This past week, Sinn Studio, the VR studio behind the popular melee combat title Swordsman VR, announced the successful closure of a $2.5 million funding round. This substantial investment will help to drive the development of “the world’s first real-time player vs. player VR combat game,” leveraging advanced spatial computing technologies. The funding round was led by Hartmann Capital, with contributions from Boost VC, Republic, Alumni Ventures, Mana Ventures, MetaVision, and notable industry angels such as Chris Ye of Uken Games.
The new project, currently under the working title “BATTLEGROUNDS,” will be a free-to-play game powered by Sinn Studio’s proprietary “Combat Engine.” This cutting-edge suite of tools and features, supported by the innovative “Large Intent Model” (LIM), is designed to enhance the realism and immersion of VR combat by accurately interpreting and responding to the subtleties of human motion.
Alek Sinn, Co-Founder & CEO of Sinn Studio, expressed his gratitude and excitement for the future: “We spent seven years surviving the ups and downs of VR as a bootstrapped company, waiting for that industry-defining moment, and the right partners to commit to our first fund raise. Today, we’re incredibly grateful to Hartmann Capital and everyone else who joined our seed round for their belief in our mission to redefine the future of combat in this exciting new era of spatial computing.”
Following this announcement, I caught up with Alek Sinn for an in-depth Q&A session to delve deeper into the upcoming game and the studio’s future plans. Here are some highlights from our conversation:
Q: So, should we assume that this next title is a direct sequel to Swordsman, or is this a new hand-to-hand combat IP that just builds upon what you have learned from Swordsman?
Alek Sinn: It was originally going to be a spin-off on the Swordsman IP, but between Swordsman VR, this PvP game, and a separate MR project we’re working on, we didn’t want multiple titles sharing the Swordsman brand being marketed simultaneously.
Currently, Swordsman will be reserved for potential future premium titles (likely PvE with co-op), but nothing concrete planned for this yet.
This new PvP project will be a completely new IP, the working title for which is “BATTLEGROUNDS”. It’ll be free-to-play, as we’ve said before.
As for the code-base, we’re building it from scratch using everything we’ve learned from Swordsman, with adequate infrastructure for scalable multiplayer. This is part of a broader initiative to build a combat tech stack — internally, we call it the “Combat Engine”. TLDR: it’s a suite of tools and features that solve a bunch of different problems for creating great VR mechanics, and great combat mechanics in VR.
Q: Will this new title focus on armed combat like Swordsman, more modern hand-to-hand, martial arts-style combat, or both?
Alek Sinn: It will be focused on armed combat. We want to double down on getting sword-on-sword PvP feeling really good before we start exploring other directions; but, long-term, our focus will expand into more than just armed combat.
Q: With this next title being PvP, in what ways have you been able to leverage the systems from Swordsman to build these new systems for Battlegrounds? Is it simply an application of similar physics and/or animation, or is there more to it than that?
Alek Sinn: We’ve started building all of the new tools (and games) from scratch, taking everything we learned from Swordsman about what works, and crucially: what failed. This includes physics sim and stability, player IK and animation, weapon handling, general UX and flow, tutorialization, and the many subtleties of real-time VR combat, where players have complete control of the experience but expect to feel powerful and capable.
Q: It sounds like you may be developing this Combat Engine to be something that you can package and license to other studios for use in their own projects. Is this the goal? And if so, will it be exclusive to Unreal Engine?
Alek Sinn: This is a deeper future vision, and not a focus for us — but: Right now, our priority is to build these tools for first-party projects, like Battlegrounds. But yes, looking deeper into the future, first–party games will become a stage for the technology, and we’re exploring the possibility of licensing the stack to other studios. It will be exclusive to Unreal Engine initially (as we don’t want to divert efforts away from our own games), but we’re open to expanding into other major engines/languages. This can go in a few different directions:
- We license the tech directly to other developers
- We license the tech to IP holders, who outsource development to other studios
- We directly license external IP ourselves, and develop projects for it internally
E.G. – Disney wants a flashy Star Wars game that competes with our many years of expertise; they’re either going to work with us in some form or trip at launch. We strongly believe that combat, whether as a key or secondary feature, will play a significant role in the future of VR gaming. In this way, we feel that we’re solving some very fundamental problems to pave the way for our favorite IPs, becoming a specialized studio in all forms of spatial/XR combat.
Q: While we’re on the subject, is this next title being developed in Unreal 5?
Alek Sinn: Yes.
Q: What VR platforms are you targeting? Will Battlegrounds even be exclusive to VR?
Alek Sinn: It will be exclusive to VR, targeting Steam VR and Quest 3 for an Early Access launch, with potential to expand into PS5/PS VR2. It’s not clear yet if we’ll support Quest 2.
Q: Are you working toward a simultaneous multiplatform release or an initial release on a certain platform, with future ports to the other platforms?
Alek Sinn: It will be a multi-platform launch with cross-play and dedicated servers, targeting Steam VR and Quest 3, at minimum.
Q: When do you expect this title to launch? 2025? 2026?
Alek Sinn: We don’t have an exact date yet, but are working to better understand this now. Our current timeline places us in official Alpha this June, then Beta later in Q4. It’s reasonable to expect an EA launch between Q4 and not very deep into 2025. We expect to support the project long-term.
Sinn Studio is undoubtedly paving the way to the next era of VR gaming with their innovative approach to real-time PvP combat. Stay tuned to XR Update for the latest developments on “BATTLEGROUNDS” and other exciting news from the world of XR.
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