Originally Posted by
pbjosh
Nah, Golf works. For $20 a head you can walk around 100 acres with a $2500 bag of clubs and take 4-10 hours in a day to do it and barely be within shot range of a paintball gun most of the time. Right in town and areas with higher cost per acre. Paintball is lower overhead than that.
The problem with PB is most of the demographic is 16-24, and brokeish, and most of the Golfers are at a far better place economically. And Golf is established, so they look at a field as a 30 year investment and can get solid backers, where as most people's experience is a small backyard field that the original budget is a tax return or two, or a poorly run side business. Golf uses far more space generally per person, and take in significantly less per head per acre. Though, they also have drink carts.
That being said, the AR requirement can fit the Golf model for outdoor, in fact it can be significantly cheaper I suspect, since you can pack more people in a few acres to pretend to be WOW characters and fight AR dragons. Indoor, AR could do better than a Gymnastics building. It is $150 to $225 to rent a huge gymnasium for a birthday party where a dozen kids run around in a padded room. You could put 30 to 40 adults in the same area with padded swords pretending they are lightsabers for $20 a head per hour for significantly more profit per hour. Shoot, the little 7D rides and even the Ferris wheel next door to us in Pigeon Forge are $15-$20 to get through, and they are lame compared to AR.
The demographic for AR have higher paying jobs, and would cover a larger age range 10-50yo, who have a decent amount of disposable income, and birthday parties would be a big hit. Just look at the simple popularity of Pokemon Go, the lightest AR possible. It was a huge, for a limited time. If AR can be done in a cleared out Garage or spare room, a backyard or a spare chunk of cleared land and WiFi linked to a solid computer, I think it can beat the PB model in many ways. If linked, well, it might be closer to Ready Player 1 than we want to admit. If you don't need a specific AR field to go play at, cost to get in might be a $1500 setup but after that it is just buying software and some prop upgrades. How many people drop that on video games?
I agree with Steve on this.
As for paintball crossing over - I see it as two different industries for the most part. Paintball has mostly machined gear that actually has to fire something, clothing, paint. Nothing really transfers over, short of maybe clothing. 90% of what would make decent AR work is headgear, injected plastic props with IoT, and lots of sexy software.
Though, inflatable bunkers and AR? Huge potential there.
What PB should try and do, in my opinion, is work to end up more like a video game. After challenges and courses that work like a FPS, work to give you a $20 ride type of experience. Thousands of people do the Zombie Hunt paintball courses, and that is it, because they still like the 'real' feel of it. Updating the game so it feels more like a video game, and I think you would have the best way to compete with AR. Or even augment the game. Adding AR to PB can result in the Video Game feel (maps, tracking, building in upgrades that give you semi-auto or related) and that would give you a hybrid that can feel incredibly real, yet far more.