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LBX Collective
Sound Off #100 - Top Golf's PE pivot, IP fatigue, Manufacturer pivots, and more!
Sponsored by Intercard!
Sponsored by Alan-1!
On this week's 100th episode of Sound Off, we map the biggest shifts in location-based entertainment: rising RAM costs driven by AI, Topgolf’s private equity pivot, the LED takeover, mixed reality stepping past VR’s novelty, and more. Competitive socializing, sportainment, and mission rooms emerge as the next anchor attractions.
• RAM inflation hitting consoles, PCs and venue hardware
• Value for money driving guest choices and pricing pressure
• Topgolf sale signals need for mixed attractions and hospitality
• Six Flags leadership reset and portfolio focus
• Tencent-UBISOFT deal underscores IP strategy and risk
• Triotech’s pivot to social play and own-venue strategy
• Mixed reality fidelity rising with Apple Vision Pro
• Hero Zone roll-up pushing VR stability and content breadth
• LED screens challenging projection for big and small formats
• Licensing fatigue when IP misses the audience
• Claw crane evolution and merch strategies
• Mission rooms and compact escape games for repeat play
• AI for data insights and outage resilience planning
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Are you on the edge of your state? Covering today's latest trends in location-based editing. Brought to you by the LBX Collective. Your community collected A Fun. All right, everyone. Let's buckle up.
SPEAKER_00:All right. Well, welcome everybody to Sound Off with Kevin Williams. This is episode number 100. 100. I feel like we have need to have applause and shouting and everything else. This is amazing.
unknown:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:How are you? How are you feeling at 100?
SPEAKER_03:I'm feeling like I I should do it 100. Still uh recovering from uh the joys of La Alpa, uh, but also uh trying to recover after 100 episodes of this.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, certainly. Certainly. So um given that, right, we got to start it off the same way here. How uh how are you gonna change my mind this time?
SPEAKER_03:Well, have I changed your mind after 100 uh uh issues? What has my batting average been like? How how on the ball have we been, do you think?
SPEAKER_00:Oh man, I mean, I think that we have uh certainly I think that the the some of the discussions have changed my mind on things. Uh, there's no question about that. Um, I think a lot of things were fairly closely aligned, you know, in some areas. So um, you know, a lot of the things that we talk about here, but man, I I hope so. I hope people's minds have been changed. I mean, that's really the goal. And sometimes, you know, we're pushing, you know, you're you're you're maybe pushing the boundaries, right, to get people to think about things differently. And so, yeah, I've really appreciated the thought-provoking way that we start this thing off every every time.
SPEAKER_03:Well, maybe at 200 we should do a poll of uh the top uh contentious subjects, but one of the ones that we have touched upon, which uh suddenly reared its ugly head uh during uh ILPA was kiddie casinos. And uh I I heard from a number of sources now that they their operations were being questioned about the the skill level of their cranes and the skill level of uh their redemption products. So uh for my crystal ball next year, I think we will be talking a lot more about that subject, let alone some of the other subjects that we've touched upon.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean I think especially as we've seen the new wave in the new wave cranes and the crane operations and the way that they're thinking about that from like almost a retailing standpoint and merchandising standpoint, um, definitely does bring uh up some of those skill level questions for sure.
SPEAKER_03:It's it's it's something that was inevitable that especially when we're at a uh period where everybody's paying closer attention to their disposable income spend on entertainment, that uh they want value for money and they also don't want to be fleeced.
SPEAKER_01:Indeed. Indeed.
SPEAKER_03:Anyway, uh uh 100 and a new look, uh and uh let us jump into the technology. Let's do it. Uh and first the economy, and one of those uh subjects of the economy has been the impact. Now, this is uh an interesting um, shall we say, domino effect. Uh, we've seen a massive increase in random access memory uh RAM uh prices. They've just gone through the roof. Uh and RAM is an essential component of uh the PC side of the business, as well as the gaming console side of the business, as well as uh in in some cases uh smart devices and electronics. But predominantly we uh are seeing a vast increase in the pricing for uh uh this application for console usage, which will see the increase in the Sony and the Xbox console prices uh over the holiday period. We have also seen an increase of uh static RAM for the PC sector, so that has uh an impact uh on uh new developments. Uh the brand new Valve um uh Gabe box or the uh Steam box that is uh being developed is going to have to be a lot higher than uh the industry was expecting, which is caused uh vibration through the market. But from our industry, we are also quite a large user of RAN. And this will indirectly or directly have an increase in the price of uh the PCs that go into powering all aspects of the video amusement redemption and attraction market. Quite concerning, uh just another kick in the uh genitalia uh regarding uh the increases in prices. And I always already was hearing at uh IALPA, the rumblings and grumblings about uh the increase in pricing for hardware across the market.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I mean this is something that is concerning. I mean, because we have RAM in virtually any computing device, even if it's uh you know a small bit of, you know, we we think of RAM as maybe in sticks uh that you would put into a PC, uh, but RAM sits in on other like smaller circuit boards as well, right? I mean, it's just a it's a storage device. Um and historically the prices have gone down and down and down for more and more, right? Like Moore's law has been very much uh applied to RAM as well as to uh CPUs and GPUs, but supply and demand, uh you can't uh you can't go against those uh market pressures either. And uh it will drive up costs for consumers and it'll drive up costs for us as well, and the the everything that we have to buy for our centers, and the uh then ultimately we're gonna have to drive up costs for uh yeah for our guests.
SPEAKER_03:And sadly, we can lay this problem at AI's doorstep because the reason why uh there's a drive to get your hands on RAM in the tech sector is to power the server systems that are running all of the uh AI. So all of that lake boiling um electricity sucking technology is also needed uh to be powered by as much RAM as possible. Um AI is really kicking us in the uh uh lower extremity, shall we say, when it comes to the economy.
SPEAKER_00:Indeed.
SPEAKER_03:Moving away from uh the economy side of the business and looking at the Bizbiz, uh, and you know, we told you so has come to pass. The situation happened uh just the day uh I was uh getting on the plane uh for Ayalpa that uh Callaway uh decided to uh take a deal with a private equity firm that they have links with uh to sell off the uh top golf operation to them. Uh Callaway still retaining, uh, I'm led to believe a 40% stake in the operation, though I'm not sure if that's a board-level stake or if that's a uh a revenue return. Uh the most important part about this is the you know, the major hit that's been taken. You know, they're selling it to an investment firm for uh 1.1 billion. But in reality, back in uh 2021, Callaway acquired top golf for 2.6 billion. So, you know, uh questions about where where has 1.5 billion gone, uh, I think would be the first question, closely followed by some other questions that haven't been answered, like is this also going to include the sale of top golf swing suites uh as part of the deal? And how much is um the private equity firm going to give uh uh abilities for the current board of Top Golf to continue operating as they are, or are they going to look for a root and branch C-suite change?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I mean, look, even if you consider the fact that they're retaining a 40% stake, 60% of$2.6 billion is you know just under$1.6 billion. And so they're still taking a half a billion dollar haircut on you know their original purchase price from four years ago and you know, or nearly five years ago at this point. So one would presume, given all of the building, like how many times we talk about a new top golf opening, um, they are opening new top golfs at least once every other month that we've seen, if not more frequently than that. And you would think that with all of that happening, that they would have actually been able to increase the value. And so this is right in line with what we have been saying for really the last two years almost. Uh, that they are surprised actually that it took this long for somebody to come along and take this off of Callaway's hands.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, uh they've been trying to wash their hands of it. I uh I alluded to the uh the previous surprise departure of the CEO at Top Golf. Uh may have had something to do with a failed uh uh possible white night. Uh, for Callaway to go to a private equity firm, sounds like you've encouraged someone to do that. Uh during uh discussions about the topgolf situation uh in Orlando, a colleague of mine pointed out to me to you know go away and do a little bit more research on a particular piece of information he'd been given, which was of all of the top golf uh venues in the world, the UK venues had actually seen quite an increase in their uh sale-on-sale uh profit sector and uh their uh spend per site. And he was right. They the the UK was one of the few uh silver linings, shall we say, in uh in the crown of the top golf uh operation, which which was looking at some very dubious uh uh returns on investment. That said, it was also interesting to point out that the UK top golf facilities are the ones, uh at least one of them uh has been configured to include an arcade component, uh, as well as trying to include secondary uh entertainment. You know, the one thing that always strikes all of us is why there isn't a top golf facility that has a swing suite uh bay uh operation inside it. It just seems basic. We we do know Top Golf experimented with the arcade. We have a partnership with uh Band Dynamco. We know that they experimented with uh opening up a mini golf. And uh again, sources are suggesting that if the new C-S tweet comes in, the first job will be to improve the entertainment split and spend and also take a very hard look at exactly what they're trying to offer for their value for money.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, yeah, it's always blown my mind that they have built such amazing, beautiful facilities just for driving ranges, right? And no other mix of attractions whatsoever. Uh you know, and when you think people go to a driving range, typically at a golf course, they can they practice their drives and then they go and they practice their putting, and then they can do some chipping and they can do all those things. And I understand that Top Golf's MO was to gamify the driving range experience, make it more social and competitive. They were on the leading edge of like social competition venues, um, and understand that that was their main focus. But at the same time, when they start selling memberships with the expectation that people are coming in to practice their swing, you would think that they would even add in the other elements that would actually help people improve their overall golf game if they wanted to stay exclusively focused on golf.
