Social Gaming Good Enough vs 10x Providing a good enough version of a new and popular Social Gaming concept can provide a good return on the dollars invested in the short-term, but it’s unlikely to produce a strong, long-term profit.  Why won’t “good enough” work for the long-term? Once a new out-of-home Social Gaming concept becomes popular, it sooner or later gets copied by multiple operators and the market becomes saturated with good enough options.  In fact, the pressure to build it cheaper becomes the priority and so does charging a lower price to play. Too much capacity ..read more

Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation Can Out-of-Home Entertainment Venues be Designed to Significantly Reduce Loneliness and Isolation? The Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation is a REAL problem and it’s affecting people of all ages in the United States and in countries around the world. If you are looking for proof, the Surgeon General released an advisory report in 2023 that raised the alarm about the devastating impact of the epidemic of loneliness and isolation in the United States.  It’s important to note that Out-of-Home Entertainment Venues can be upgraded to better enable our gue ..read more

Four years ago, I published an article entitled:  Why Did the Out-of-Home (OOH) Entertainment Industry Apocalypse Happen? Below is the entire article as it was published in 2019 with updates in purple on what I sort of got right, what I got wrong, what’s still too soon to call, and what I didn’t even see coming – like Covid! How did I miss that?  Just like I said in 2019, I don’t expect 1 out of 100 in our industry to read this from start to finish; however, on a positive note, I do expect these articles to help me (and whoever reads them) to better understand what’s happening now ..read more

Social Gaming Wins!  Competitive Gaming Loses High Skill Level Variance is the Number One Reason Competitive Gaming is a Loser in an Out-of-Home Social Entertainment Venue. In fact, most Competitive Gaming experiences are the polar opposite of Social Gaming.  GREAT Social Gaming experiences are ones where ALMOST EVERYONE CAN PLAY, ALMOST EVERYONE CAN HAVE FUN PLAYING, and ALMOST EVERYONE CAN EAT and DRINK while PLAYING. Most importantly, our Guests can DO IT ALL while SOCIALIZING with their FRIENDS, FAMILIES, COWORKERS, GROUPS, or FELLOW GUESTS! What is the difference between Low ..read more

LASERTRON IAAPA Newsletter In this newsletter,  LASERTRON’s New LT-X3 Phaser NEW Automatic Axe Scoring Powered by LASERTRON on Display at IAAPA What’s Most IMPORTANT to the Success of a Social, Gaming, Drinking, and Eating Venue?  LASERTRON’s New LT-X3 Phaser  Pre-Orders Starting January 10th, 2023 The LASERTRON LT-X3 has been a work in progress for over 4 years. It was designed to be the most fully functional phaser in the laser tag world as well as with many of the unique bells and whistles found in online games.  For example, Dual Red and Green Lasers, Dual Stereo Spe ..read more

Topics: 1. NOW PLAYING!  Automatic Team Rebalancing 2. Why is LASERTRON 10x better than ALL the others? 3. Western Bowling Proprietors Insurance CEO Cameron Linder shares safety video on LASERTRON’s Axe Throwing attraction 1. NOW PLAYING! Automatic Team Rebalancing LASERTRON has developed and installed fully automated team rebalancing software at both of our entertainment venues located in Buffalo and Rochester, New York.  Exclusive to LASERTRON, the new Automated Team Rebalancing software enables our LASERTRON players to experience highly competitive and exciting team games while e ..read more

Topics: 1. NOW PLAYING!  Automatic Team Rebalancing 2. Why is LASERTRON 10x better than ALL the others? 3. Western Bowling Proprietors Insurance CEO Cameron Linder shares safety video on LASERTRON’s Axe Throwing attraction 1. NOW PLAYING! Automatic Team Rebalancing LASERTRON has developed and installed fully automated team rebalancing software at both of our entertainment venues located in Buffalo and Rochester, New York.  Exclusive to LASERTRON, the new Automated Team Rebalancing software enables our LASERTRON players to experience highly competitive and exciting team games while en ..read more

Entertainment Venue Software & Hardware  One of the most complicated parts of operating an entertainment venue is the software and hardware required to operate it at a high level.  Unfortunately, it’s only going to get more complicated as new software and hardware features are integrated to further improve our guests’ out-of-home entertainment experiences! Most operators may not know this, but LASERTRON has been on the front lines of developing our own entertainment venue software and hardware for many years.  We created our first software tool over 25 years ago after fai ..read more

What is STOPPING US from Creating New and Dramatically Better Social Gaming Experiences?  At the end of this article, I’m going to outline eight ideas that can help us create better social gaming experiences. However, talking about these ideas won’t help much if we don’t talk about the elephant in the room, which is our brain’s default setting to say NO to anything new and, especially, the new and unfamiliar. By providing a list of ideas that could help us create better Social Gaming experiences, our brains will automatically focus on identifying the reasons why each one will NOT work ..read more

Fun Social Gaming Experiences How do we create more of them? Creating new habit-forming social gaming experiences is really hard. Why? Because, we have to figure out the best ways to maximize the integration of the gaming, the social gathering space that faces or surrounds the gaming, the services that help to enhance the quality of the social gaming experience (food & beverage, ease of reservations & payments, as well as the staff members who facilitate the overall experience), plus the triggers, which are hugely important to encouraging more repeat visits to occur.  The ingredie ..read more