Bob Cooney’s new VR guide is out now

Bob Cooney, one of the world’s most renowned VR experts, has released his Spring edition of The VR Arcade Game Buyer’s Guide, a comprehensive guide to the location-based VR market and he speaks openly about The Park Playground, including a full review of the franchise model. Here are some highlights.

Bob Cooney, one of the world’s most renowned VR experts, has released his Spring edition of The VR Arcade Game Buyer’s Guide, a comprehensive guide to the location-based VR market and he speaks openly about The Park Playground, including a full review of the franchise model. Here are some highlights.

“Competitive socialization is the new hot buzz in the location-based entertainment industry. New concepts are popping up everywhere. People love to socialize, and lighthearted, fun competition creates an experiential framework for people to spend a few hours together without the pressure of making conversation the focal point. 

"Social experiences differ from shared experiences like movie theaters. In a shared experience, the activity IS the experience. The key to making a shared experience social is reflection… Most VR games are shared experiences. With a framework for reflection, we can take advantage of the opportunity to make these social. 

"Successful operations like The Park Playground in Europe have integrated a café and single-player VR games into their package. Everyone purchases a minimum 60-minute experience, including a free-roam game, single-player games, and a social VR experience. The Park Playground offers a lounge for socialising.

The Park is a franchise spun out of Telenet – the giant media conglomerate in Belgium. With about a dozen locations in western Europe.

“The Park have developed one of the most promising business models I’ve seen in the VR arcade industry."

The Park curates an experience that, despite the isolating nature of VR, is inherently social. The typical Park Playground has two free-roam areas of about 1000 square feet, each capable of handling six players. They also have between 8–12 single-player stations, and Richie’s Plank can hold six players taking turns. With the café capacity, The Park’s occupancy is easily 40 people at a time… and they manage to cram that into 4000 square feet. 

The Park Playground Franchise Model Review

I’ve been to almost all their locations in Belgium and the Netherlands and spent days at their corporate HQ interviewing their management team. The Park was incubated by Telenet, the largest media company in Belgium. They have more than a dozen locations now and are growing rapidly. The Park’s operating model is a combination of single-player room-scale, and multiplayer free-roam. There’s a simple café and they can handle 40 customers at a time in a 4000 square foot space. The Park recently ported their content from backpacks to native all-in-one headsets using the VIVE Focus 3.

“The most diverse library of exclusive content of any VR franchise I’ve seen.”

The hallmark of a valuable franchise is its operations system. The Park’s gig-economy employment model is one of the biggest innovations I’ve seen in the LBE market. Their staffing model is like Uber (which makes sense since their first CEO ran Uber Eats in Belgium). Casual workers are notified of bookings, and they can pick their shifts. The hiring and training program is gamified, with staff levelling up based on the net promoter scores of their customers.

Bob’s Take: I like these guys. I considered working to bring this concept to the US, but there had not been enough time for the existing stores to fully recover from the pandemic for me to build 100% confidence in the model. But they’re damn close, and of all the operating models, this is by far my favourite.