What Are the Key Components for the Best Out-of-Home Social Gaming Venues?
The entertainment venues that figure out how to provide the key components will become a group’s default destination: the place they pick for a casual night out with friends and family, birthday parties, office events, and celebrations. Getting there takes four ingredients all working together:
- A well-designed social gathering space that is integrated with each Social Gaming experience.
- Three or more premium Social Gaming experiences, each with a wide variety of fun, easy-to-play games, and capable of being played by a wide range of participants.
- Food and drink that’s effortless to enjoy while guests play.
- A steady stream of new games that provide guests with tempting reasons to come back to play the new games with friends and family.
Any one of these on its own is a critical feature. All four together are what ultimately drive the most repeat visits.
Variety: Everyone Finds Their Favorite
The people in a group almost never love the same things. One friend lives for darts, another wants to throw axes, and a third is happiest shooting a real arrow into a bonus target. Even on the same experience, participants gravitate to different games.
That’s why variety matters at two levels. First, every out-of-home entertainment venue needs a variety of Social Gaming experiences, such as Krazy Darts, Krazy Arrowz, or Krazy Axes alongside Duckpin or Full-size Bowling, or other popular Social Gaming experiences. And each one needs a deep library of fun and easy to play games.
The goal is simple: every guest plays two or more Social Gaming experiences per visit as well as a variety of games on each. This gives each person multiple opportunities to discover their favorite Social Gaming experience and favorite games to play. When everyone in the group finds something they love to play, the outing is a hit, and sets up the required conditions needed for the group to want to come back again and again.
Make It Okay Not to Play
A great Social Gaming experience never forces anyone to play. Some guests don’t want to, and some can’t. Either way, they should feel like they are a part of the group experience whether they play or not.
Design for it. Seating, sightlines and table space should make watching, cheering, laughing, eating, and drinking feel like a natural way to join in. Guests who hang out all night and have a great time socializing with their friends or family is a big win. And, they’ll want to come back with the group again.
Built for the 90 Percenters
As I’ve written before, the vast majority of our potential guests are what I call the “90 percenters.” They come to socialize and the game is one of the reasons to gather, not the point of the night. The other 10% are competitive socializers who care more about winning, scoring, and topping the leaderboard.
Venues that last will offer a wide variety of Social Gaming experiences (4 or more), and they’ll design every one for the 90 percenters. The best social gaming experiences enable participants to take turns playing the game. Taking turns gives each player the opportunity to be in the spotlight.
Being in the spotlight can be a good or bad experience. If we want it to be a good experience, the game settings should be defaulted to their easiest settings. This helps to ensure that every player is able to score points and contribute to their team’s success.
Ultimately, the Social Gaming experience keeps the group together and gives them lots to talk about while playing, laughing, eating, drinking, and bonding with each other.
Food and Drink Belong in the Game
Eating and drinking shouldn’t mean leaving the action. Guests should be able to order, eat and refill without stepping away from their group’s social gathering space. When food and beverage is built into the experience, guests stay longer, spend more and remember the night as one seamless outing.
New Games: The Movie Theater Model
Out-of-home venues need compelling reasons for guests to come back. The strongest one is something new.
Software-based Social Gaming works like a giant Xbox or PlayStation. The hardware stays on the floor, and a continuous flow of NEW, low-cost game releases keeps reinventing it.
The continuous flow of new games provides operators with something fresh to promote on a regular basis, with no new hardware investment and no additional floor space.
It’s a bit like the movie theater model: a new BIG movie release brings people back. But there’s a key difference. Most people see a blockbuster movie one time, but a great NEW Game is designed for repeat play and to get players to return to play it again and again!
A venue that pairs a growing library of perennial games with continuous flow of new game releases is designed to get players back more frequently.
The Opportunity
Venues that provide great social gathering spaces that are integrated with multiple premium Social Gaming experiences, easy to access food and drink, and a consistent flow of new fun and easy to play games for a wide range of participants, along with a broad variety of perennial favorites will become their guests’ go-to destination.
Social Gaming is a huge opportunity for the best entertainment center operators, restaurants, bars, microbreweries, and resorts looking to extend their guests’ stay and bring them back more often.
I’d love to hear what you think. Reach me at jkessler@lasertron.us.
Thanks for reading!
Jim Kessler