood (much like Rocket League, so the description is quite apt). The virtual reality plays an important role in the game. The headset is quite necessary to make playing in such a fast-paced environment possible, and the headset also makes it so you can look one way while doing things in a different direction. The motion controllers are even more important. Not only are they used for grabbing and throwing objects, they allow you to propel yourself around the environment using something besides your rocket.

In terms of the dichotomy I described above, I believe Echo Arena works because it falls under both categories. It uses virtual reality as both a peripheral and a gimmick. It is used as a peripheral as necessary tools of the game. It is a gimmick because it allows you to experience this new sport in an incredibly real way. In a way, Echo Arena works because it understands VR.

Immersion

I’ve already discussed immersion a little bit above. However, I believe it is worth drilling a bit further down into what makes Echo Arena stand out. Usually developers focus on a single thing when trying to be immersive, perfecting the visual experience. It makes sense. Isn’t the entire point of the Oculus Rift to trick your eyes into believing that what you see on the screen is the actual environment around you? And while that is true, believing that this immersion can solely be accomplished through the world itself is short-sighted (pun intended). What developers either forget or forgo is the fact that how the player moves around this world is also a key component of immersion. If what we are seeing doesn’t match up with what our mind is telling us, we lose immersion.

To be fair, developers are quite limited with what they can do regarding movement. Either they can choose to make it so the player cannot move without teleporting, or they allow the player to walk without them being able to move their legs. It isn’t the developer’s fault, just a problem with the state of VR technology. However, there are ways to get around this leg problem (without purchasing expensive 360° treadmills). One way, which is the method Echo Arena employs, is to stick the player in zero-gravity and allow them to either use rockets on their hands to propel themselves or grab onto objects and launch themselves. Not only does this avoid the problem of legs breaking the immersive experience, it actually adds to the experience by allowing the hands to be used in a way that feels totally natural. This is possibly the first game that I’ve played that allowed free movement where I’ve had moments while I was actually standing up in my room. The only other VR experiences I’ve had the provided that feeling were experiences that required me to stay in one place (e.g. Roller coasters, sitting in a movie theater).

It would be unfair to not talk about the environment when talking about immersion. Ready At Dawn was given an odd task when the set out to create a world that could be enjoyed in zero-gravity, and they were successful in completing this task. The lobby is a legitimately comfortable area to hang out before games. There is both a small practice arena and a sparring arena for players to practice, a dart board, a ball to throw around, and a few extra nooks and crannies to explore. However, the stadiums are where the real magic is located. RAD Studios did not skimp on the level design. Everything in the level seems to be there for a reason. There are ramps, blocks, protruding walls, and more to bounce the disc off of. The goals are positioned in a way that you can’t simply throw the disk in. You have to come at it tactically, allowing the other team many options to set themselves up in defense. To use esports terms (which, by the way, I’m convinced this will be the first VR esport), there is a surprisingly deep metagame, created almost entirely by the well-designed map. This depth in strategy allows the player to focus entirely on the game instead of focusing on the virtual reality environment, in turn making the virtual reality environment stay immersive for longer.

Price

I’m not going to try say that VR needs free experiences in order to succeed. While free experiences are great, it is certainly not necessary for the industry to take off. I believe word of mouth is must stronger than simply giving cool things away to players and developers shouldn’t at all be expected to work for free.

That being said, in an industry with so many naysayers, Echo Arena is a godsend. There are no other free experiences that really come close to Echo Arena. There are certainly very interesting pieces of software, like Rec Room and Google Earth VR, but when it comes to free software Echo Arena is in a league of its own. This is really one of the things that makes this game so important at this particular moment in the VR saga. Not only is it this amazing game that highlights VR’s capability, it is playable by anybody with a VR headset and motion controllers. And when it’s not hard to find articles posted around the web saying that VR is essentially dead on arrival, this experience being spread far and wide is critical. The world needs to be shown that VR adds something new to entertainment rather than that it just improves an existing part of it. The world needs to be shown that VR is more than just a gimmick, it can create meaningful experiences. And free is an excellent pricetag to make that happen.

Not Just Roses And Sunshine

I’d like to talk about some of the issues that both Echo Arena and the VR industry face. While this is an amazing game, I am not going to pretend that cranking out a million copies of the game will fix all of our VR woes.

The first issue is community. I am not insinuating that Echo Arena has a bad community. In fact, it is rather wholesome for a multiplayer game. I’d pick an Echo Arena lobby over a Battlefield 1 lobby any day of the week. However, the addition of virtual reality to multiplayer gaming has created new problems that developers are forced to handle with their communities, some of which RAD Studios has yet to fix in their own game. A particularly concerning issue is harassment, sexual harassment in particular. The Echo Arena subreddit is riddled with people complaining about other players making disgusting motions either towards or onto their in-game avatar. The immersive environment only serves to make these acts more disturbing. A block feature would serve to fix some of these issues, however RAD Studios has yet to implement such a feature. Going forward, this is something multiplayer games should have out of the box. However, a block feature isn’t going far enough to solve the issue. The gaming community already has a problem with sexual harassment, and Virtual Reality only makes these offensives worse for the victim. A change is going to have to happen with the gaming community as a whole.

On a much lighter note, another issue Echo Arena highlights is, in fact, the motion problem. Echo Arena uses an extremely clever fix, as detailed above. However, not every game can put their game in zero-gravity and give player rocket arms. There is going to have to be some type of fix. Either developers are going to have to find some workaround that works better than teleporting around and can be applied to many games or there needs to be some way to bring the legs into the VR experience that is both cheap and doesn’t up a ton of space. Neither of these seem like they are realistically going to happen any time soon, so this is going to be a constant struggle for VR devs.

Conclusion

If you have an Oculus Rift with touch controllers, download this game today. I am serious. This game will change the way you see both Virtual Reality gaming and the industry as a whole. Echo Arena is fun, immersive, and free — a combination that I think is exactly what VR needs right now. What are you still reading for? Start that download.

Also, consider checking out their standalone game, Lone Echo. I haven’t had a chance to play it yet, but I’ve heard good things from people in Echo Arena. Also, keep your eyes open for Echo Combat, an FPS under development by RAD Studios that should feature the same type of zero-gravity environment.