SPEAKER_03:I I think they're going to have to really uh address the uh the elephant in the room. And it may be painful for some of them to admit that they're in the entertainment business rather than just in the golf business. But again, uh once the dust settles on this uh uh positioning stake, we will we will get to see the new look because they they're under a you know a very short leash here. They they can't sit around uh on their laurels. Uh talking about can't sit around on their laurels. Our friends at Six Flags uh have surprise, surprise, parachuted in a brand new chief executive officer, who I'm also led to believe is bringing in some uh officers of their own liking to the board, uh restructuring a plenty. Uh I think this is the phrase uh lighting a fire under their bums to uh try and address the situation that Six Flags Entertainment has got themselves in. They've mired themselves since the merger acquisition. Uh, and now the brand new uh CEO comes in uh with a fire lit under his derriere. Uh and I expect we will also be hearing some announcements of some restructuring, not just of executives, but also maybe the uh separation of certain venues that are under their uh under their watch uh that were still hanging around, but people feel that need to be uh let go of uh to try and slim down the operation and focus on moving forward after creating such a whale of a uh of a chain.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, this this is it might actually be the thing that turns six flags around. Um you know, we know that you know so much of this is driven by the leadership that's there, um, but he comes with an amazing pedigree, um, really phenomenal pedigree, right? He was most recently this over at Palace Entertainment. Um, he was uh an interim at SeaWorld Parks and Entertainment as their CEO and COO, and has had uh you know lots of experience um you know in in many other places as well. So anyway, I mean this he's he's run big, large organizations, he's helped with turnarounds and you know, and hopefully Six Flags, Cedar Fair, like they will be able to have a leader that can take them to the next, you know, the next 10, 20 years, even though he will likely just be a temporary CEO for the next you know few years.
SPEAKER_03:I I believe he's an interim CEO, uh safe pair of hands, while some hard decisions and some painful decisions are made. Um what should have been made uh with the merger? Uh he will be able to cut the cloth and not feel that uh he's in a position of danger. At the same time, he will be able to change the C-suite mentality uh without the need of investors uh threatening legal action. But again, we wish him a lot of luck. He comes with a pedigree, as you've said, but uh this is a daunting uh task to take on board. Uh daunting task to take on board. Ubisoft. Ubisoft has a lot of uh involvement for us in the location-based uh entertainment industry. I will be talking about Ubisoft again later on in the technology side of uh uh our sound off, but uh it seems that Tencent has gone for a uh pick-a-mix approach rather than buying Ubisoft lock, stock, and barrel and adding it to the vast network of uh AAA publishers uh and developers that Tencent has under its belt. It's actually uh forced um Ubisoft to parcel their core IP assets uh into a operation, uh a new studio operation, and that uh as a division of Ubisoft will be retained by Tencent, uh, which they're paying for. So it's sort of like put the money in the bag uh and uh uh you know I won't point the gun at you anymore. What happens next, of course, with Ubisoft is that they have a major cloud hanging over them with legal action uh uh regarding how their C-suite has been behaving over the last uh few years with um very nasty claims of how they've been treating staff, female staff, uh, as well as uh uh an attitude that was toxic uh within the structure, as well as a failure to be able to maintain their high-level IP to release successful uh series. Now with uh this operation in a new uh let's say a new infrastructure, uh the hope is that we'll get a breath of fresh air that the uh franchises will be able to breathe, because, as I'll state on later, those franchises are incredibly valuable at the moment.
SPEAKER_00:It's an interesting play uh by by both Tencent and Ubisoft to be able to bring in investment, but also you know, have Tencent feel like they're a little bit protected from the over overall um you know issues that they're dealing with.
SPEAKER_03:It kind of puts it into perspective that we're talking about 1.6 billion euros. It kind of gives you uh an inkling of uh what 1.1 billion dollars will get you for a uh top golf operation. But uh again, how important these IPs are beyond just the uh the sales of asset price is very telling in this transmedia market that we're living in. Moving to the tech, as it were, and some of this will touch upon IALPA. I'm gonna go into uh the detail of the trends of uh IALPA later, but I just wanted to touch on some of the top-flowing business that was uh worth note from the tech positioning. We saw the the pivot by a major uh what I would call media attractions company into the competitive socializing sector. So I was the one waving the flag uh uh at the back. Even though I missed the press announcement, Ernest, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Um he made it very clear to me when we met up afterwards. Uh my my absence was noted. Uh that's kind of him to say, but he walked me through to get a better uh handle on what's going on here. And uh there are three key announcements of products that are being developed by uh Triotech. This is the largest number of new releases that the company has made, uh uh uh has revealed at an IALPA in its uh history. Uh the first is what uh you know the energize for me is their interpretation of the cube uh or the uh arcade arena uh or even uh what's our friends at uh uh conductor called theirs, uh their cube?
SPEAKER_00:The arena. It's literally the arena.
