What happens if you combine computer games and physical exercise? Can such a hybrid format become a full-fledged sport, and not just entertainment? This was discussed by scientists, teachers, coaches and students at the Sirius University at the All-Russian scientific and practical conference “Sport of the Future”.
Several years ago, the Games of the Future project appeared in the country. These competitions combine traditional sports, computer games, and virtual and augmented reality (VR/AR) technologies. They require athletes to improve both their digital and athletic skills.
“We have ‘mirrored’ eSports with physical activity – this is the main feature. E-sportsmen are a special category of people: they sit at home, speak their own language, use their own gestures. According to research, out of eight billion people worldwide, about half a billion are involved in eSports. They either participate themselves or watch broadcasts. In Russia, 15 million people have tried on the role of an eSportsman at least once. One of our social missions is to ‘pull’ people out of computers and offer them to do classical sports, among other things,” said Igor Stolyarov, head of the Games of the Future project.
What to play?
In Russia, they took the new phenomenon seriously and have already created the All-Russian Phygital Sports Federation. A special laboratory has also appeared, where they test disciplines that can be transformed into the new format. And already in September, a trial tournament was held in the country. Its participants competed in phygital football and phygital basketball, drone racing, and also played Beat Saber.
The test “Phygital Games” in Kazan brought together 20 teams. In addition to Russian participants, there were cyber sportsmen from Belarus, Bulgaria, Brazil, and Turkey. The broadcast of the games gained 6.5 million views. At the conference in “Sirius”, students were also given the opportunity to try themselves in new disciplines.
Phygital Basketball
Participants first play 3×3 basketball on a real sports field, then on a console. The winner is determined by the sum of points scored in two stages. Other team games are built on the same principle. For example, football or volleyball.
Virtual Race
With the help of a mobile application, runners cover the distance in real time and complete tasks along the way, including meeting virtual characters. To win the race, you need to score the most points. The results are taken into account in the rating table.
“This is an analogue of orienteering, but with the use of gadgets. A person runs along a certain trajectory and completes tasks that he receives on his smartphone,” explains Denis Gusev, head of the resource center “Interdisciplinary Sports Research” of the Scientific and Technological University “Sirius”.
Drone racing
A drone race in which drone operators must complete a race against the clock. They control the drones using a virtual reality helmet and a special remote control, and the images are received from cameras installed on board the drones. The speed of the small helicopter can reach 160 km/h.
Tank robotic Raceathlon
A remote-controlled tank must pass the track and overcome obstacles. The winner is the participant whose vehicle scores the most points and shows the best time.
Benefit or harm: what do the experts say?
Ten teams prepared projects for the conference in Sirius: six on traditional sports, four on phygital. Experts are sure that the young direction will need time to gain a foothold in the world of sports and find its participants and spectators.
“There is a fine line here. Sport is not only a competition, but also a large preparation process. Traditional sports also have established rules by which competitions are built. Phygital is still an “infant” in this regard. It lacks elements for us to consider it a full-fledged sport. There is a very spectacular show, but there is no training methodology, new disciplines are constantly appearing, competition rules are only in the process of being formed and clarified, the impact and permissible loads on the body have not been studied. A balance is needed, because sport should not harm health: physical or psychological. Neither computer nor phygital sports have any reliable scientific studies on how useful or harmful it is,” says Dmitry Savin, head of the Interdisciplinary Sports Research department at Sirius University.
According to Savin, Sirius is ready to help colleagues and has already outlined a number of scientific and educational events so that eSports and phygital can take a worthy place in life and benefit society.
Test for strength
Sirius experts not only talk about sports safety, but also prepare the ground for large-scale research. The task is to determine what impact hybrid sports have on humans.
“Where is the line between developing sports and where we need to pay attention to safety. If we talk about the computer direction, then a person is overwhelmed by a large amount of information that still needs to be sorted out and analyzed. And now we will study what will be developing here, and where it can lead to exhaustion of the nervous system, to mental deviations, to risks. Then it will be clear whether it is possible to bring this activity to the level of professional sports, when people will compete between cities, regions and countries. Sirius University has all the necessary equipment for these studies, including for computer sports. The construction of a laboratory in the Park of Science and Art is currently being completed. Accordingly, phygital sports, among other things, we will study the compatibility of physics with the digital world,”
Today, literally before our eyes, new sports are being born that combine real physical activity with digital technologies, classical sports with computer games, and surrounding reality with virtual reality.
The first “Games of the Future” in the phygital sports format in Russia are scheduled for spring 2024. The tournament in Tatarstan plans to feature 16 hybrid disciplines.
