Learn how you can create an interactive experience in your laser tag arena and how this benefits your game play and profits.
Hey friends, welcome to another 360 Insight video coming to you once again from Creative Works.
We are excited today to talk to you about creating interactive play for your laser tag experience.
Now, obviously, there are two sides to this coin, both the environment and the equipment itself.
And so, when we look at the environment and the arena, we’re going to talk about what technology is out there, how do we leverage that to be the most impactful as well as then putting that in tandem with new equipment offerings that the manufacturers come out with.
So that way when it’s a Tuesday at 3:30 and we maybe have 4 or 5 people in our arena, they can play against the environment itself instead of having to have a lesser experience because there aren’t as many other players in the space to tag.
So, let’s take a look first at the arena and the environment itself and what we’ve been doing and where we see it going to create the most immersive experience possible.
When we look at the arenas right now over the last couple of years, we’ve seen DMX and what that is that’s a programmable, special effects for lighting and sound that we can then tie into targets and other equipment pieces.
So that way, let’s say for example, you have a space theme and you want a spaceship, that’s a big foam prop that’s 8 feet wide coming out of the wall and looking like it’s getting ready to fly over the top of your head.
Well, we wanted instead of that just being a static piece that’s on the wall, we now want to start adding special effects, lighting and sound effects and a target on the equipment side so that way a player can come up and start tagging at that ship, have some lights triggering so that what they see that, yes, something is happening and I’m getting this instant gratification and I know I’m doing something.
And then, as they get more points and more tags on that ship, we can then have a big sound explosion and a fog machine that’s in there to trigger a fog burst so that way it makes that seem like they’ve actually blown up that ship and then it gives them a bunch of points and they feel awesome because they’re on top of the leaderboard with that.
So, those are the types of experiences where we focus on the prop first and then incorporating the equipment second in order to create this in tandem approach of interactivity.
We’ll see this in a lot of different ways, we can do this with whatever theme that we’re looking at but beyond just straight targets that can be blended in the props, there are other things that we can do, right, video bases and gates.
And so, for a video base for example, that’s something where you can do multiple choice questions and have guests that are coming in from corporate business or church groups come in and be able to show their knowledge while still engaging in a fun tag activity.
We can do all sorts of different elements now with our simple video base that just starts to take it to a next level, adds a little bit of visual dynamic and engagement for the guests as they go through and it’s just something that they haven’t seen before or it’s new to them and that’s what’s going to encourage them to come back and play more and more, or it allows you to charge a higher price point than what your competition is able to because the experience is stronger.
So ultimately, we want to look at whatever we’re doing with the experience is that we keep it story driven, social and immersive.
And so, by having these high visual elements in the arena like we have been with the full wall murals and really taking that to the next level.
Now, what we’re seeing moving forward in the environment is being able to do things like projection mapping and projection mapping is where we actually digitally animate content that overlays on top of existing murals.
So for example, let’s say we have a jungle theme and we have a waterfall that’s beautiful and grand, that’s 18 feet tall. Well, now I want to be able to show some projection mapping and movement that makes water look like it’s actually cascading over the side.
And so again, making this a more realistic environment where we can still take advantage of what laser tag does with a throughput capacity side that VR can’t, virtual reality can’t now with where it is in free roam.
But then we take it and make it more of an augmented reality or mixed reality where we have these digital overlays into a physical environment and it just starts to take it to a whole new level.
The other thing that’s new and coming on the equipment side of things is looking at membership programs and power ups and there are a whole slew of different pieces that we look at and see that are doing really well in the online gaming piece and how do we take that type of interaction and start to put it into equipment throughout the arena that’s obviously then blended into the theme made.
So hopefully, this starts to give you a little bit of an insight on what you can do or what you should be looking to do within your laser tag experience in order to create the best story driven, social and immersive engagement that we can.
Whether it’s the arena itself and the props that we’re then putting the equipment and targets and special effects all into or looking at just new technologies like projection mapping that create this amazing visual impact.
So, please feel free to reach out to us and if you have any questions, then we look forward to being of service and as always, go get after it.