SPEAKER_03:All right, yeah. Either way, uh this is a uh LED floored interactive um with some wall uh attachments, cube that you are closed within with a group of people. Uh we have seen examples of this. I I actually use the example of the cube in the UK, uh both in Manchester and London, as the gold standard of what you can achieve with uh this kind of approach. It's very compelling and it also offers an audience experience. Next is Crazy Carts, and it sounds like it says on the tin what it is. Uh, rumor has it that uh Triotech tried to establish a closer relationship with battle carts uh for various reasons, technology-based as well as business-based, they couldn't establish that. And so Triotech has decided to go down the path of developing their own projection mapped electric cart system. Uh, and it was also made clear to me that the cart that was on the booth at the show uh was a placeholder. That isn't actually the final design of the system that they're going to be using. And then the weird one for me out of the three is uh what they're calling electric funfare. Um it is fundamentally a traditional funfare game experience, but incorporating multimedia with LED screens supporting uh what you would usually see as the ball toss into bin kind of uh game experience uh or the down the clown type of experience as an attraction, but pivoted uh very heavily to be uh supported by media, what I would call a fidgetal environment. It is clear that uh these new attractions are pivoting towards proven formulas in competitive socializing. Um, the fun fair uh is clearly fair games, the uh the uh the uh energize is the cube and crazy carts is battle carts or chaos carts or one of the other uh projection uh cart systems, but they are uh leveraging themselves into competitive socializing, being available as an off the uh off-the-shelf system, as well as one other thing, and I'll touch upon that in a little bit.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I mean this is really interesting pivot, and um I I think I would almost call it a pivot, frankly. Uh you know, it's the very rarely do you see any company come out with one, a product that is orthogonal to their their core business, but when they come up with three at the same time, this tells you that something is the wheels on the wagon are wobbling um based on their core product offering. And so they feel like the real need to introduce very quickly things into the the sector in which the uh the the overall uh uh entertainment experience is moving to. Um you know, less uh sitting and consuming and viewing a screen and maybe shooting at screens and more interactivity, social competition, social play, etc. Um, and I think they see this uh, you know, it's it's similar to what we talked about at the LBX show um in our app or debrief just a couple of days ago, where you're seeing all these laser tag companies, these legacy companies that have been building these laser tag systems for decades, are now introducing new products as well. Now they happen to be replicating each other's products, unfortunately, instead of really trying to develop something new, um, like Lasertron has done with their uh with their crazy uh crazy darts and crazy arrows and axe throwing. Um but you know, to see Triotech uh make this type of shift or pivot is really interesting. It would have been great to have seen something a little bit more tactical from them um at this show versus just an announcement. Uh, but I feel like they probably needed to get out in front of everything else that people were going to see at the show to at least put their uh toe in the water or you know, grab their slice of pizza before somebody made buying decisions uh with somebody else and one of their competitors.
SPEAKER_03:Uh the IALPA organization has kind of been shy to uh uh admit to the situation regarding competitive socializing as a possible entrant into the market. And you know, I'm an old enough bunny to have been around uh the IALPA show to see corporations in one sector pivot or shift, as you say, into others. This reminds me very much of the shift from passive uh attractions that use a projection-based to the migration to interactive uh attractions and the addition of gamification or media-based uh attractions. We can definitely say that this is not the only major name that is going to be announcing a suite of uh competitive socializing elements to them. And I wouldn't be surprised if uh the IALPA committee is forced to actually consider having a competitive socializing uh component to the makeup of next year's show. Just compiling uh our coverage of IALPA this year, um, the number of competitive socializing uh products uh and providers there you know outnumbered the VR uh uh considerably and outnumbered, uh I would argue in some cases uh the media-based attractions. But again, an interesting move by Triotech and for a particular reason. But again, we'll come back to that in a minute. Uh as I said, virtual reality wasn't as prevalent uh at the IALPA show compared to the pivot towards mixed reality, where we had a number of companies presenting mixed reality products as the innovative next step, uh, the obvious next step in the evolution of this technology. I picked uh our friends at AllStation because they were kind of a surprise outlier. A Chinese company that has been running at least seven facilities in China using their mixed reality, not augmented reality, mixed reality because it's a pass-through rather than see-through technology. And they're using a Rolls-Royce to drive, uh drive you around the park. We're seeing that$3,000 plus uh Apple Vision Pro headset being used as their everyday drive uh uh for the guests to come to their facility. Uh speaking to the team, we were led to believe that AllStations is the largest purchaser of uh Apple Vision Pros in China for their venues. And you know, if you do the maths in your head, if just one of your venues has about 20 uh Apple Vision Pros, then it's a good reason to turn up with a sock over your head and a gun in your hand to take them away. I mean, this is a lot of uh money, not something I think uh most operators would jump into having uh a$3,000 headset in the hands of consumers, especially the Rolls-Royce uh of uh mixed reality headsets, but uh I can attest to the quality of the experience that was achievable using this high-level technology.
SPEAKER_00:It was a good experience. Uh, we didn't talk about it actually on the show, uh on the show review on the OVEX show. Um it was a good experience. They were doing some really interesting things that I think it was definitely the highest fidelity experience that I've seen from the mixed reality so far. Um, I would have appreciated, and again, you know, that's a demo. Okay, so it's a demo to show off what the what the thing can do with the capabilities. They talked about being able to do custom content as well on their platform, so that's interesting. But um, you know, I would have liked more gameplay, and I think that's one of the things that I appreciated about um uh oh my gosh, I'm going for it.
SPEAKER_01:Dream Park.
SPEAKER_00:What's our yeah, Dream Park, thank you. I was gonna say two-bit circuits, but no, about Dream Park. Um, is that at least there was there was some you know interesting gameplay and interactivity, um, where A stations uh things would just you could really just view and look around and and as more edutainment and experiential, but again, super high fidelity and um be interesting to see where they go.
SPEAKER_03:I'll touch upon this again later uh about the mixed reality that was at the show. But uh you know, I agree with you that A station are going to have to show their A game uh regarding what you get for uh for your uh your money because the novelty value will wear off very quickly with this, and I wouldn't be surprised that they're going to be eating through a lot of content, so their ability to turn around content. All in all, the key thing here is that AllStation came to IALPA to announce their leasing uh uh well, uh their franchise leasing capabilities where you can buy uh their platform and pay a royalty, and you can utilize uh Dead Space within your uh location to be a mixed reality, either a dinosaur experience or a zombie experience or a ninja uh experience. I only got to do the ninja and the uh the dinosaur. You actually got to do the zombie side, if I remember.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, and that actually had a really interesting mechanic in which you could hold up the shield with one hand and then you know you kind of activate uh these these uh knives essentially or like swords that kind of fly at the zombies. And that was a really interesting way to play with the hands without having to hold anything in my hands as well, and had some interesting mechanics with it, but um but yeah, again, you know, it's another zombie shooter, and like I don't think the world needs another zombie shooter, even if they had an interesting way to shoot the zombies.
SPEAKER_03:Uh you better. Get value for money, or else this will be a one and done, and for the type of points that we're talking about. As well as these this company not coming from a true background in theme park experiences and attractions, this is going to be quite a uh proof of uh uh proof of confidence that this is uh a viable business model. Talking about viable business models and MA was deep at it uh during uh IALPA. Our friends at HeroZone continued their world domination tour after uh acquiring the assets of SPRE uh for their uh arena-based VR children's content. They have now partnered uh in an acquisition merger agreement with Phenomena. Phenomena will be familiar to some of our audience uh through their VR Esports Arena platform, a one of the many VR Arena systems that are out there. Another one bites the dust, and uh Herozone gets a little bit bigger. It uh moves itself down to the top of uh the largest operator of uh VR Arena systems, uh just by the number of install base they had uh at the show uh the chance for us to try their Terminator uh Salvation uh VR multiplayer uh free roam game experience. It was in a, I would argue, a 95 or even an 89% complete uh state. It was very good, it was very fun, it was very compelling, but it was missing certain game hooks that uh uh I would advise clients uh to add to any VR experience. Uh whether this was added to or taken away by having such a well-known IP attached to it, uh, I would argue the game was a good experience and it showed the skill set of uh Hero Zone. And one thing about the acquisitions and the continued growth of Hero Zone is that the ability to have more customers under one umbrella creates something I uh we felt felt for some time is needed in the VR market, which is stability and a one-platform rules them all kind of approach. And if that can gain momentum, then uh we can be on a much more stable footing because you know at the moment VR is feeling a little bit of the growing pains in the consumer sector as well as uh in the location-based entertainment sector.
