By Lou Pizante, The Experientialists
The missile hits just before the final turn.
You’re coming off a high-speed descent from RPM Raceway’s upper deck, drifting low into a wide, banked curve, when the red icon flashes on your steering screen. Shields down. Too late. The kart stutters—motor choking for a breath—as your momentum bleeds away. You feel it in your gut: he’s got you.
The screen flickers again, then his face pops up—your best friend, your roommate, your now mortal enemy—grinning like a Bond villain as he boosts past you in a blur of blue streaks and bad intentions.
You recover, slam the accelerator, and slingshot down the final straightaway, your kart hugging the track like it’s trying to escape gravity. You’re still in it. Just not in first. Not yet.
A market fixated on glory
Play isn’t a genre. It’s a spectrum.
We are living in a golden age of darts, drinks, and leaderboard drama. It’s tech-infused ping-pong in Shoreditch, sensor-tracked minigolf in Scottsdale, smart-target axe-throwing in Sydney. The activity barely matters. What matters is the alchemy: playful friction, social lubrication, and margin-rich hospitality—all lit by LED and optimized for Instagram.
The model, now branded competitive socializing, has found enthusiastic suitors in landlords and private equity firms alike. And for good reason: it turns casual nights out into structured revenue engines. It’s a bromance of the boardroom variety—experience venues that flirt with fun but marry scalability.
But as the scoreboard takes center stage, something quieter—and potentially more valuable—is being edged out. Competitive play, for all its kinetic thrill, is only one note in the symphony of how people engage. It rewards extroverts, risk-takers, and revenge-driven roommates. It fits certain boxes: short dwell times, loud groups, tight rotations. But it doesn’t fit everyone.
Many guests aren’t looking to win. They’re looking to unwind. To explore. To connect. Or to disappear into a world that doesn’t require keeping score.
And this is where the industry’s infatuation becomes a limitation. It confuses a successful format with a universal truth. It builds for what’s legible to investors, not what’s memorable to guests. In doing so, it leaves people—and profit—outside the sliding doors.
If operators want to build experiences that endure, they need a broader playbook. One that accounts not just for competition, but for cooperation. Not just intensity, but ease. One that reflects the full emotional terrain of play—so we can design not only what people do, but how they feel when they do it.
Plotting the geometry of play
The industry’s fascination with competition has generated a wave of leaderboard-driven venues, but rarely with a coherent framework for understanding play itself. If we’re serious about building for how people play, we need a better map.
At the heart of that map is a two-axis matrix. One axis charts Competitive versus Cooperative socializing: are players facing off or teaming up? The other maps Intense versus Relaxed play: is the activity demanding focus and energy, or does it allow for snacks, banter, and off-script detours?
This yields four distinct quadrants—each with its own emotional logic, design imperatives, and commercial upside. Think of it less as a taxonomy and more as a tool: a way to understand not just what guests do, but why they do it, how they feel doing it, and what systems support or sabotage that experience.
And like any good framework, it comes alive in practice. So let’s ground it in a few case studies—each a real-world exemplar of a quadrant in motion.
Intense competitive socializing: RPM Raceway’s Kart Klash
RPM Raceway doesn’t just sell speed—it sells sabotage.
Kart Klash is a multi-level racetrack outfitted with LED screens and digital power-ups, turning go-karting into something closer to Mario Kart meets Mad Max. You don’t just pass your opponent—you missile them into oblivion. One button to shield, one to boost, one to obliterate your roommate’s avatar while he howls in helpless defeat.
It’s loud and fast. It’s calibrated for adrenaline and designed for rivalry. Every corner is a decision, every lap a miniature arc of revenge and redemption.
“This next generation of competitive socializing isn’t just about adding LED lights,” says Andrew Farage, CEO of RPM Raceway. “It’s about using tech to reimagine high-skill games to be more inviting and engaging.
“Topgolf did it for driving ranges. Puttshack did it for putting greens. Darts, soccer, baseball—they’ve all been remixed to feel more playful, more social, and way less punishing. We did the same for karting. It’s still fast, still fierce—but now it’s social, strategic, and way less intimidating. That’s how you grow the market: not by dumbing it down, but by opening it up.”
