“Games of the Future”: what is it and what is the prize fund

From February 19 to March 3, the “Games of the Future” will be held in Kazan. This is a physical sports competition. What it is, in what disciplines the participants compete and what the prize fund is – in the Kommersant information.

What is phygital sports

Phygital sports is a direction that combines traditional sports and computer games. For example, participants first compete on a football simulator, and then go onto a real field and continue the match. The team with the most goals wins. The first such tournament was held in Kazan in 2022. Since then, the city has hosted nine more phygital games.

What directions will there be at the Games of the Future?

In total, 21 disciplines will be presented at the tournament. The competition is divided into five areas: “Sports”, “Tactics”, “Strategy”, “Speed”, and “Technology”.

Challenge “Sport”. In this category there will be competitions in football, hockey, basketball, martial arts, skateboarding, BMX, regular and bicycle racing. All competitions have both virtual and stages taking place on real playing fields. In the case of racing, participants will have to compete in Formula 4 cars. At the martial arts tournament, after battles in the console game, athletes will have a physical stage in the octagon according to MMA rules. The only completely virtual competition in this direction is a bicycle race.

Tactics Challenge. This category includes online shooter competitions. Tournaments will be held in CS2, Warface and Standoff 2. Athletes will first meet in a computer game, and then continue the match in the laser tag arena.

Strategy Challenge. In this direction, tournaments will be held in MOBA games – Dota 2, Mobile Legends: Bang Bang and World of Tanks. The offline part is represented here by a separate category “Superfinal”. In it, the participants themselves decide in which sport they will meet. For example, the finalists of the Dota 2 tournament will choose from football, basketball and laser tag. For this competition, athletes receive a separate prize.

Speed ​​Challenge. This category includes only one direction – Speedrun. This is the passage of various games at speed. There is also a “Super Final” here. Athletes will be able to choose from football, laser tag or compete in the dance simulator Just Dance. Both finalists and teams competing for third place will participate in this competition.

Technology Challenge. This direction is not associated with either computer games or real sports. This category will include robot battles, drone races, cybathletics and sports programming competitions. Also in this direction there will be a tournament on the dance simulator Just Dance. At Cybathletics competitions, people with bionic prosthetics will perform various tasks. In addition, a VR rhythm simulator tournament will be held in this category. In it, participants will fight in Beat Saber. In this game, a person uses VR joysticks to control two laser swords, which must be used to break blocks flying in rhythm.

What is the prize fund

The total amount of the prize fund is $10 million. The largest winnings are for football and basketball competitions – $1.25 million. The winners of the super final of the Speed ​​Challenge block and competitions in dance and VR rhythm simulator will receive the least – $50 thousand.

Who will take part in the competition

In total, 2 thousand athletes from more than 275 teams will take part in the competition. In addition to e-sports teams and streamers, professional athletes will also come to the Games of the Future. For example, the phygital BMX tournament will feature Tokyo Olympic silver medalist Daniel Derse and 15-time X Games champion Garrett Reynolds. The “Games of the Future” will also be attended by physical squads of such football clubs as the Russian “Lokomotiv” and “Rotor”, the Turkish “Besiktas”, the Serbian “Crvena Zvezda” and the Brazilian R10 Team.

On February 22, after the semi-final of the hockey tournament, an exhibition match will be held. It will be attended by Pavel Datsyuk, Ilya Kovalchuk, Evgeny Artyukhin, Maxim Afinogenov, Danis Zaripov, Sergey Mozyakin, Alexander Semin and Vasily Koshechkin. The basketball tournament will feature squads from the Russian UNICS and the Serbian Partizan. In total, athletes from more than 100 countries will take part in the competition.

Where can you watch Future Games?

You can watch the broadcast of the competition on the official website Events. In addition, this can be done in VK Play Livein the “Games of the Future” accounts on YouTube And Twitch. The Match TV channel will also broadcast television. You can view the match schedule on the official website Events.