SPEAKER_00:I feel like this was something that we had uh not to do too much of like a patting ourselves on the back, but this is another prediction we had made even earlier this year, maybe or late last year, sometime around it wasn't uh, you know, maybe it was a full year ago, but there was a lot of um, there's so many different VR companies, and we had predicted that there would be a roll-up coming soon. Um you know, either we see VR companies shut their doors because they're unsustainable, or that there would be a roll-up, or both. And we are seeing that, and Herozone is the one that stepped to the front, to the forefront to begin to roll these up. And look, the more that you do this, we've seen this with Genda, the more that you acquire more and you gain more revenue, gain more um users, the more opportunities you have to scoop up more and continue to get bigger. And I think we'll continue to see that with Eurozone. I don't think they're done yet.
SPEAKER_03:No, they're not done yet. Uh, I was joking with the team uh about my private list of companies that they should go for, and I'm not gonna give them free consultancy. Uh but uh there were uh are a number of VR companies out there that are vulnerable to uh acquisition. At the time of uh attending uh Ialpa, I was informed of at least two VR arcade facilities, uh one a chain, the other one a uh well, one a chain of four facilities, one a chain of two, uh, that had gone to the wall, fallen into liquidation. We will talk about those in the next uh uh open and shut, but it kind of underlines what you're alluding to, that we had seen the writing on the wall that there was a coming change. How that writing manifests itself, will this be acquisition and merger, misery likes company, or will this be cold hard liquidation and then acquisition of assets post-mortem? Uh, is the question. And if I was involved in the investment community, I wouldn't be so keen to pick up other people's debts so quickly unless I could see that there was a going concern here, because there's a a fourth or even a fifth possibility here that we're going to see in the transition in the VR and the MR market of a brand new group of clean-shirted investors and evangelists uh and developers turning up and really wanting to distance themselves from the previous uh phase, uh, which I like to call phase four or five of uh virtual reality application in location-based entertainment. And they will want to be treated as uh new skins, as clean uh to this market with brand new ideas and not uh held back by the baggage. But again, uh we're in a period now where uh it's not about the uh technology, it's now about the revenue generation. Moving on, and uh that merger and acquisition uh or that close uh uh affiliation takes hold. Uh, I've actually had the pleasure of doing some consultancy for uh both uh Hero Zone as well as uh for Ubisoft Escape Games uh in the early period of uh the adoption of VR. Uh little known location-based entertainment operation, Ubisoft Escape Games, where they created uh three core uh VR Escape uh experiences based on Ubisoft property. We were talking earlier about Ubisoft being important uh to the mix here in Location-based entertainment. And following iAlpha, we had you know Ubisoft showing their brand new successor to uh Virtual Rabbids. Uh and then in the news, we had uh uh the uh announcement regarding SpawnPoint, who are another player in the VR free roaming arena sector with a considerable number of installations out there, looking towards maximizing their content availability. Some companies make their own content, other companies are now acquiring available content to add to their list, and being able to uh port, as it were, the Ubisoft Escape games content onto your platform and add that to the list of uh properties that you can uh circulate through uh through the platform uh is is a big bonus here. And I think it caught a lot of companies off guard because this is a continuation of that cons uh consolidation of the market, less individual companies and more closer affiliations that share under a common pot. Moving on, and uh another uh aspect that uh I wanted to touch upon here is the sudden explosion of LED uh displays uh at the show. We will talk a little bit about that later, but my main point of bringing this one up uh was regarding what happened to me near the end of the show. I was very lucky to be invited to private screenings off the show floor of new generation LED uh screens, theatre-sized screens for flying theaters, for 4D theatre or 8D theatre uh experiences, as well as for new kinds of immersive enclosure systems. This was a major departure, uh, and again I'd like to thank those at Craftworks for the opportunity to see this. The demonstrations actually happened at Falcon's Creative's uh warehouses just uh down the road from the uh Orlando uh convention center. And I got a chance to see what for me is one of the best 3D LED displays uh systems that I'd ever uh had the pleasure to see at a price point that isn't higher than the projection alternative. So we've got to that point now where the projection industry must be a little bit concerned about what they've got left in their warehouses compared to the flexibility, capabilities, and now uh the uh opportunities that uh LED displays uh have to offer. Think of it from this point of view. I was watching a uh what would be called a dark ride uh experience, similar to a ratatouille kind of experience, that normally would need to have two or three projectors to achieve its 3D uh imagery uh for uh an audience. This kind of technology means that you have to wear passive glasses, you know, the usual Polaroid glasses, but uh the one thing the one problem with 3D projection uh experiences is they're a lot darker than uh just having a single projector because uh the Polaroid glasses darkens the vision and also the need for the convergence for the 3D effect to work properly also impacts the uh, so we say the shine of the experience. But with these LED uh systems, the brightness was turned to the max, the darks were dark, the uh the lights were light, and it was extremely compelling. And while the technology physically may not change greatly, you're removing projectors and replacing them uh with the requirements of an LED, the experiences will now pop much more uh under this tutelage. So it's a double whammy here. We can go back and look at the existing projection attractions and now replace them, domes uh as well as curved screens, uh as well as flat screens with LED, but there's also a possibility that this could be an impetus for the projection industry for a kick in their pants and a chance for them to up their game to stay competitive. So, from my point of view, uh seeing this technology was heartening because I'm now seeing the next trend in immersive technology, as many of uh our followers will know I'm a big uh uh proponent for LEDs, display, large display systems. But from another point of view, uh I think the outlook for media-based attractions just got a lot brighter.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, absolutely. And uh way to reference the brighter there. That was nice. That was a nice way to close that out. Um, but the uh you're beginning to see even the shifts we talked about at the other at the show, um, or you know, on our show two a couple of days ago, the shifts to LED interactivity, uh, so inside of these immersive enclosures. So you have conductors arena, you have Moment Factory's augmented games floor, you've got the Vex uh Party Dash that all have this interactive LED component that is so much more visually appealing than, frankly, I love the gameplay that Cubics has, but I think Cubics is going to need, you know, by InnoWise is going to need to think about doing LED panels now instead of their projection mapping. I think that's the they're absolutely going to have to consider that because it is just you have to be in a dark room, it has to be dark in order to see it. There's a number of reasons why the LED panels are just so much better. And you're beginning to see the pan um the projector companies like you know, Christie, for example, making the shift from projection to uh to LED paneling. They have their core series and they've got their micro, uh their micro tiles as well. And so they're really moving into the LED paneling and LED walls component. And I think they're seeing the writing on the walls um uh at that level and and having to make that shift away from their projectors.
SPEAKER_03:It was interesting or very telling that Christie was the only major uh projector company, or uh I would argue, also LED uh company at the show. Uh no Panasonic, uh no Barco, no Sony, no Samsung. That said, the simulation show, uh the military simulation and training show that takes place directly after uh IALPA at the same venue will have a number of the projection companies there because they know that they still can find a home for their business uh in the commercial simulation sector. But the clock is ticking here regarding how far we move to the next generation of immersive display. VR are being used in some interesting uh areas. We saw Sporttainment uh uh being uh employed as a as a possible platform for VR. Now we've got uh uh fighting, I think it's uh Pacific Rim uh writ uh writ large now. I forget the name of the Hugh Japan film where he uh they were having fighting robots. Uh it didn't do too well in the cinemas, but anyway.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I do remember that. I don't think I've ever actually seen that movie. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:Anyway, uh that that premise is now available. We uh have uh the R.E.K., uh, which is uh kind of they want to be an ultimate fight championship, uh, and they've got some robot fighting taking place where people wearing uh head-mounted displays can control their robots uh and uh uh knock each other out uh for well, at least it's a less bloodied uh experience than uh the uh the normal Ultimate Cage match. For me, it's interesting. Um we've all you know, we've already been concerned about products that were told to be robots and autonomous actually turning out to be telepresence, uh teleoperated. Now we have teleoperated robots able to do things that uh hopefully humans uh don't have to do. Um to watch as a sport, and I wouldn't be surprised that we see uh VR-controlled robots being used in sports uh and entertainment. Uh again, if you're in the uh mascot business for the theme parks, I wouldn't be surprised to see uh the future mascots being a robot with someone maybe uh miles away, telepresence steering them around the park.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, and by the way, it's uh real steel. So I looked it up. Uh the movie was Real Steel released in 2011, and actually, you know, not a bad uh not a bad rating. So I haven't seen it, but uh um yeah, seems like it'd be I I think it's maybe somewhat compelling. I mean, to see robots bash each other to pieces. Um, I don't know. Uh we'll have to wait and see. I mean, I I love um oh my gosh, and now I'm going blank on the name, but the uh where you build these crazy robot contraptions and they like try to rob each other into pieces. What is it?