And for the business? It’s a dream. Long dwell times, high throughput, and guests who keep coming back just to settle the score.
But here’s the trade-off: this format filters its audience. If you’re not here to taunt or be taunted, you may not be here long.
Relaxed competitive socializing: Flight Club – darts, drinks, and social theater
At Flight Club, the stakes are lower but the style is dialed up.
You walk in and it feels like a Victorian dream sequence—digitized dartboards, curved banquettes, and chandeliers that look like they know your secrets. Games are fast-paced, visually theatrical, and loaded with just enough spectacle to make each bullseye feel like a party trick. You’re not playing to dominate. You’re playing to vibe.
This is competition as ambiance. As flirtation. As social choreography disguised as a pub game.
The genius of Flight Club isn’t that it reinvents darts—it’s that it reframes play as the backdrop to connection. Operationally, it’s ideal: guests stay longer, order more, and bring friends who don’t like sweating for fun. You’re not fighting for your life. You’re just playing for the next round—and who’s buying it.
Or, as Toby Harris, CEO of State of Play Hospitality, its US operator, puts it best, “Flight Club proves that competition is just the framework—what truly matters is the connection the games spark between guests.
“It’s about coming together, sharing moments of joy, and experiencing a social setting that’s accessible and fun.”
Intense cooperative socializing: Beat The Bomb’s chaos by design
Now shift from rivalry to urgency.
At Beat The Bomb, the goal is shared: defuse the device or face an extremely photogenic failure. You and your teammates are dropped into a high-tech escape sequence where every second counts and every task—from memory puzzles to physical obstacles—demands speed, coordination, and a tolerance for total sensory overload.
“What’s the point of getting together if you’re not actually doing something together?” says Alex Patterson, founder & CEO.
“People say they want to create shared memories with friends, family, and co-workers—but give us five minutes of downtime, and the phones come out. Beat The Bomb solves that by suiting players up in ‘hazmat gear’ and dropping them into a one-hour immersive video game experience inspired by 1980s action movies, the challenge of escape rooms, and the fun of TV game shows.”
There are no instructions. Just countdowns, chaos, and the creeping dread of a neon paint bomb grand finale.
What begins as teamwork ends in triumph or absurdity—and either way, it ends on camera. The rooms are slick, the stakes are legible, and the reward is as much the post-game TikTok as the in-game win. This is intense cooperative socializing at full blast: mission-based immersion that monetizes both the adrenaline and the aftermath.
“We use cooperative game mechanics and high-tech game rooms—not to create kumbaya moments—but to ensure every player has a critical role to play,” explains Patterson.
Games include replaying sound sequences, driving a robot through a maze, and dodging virtual fireballs in a projection-mapped room. Each player’s actions impact the entire team’s success—or failure. The better the teamwork, the more time earned on the ‘Bomb Clock’ to disarm the World’s Largest Paint, Foam, or Slime Bomb in the final glass-walled Bomb Room.
Relaxed cooperative socializing: Phantom Peak – where time wanders
Phantom Peak is the opposite of urgency. It’s not trying to get your heart rate up. It’s trying to slow it down.
You enter a foggy steampunk hamlet—part Westworld, part Renaissance Faire, part acid trip designed by emotionally intelligent engineers. There are mysteries to unravel, characters to interrogate, and platypuses to befriend. But nothing insists you do any of it. You can just drink a local ale and pretend not to notice the mayor arguing with a blimp.
There’s no scoreboard. No final boss. No rush. Just trails, clues, and choices that reward curiosity over conquest.
“We didn’t build Phantom Peak to be completed. We built it to be lived in,” explains co-founder Nick Moran. “What our guests value most isn’t adrenaline or spectacle, but discovery: the quiet thrill of peeling back a layer, of uncovering another vertical slice of a strange, otherworldly town.
“In Phantom Peak, you’re not competing to win; you’re competing with yourself to understand more, feel more, uncover more. It’s curiosity—not conquest—that keeps people coming back.”
