Legends of Gaming, a popular YouTube series that features competing eSports stars, premiered its second season this week. In addition to introducing the new cast that wold be joining show host “Syndicate” – a YouTube video game personality with nearly 10 million subscribers – season 2 also kicked off with the series’ first ever implementation of virtual reality film making.
The teams that would be competing in the popular racing/sports hybrid game Rocket League were revealed to the world via a specially produced 360 video:
The teams competing in futuristic shooter Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 were also introduced in a similar manner:
A representative for the show reached out via email to further explain the style and genesis of these spherical 360 videos:
Legends of Gaming launched two VR clips today, featuring live action 360 spherical video and mixed media, utilizing graphics, traditional video and gameplay and then a fully immersive gameplay section to create a dynamic experience.
The production team at Endemol Shine Beyond USA made the most of the larger spherical canvas available with VR, and they were able to feature the gamers and composite the gameplay over their heads simultaneously – allowing the user to choose which they want to watch instead of forcing viewers to watch only one element. To make this experience even more immersive, “Legends of Gaming” also used the extra space in the VR content to throw in a few surprises for the viewers (including hanging the host Syndicate from the ceiling!).
Endemol Shine is a worldwide production company that is best known in the United States for shows like Big Brother, The Biggest Loser, and MasterChef.
YouTube’s 360 video content library has been growing at a steady pace. The massive streaming giant is perhaps only in true competition with a site like Facebook for the title of “most aggressive deployment of 360 video content.”
Additionally, VR has long been considered a fertile ground of potential for eSports competition and content for the players, but these videos seem to demonstrate that it can be just as viable platform of a platform for the spectators as well.
Endemol Shine VP Mathew Forrest commented on the future of this technology saying:
“We are really excited about the idea of taking this to the next level with fully rendered 360 gameplay and other formats we hope audiences will enjoy.”
