By Lexie Shezifi — Reporter
Last fall, San Jose State Esports member Rainier de Fort-Menares was approached by alum Andrew Miller about forming a virtual reality (VR) team. The rest was history.
The SJSU VR team competes in events hosted by Collegiate Virtual Reality Esports (CVRE), which offers competitive play in Echo Arena and Beat Saber.
Beat Saber is a VR rhythm game where the player slices blocks that represent the beats to songs, which de Fort-Menares says can be physically demanding.
Echo Arena models more traditional sports, where players earn points by throwing a frisbee into a goal by working with teammates.
Before he became the captain of SJSU’s VR team, de Fort-Menares said he got into VR back in 2018 when Beat Saber was first released.
“Spring of my freshman year I bought an Oculus Rift CV1 because I was infatuated with Beat Saber,” he said. “I was like damn, this is it, this is my game, because I fence and the difficulty and premise was cool, the game just looked super appealing to me.”
VR is different from traditional esports, because players are actively moving in an open space rather than sitting at a computer screen using a mouse and keyboard.
“For me, it’s really challenging physically. It’s a workout which sucks because I can’t play for long periods of time,” said de Fort-Menares.
One of the reasons that de Fort-Menares likes Beat Saber more than Echo Arena is the challenge and self improvement that comes with it.
“The game is really really hard and I like games that are challenging to the point that its just dumb, you get this feeling of self improvement and overcoming really high obstacles,” he said. “It’s a really good feeling, that’s what I value a lot in games, I want to be able to improve noticeably and Beat Saber does a good job at that.”
Beat Saber is a single player game, so members of the team practice on their own and improve on their own time.
de Fort-Menares also added that any student with an interest in VR can join the team, all they would need is their own equipment.
When it comes to Echo Arena, de Fort-Menares said the stars aligned for the team to be able to come together this semester.
“I didn’t think we would field a team, but somehow it happened,” he said.
Every semester, SJSU Esports puts out a Google Form where players can apply to join any available team. de Fort-Menares added Echo Arena to the form on a whim.
“Somehow we got an incoming freshman who actively plays Echo Arena, it was crazy,” said de Fort-Menares.
For a year it was just de Fort-Menares and one other member, until freshman Dunncha Howard joined during the spring semester.
With three members on the team, they were finally able to compete in CVRE Echo Arena events, which are held in a 3v3 format.
To add to that, Miller joined the team as a coach and helped all three players improve their skills and teamwork.
“I messaged [Miller] and told him about the team and he was completely onboard,” said de Fort-Menares. “Without him we would not have found the level of success we have.”
For the VR team, it has been exciting going from having no Echo Arena team to having an established team with a coach and multiple practices per week.
“I think next semester we have a really good shot of winning the whole thing,” said de Fort-Menares. “We started from two unexperienced players and one good player to placing second in one semester, it’s been crazy. It far exceeded my expectations.”
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