VRC Volleyball (website listing here) is the latest attempt in a decades-long quest to create a seemingly simple thing: A physics-enabled game involving a ball that people can play together from around the world in a 3D virtual world in real time. Most attempts end up being comically, unplayably laggy.
This new version in VRChat, however, has been playable enough to generate not only a large returning audience -- over 300,000 visits since launching last November -- but also player leagues... and even live sport casters on YouTube. (Watch above.)
The world's creator, mamemoyasys (on Twitter/X here), had never actually played volleyball in real life when they started building it, but was inspired after reading the volleyball-themed manga Haikyuu!!
They also saw a need for such games on the platform:
"Many game worlds in VRChat are similar to FPS games," they explain, "where even if people are playing together, they often feel like they are acting separately. I wanted to create a game world where everyone interacts with a single target, leading to natural communication."