Racket: NX passed the IRF vote and officially became a sport recognized by the International Federation of Independent Sports.
Text / Mengqiao
Recently, the International Racquetball Federation (hereinafter referred to as the IRF) officially announced that the VR squash game Racket: NX under VR game developer One Hamsa has been voted by the IRF as an officially recognized "global sport".
According to ECO esports, Racket: NX is also the world's first video game to be recognized as a "global sports project", which will officially take effect on April 1 this year.
In 2021, One Hamsa announced that it is working to promote its VR squash game into an Olympic-level sport. Since then, the company has worked with organizations such as the IRF and the Metavalse Sports Association to finally get Racket: NX through the IRF vote this year and officially become a sport.
One Hamsa, an Israeli company founded in 2015, previously led Amazon's voice and user interface shopping business as vice president at Amazon and held the role of Uber's head of product.
The company's businesses include VR, AR, and game development. Judging from the situation on OneHamsa's official website, Racket: NX is currently the company's only game product. Racket:NX was originally just a showcase software from OneHamsa Studios and Waves, a developer of professional recording tools, to showcase Wave's stereo technology. Subsequently, One Hamsa saw the entertainment potential of the software and developed it into an indie game.
In addition to the squash movement, the selling point of this game is that VR technology can also provide players with different sports scenes. Allows players to play squash in the Great Desert and even in space. "Racket: NX" has launched quest and Steam's VR platform as early as 2018, priced at $19.99 (68 yuan in the national area), and received 96% praise on the Steam platform.
To some extent, this cooperation between IRF and VR developers is a "two-way rush", which recognizes the game project as a sport while also bringing squash sports closer to the game industry. According to the report of foreign technology media VRfitnessinsider, after giving Racket: NX the "name of sports", IRF was also invited to enter the video game exhibition area of the Commonwealth Games held in Birmingham on July 27 this year. During last year's Tokyo Olympic cycle, the IRF was also one of the candidates for the virtual Olympic series.
So, after Racket: NX is recognized as a global sports event, does it mean that "esports into the Olympic Games" will also be relaxed?
Essentially, Racket: NX is not a traditional esports game. In fact, in terms of gameplay, Racket: NX is even closer to traditional sports than video games. Rather than being a sports esports game, Racket:NX is a sport that "embraces technology related to the game industry." It is precisely because of this quality of Racket:NX that the IRF can accept it with relative ease.
But in any case, the IRF's recognition of VR games still brings e-sports one step closer to the Olympic Games. At present, there are many sports VR games with the same characteristics as Racket: NX, such as Echo Arena in the Frisbee category, "HoloBall" in the fitness category, and the climbing "The Climb" series. Before traditional e-sports are recognized by the Olympics, we may as well expect these sports VR games to be named sports.
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