We could mount a full-blown competition that will run through the Summer and culminate during the Open Fortnight, featuring the best possible game for virtual tennis: Racket: Nx.
Further, we have a developing opportunity to create a sponsorship bidding situation between Samsung/Microsoft and Oculus/Facebook.
I give you more insight into this possibility below, but the short story is that we’re positioned to have a very major impact with relatively little effort and expense, because of great timing on a number of fronts.
Other Majors have been trying to highlight electronic games, from the Australian with their AO International Tennis simulation effort to, this year, Roland Garros with their “eSeries,” slated to final on May 25.
Paris touts their effort as “the first Grand Slam tournament to organise this type of competition.”
They certainly will be, but it will pale in comparison to what we could do around and at the US Open this year, which would be the first virtual, fully athletic, electronic sport competition of a legacy sport anywhere.
I have broached this idea with Jolyn and Carlos, and I will discuss this with Kelly Fairweather tomorrow [Friday].
My proposal is simple: that you consider doing this.
In this proposal, we also address three central questions:
- What will widening the definition of tennis into the virtual realm mean for its growth? Who can we reach that we cannot reach today, and what can we provide to engage them where they are?
- Can playing Virtual Tennis “Jump Start” Conventional Tennis play? Are core skills compatible?
- What paths can we build to bring as many as possible of these new virtual players to conventional tennis?
I provide more perspective on this possibility below, and of course I will be available to you or whomever you designate to explore this, at any time and place.
This is a somewhat crazy initiative, I know, but when I saw what you did in Singapore, I knew that this could happen.
Virtual Tennis at the 2019 US Open: Issues and Answers
This is not meant to be a comprehensive proposal or project plan. It is intended to provide more perspective on why and how we might make this happen.
For the sake of brevity, I am leaving out a great deal of data and analysis, all of which will be forthcoming if you choose to take this further.
You already appreciate the basic rationales to do something like this:
– To broaden the marketplace “umbrella” for tennis.
– To address the greatest continuing inhibitor to the growth of tennis: screen time.
– To provide an exciting departure from run-of-the-mill, finger twiddling electronic tennis simulations [more on this below].
– To rivet the attention of these and other massive groups:
- present tennis fans
- eGaming and eSports fans
- Racket:Nx active owners
- the millions of young people who are VR users today
– To create “the buzz of the new” around tennis, in this emerging virtual age. From five sets to three in Davis Cup is cool and new… Virtual Tennis is really cool… and really new.
– To establish a widely adopted, athletic, non-violent, healthy screen alternative for the kids of the world.
– To be the first major step toward bringing virtual tennis to the 2024 Paris Olympic Games as a full medal sport.
I think we could bring Microsoft and Samsung or Oculus and Facebook along, with your invitation, for this effort.
We imagine a series of streamed and broadcast preliminary events, leading to a Virtual Final either on the eve of the Open tournament [as Roland Garros is doing] or on one of the early Finals, or even on Sunday morning [EST]. [see more detail below]
I believe that we can do it this year because there are already over 150 million VR users, the competition infrastructure is in place today, and the buzz from a Spring US Open Virtual Tennis tournament announcement would send participation and viewership through the roof. This is particularly true because of the mindshare vacuum left by eSports’ failure to qualify for the Olympic Programme for the foreseeable future. On top of all this, IOC President Thomas Bach supports virtual sports, and in particular, virtual tennis.
The US Open Fortnight is also the perfect time of the year because the eSports calendar has a lull in late August and the first half of September, so global eSports-hungry fans will have little to watch but virtual tennis competition at the US Open.
Just to give you an idea of how fast things can move in this sector, Fortnite went from about zero to the biggest eGame ever in about six months:
Also, given that the US Open “Fortnight” usage well predates that similarly named eGame, and because players could compete in early rounds from anywhere, we could well do something like this:
And position Racket:Nx as a worthy companion to conventional tennis:
WHY RACKET:Nx AND NOT A CONVENTIONAL TENNIS SIMULATION [like AO Tennis]?
We recommend Racket:Nx, instead of a conventional tennis simulation, because it does a far better job of enabling the essence of tennis, while best reflecting and utilising the actual, physical space in which the vast majority of virtual tennis athletes will play: a room.
Our focus on “room-space” is at the core of the consumer attractiveness of virtual sports. Real world play space and convenience is critical to the wide adoption of virtual sports, for obvious reasons.
Given this, an optimal virtual play environment will take the best advantage of the smaller space, and enable/require movement that is compatible with that actual space.
This is necessary to best connect virtual game dynamics to the actual movement that is available to the player in her room.
It is also important that there not be a wide divergence between how the player is actually moving and how she seems to be moving inside the game.
This divergence makes the game less realistic and – in VR – increases the potential for disorientation and nausea.
