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February 22, 2024|8 min read
Upward VR co-owner, Will Stackable, offers tips on how to to start and run a successful VR Arcade.
Rather read-through than watch? Transcript below!
[Begin Transcript]
Probably the single most important part of our whole arcade is actually the software we use to run the arcade. When we first launched, we were timing things with stopwatches, we were having to go over to the stations and switch the games from Brookhaven to Arizona Sunshine. Once we had 10 stations, you’d imagine it was just a total nightmare. We had to have a lot of employees on staff all the time and customers were having to take the headsets off, ask for help, and it just wasn’t a great experience. When we started using SpringboardVR here at the arcade, it was a total game changer. Not only did it create a great customer experience where people could put the headset on and pick and choose their games, they could see how much time they had left, they could call for help. All that, but also for employees. It let them monitor and manage all of our stations in a really easy to use way, where they could see exactly who was in what station, how much time they had left, and so they could manage the whole flow of the calendar.
So when things got busy, they’re able to see who was almost out of time, and who just started and so they knew exactly what stations were going to be available. Not only that, but the booking feature is absolutely a game changer because now customers can actually just book on the website, pay for it, and when they walk in they’re already in the calendar. That reduces a huge amount of a load on the employees and it lets them show up, immediately get into their station and not have to wait in line or deal with any of those other issues. When a customer first walks in to your arcade, and they put that headset on, that is the first time they’ve ever been in virtual reality and for a lot of arcades it’s not a great experience. When we first started it, it was pretty terrible.
They’d put it on and you saw all this steam home, and when something would break or the game would crash so they wanted to switch, they had to pull the headset off and so SpringboardVR has been huge for us, because when that customer put the headset on for the first time, they’re in this beautiful environment that’s really interesting to look at, this fantasy world. They’ve got all the games. When they hover over the game titles, the video pops up so they can see what they’re about to play. They can pick and choose a game and easily switch back and forth between them. Not only that, but there’s a tutorial, so instead of our employees having to spend 15 minutes explaining all the buttons and then walking them through things, there’s an interactive tutorial where they can click on it and immediately understand how to play, how to use the controllers, how to switch in between games, without the employees even having to be present. I highly recommend you looking into some kind of game launcher software for your arcade. It doesn’t have to be SpringboardVR, I know there are other ones out there, but that’s been the one that’s really worked well for us.
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