 Welcome to the wide world of eSports, a show devoted to all things eSports. I'm your host, Katharine Norr. Our show today is Get in the Game with Hado, the world's first augmented reality physical eSports. With me today is Shane Vandercoy, the CEO and founder of Hado. Welcome Shane. Great to be here. Thanks so much for having me, Katharine. So what is Hado? That's a great question. And the first time, I've got to share this, the first time that I showed Hado about a year and a half ago to my business partner, the first thing out of his mouth was, this looks like dodgeball meets Marvel. And so that description kind of sticks a little bit, but if you see Hado, you see a video where you watch a Hado game play, it takes folks like me back to sort of dodgeball days, but it is an augmented reality game. And it was it was created in Japan. And so I can't say I'm the CEO of Hado. I didn't get to say that I can't say that I created Hado, but I'm the founder here of Hado USA. And we're bringing it here to the United States. And I think a brief, a short description would be, it is the world's first augmented reality physical eSports. I think it kind of converges or comes up the middle between physical sports and gaming. And essentially it's it's a game that has three players versus three players on a physical court. It's not done purely on a screen. It's location based players wear headsets. I've got one, I don't know if you'd be able to see it here, but it looks like this. It's just a simple augmented reality headset. Inside is an Apple iPhone and players also wear an iPhone on their wrist. And because it's augmented, they're they're playing in the space, they see the real space, they see their opponents, but they also see these augmented elements that are part of the game. So just kind of like real dodgeball, players are able to fling in this case, energy balls at their opponents, their opponents, of course, are trying not to get hit just like in real dodgeball. They have augmented reality like digital images of life pedals where they're in their chest area. And players can actually see these energy balls flying towards the life pedals. And if they strike them, they take one out. Of course, defenders are trying to avoid getting hit. And so they're moving, dodging, weaving, they might throw up a digital energy shield to absorb the attack. And games are super really fast paced, lots of action, very physical. And, you know, that's that's kind of the game in a nutshell. What the players see through their headsets is what also the fans get to see who are maybe they're physically present. If it's being streamed on a monitor or a big screen, or if it's streamed virtually, they're seeing it, you know, on whatever platform they're watching it on. And they're seeing all the augmented elements as well. So they're seeing the players, they're seeing the space, but they're seeing the energy balls fly, they're seeing the the collision when you know they hit life pedals, they're seeing score and health stats and, you know, all those cool things that you'd normally see in an eSports game if you're watching the play action. All right, let's show the video. Ten Eye, the Hado World Cup Final is happening here in Tokyo. Every fan in the world. It actually kind of takes me to how I was first introduced to Hado. And I have to clarify, that's a promo video. So there's a few creative liberties that were taken as, you know, as a promotion. And I think there's even a few laws of physics that are broken in there. But probably about two and a half years ago, I saw that video along with another one on social media. I was just looking around and I'm all, my other business, I'm always looking for that next cool game, toy, software, something that we use in an educational setting to inspire kids what's possible with technology. And so I came across that video and I thought, okay, if this is real, like if this really exists as a game, I've got to, I've got to have this. I got to bring this to our community here in Florida. And at the same time, I actually was introduced to Gerald Solomon, who maybe your audience may maybe familiar with Gerald leads the NAISF, North American Scholastic eSports Federation. Our community brought him in to speak to the community about Scholastic eSports. And I was suddenly just stunned to hear the statistics. I felt like I've been asleep for, you know, maybe a few years. I've been teaching kids how to create video games and play with them and so on. And didn't realize they're 16 year olds making seven figure incomes that the size of the gaming industry and the size of eSports within that is a niche. And then Scholastic eSports growth was astounding to me. So at that moment, I remember this promo video I saw in social media, I put two and two together and started to connect the dots and thinking, what if we brought that, you know, huddle this unique physical eSport into the Scholastic space? I think we could really inspire a lot of kids and do some really neat things. So I tried to find out, okay, who, who has this? Found out it was, it came from Japan from a company called May Leap, Inc. And I reached out to them and said, okay, where can I try this? I'd like to bring it to Florida. And they, they shared with me that they didn't have a Florida distributor. They had a lot of traction already in Asia and, and it was starting to grow in Europe, but really didn't have growth yet in America. And so I quickly sort of shared what I thought would be an ideal strategy for them, which involves a Scholastic form and collegiate form of the program, along with some, some more commercialized business activities. They liked what they heard. And so I was on my way to Tokyo to meet with them directly. And a week or two later, COVID hit. So my, so we've all been there. We know what the