A New VR Game Puts You in the Middle of Real English Premier League Plays

The bones of the gameplay product are already set, however, and they offer glimpses at a fully immersive future across sports gaming.

Kickin’ Around

Rezzil’s main priority for Premier League Player was to make the game something that appeals to the general public and not just players familiar with soccer’s mechanics.

“Someone’s grandma could play this,” says Adam Dickinson, Rezzil cofounder and design director. “You don’t have to be a sportsman.”

Achieving that accessibility required a few compromises, most notably in the game’s kicking mechanism: Players “kick” by swinging their arms while holding standard VR controllers at their sides, doing their best to approximate natural leg motions. The default in-game foot appears at a 90-degree angle from the leg, as it would while standing flat on the ground, ideal for making and receiving passes; holding the trigger button flexes the ankle and extends the player’s foot out straight, mimicking the ideal position for a harder shot or volley.

Like all game modes, kicking drills transport players onto digital Premier League fields. Players are prompted to kick and receive passes to and from various targets. Easier settings include “aim assist” and similar player helpers that help modulate kick speed and direction, while higher levels are almost entirely devoid of these crutches.

Dickinson tells me Rezzil has already created and tested versions of PLP where players kick with their actual feet. Those versions, though, require additional VR sensors purchased separately from the headset itself; even VR headsets with “inside-out” tracking cameras pointed outward can’t yet manage the needed tasks, Etches tells me. Many popular dance or spatial VR games utilize up to a dozen such sensors to track full bodies, but Dickinson says Rezzil users would only need a couple. But even that added cost (around $300, Etches says) seemed too prohibitive for the game’s initial launch. By this time next year, though, expect to be able to kick the virtual ball by moving your actual feet.

“We can flick a switch and put it into play,” Dickinson says.

In their current format, PLP’s kicking drills are its least realistic. But the game’s other features are much more natural.

As mostly a keeper in my brief time on a youth soccer pitch, I was especially keen on the goalkeeping drills. They don’t disappoint. Shots come in from a combination of Rezzil-created “shot cannons” (little items they can place anywhere on the field and program to shoot balls at various speeds and spin rates) and actual 3D renderings of Premier League players, who appear on the pitch in various locations like the penalty spot and longer free kicks.