SPEAKER_03:Robot Wars.
SPEAKER_00:Thank you. Okay, it's on the nose. Uh Robot Wars loved watching uh those shows, partially because the announcers are absurd. Um look, you know, we like to see that, so why wouldn't we like to see this as well?
SPEAKER_03:Uh I think it's it's it's got opportunities, it's got legs, as it were, and it also leads into applications into the entertainment scene in our side of the fence. Finally, uh you know, one of the things that we've been having to do recently is take stock uh of where things are, and you know, it is nearly, well, I suppose on the head, it's 10 years that have separated the boom of uh the this latest phase of interest in consumer VR that has led also into location-based entertainment VR application to where we are now. And you know, the question, the navel gazing has to be where have we come? Uh, where are we going? Based upon the consumer sector, it is fascinating to think that the first machines that I was looking at of this latest phase were homebrew kits uh by a Kickstarter startup and uh an RD project by Valve. Uh and Valve had thrown some of their megabucks uh that they make off of Steam at a pet project run by Gabe or influenced by Gabe Newell. Uh and we had something called the VR room that used the latest panel technology that was available at the time with a very unique tracking system. And they created the VR room, you know, back in uh 20 uh 15, 16, I was lucky enough to sort of see this and sort of rub the chin and go, hmm, it looks like VR could could make it this time, jump forwards now 10 years, and yet again, Valve uh just released their latest interpretation of what they see VR as being. And to be blunt, they have produced a consumer version of the promise that they showed 10 years ago. So I suppose you could say, wait ten years, you need to get the tech. Whether the market is still enthusiastic enough to pay the uh the money to have this VR interpretation, we will have to wait and see, especially as we still don't know the price that they're going to be charging. As it is clear that Meta, even though they dominate the market, uh subsidizing their machines incredibly, have not really achieved the numbers they want. And I I'm led to believe that even Samsung and the launch of their brand new XR platform, you see, rather than focusing on VR but looking at the MR as well as the VR market, they're not seeing the response from their market. So is this 10-year gap the Swan Song? Uh, are we going to then see maybe the niche return to this and the mainstream gloss uh pulled back a bit, and we're going to have to wait maybe another 10 years for the next revolution in uh immersive display technology. I'm banking uh on LBE uh still using VR and headsets, maybe moving away from pure VR towards other kinds of applications, but I'm also very interested what a digital environment using LED displays will offer. No hair muss, no makeup problems, no uh no sim sickness, the ability for the same group of people to see the same experience within an immersive environment that is of a higher fidelity than can be achieved on a headset display or on a projected display is something that uh emboldens me for our future.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Uh completely agree with everything you said. And uh yeah, I do I have always and continue to struggle with VR's uh application at the location. Not that you can't create and shouldn't create really good, compelling uh VR-based experiences for LBE, but for the very reasons you said about the hair muscling, makeup smearing, etc., when you people are typically going out, they want to experience things with their friends and their family, and they're sometimes dolled up and they don't want to, and both the men and you know the men and the women are dolled up and they don't want to mess that up and have that experience. And so anyway, it just it gets in the way of the guest experience, I think, in some ways, unless you're going there exclusively to do VR and knowing that that is going to be happening, um, and that you are going to have uh you know hair uh that has been compressed for 45 minutes or whatever. So um yeah.
SPEAKER_03:As well as the obvious hygiene aspects, of course, but uh yeah, yeah, and throughput and and everything else, right?
SPEAKER_00:That that that you know, VR uh the downsides of VR. There's a lot of really interesting upsides, but those are certainly the downsides that impact the overall guest experience and the revenue you can make from it. Um yeah, and it's finding that balance. Um all right. Well, coming up after the quick break, we will dive into the trends in AI. How are your gameplay arcades by Allen One? Whether it's perfectly point to defective plan, defending officials like something speculated, or defending cities to attend this command rate. Alan One has something to every venue in arcade stores and like two gifts. Let's quote that cost to bring more accessible. Innercard is the only capital system designed, developed, and manufactured all in the one roof. They introduced capital technology to use the industry and has been leading the way for over 30 years. Innercard is so proud to be serving the music industry. And if you are already part of a global family of customers, they hope you will become one too.
SPEAKER_03:Right, and straight into the uh trending AI side. And there's only really one that I wanted to jump on, uh, really from uh IL. But there were a number of products that were claiming to be incorporating AI elements, but I couldn't really nail down exactly what AI elements they had, uh, how much of this was uh hype and how much of this was reality. But our friends at Embed have uh you know incorporated AI now into their uh cashless business management solution, as it were. Uh I I'm uh waiting to get my hands on this to actually see how the AI interfaces, but it is that kind of use of uh AI as uh a smoothing agent between the human interface and uh the data that you want to put in front of the customer. That seems to be one of the prominent applications of where AI really works.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I mean, I I don't know if you have Rollers on the next slide, but Roller also introduced their IQ system uh that is AI driven to take uh and analyze all of the data that roller as a point of sale is coming in. And so, yes, I think we're gonna continue to see more of these large systems that have lots and lots of data points coming together or using AI to bring that data together and be able to do analysis on it that you know a standard reporting engine isn't going to be able to do. Uh, hopefully help bring insights, be able to ask questions of your data and get answers back. And I think that's where we see embed going with this, and that's certainly what Roller's intentions are with their IQ system.
SPEAKER_03:So, yeah, uh that thank you for bringing that up. I didn't include the roller slide here. I didn't include uh Apple Industries, who uh also are talking about AI being used in their uh new uh um uh ID card uh photo booth system. Uh I didn't include photo me who say that AI is being used in their uh uh their photo capture drawing bots toy, and I didn't include our friends at Doff Robotics because uh I was surprised after the interest and success of their uh AI-powered photo booth system. It hadn't really progressed that much uh uh f since uh what we saw last year that was at the on the show booth this year. But uh it it you know the melting pot is that this AI segment uh uh of sound off is going to uh have some life in it still.
SPEAKER_00:Uh for good or something and to be clear, I was only it's like obviously there's all like the AI photo things, but you know, it's like Apple and Doth, and like, you know, again, there's there's there's a lot of the AI photo generators uh out there, and I saw even a couple of other generics on the floor from China as well. Um, but I was more referring to the big data analysis, uh, you know, the AI uh and the power that AI can do to now like evaluate and analyze and drive insights um around your large amounts of data that were was previously unable to do.