From a business perspective, Phantom Peak is more interesting to quantify—and easier to love. Guests linger, return, and bring friends not for the plot, but for the possibility. It’s a loyalty engine disguised as a living storyworld. And in a throughput-obsessed industry, that kind of sustained engagement is its own kind of win.
Systems of play: where the quadrant becomes a playbook
A model is only useful when it becomes actionable. The quadrant helps us classify how people play—but strategy emerges when we connect that model to the larger systems that shape location-based entertainment: psychology, design, and operations.
Psychology: who plays, and why
Psychology tells us who’s playing—and what they’re really doing there. Research shows that three core motivations drive most play: achievement, bonding, and immersion. But in practice? People are messier. Some show up to dominate. Some just want to collaborate without sweating. And many are there to sip a cocktail while pretending they understand what’s going on.
That messiness is the point.
Few people understand this better than Maria Redin, who once prototyped fun at Mattel (home of Barbie and Hot Wheels) and later helped architect the future of it at Two Bit Circus.
“Play reveals how people think, connect, and come alive,” notes Redin, who’s made a career out of reverse-engineering joy. “At the ‘Circus,’ we weren’t just picking experiences—we were designing for different brains, different moods, and different kinds of connection. The psychology of play wasn’t an afterthought. It was the blueprint.”
Demographics offer clues—but never the whole story. Studies suggest women often prefer collaborative, narrative-rich formats, while men lean more competitive. Neurodivergent players may benefit from clear structure, adjustable intensity, and sensory control.
Children thrive in relaxed, exploratory settings. Teenagers want a challenge. Adults—especially the ones footing the bill—mostly want permission: to go deep, goof off, or gracefully opt out.
That doesn’t mean we sort people by stereotype. These are tendencies, not templates. “The goal isn’t to slot people into boxes,” explains Redin. “It’s to create a context where they can shift, flex, and surprise you. A place inclusive enough for them to bring their whole selves.”
Design: how the experience is delivered
Design is what tells people how to play—without needing to actually tell them anything.
Each quadrant brings its own demands. Intense play wants speed, stakes, and feedback you can feel in your gut. Relaxed play calls for openness—spaces that let you wander, snack, and slowly decide whether you’re participating.
Competitive formats depend on clarity: rules that are legible, outcomes that feel earned, and just enough friction to make a win satisfying. Cooperative ones rely on trust, subtle cues, and mechanics that make teamwork feel like the point, not an unpaid internship.
This isn’t about signage. It’s about mood. Design can nudge, suggest, or gently shove—if it knows what it’s aiming for.
When you understand your quadrant, you know whether to build a leaderboard or a lounge. You know whether guests should be briefed, beckoned, or seduced. That’s when design starts doing its real job—not just setting the scene, but setting the stakes.
Operations: how the experience holds together
Every quadrant asks something different of the back-of-house. Intense play needs precision—tight timing, reset speed, and staff who can fix things before they break (or before someone insists the leaderboard is rigged). Relaxed play needs flexibility—staff who can float, improvise, and gently redirect the guest who’s been “between missions” for 45 minutes and counting.
At RPM Raceway, you need techs, flaggers, and a queue that runs like a transit system. Beat The Bomb is logistics in a jumpsuit: briefing captains, countdown clocks, and reset crews who clean up neon chaos without breaking flow. Phantom Peak runs on narrative continuity and nerves of steel—actors keeping a hundred guests inside the story without ever acknowledging that there’s a script.
And the message has to match the mechanics. Sell competition, deliver adrenaline. Sell discovery, deliver space. When the pitch and the reality align, guests return—often with reinforcements.
Play as architecture, not afterthought
So why does this model matter?
The quadrant isn’t just a framework. It’s a mirror—reflecting what play already is in the world: competitive, cooperative, intense, relaxed. But paired with the systems layer—psychology, design, and operations—it becomes something more: a full play architecture. Not just a way to map experiences, but a way to build them—intentionally, flexibly, and at scale.
But the future of location-based entertainment won’t belong to those who chase throughput alone. It will belong to those who design for texture. For balance. For memory, mood, and return.