There are two broad categories of conventional tennis simulations: 2D and VR [3D], both of which have severe limitations in these areas.
2D simulations are “flat,” with the illusion of depth, and displayed on a personal computer or smartphone screen.
A leading example of this kind of simulation is AO International Tennis, which is licensed by the Australian Open.
The good news about these simulations is that they are often beautiful renderings of actual venues and players, like Rod Laver Stadium and Rafa Nadal.
The bad news is that they enable/require NO movement at all, except that required to manipulate a keyboard, a mouse, or a game controller.
VR [3D] simulations are far from the high visual resolution of 2D simulations, but they compensate somewhat by providing 3D “presence” and the ability to move, hitting the virtual ball with physical motion.
A hybrid of these was the Nintendo Wii, which was hugely popular in its day:
But the Wii was not immersive. Its players watched a TV screen. Now we have fully immersive VR simulations.
An excellent example of this kind of simulation is Tennis Kings VR:
The problem with these kinds of simulations, however, is that the player “moves” around the court not by physically moving [which would be impossible in the average living or bed room], but by having the court scene move automatically or with a kind of joy-stick, following the flight and direction of the ball.
Further, the physics, the mechanics, the sensations, and the effects of hitting the simulated tennis ball are so far different from those of hitting a real tennis ball that there is no effective transfer of the simulated experience to the physical reality of playing tennis.
For these reasons and more, simulated conventional tennis is in many ways farther away from the actual experience of playing tennis than watching a broadcast or video of good players playing the game.
If anything, playing these simulations is more likely to inhibit any transition to playing the real game, because the experience gap is so great. Transitioning from Racket:Nx is significantly easier and more effective [see the “Jumpstart” chart below].
Please note… the day will come that virtual conventional tennis can much more accurately replicate the tennis stroke and contact with the ball. In time, with highly tuned 360 degree treadmills, even player movement around the court can be simulated in “room space.”
But that day will not come for a long time, and maybe never be affordable for the average person.
In any case, by that mythical time, other far more interesting, practical, and affordable virtual racket sport experiences will be available… experiences that are the essence of tennis but that stand on their own as complete sports inside virtual space.
Such an experience exists today, as a “AAA,” highest quality, VR game: Racket:Nx.
What will widening the definition of tennis into the virtual realm mean for its growth? Who can we reach that we cannot reach today, and what can we provide to engage them where they are?
Our analytical and marketing process involves creating a visual [usually “Before and After”] that summarizes the impact that we project.
A great deal of demographic analysis underpins these images, but the goal here is not to write a book… it’s to paint pictures.
BEFORE:
[By the way, that “Victor” mini-profile is me, and my own tennis history.]
AFTER:
Can playing Virtual Tennis “Jump Start” Conventional Tennis play?
Carlos Salum, organiser of the Tennis Industry Association Innovation Challenge, recently said this:
“As I mentioned during my short presentation at the IC, whatever get the kids to move and connects them to racquetsports is worth exploring in-depth.”
One of the areas of concern for top-level coaches is the stimulation of the right neuropathways, so the players get fully engaged and they can actually train “as if”
they are playing tennis: visual focus, trajectory calculation, reaction time, biomechanically correct gesture and muscular engagement, number of repetitions, etc.
If Virtual Tennis can address this, it can be promoted as another dimension, an expansion of the opportunity.”
When we apply these principles to the relationship between Virtual Tennis and Conventional Tennis, this is the assessment that results:
Finally, this image directly relates to the last question:
What paths can we build to bring as many as possible of these new virtual players to conventional tennis?
There are three fundamental paths to encourage and enable Racket:Nx players to migrate to conventional tennis:
- Ease of Transition: The easier the transition, the easier the adoption of the conventional game. And, as we described earlier, Racket:Nx is substantially easier in transition than any other alternative.
- Incentives: Whether it be providing conventional tennis time or equipment or lessons as awards or gifts or bonuses for superior virtual tennis play, this is a powerful connection and inducement to try the conventional tennis court.
- Social Influence: One of the reasons that we propose building virtual tennis from the existing tennis infrastructure is because those who are building are already tennis people, whose natural inclination is to share tennis with all those new players.
Here’s how that looks:
[There is actually a fourth path, which I will be happy to discuss with you in another forum.]
What is the “Infrastructure” from which we seek to grow?
This kind of infrastructure is replicated similarly in almost every country around the world.
Our absolute commitment is to rise out of the athletic sport of tennis, not the non-athletic [and often violent] “sport” of eSports.
This is fundamental to our desire and ability to be an athletic, non-violent alternative to this kind of thing, the largest high school eSports league in the U.S.:
[This is their actual, current website… really.]
Where can all of this go?