SPEAKER_03:I'm really keen uh when I get back into uh operation side uh of our investigation that we have to do for our consultancy to look at creating an AI agent to act as an events uh and operations manager and see how well it can collect data, because that's the whole point. You know, what the large language model machines, it's uh it's you know, you feed in a lot of Lego bricks and it can sort them for you. Uh it doesn't matter if it's going to sort them in the right color or not, it can sort them out, and then it's up to you to take that data and run with it. That's something that I think we all in operations uh you know at the backer house need to be aware of. Uh and of course the dangers of uh these AI systems uh uh and these smart technologies, spoiling all the water, eating all the RAM, uh, and uh screwing over all the bandwidth, they can also go wrong. And we've had now our third major outage uh since uh the lovely AWS problems. Uh we've now had uh the chat GPT go down. You know, people were wandering bleary-eyed out of their houses, able to actually communicate with the real world now that they didn't have to depend on uh Twitter, sorry, X uh or uh uh their chat GPT uh um uh waifu. I you know, I was expecting this to happen while I was in the air. I seriously, you know, I as soon as I was getting on the plane, I said, all right, what major disaster is going to take place that's not going to allow me to get to IALPA? And I was pleasantly surprised when the machine touched down, uh the big silver bird touched down in Orlando, and uh and a slightly inebriated Kevin staggered through uh uh the uh uh the customs control uh, but only to find out the next day that uh the whole of uh social media for some people had uh exploded. We haven't been given really much detail regarding this latest failing. Uh the you know, the important component in the structure that failed this time was Cloudflare. Uh kind of a name that is a warning in itself. Uh anyway, uh I'm led to believe that yet again it's a bad piece of code put through the system, not checked properly, and allowed to migrate across the whole platform before the grown-ups actually saw that there was a problem. Either way, this is now three times that we've had this. Um if you include a Microsoft outage uh a year ago. I am concerned that we all need to come up with a more practical backup solution for when this type of stuff happens. Uh, I don't have the answers to what that backup could be. Uh uh a soft landing capability where you're not faced with a dead page, but you're faced with a please wait, rescuers are on the way kind of approach for this kind of technology, especially as it is so vital to our retail as well as our uh social activities.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I mean, it was really interesting when this went down. Um, we didn't know at first that the entire, you know, most of the, you know, most of the major platforms uh were down, but it also impacted uh Intelliplay. It impacted Roller and Aluvi, and those were just some of the others like actually on the show floor. And this happened Tuesday morning right before the show floor was ready to open, and we're all freaking out because like our products aren't working and we won't be able to do demos, etc. And we all had meetings booked, and um, you know, but then again, then we looked and was like, okay, this is the entire internet is basically experiencing this issue. It wasn't just us. Um, and uh, and part of it is the fact that we are super the internet as a whole, and many of these companies are super reliant on Cloud Player's product. Um, they play a pivotal and an essential role in delivering the security and the performance for you know most of these websites out there. So they really do have a strong role in blocking malicious traffic. They stop hacks all the time, they stop DDoS attacks all the time. And so um they're really important. It's one of the reasons why the IntelliPlay system is built on um on top of CloudFair security. Security system and why all the other point of sale systems that were there have done the same thing. But when they go down, then it can actually impact your business if you're using, you know, one of any of these tools that are running on top of something like Cloudflare. So definitely something to just be aware of and keep an eye out. Um, because this isn't the first outage that Cloudflare has had. Now they got it back up and running pretty quickly, but that uh, you know, but that doesn't mean that it can't happen again.
SPEAKER_03:Belt and braces, it would be nice to be able to support two of these systems, but as we've seen vulnerability across three of these uh infrastructure systems, then it doesn't bode well. And it was kind of interesting to see the first hour of the show opening where I was uh assuming that the problems that I was coming across on people's booze were the usual uh Orlando uh convention center routing problems uh turned out to be international. Uh that said, um the Wi-Fi on the show floor was appalling. You really do need to buy the Ethernet if you're running uh demonstrations that are dependent on smooth connectivity. Now, I've tried to condense, uh well no, I think it's better to say I have concentrated my thoughts from finalizing the coverage of IALPA. It it was a monster to get it into the Stinger report. I've just put in the final touches to this multi-issue. It's usually about four or five issues we do to uh cover uh the whole of uh the IALPA week, as it were. And it's nice to be able to sort of condense that thought and that uh writing and just uh use this as a talking point about the key trends that we saw and maybe give a little bit of a pivot on why we're calling these trends of importance for uh for the industry looking towards 2026-2027. Now, the first one I've alluded to uh already, which is uh our friends at Triaddech pivoting, uh, but also our friends at Doff Robotics have pivoted, and now not everybody who's watching this will be fully aware of these announcements. They are still treated a little bit under uh embargo, and you know, the full details uh can't be discussed here yet. But one of the reasons why Triotech has uh pivoted so hard into competitive socializing uh is not just because they see that that is the future of the market, uh, but also that the company is looking to open its own facility. So we are now moving into a stage where uh rather than uh rather than buy the milk, you own your own cow, as it were, and uh recurring revenues and possibly creating a location-based entertainment facility kind of is attractive, selling to yourself. Uh, if you jump in the time machine with me and go back to the 1980s, uh I'll run away and find a pub. But after uh I come back, uh I would point to you with what would be happening in the Japanese market at that point in time where the Japanese amusement manufacturers were beginning to think, why are we selling to uh uh amusement operators when we could be running the game ourselves? You know, we could be uh selling to ourselves and having the uh the machines operated. And that business has proven incredibly successful for these companies over the years. Some of them have given up on making the games and just continued on operation. Here for Triotech, the opening of a flagship facility, which will have in the basement uh a karting system and have dotted around its competitive socializing, uh, as well as other products from its catalogues, selling to yourself, it's a showroom and it's a great learning experience to be able to do that. And surprise, surprise, our friends at Doff Robotics following their Turkish flotation. They've had to admit that they have two Turkish FEC projects that are underway, and they're actually looking uh towards uh finding a partner for a US facility based again on their own products being uh uh deployed into an entertainment facility.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I mean, we see this actually we see this in this direction and also in reverse. Uh, you know, a lot of uh a lot of manufacturers uh will uh build their own facilities so that they can test their products. I mean, Lasertron has been doing this for years. They actually have Lasertron branded facilities. Um, and so they you know are able to try out and and pivot and test new things. Um you also then have people who start facilities and they're like, hey, I don't like the point of sale that's on the market. And so they go and build another point of sale. This is why we ended up with uh you know a thing like uh what used to be Activate that was sold to Roller and then CenterEdge and and others that are have been in Alouvi even have uh been developed from from park operations and then into their own standalone products. So um, yeah, it's not surprising. I think it is telling that uh Triotech built their own, decided to go build their own facility and realized, hmm, you know, we don't necessarily have the right products that we would put into a modern FEC at this point. And so I think it was a little bit of navel gazing on their end to say, wow, if we wouldn't put our stuff into our own facility, we need to really rethink our product mix.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, as uh as one that's uh jumping up and down in Triotech's face, sort of pointing this out to them, for them to suddenly go, oh wow, you were right. It's kind of you know, you bang your head against the wall for a couple of minutes and just take a deep breath. Uh, it will be fascinating how many of these companies, when they start to operate their own facilities, will understand why we are so adamant about the type of trends and products that they should be producing in the market. I I always like to point to uh time zone, uh you know, going one way with uh its uh ability to understand what a point of sales platform would be needed and leading to embed, and pointing the other way where LAI games uh can use uh their facilities there uh to test products. That that ability is nothing to be sneezed at. And some companies miss out on direct hardware evaluation of their business directions and start talking in an echo chamber, which leads to them going down areas where they're making products that the industry doesn't need. This can only be good for the industry as long as these companies and the others that are looking at doing this learn from the lessons of the market. Moving on, and again, I've uh alluded to earlier about uh the changing of the guard regarding mixed reality and virtual reality. To be clear, VR hadn't disappeared from the IAPA show floor. How I'm describing it to clients and in my writing is that the VR machines that were there bar the Chinese VR systems. The VR products that were actually at the uh IARPA 2025 event were not there for novelty value or claimed innovation value. They were there as products that had proven revenue generation. So less innovation and more application was the uh the order of the game. The Chinese VR systems are another matter, and uh, you know, I'm not going to touch on uh that now. What's going forwards as on the innovation is we were inundated with MR, mixed reality. That's where you're using a headset with cameras on the front, capturing the world around you, and then uh projecting that to you as well as superimposing virtual reality components or synthetic composements into your world. I played five, so four uh of the uh MR systems that were at the show. We've already touched upon all stations, we've already touched upon our our friends at Dream Park, who were setting next door to each other, which was uh uh pretty interesting. Uh we had um uh L3DX, uh FX, thank you, uh, who is a company that specializes in making escape rooms and environments and had partnered with another company uh to create a mixed reality experience. Um and uh my brain is escaping me on number four, uh which will come to me in a couple of yeah, I don't remember.
