Competitive VR gaming has emerged as a new trend in recent years, due to the availability of consumer grade VR technologies and the rise of esports as a billion dollar industry. Despite the considerable attention to competitive VR gaming, there is a lack of research on attitudes and experiences that players have with these games. In this qualitative study with a pre-post interview design, we recruited eight competitive Counter-Strike: Global Offensive players from a university esports club. We aimed to understand their attitudes towards VR esports and their experiences playing a representative location based VR esports game. Findings showed that players had visceral and positive affective experiences in the game, such as how players map physical movements to the game. These findings can help design future competitive VR esports, while also further contributing to HCI as the first exploration on player experiences with VR esports, laying groundwork for future studies.

Toxicity in online environments is a complex and a systemic issue. Collegiate esports communities seem to be particularly vulnerable to toxic behaviors. In esports games, negative behavior, such as harassment, can create barriers to players achieving high performance and can reduce enjoyment which may cause them to leave the game. The aim of this study is to investigate how players define, experience and deal with toxicity in esports games that they play. Our findings from an interview study and five monthly follow ups with 19 participants from a university esports club show that players define toxicity as behaviors disrupt their morale and team dynamics, and are inclined to normalize negative behaviors, rationalize it as part of the competitive game culture akin to traditional sports, and participate a form of gamer classism, believing that toxicity is more common in lower level play than in professional and collegiate esports. There are many coping mechanisms employed by collegiate esports players, including ignoring offenders, deescalating tense encounters, and using tools to mute offenders. Understanding the motivations behind collegiate esports players' engagement with toxicity may help the growing sport plot a positive trajectory towards healthy play.