pandemic did. And so that kind of slowed things down a little bit to say the least. But in between lockdowns, I did get to try out Hado, you know, to make sure this is real. It's not just the, just the promo video. It's the real deal. And I did that in LA. There was a temporary studio set up there. Tried it out, loved it, you know, realized it really does work. It's amazing experience. And I could really see how this would fit. And so throughout the COVID lockdown period, we negotiated with our Japanese amazing partners. And we now have the exclusive rights partnership to develop Hado here in the United States. So that's a little backstory to that video. That video really kind of represents the competition side of Hado. And there's already tournaments. There's international, national and regional tournaments throughout Europe, throughout Asia. We have one penciled in already for America. We're going to have our first sort of official national tournament in December, where and how and all that is still secret. We'll be announcing that soon. But we're pretty excited for that part of Hado. But to get there, we actually have to educate the public. So I'm grateful for this opportunity that you've given us because we've got to put Hado out there. It's a new sport. Japanese, our partners call it a techno sport. And so working through the eSports gaming community, as well as the sports community, and kind of bringing them together, we're kind of evangelizing. We're putting it out there. We're working with schools, colleges, the public, big, large, even community based events. We're bringing on potential licensed operators to get it across the country, because it is location based. And then from there, of course, we'll get into the adrenaline pumping, exciting competition experience. And on the hunt for and on the path or journey to find Team USA. And of course, eventually bring that gold back here. But we got some catch up to do. So I did have Gerald Solomon from Nyssa on a previous show. And definitely he's a good person to, you know, sing it praises for sure. Now, is this the future of PE or physical education in school? That's actually a really observant. Because actually about 12 years ago, I was actually introduced to call something called extra gaming, where there was kind of approach to teach future PE teachers how to harness gaming technology, everything from we systems to pretty large sort of commercial level game systems that were kind of mechanized and gamified. And the idea was to create these super circuits in PE classes to engage kids, sort of fight fire with fire. We're not going to take technology away from kids. And there's some legitimate criticism of some maybe not as such healthy behaviors when technologies misused. But the idea is, how do we use it in a way to, you know, guide kids the right way? And so there was some really great research being done back then at University of South Florida. And I actually founded a charter school and we're getting I do other things, but and put this extra gaming lab in there. And to your point, I mean, I've moved on since, but it really that actually probably is what caught my attention with Hado because I saw Wow, 12 years later, this is how this has evolved, you know, augmented reality, mixed reality. And one of our first pilot sites is at a middle school here in Florida. And the program is actually operated by a PE teacher and it's it's rolled into his PE program. We're also very close to setting up a pilot at USF in partnership. We've done some demos with their the athletics health department, working with their their teams and linking up with with maybe their recreation department. So there's just so many areas where this could apply and fit because I think it kind of straddles between sports and gaming and esports. Yeah. And you know, I think that there's another thing that it solves the problem. Okay. And let me tell you why I think it's a problem. I think it solves the problem of the Olympics, having esports, because frankly, one of the downsides of having esports in the Olympics is it's not as physical as people want it to be. Okay. So this is that physicality that the Olympics is famous for. So I would think that along with Rocket League and the other games that are being considered for future Olympics, that Hado would be it. Absolutely. I would I would love that. And I think you're right. And you know, Hado happens to be kind of maybe first as this sort of formalized physical gaming sport. But I think I believe we're probably going to rapidly see lots of different games sort of get into that mixed reality, extended reality experience. And the more physical it can be, I think, and not all of them can be, but you know, I think that's going to make them more engaging and to your point, yeah, more more welcomed into something like the Olympics and traditional, you know, big, huge sports competition like that. So let's show the second video and get into how it worked. There's good news. It's very easy to take up and play immediately. Within a minute or so of instructions, when I went out to LA, I was playing Hado and surviving, much longer than I survived the first time I tried Fortnite. But so anybody can easily take up Hado, have fun, and learn how to play at a recreational level or a discovery level experience. And within a few matches, players are already hungry to figure out strategy and there's, you know, their skill point levels that you can control between your team sort of devised to go along with your preferred playing style or strategically to win in competition, you can allocate between, you know, the players on the team, the speed of the energy ball or how fast it will recharge or how large it will be or how many shields you get and strategically you decide who's going to be the defender, who's