SPEAKER_00:Maybe there was because uh I didn't get a chance to do it because that they were in a weird location, but you had Verse Immersive, who was in the you had them in the haunt, right? So they actually were in the haunt pavilion.
SPEAKER_03:But they're not MR. And I was I was gonna come to that. Uh uh, hopefully in a couple of seconds I'll remember who okay.
SPEAKER_00:You would consider them AR exclusively.
SPEAKER_03:They are AR. And that and this and sad uh sadly, a lot of companies missed this and have kicked themselves and have been screaming for all of my photos of the experience. Uh, what Brandon's alluding to is uh uh you know Versus has been in our sector for some time with their uh uh Microsoft HoloLens uh experience. And then with Microsoft pulling out of the HoloLens uh system, they were left floundering needing a headset. And they have signed uh you know uh an obvious relationship with Snap. And Snap Spectacles uh offers them the ability to do AR, which is pass-through, where you're actually seeing the world through lenses, and the virtual environment is uh or the virtual elements are superimposed on into your vision uh rather than creating a synthetic uh world rendering. And they were running around, and they had about three or four of their experiences now put onto the Gen A dev kit versions of the spectacle. It is a very slim spectacle. This isn't AI glasses, smart glasses, you know, these are real augmented reality glasses, uh, and spectacle have really worked uh hard on these. The field of view on these systems uh will change. They were a little tight on the versions we were using at the show. They're going to get a little bit bigger for the final production systems that they're going to have next year. Uh, but it was a serious transition. Uh, the verses experiences are good and strong and compelling for what they are, and I think with the right hardware it goes forward. But as I as I corrected, it's it I I see that as the one and only AR that was at the show floor. Um, everything else was mixed reality uh going through the uh the pass-through system. I remember what it was. The Tokyo Dome experience was the other one that I was trying to remember. And that was an interesting one there because they're really mixing mixed reality, pardon the pardon, mixing mixed reality with virtual reality. You sort of start off in a kind of mixed reality experience and then you're dropped into a full virtual reality experience, as well as they were the other company at uh IALPA using uh the Apple Vision Pro as uh their fielded platform, though I think they don't field uh Apple Vision Pros as much at the Tokyo Dome facility as our friends uh uh at A Station. Moving on and uh the uh rise and rise of competitive socializing, we've touched upon that before. Some of us were lucky enough to go to the uh conductor and 501 mixer that took place at Dave and Buster's, where we could actually touch uh and play with the uh social bay installation there. Uh, as I cynically said, the most uh popular and most popular, most used time for that setup at Dave and Buster's they've ever had, I'm sure, but it did show the draw of that on the chauffeur floor. We had all of the companies with the mini golfs uh out, including some we didn't expect. Our friends at Put Shack actually made an attendance uh at ILPA. We had all of uh you know, all of the competitive socializing elements uh thrown to the walls and new entrants, such as what we've been talking about with Triotech, it can't be ignored. Uh it can't be called another Kevin uh trend boondoggle, you know, competitive socializing, social entertainment is here and it's not going anywhere.
SPEAKER_00:Uh 100%. I think if there was really any significant trend to take away from the show floor, uh it is that social entertainment is here to stay for the next round of entertainment experiences. Um and there will be some experimentation, there will be some winners, there'll be some losers, there will be people who come up with ideas like uh pickleball uh social bays um that may or may not work. Um, but there will be uh but but no doubt there uh this social entertainment across the board is is here.
SPEAKER_03:The competitive socializing kinds of also bookends with the active entertainment and sport tamer. It was interesting to see products like uh Home Run Dug Owl offering a fantastic competitive socializing environment, but using all of the tools of sporttainment or active entertainment. We had Batfast at the show, um Bat Box, uh we had uh the golf simulators from uh HD Sports, we had all of the sporttainment components thrown into the entertainment mix, and active entertainment really is married closely to uh the leisure entertainment business, from the trampoline parts to the climbing walls to the laser tag, can all be defined as active entertainment experiences. But there is that entertainment component, the gamification that's strong. And if you get the gamification and hospitality mix right, then you're in competitive socializing. So if you look at the nasty Venn diagram that uh I threatened to unleash uh upon our audience, the next sound off where you can see all of the intervening components that we need to take into consideration for our sector, you will see that if you can create something like big hoops, which is that picture there of an automated uh and compelling gamified hoops experience using projection mapping and tracking and a good game engine, and then throw in hospitality, then you are looking at uh a competitive socializing experience. I'm not sure where overactive and active ends and competitive socializing and social entertainment end. You know, I know that it's difficult to try and drink a gin and tonic while playing on a uh trampoline, but at the same respect, it's interesting to watch people exert themselves as the audience while uh enjoying the uh hospitality of the venue. Again, if you're looking at competitive socializing as one of those strong trends that uh was defining itself at IALPA 2025, then you also need to accept that sporttainment was uh uh the other facet of that coin. And then we go on to the ubiquity that is licensing. You know, the IALPA has embraced this with its own licensing components uh on the uh to the show. Uh IALPA has also partnered with the licensing uh association uh to formulate closer ties, and it's hard to find a product on the show floor that didn't have some link to a license or a brand, uh, an IP or a movie franchise, be it the lowliest pinball, to the highest redemption. Some works, sometimes it's wrapping uh a gold brick uh with titanium, in other cases it's uh covering up a turd. But either way, we are seeing licensing uh being used incredibly hard. One of the ones that I wanted to point out too is the G.I. Joe uh uh appearance on the show floor, which is one of those last-minute whoops, we need an IP to sell this product kind of approach. Uh the Chinese game uh from Frame Store is a great shooting game, but it is very Chinesey, and uh so uh you know, changing this to be a GI Joe property is going to be interesting. That said, our friends at Sega had their ball tossing game with Simon uh as its uh brand, and you know the jury's out, as Adam uh eloquently said during uh our sort of round table uh or cooldown after uh the IALPA recording, that maybe these IPs uh are not aimed at the right audience. Was it? Uh the words you keep on using, I don't think you know what it means. Yes, everybody knows what licensing means, but they may not be thinking that these are the right uh licenses. And it goes back to a phrase that I've been using recently of the old man syndrome, where uh the uh the RD team guys may understand the basics, but they're not understanding their audience. We in the location-based entertainment industry are renowned for not really having that close a contact uh with the people who pay our wages, the the actual audience. I'm not sure that a uh 10-year-old, 12-year-old, 13, 14, 15, 16-year-old is going to be that interested in Simon, the classic uh uh toy from the 80s, the same way that uh that same age demographic may not be that interested in G.I. Joe. Just because you can get your hands on an IP doesn't mean it's the right IP for your audience.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I completely agree. I mean, this and I really question the the importance of licensing, right? I mean, I know you have that there, um, that that you especially when the consumer is not going to connect with the IP anyway, but like they see a cool gun aimed at a screen with some stuff that they can go and sit down and play. Like, do I care or do I even need a GI Joe IP on it? Or could it be some generic brand that's made up um and just allows great gameplay? Like, I think sometimes we uh have been in the in the recent years have been relying heavily on licensing and IP to drive uh traffic to that particular machine or game or even venue instead of focusing on really good gameplay. Uh that Simon game, frankly, is a giant piece of shit. Um, I played it. Um, it is uh nothing at all like the game. It was difficult to play. It was difficult to throw the balls through the through the gaps in the holes. So, first of all, like I'm not a bad throw, I'm not a great throw, um, but I probably got 50%. Right, and and as somebody who played Simon as a kid and loved it and like played it obsessively, um, it had nothing to do with the actual game of Simon other than making the tones when you went through the holes. Um, there was actually no memorization, or I thought maybe there was, and I was trying to like anticipate where the balls to go next based on the pattern. No, there was no pattern. So, anyway, all that being said is like it's one thing to take an IP and make it relevant to the gameplay and make it relevant to the audience. Um, it's another thing to just take a piece of IP and throw it on a game and you hope that helps people play it more instead of focusing on the core gameplay element.
