Gym Class Adds All of the NBA's Home Courts to Its VR Game, Including the Mavs'

Basketball video games can simulate just about any aspect of the game. NBA 2K23, for instance, can put you in control of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and his patented sky hook, help you create your own team by stealing away superstar players from other teams like the New Orleans Pelicans' Zion Williamson or the Chicago Bulls' Zach Labine, and even let you peek at and shriek at the prices at the concession stands.

But there's one thing this advanced basketball simulator can't recreate: the satisfying ache you feel in your knees after pulling off a sweet dunk or draining three consecutive three-pointers from outside the line.

Gym Class, the popular virtual reality basketball game on the Meta Quest 2 VR headset, forces you to get off the couch to play basketball, and a new feature simulates the feeling of playing a game in front of a capacity crowd on the court of any NBA stadium.

"When you're on the court floor, you're seeing from the floor," says Gym Class VR and IRL Studios co-creator Paul Katsen from his office in Austin. "What we focused on was getting that first part details. It's all about being the player. We've definitely pushed the Quest to a limit we don't think it's hit before."

The crew behind Gym Class just updated its popular basketball game to include all 30 full-time arenas, including the Dallas Mavericks' home courts. Players can now pick their favorite home team to play on and gear up their avatar with jerseys, sweatbands and even team basketballs for a quick round of hoops through the Meta Quest 2 headset.

Gym Class first went out to players in 2020 on Sidequest, the unofficial marketplace where developers could upload early versions of their games to help build interest in titles that could help them find a spot on the Meta Quest's store. The first versions were rough, but they used the feedback they got from those early players to smooth out the reactions and controls. It became one of the platform's most popular sports titles.

"Traditionally, with game companies, they work on something for a year or two and then they have their big moment," Katsen says. "We actually put out something really horrible. You couldn't dribble. You couldn't run around. We figure basketball is super social and if they could play that and chat together, they'd come back."

Eventually, Katsen and his crew worked out the kinks and added improved controls that let players dribble as they move down the court and pull off high-flying dunks by kneeling and jumping as they pressed the "A" button.

Not long after the official Sidequest launch, Meta launched its Meta Labs program, and Gym Class became one of the first to make the jump to the Meta Quest 2's online store that Katsen says was "pretty pivotal" in the game's development.

Then, someone who works for the NBA discovered Gym Class and the league reached out to the IRL Studios team to learn more about the game.  "They reached out to us before we'd even done our first fundraising round," Katsen says. "One of their folks who's pretty high up on the licensing team had a Quest. They've been looking at VR for quite a long time."

Katsen says his team viewed every basketball venue and focused on re-creating the main courts because the players' main point of view would be from the floor of the arenas.

"If you think about the art around the Mavericks' stadium and the court floors and the colors around the court, it's pretty awesome," Katsen says. "You start to hop in and look at the floor and it has all the color schemes and the ambiance. You have the blues and silver on there. It has a really cool vibe."

Then the team added a virtual packed house of 18,000 fans for each arena who react in real time to the players' shots, dunks and bricks and even to the time on the clock. Each stadium also has a Jumbotron that plays animations that are in time with the action on the floor and even an announcer who comments on the action.

"We just take you straight into the game and most of the people playing the game aren't professionals," Katsen says. "They're just hanging out. This is just a place to hang out and shoot some hoops. The cool part of this NBA bundle is this is a whole new way for NBA fans to connect with each other globally. You could be in Dallas and connect with a Mavs fan in Tokyo. That's something that's never existed before."

Gym Class takes full advantage of the Meta Quest 2's communication capabilities that can direct other players' voices as they move toward and away from you. So, you can trash talk someone on the other side of the world as you posterize your opponent with a nasty dunk right from your living room.

"It's really great at making you feel like you're right next to someone," Katsen says. "For us, this is something we'd want to play every day because it really has to be a social sport because it touches on both of those pieces and making a basketball game was a no-brainer for us."