And most importantly, it gives us a way out of the default settings.
Because right now, too many venues are optimizing for volume without vision. They’re stuck in a loop of missile-button gameplay and drink-in-hand dueling, not because it’s the most resonant format—but because it’s the most familiar. It photographs well, it scales neatly, and it sells fast.
But the future of location-based entertainment won’t belong to those who chase throughput alone. It will belong to those who design for texture. For balance. For memory, mood, and return.
The most successful operators and experience-makers are programming for the full spectrum. They may anchor in one quadrant, but they build across all four. They flex the systems: psychology, design, operations. Because they know the game isn’t about doubling down on one kind of player. It’s about how many kinds of players see themselves in the game.
Building across all four quadrants
“Kart Klash turns karting into playful sabotage—but our purist mode runs on the same tech, built for lap times, clean lines, and performance precision,” says Farage, who believes the future isn’t faster. It’s broader. “And off the track, our arcade and attractions cover the full spectrum of play. It’s not just for speed freaks or score chasers. It’s for anyone who likes their fun with a point—or without one.”
Alex Patterson agrees. “Beat The Bomb’s future is all about blending cutting-edge immersive technology with unforgettable moments of connection. Looking ahead, we’re designing experiences for a broader spectrum of social play.”
While the original Mission product sits firmly in the Intense Cooperative Quadrant, the new Arcade Bomb Battle is classic intense competitive socializing, with 2–3 teams squaring off in a 25-plus-game library tournament bay.
Level99
A really sharp example of this multi-quadrant thinking is Level99, which has essentially built three distinct play styles under one roof. Their “Rooms” are small, enclosed team challenges—pure intense cooperative socializing—where groups solve physical, mental, or skill-based puzzles entirely out of sight from the rest of the floor.
The “Duels” flip the script into intense competitive socializing, hosting open-floor “Arena” head-to-head games designed for visibility, quick turns, and the kind of public victories (and defeats) that draw in onlookers and passersby. And then there are the “Hunts”—location-wide scavenger-style challenges that let you roam at your own pace, making them a textbook relaxed cooperative format.
The layout is deliberate: cooperation is hidden to create immersive focus, while competition is staged in full view to turn gameplay into a spectator sport. It’s a design strategy that not only maximizes each quadrant’s strengths, but gives guests a reason to explore the whole venue rather than camp out in a single format.
“The Level99 team has worked in location-based entertainment for 25 years—design for Galaxy’s Edge, stage sets for Blue Man Group, exhibits for the Smithsonian—and observing all those varied projects, we have extracted what really works, what is lasting, what brings people back again and again,” explains founder & CEO Matthew DuPlessie, a guy who can MacGyver an escape room out of a stapler, a roll of duct tape, and a dare.
“Level99 very deliberately goes after each of those need states, from collaboration to competition, from exploration and discovery to comfortable and intuitive. This is the most fun you can have with the people you love.”
Long-term sustainability
Long-term sustainability—and actual scalability—comes from designing across the quadrants and building systems that support the full spectrum of play.
The most successful experiential businesses will be the ones that flex: across formats, across psychologies, across use cases. The ones that don’t just understand who’s already walking through the door, but know how to get more people to it. Not just a segment—but the full cast of humanity: introverts, extroverts, spreadsheet dads, birthday kids, bored teenagers, and that one friend who turns every group outing into a hostage situation.
And here it is—the part we’re all pretending isn’t obvious: The true currency of play isn’t speed or spectacle. It’s return. Not just return on investment—but return of the guest. Again and again. With new people, with new stories, and with a growing sense that this strange little world you built might actually have room for them.
Because in the end, play isn’t always about the win.
Play for that, and you don’t just stay in the game—you start winning the one that actually counts.
This article is part of an ongoing exploration of the evolving immersive landscape—how we lost our way, who’s fighting to bring meaning back, and why it matters.
For more on what this column is all about, start with Is this article immersive?, where I lay out the mission: reclaiming immersion from the gimmick merchants and giving it back to those who create experiences worth disappearing into.