SPEAKER_03:Why so many movies have sequels? It's not that the sweet sequel has to be good, it's just that you have the memory berries from the original. Um, questions will have to be asked about Simon internally, um, whether that was the right way to go. Um, and I'm sure I I, you know, uh we're being honest here, I had problems with another licensed product uh at the show, the Ubisoft All-Stars VR experience. Um, you know, I I found it very frustrating that such a slam dunk opportunity was missed. Uh I'll keep my powder dry about that because I'm led to believe that uh my frustration and others' frustration has made manifested its way up the chain of command, and maybe they're going to make some changes to that product. But uh I don't know what you can do to Simon, but uh I definitely know what you can do to uh all stars to try and improve that. The other ubiquity on the show floor, of course, was claws, claw machines are plenty. Uh, for the first time, some people got a chance to see the new generation claw machines uh and crane machines and actually understand the difference between the traditional approach and the the modern approach. We also got a chance to see some of the new generation prize merch that needs to support these machines. Um I'll point to Alan uh Alan One's butt as uh that type of uh branding merch.
SPEAKER_00:To be clear, not Alan One's butt, uh Alan One's butts on things. Um things butts on things.
SPEAKER_03:And uh first chance that people had to see a Kiddleton self-service machine. There were there was a lot of um uh forced acceptance by some companies that they had to up their game regarding their claw uh machine offering, even to the point that Elot uh went through the process of uh having a private behind-the-scenes launch of a brand new approach to a machine that I'm I'm sure four years ago they said they wouldn't need it to have made because they had crane machines at home. Well, that market's gone and this market's here, and it was evident that uh clockades are here for the foreseeable future. And then finally, uh well, the last two uh aspects for me the uh the uh it'd be nice to learn to type properly, but the uh growth of the escape uh and mission room side of our business uh was strong. Uh if you haven't had a chance to look at the Creative Works uh detonation machine, uh this is a arcade escape product that uh fires my imagination of where it could be deployed and what it could be uh to the market. And if you haven't had a chance to see uh um the AVS companies, um sorry, CVAs companies, uh uh escape pods, as I like to call them, uh then you you really do need to catch up on the new application of escape gaming uh and mission gaming that was just seen across the show floor. We've always joked about this in the location-based entertainment attraction market, how the escape game industry is its own little universe, but it's not so little. There are you know calculations that are 50,000 escape rooms dotted across the globe, but you know, that number comes uh from just you know uh an amalgamation of uh new openings and existing sites. It is an established and proven format, but it isn't part of the theme park or the attractions or the amusement industry. Well, these appearances uh during the show look like uh that uh divide is beginning to grow closer together.
SPEAKER_00:There's no question, um, especially at the mission room level. Um, you know, I think the the smaller form factor, shorter gameplay escape room concept is interesting, like the mini escape games, I guess maybe we'll call them. Um but the mission rooms for sure uh had a strong presence. Surprisingly, we didn't see uh you know vendors like Time Mission who have been on the show floor before. Um, but there were certainly others that are focused on developing mission room concepts. You could make an argument that uh Triotech's Electrify um is sort of like a quasi-mission room experience, right? Um so I think they were definitely somebody who's making that shift or at least recognizes the value there.
SPEAKER_03:So um X Cube, as I always say Oh, XCube, right, yep, exactly.
SPEAKER_00:XCube is another like time mission competitor for sure. Um, you know, you could argue Activate wasn't on the show floor, but um, you know, an X Cube, Activate, Time Mission, etc. Right, those guys are all playing in the same sort of adventure room, mission room space. Uh so 100% a trend. And you know, fits interestingly in like that social entertainment element that's like this blend of social entertainment and escape rooms, um, to create something that's like shorter, time-based, more social, collaborative, and um, you know, you could take a break from doing your mission rooms to have a drink and some food and then go back to doing more mission rooms again versus the hour-long escape experience.
SPEAKER_03:I I feel that uh the right themed escape room. Let's stick with mission room, the right themed mission room uh could be popped into a competitive socializing and sit alongside the karaoke, sit alongside um, you know, whatever the sport tame it is that you have, and then suddenly my mixed-use leisure entertainment facility concept has a lot lot stronger legs than just depending on uh some um mixed reality attractions uh to keep the audience coming back for more. Interesting thing about XCube, um, they also kind of cross over into the licensing argument because I was uh uh informed by the company at the show that they just signed a deal to have Traitors, the uh popular television series, now turned into a uh a kind of whodunit experience uh that you can play within their enclosure system. Finally, um I've already touched upon the big applications of LED screens, but we also had the smaller, more in-your-face pardon the pun uh applications. Many people got got their chance to see Vex's uh Party Dash for the first time and can now understand why a predominantly VR Arena uh entertainment platform developer would pivot so hard into what I would call an immersive display uh entertainment product. We also had a fusion product by one exhibitor, which included the use of uh LED screens uh as well as CGI characters with motion capture uh staff controlling, so that the day of the mascot could become endangered by the usage of uh more fidgetal environments rather than having someone dressed up as Mickey Mouse wandering around your facility. You could have screens placed in your facility uh where the mascot will appear and be live and interact. Uh, if that is suitable. Again, the physical nature of the mascot compared to a digital Vactor, uh, you know, they they bring different things to the table. But I just wanted to kind of end on this point of saying that the LED power uh of technology wasn't just on the big attractions as we alluded to earlier, but also it had a part to play for the smaller attractions. Anyway, I bored you all long enough with uh our hundredth episode. Um we need to get a sponsor from a sleep aid or a mattress company, I think, in the future.
SPEAKER_00:That's a really good pillow. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_03:Good pillow. Well, as long as it's one particular pillow manufacturer, but yeah, definitely a good pillow manufacturer. The uh interest uh from IALPA, I've received a lot of LinkedIn inquiries and stuff like that, wanting to know specific was this product here or is this type of thing here? Please be assured that our IAPA coverage that will be appearing in the next couple of days will be extensive, uh as always, and it will go into detail. But if you have any questions or if you wanted to point us to a product that you think we may have missed, you have my LinkedIn and my email there. And uh please jump on board the coming Stinger Reports. Uh, and uh let's hope that next year's coverage will be equally as uh extensive.
SPEAKER_00:Absolutely love it. All right, well, Kevin, um congratulations on hitting a hundred sound off episodes.
SPEAKER_03:Umgratulations to us, Brandon. It has been an honor to do this. I don't think I could have done this on my own. I definitely know I couldn't have done it on my own. Thank you for your hard efforts in putting this together and also in offering support to my lunacy.
SPEAKER_00:I love it. Um it's been an honor as well and a pleasure, and I look forward to the next one hundred with you.
SPEAKER_03:If we survive.
SPEAKER_00:We'll see you guys on the next one.
