g4metime
Hamburg, Germany
Leon Groenewoud always wanted to run a gaming centre. He’d been in the esports and gaming industry for many years — and finally, 2023 was the right timing to make the leap.
G4METIME in Hamburg, Germany, has many rooms for groups and families to play together in, with all sorts of PC and console setups. And of course, he wanted to offer more.
“VR was something we couldn’t miss,” he says. “Everybody wants to do VR.”
Leon was no stranger to VR — which meant he knew not just any VR would do.
“I had lots of experience with Quest and VIVE, but only single player VR stuff. That was not something I wanted to offer in a gaming center, I wanted something for groups.”
Could Escape Rooms Be The Answer?
He was also thinking about physical escape rooms. Looking around Hamburg, he saw some 30 businesses offering them, so they’re clearly popular in his market. But he encountered some of the big challenges in running physical rooms. They’re expensive to build and install, and once you’ve got one in, you can only sell it to the same customer once. Then, you’ve got to pay to remove it all and put in a new one. And while many people are escape room enthusiasts nowadays, there is still some hesitance.
“There are also a lot of people who are scared to be locked in a room and can’t go out, because if you go out the group loses.”
That’s a big drag on a business’s return on investment. You’ve got to time it right for having gotten the most out of your market, and be able to take the hit on the space not generating revenue during the downtime.
Discovering Multiplayer VR Escape Rooms for Businesses
The desire for group VR and something like an escape room led to Leon checking what was out there. He found several VR suppliers and chose vrCAVE, having seen that vrCAVE’s VR escape rooms were the perfect answer to all those worries about physical rooms.
“That’s all the advantages of a VR escape. If you don’t want to do it anymore, if you’re scared or whatever, you can take off your headset and you can sit there and the rest can continue to play.
“I always tell that to the customers that are coming in here. Nobody ever took it off. Everybody always enjoyed it.”
He also liked that you’re not constrained to the limits of the building. While the playspace is set, the experience goes beyond it.
“You can actually see the sky or the moon or whatever setting you’re in. And that’s something that physical escape rooms can’t do.”
And of course, there’s the size of the game catalogue. vrCAVE currently has 8 VR escape rooms available, each with a different theme.
“They’re all escape games but are very different. You pick the scenario you want. If you’re into space, pick that game. If you’re into pirates or western, all options. Every game is different, the riddles are different, the whole look and feel. Physically we’re in the same room, but every game is a whole new story.”
That solves the problem of repeat business. No need to strip a room and rebuild — they’re all in the same headset. And vrCAVE releases one new game per year. G4METIME even uses this to spur competition among groups
“We also have high scores. The best three groups of the year get invited to see the new game first, that’s always exciting, so we have a bit of competition. Sometimes people have to think, should I take a hint or not, because a hint will take away from the time and they might not end up in first place.”