We have the very real opportunity to do this:
How do we envision this effort unfolding?
We plan soon to negotiate the first ever “game-to-sport” agreement for Racket:Nx with its developers: One Hamsa, based in Tel Aviv.
This agreement would establish an ITF-sanctioned “Official vSport Edition” of Racket:Nx, whose changes would be under the control of the ITF.
We would approach our key endemic sponsor candidates: Samsung/Microsoft and Oculus/Facebook.
We would assemble the appropriate technical and marketing infrastructure, depending on whom we select:
If Samsung/Microsoft:
If Oculus/Facebook:
We could schedule six weekly tournaments, tied to the US Open Series:
We would have a combination of early single player leader-board elimination rounds/tournaments, then
single elimination PvP quarters, semis, and finals, drawn from the top players [cumulative scores] in the elimination rounds.
The single player content will encourage wide adoption and eliminate scheduling and capacity issues.
The single player and PvP cycles can run a number of ways, combining full unsupervised remote, remote supervised, and local play for the finals in Flushing Meadows.
I have a preliminary feeler out to the largest fitness center network in the world, with well over 3,000 U.S. locations and the single largest world-wide contingent: Anytime Fitness.
We have researched them for years, and it turns out that Adam Sher [one of the Innovation Challenge finalists] has a very close relationship with their leadership.
They [and other international fitness organizations] could be a site environment for remote supervised play, for these events and on-going.
Alternatively, schools and university locations could well be even better such locations. The challenge is organising them well enough in time.
Sponsorship
It is premature, before the formal involvement of the USTA or the ITF, to have committed Samsung or any other manufacturer. However, Samsung and Microsoft are aware of and prepared to consider all of these things.
Beyond this, there may be an emerging opportunity to create a bidding situation for USTA and ITF endorsement/involvement between Samsung/Microsoft and Oculus/Facebook.
Oculus [part of Facebook] have announced the Quest, their latest self-contained VR Head Mounted Display [HMD].
It is slated for “Spring” availability, and its price point is perfect, particularly as it requires no other computer or smartphone to function, as Samsung does.
Beyond this, Racket:Nx developer One Hamsa has already developed and is testing a Quest “ported” version of Racket:Nx, which should be ready by June.
Samsung and Microsoft have gigantic advantages because of their market power and Samsung’s existing IOC connections and commitment.
However, Facebook also has tremendous market power and substantial motivation to “make the market” for consumer VR.
[Mark Zuckerberg]
With the USTA and ITF involved, we have an opportunity which I could not create alone: to extend to them all the possibility of endorsement and involvement in the development of what could be their first VR killer app:
On top of all of this, I meet Friday morning with Kelly Fairweather, to discuss going forward in a strategic partnership.
The U.S. Open effort could be the tip of the VR consumer marketing spear for Samsung/Microsoft or Oculus/Facebook, and a jumpstart for the ITF country effort.
Samsung is just now recovering from the major effort to mount their yearly product drop last week, in Barcelona [at the Mobile World Congress], in which effort both of our key contacts, Shawn Jung and Victor Ryu, have been buried for months.
Alex Kipman’s Microsoft group [Mixed Reality, Cloud Computing] has also just dropped their Hololens 2 in Barcelona. To give you an idea of their interest in Virtual Sport, their Yancey Smith [Alex’s #2] helped me rouse Victor at Samsung in Seoul when I needed him two weeks ago.
So, they’re aware of what we can do, but they’ve been distracted. With your and Kelly’s involvement, the buzz around the Innovation Challenge Award, and the imminent opportunity with the US Open, I believe that we can get their attention.
I gather that your previous efforts with Microsoft and Samsung did not include this opportunity. Now we have some very timely news for them.
By the way, doing this does not preclude eventually opening up Virtual Tennis to all providers that meet our standards for sanctioned competition.
Beyond these obvious sponsor candidates, and those in your present stable, we may also have a very interesting and unexpected sponsor candidate: Lacoste.
Ten years ago, they created an ad that envisioned the Future of Tennis. Not who the future stars might be, but what the game could look like by “2083.”
This is what they produced
:
http://virtualsports.international/lacoste-tennis-of-the-future-in-2083/
Very interesting.
More interesting is that there may be an opportunity for Lacoste to “dress” the avatars in Racket:Nx.
Today, they look like this:
Which is just fine for this edgy game of ours.
But Lacoste may see the opportunity to design or apply existing designs to these figures and fund One Hamsa to implement them inside the game as player-selectable items, which can be purchased in-game as avatars and purchased as actual clothing, through in-game links.
Lacoste already has online logo customisation, targeted at the same demographic we’re after:
And maybe they’d even get this guy to help out:
This presentation touches the surface of what we can do and how we can do it.
Leave A Comment