Competitive gameplay for events

Competitive gameplay, personalized experiences and localized offering combined with easy access are key to provide your visitors with an engaging, multi-activity entertainment attraction that delivers a reliable and measurable return on investments.

Scale your business by adding competitive gameplay for events

There are four elements that are essential to be able to continuously tailor and personalize your entertainment attraction for your evolving customer needs: technology, gamification, mobile, and competitive play.

Technology: A modern attraction does not only provide a suitable experience to your customers but includes insights on usage, gameplay and customer behavior to have a real-time understanding of your investment. Feature updates and easy modification to gameplay serve the various needs of your audience structure in the long run.

Mobile: While your customers enjoy the entertainment at your location, offer them an attraction that is sharable and accessible also after the play.

Gamification: Games need to be easy to learn but hard to master. Access to different game levels with dynamic game mechanics allow multiple in-game experiences and keeps players repetitively engaged.

Competitive gameplay: Merging fun and competitive entertainment can escalate your exposure to new generations of customers and is a scalable way to package various game experiences in different events.

We have put together a document that introduces various different competition formats and examples of how leisure industry operators can organize events suitable for a variation of group sizes and skillsets. Click the image below to access the document.

Localize and personalize your offering

Competitive play merged with easy video sharing embedded in events is a scalable option to provide already existing clients with a new game experience and expand your offering to new audiences. Before you start tailoring events with competitive game formats it is useful to look into:

• Whom do you target? 
• Do you want to create a completely new game experience or upgrade your current offering with new experiences and more service options?
• What resources can you use to market the new offering either in advance or when your customers are already on-site?
• How many resources can you use to create and perform the new offering? Which service level do you want to provide or add?
• What is your brand-specific concept and which game and competition format supports this best?
• Do you aim for repetitive visits and long term relation with your customers, want to encourage your customers to consume more beverages or spend a longer time at your venue?

Not every new offering needs to be a full-blown event but rather an added service level or experiences to already existing attractions. That's where technology and gamification come in handy. Allowing easy and fun play embedding in a competitive play surrounding for different age range and group size gives you flexibility. ValoClimb and ValoJump provide game options from preschool age to the professional climber and trampoline jumpers. In addition, using a mobile application like ValoApp provides smooth selfie video saving and sharing as well as game-related notifications to boost repetitive play or revisits.

Please reach out to me if you like to go through game-specific options to match your monetization model or tailor it to your key target group.

Audience: choose suitable games and features

Choose game levels that should be easy to learn, but hard to master for the targeted age group and skillsets.

Kids ages 4 -10: primarily interested in the games and fun, easy to play and fewer rules and more time for free play, utilize game characters to boost storytelling. 

Kids ages 8 -16: young teenagers, young athletes, games that are fun and challenging, games for dual player setup add the competitive feature. Leaderboards to compare scoring.

Families: parties & events, social factors and shareable experiences are highly valued, video sharing feature can be used as an added service.

Adults ages 25-40: young parents, social experience and recognition, want to save memories that can be shared easily with friends and family. Some love turning key service packages to get time out while kids are having fun, others want to join the party while focusing on the fun, not the organizational part.

Companies and team retreats: focus on gamification and entertainment to boost social interaction, ready programme preferred to guide through the event.

Sports professionals: focus on reaching new high scores and competitive gaming, dual play, comparing play and eager to beat the last score at a fast pace.

If you have looked at who is your core audience and your desired service level, you can go into detail about which competitive play and games suit your plans and target audience.

Integrate competitions into events packages

Here I listed event examples that include competitive gaming formats for different age group and group sizes, private and public events. The competitive element and format can be modified to your setup and attendee size. In addition, you find recommendations for games included in the Valo Motion service.

1. Event package: age group 4-11 years.
2. Event package: age group adults.
3. Public event (dual play): age group 11+.

1. Birthday Party. Age 4-11 years. 

Super Birthday

Own instructor, guided activities, party room, catering, gift for the birthday hero and party competition, free time for the parents, receive sharable recordings from your kids' gameplay.

• 2 hours, 8-10 attendees

Programme

30 min Catering + birthday session and opening presents in the party room area.

30+ min Competition format "Race to the top" – Compete to become the winner of the day. Recording of selfie videos.

45+ min free playtime according to your park policy.

15 min end of the event: reward the winner and small prizes for all participants.

Recommended games for ValoJump: 

• Toywatch – Crazy Mode (3+) 
• Toywatch – Numbered levels (8+)
• Skytails– Level: 5 Cloudland (11+), not recommended for small trampolines
• Skytails – Race (dual play, 11+), not recommended for small trampolines

Recommended games for ValoClimb:

• Hullaballoon – Birthday Mode
• Whack-A-Bat

2. Company retreat. Adults.

Company retreat and team building

Own instructor and guided activities, party room, catering & beverages, 2 competitions, free time to test out more games.

• 2 hours, 8-16 attendees

Programme

10 min welcome & instructions for the event 

10 min warmup & exercises and learning jumping or climbing tricks

30 min competition 1 "Race to the top"

10 min break [leave enough time for social interaction and access to beverage]

30 min competition "Knock-out" and "Group-robin format"

30 min catering & beverages + rewarding

Recommended games for ValoClimb:

• Flash
• Shadowlings 
• Climball

Climball is a two-player game and can be played in a one-on-one knock-out or double-elimination format for competitions. Here an attendee group size of 8 or 16 works best. For 16 attendees I recommend running the competition simultaneously at two walls despite the semi-finals and finals to shorten up the waiting time for those not playing.

3. Public Event for ValoJump Dual System. Age 11+ years.

Monthly Superhero

Public event with One-on-One matches using a knock-out system. Either individual sign-up or for full groups. Can be applied as monthly, repetitive competition with changing games and required skill levels.

• 1.5 hours, 16 attendees

Programme

10 min welcome & instructions for the event

10 min warm-up & exercises, each player shall warm-up

• Allocate players, or raffle who plays the first round against whom
• Each pair competes
• The winners continue to compete in successive rounds while losers are knocked out

30 min One-on-One matches, winner proceeds to next round 

15 min for semi-finals and final + time for a break and socialising between players

15 min catering & beverages + rewarding the winner

Recommendation for ValoJump: Jumpball, 2 players game, dual system

• Each Jumpball game takes about 90-120 seconds plus overtime in case of a tie-break.

Other recommended games for competitive on-site events at dual systems are Super Stomp and Skytails Race. Using group-robin formats and double-elimination tournament features allows you to adjust the game schedule according to the attendee group size.

Throughout the event, allow easy access to refreshments and time that players can socialize. Think about offering each attendee to redeem a voucher for beverages to increase overall consumption at your location.

If you want to know more about how to use competitive game formats in events to boost revisits or create new entertainment offerings by using ValoLeague and ValoApp, please don't hesitate to book a meeting with me.