going to be the attacker and so forth to, you know, to devise winning gameplay. That being said, it may take, you know, maybe this is exaggerating, but a lifetime to master certainly the competition matches that I've watched from Japan, the teams were playing for money and so in informal competition, it's remarkable skill. You know, they're not only the gameplay and the strategy, but also just the physicality and the athleticism. I've seen some clips where there's one of the players and particularly he reminds me of the movie, you know, in the Matrix, there's those kind of moves, you know, like leaning back and just turning sideways and, you know, avoiding getting hit by an energy ball. I'm thinking these are really fast 82nd matches. I barely know where I am and they're giving instructions to each other and so on. So just like a real sport or like I've seen eSports players, you know, with the headsets on, giving each other instructions for that strategic gameplay. That's also the case in Hado as well. Sure. And those ones that are mastering it would be the Olympian for sure. So how does an AR game like Hado differ from current VR game experience? I would probably, I mean, the simplest explanation that I use, and for me, I got to put it for myself into real simple layman's terms, I think. I describe, you know, VR takes you into, takes you in the physical world into the digital world, completely immersive, typically experience, where Hado and AR really brings elements of the digital world into the physical world. So you're still here. It's just, we've got all these really cool elements. And, you know, the phenomenon with Pokemon Go and so on, which is very simple form of augmented reality, I think people can kind of understand that if they've been exposed to that. And then there's, of course, mixed reality and extended reality and sort of these descriptive terms for all of this. And I think, you know, we're just at the tip of the iceberg of what all that's going to look like, certainly in gaming far beyond my understanding. I feel like I'm grateful to even be kind of included or invited to the conversation in esports and learning incredible amount and catching up. But it's pretty obvious, particularly I think with augmented reality that it's going, the use of augmented reality is going to permeate every aspect of life in some way at some point in the future, everything from education to business cases and uses and, you know, recreation and just for fun. And then, of course, with sports. So it's going to be interesting to see that play out. And I'm thankful that Hado is, you know, is as far as augmented reality. One quick point, if I may bring up, what we found that kind of surprised me because I didn't, I wasn't fully aware of the difference. You know, I explore the space station in a VR gear. So I get that. I felt like I was there with Hado. Some of the good feedback that we've gotten is people that have not been able to enjoy a VR experience because they might suffer some disorientation or motion sickness or they just didn't respond very well. And there's a certain segment of the population. I'm one that, you know, has vertigo and some of those things. Don't enjoy it. And we've got much less if any complaints with Hado. And I'm not sure if it's completely because of the augmented nature of it, because you still see the space. You're staring at the screen in front of your gear, but you're still seeing the real space. And so you don't have that same disorientation or have to come back to reality. You've been seeing it the whole time. The other thing is if you can look in the gear, it's a simple headset. It's clear. You can you can see right through the side. You have full peripheral vision. And so even from a sense of feeling safe or secure, we found comments from folks that were maybe afraid of VR because they don't want to bump into something or somebody would touch them or they would need quite feel safe. They have no problem doing this because it just they just felt a little bit more comfortable to try it. And then the matches are short. They're quick and you're in and out of matches. So I think you're not having those long, you know, exposure periods to to VR. Sure. Okay. And then speaking of that, do you see a place for Hado in web three, the metaverse and token economy? I think so. I mean, I don't have any secret information to our developers in Japan. So I don't I can't, you know, and if I did, I won't be able to share whatever they're, you know, they're cooking up. But there's certainly a lot of development going on there. And I know that our team is as well. There's an interesting two interesting experiments and hopefully we'll have time that I can quickly share them. One that's captured my interest was actually through my counterpart in the UK, Jim Sefton, this team at Hado UK. And they they partnered with a number of groups, including an accelerator, like, like a education accelerator. Also, I think it was Vodafone looking at 5G technologies edge computing. And another group, I think it was Noidom involved in motion capture tech. And what they did was they actually had one Hado team in one physical location. And the other Hado team and I think was a completely different city. And using all that technology, and one of the teams have mo cap gear, they're all geared up. They play. And because the camp the way Hado works, you wouldn't normally have been able to see the other team in front of you if only half was there. But the team in mo cap here was represented through these avatars and so on. So obviously, that's just a one quick step from having gameplay occurring in the physical world, but then represented in the metaverse, you know, and using web three technologies and so on. And whether it's whether it's just a streaming experience for the the spectators or spectators, as well as players represented as avatars, that seems to me to be an interesting next step. And and some of that technology, the physical technology of 5G is going to help make that happen. The other really interesting, and this is no longer an experiment, it's actually a functional business pilot in Japan. The flagship studio where the Hado courts are, they actually have one that is a studio for entertainment. And so it's a streaming studio full production. It's got a place for about 200, 220 spectators, fans. And they've got J-pop idol groups coming in and actors and so on. And they're playing against each other in scheduled matches that catch attention. And so they have an additional separate app where the fans download the app. It's it's it's basically a tipping app. So while they're watching either live or the stream gameplay, they're tipping their favorite player, the system that you're to esports in casters and so on. They're tipping their players and that immediately, if they get enough tips, the team that in the next match gets an extra skill point. So they're actually affecting gameplay. And it's proven to be incredibly successful and really popular. And so they've actually, I mean, it's standing room only there. A lot of the viewers are doing this now online because the space isn't big enough to hold it. So I think that whole the token, that's so close to the tokenomics that that we think, you know, watch to earn a play to earn kind of model. I can see that happening. I'm going to Japan in a few weeks to study that particular location closely to see how could that be adapted to our environment and our business community here. So I'm sure that people watching will want to know how can they play this at home? I wish they could. Right now it is location based. So we're looking for operators, licensed operators, and locations. And that's part of our business strategy. I don't think there's ever going to be at this point a strategy to put Hado as a consumer product to just do by yourself, like a home system. The whole vision is to bring people together. And I think that's actually been really welcomed after the pandemic. We've just got so many invitations to come out and bring Hado. That being said, though, I think there will be a point when players at home or one group will be able to play another group that maybe is not located in the same place, almost like a pickup game of soccer for practice or any other kind of sport or a small group coming together to have a e-sport game together. That's possible. You know, I also see it as special occasion type of activity where you have a birthday party and you're trying to figure out something to do. People go to escape rooms or they do certain things, but this would be a really unique thing that would be special. Exactly. And even we're getting invites to big corporate events. It's more fun for networking. Gen Z likes this kind of stuff. They look at me handing out a business card and they say, oh, you still have cards, Boomer? They like something that's fun and engaging and kind of speaks their language. A surreal moment for me was we had a big investor event and Hado was the Amelie Arena, which is in Tampa, where the Tampa Bay Lightning play their home arena. And we had gameplay happening under center ice and it was streamed live on the 50-foot Jumbotron. For a hockey fan growing up like me, that was surreal. I had goosebumps, and that was a corporate event, so I think there's lots of application for this. And let's show the calisthenic photo. So tell us about this. I mean, people are actually having to warm up. Exactly. Truly for competition and also where we see it in the scholastic space, your question about PE class, this is physical. And so we've got a lot of opportunity to not only prepare to do it safely and do it right and to be competitive, but also to maybe make some of those things more fun and more engaging to, that will be helpful to teachers. But of course, when I've seen the competitive players, you have to do that. I tried to do some of that at a couple of matches when I got carried away, in the moment. And I hurt for about three or four days. So the calisthenics is important. All right. So that leads to the value of it, because it's unique. And it does appeal to Gen Z, and I think it would appeal to anyone who likes to play dodgeball and would like to step up their augmented reality game. So I'll give you the last word, Shane. Can you tell us how people can find you? Absolutely. Please visit us at hado-usa.com. You can see some of the same videos that Catherine just shared, maybe a few more. And it explains game play a little bit more, and there's a great, I think a simple form. We're not going to bother you or bombard you with information, but you want to get in the game because you can literally get in the game with Hado. Reach out and we'll let you know where our first operations and pilots are running. And if somebody wants to bring it to the area, we need Hado Hawaii. I know that. So reach out and we're ready to go as soon as we've got the partners to do it. All right. We definitely need Hado Hawaii. Well, thank you so much, Shane. And I really appreciate you being here to tell us all about it. Thank you so much. Really appreciate the opportunity, Catherine. And yeah, I'd like everybody to get in the game. So thank you. All right. So thank you to our viewers for joining us today. In two weeks, my guest will be Reginald Nistoa joining us from Ghana. Talk about esports in Africa. See you then. Thank you so much for watching Think Tech Hawaii. If you like what we do, please like us and click the subscribe button on YouTube and the follow button on Vimeo. You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn, and donate to us at thinktechhawaii.com. Mahalo.