 We're currently the only entertainment center that is basically like a hybrid PC, console, VR and laser tag all under one roof. We're basically the first ones in Sioux Falls to introduce the virtual reality to the community. They actually are now training to perform surgeries in virtual reality. There are actually virtual reality simulators right now available. You can purchase such game slash experience for as long as you have the VR set up. At our store one of the most popular games right now still is the job simulator. This is where it's going to explode probably if not already exploding is the entertainment industry which is where we are at right now. The market is oversaturated with cheap or absolutely free games and right now there are two free games that just dominate the rest of the games fortnite and epics legends. There are so many distribution systems now too like back in the days which is steam. 14 years ago it was just steam. Obviously the communication team work would be the biggest one biggest benefits in gaming but of course the moral skills as well depending on what kind of games you're playing of course so it's more than just entertainment. We even have some businesses coming in to do a team work and they actually play with your games together like they separate in groups and then they play against each other. They live with memories, they live experiences something that they haven't before. What's up everyone welcome to Simulation. I'm your host Alan Sokian. We are on site in the beautiful Sioux Falls South Dakota. We are now going to be talking about Galaxy Gaming. We have Max Kaptanati joining us on the show. Hi Max. Hello Alan. Thank you so much for coming on the show. Absolutely. Very pumped to talk to you for those who don't know Max's background. He's the founder of Galaxy Gaming which is a laser tag virtual reality and social gaming center in Sioux Falls South Dakota. They're approaching their 14th anniversary. You can find the links in the bio below thegalaxygaming.com as well as their Instagram Facebook and Twitter pages. All right Max let's start things off by asking you one of our favorite questions. Okay. What are your thoughts on the direction of our world? If I only knew the answer to that. I don't think anybody knows to be honest. It's it's it's hard to tell and like we can all see the technology evolving and it's going really fast. Especially like what what I've noticed the virtual reality introduction. It did take off a lot. You might not see it at the households but definitely it gets very popular in all sorts of industries. Military, science, health industry, you name it. Yeah the rapid pace of technological change is occurring. It's being democratized. Computing power is increasing yet our biological this inner art that is our bodies that we have yet to really spiritually tune that well. It's kind of like this. Do you ever feel like that's a little bit of like a struggle that we haven't even figured out our own like spiritual divinity and we're like already trying to upload our consciousness? Oh it's a little bit too soon to upload consciousness. I mean I don't think we're any over there yet. But we're trying to get to the virtual worlds and whatnot. Yeah yeah that is that is very true. I might be just like the way to escape the reality. So to speak. But yeah for like the gaming industry itself, the businesses as usual, you just see more like a higher resolutions, more polygons, maybe more power ups in the games if we're talking about the gaming of course. In virtual reality I would say like when it comes to the gaming side I don't really know much about everything else. I mean I know in the military they're now doing training. So you can you can learn how to fly the jet without ever sitting on one basically. It's almost the same kind of scenario goes with the health industry. They actually are now training to perform surgeries in virtual reality. There are actually virtual reality simulators right now available. You can even purchase such game slash experience for as long as you have the VR set up and you can play that. Like for instance us like at our store one of the most popular games right now still is the job simulator. The job simulator? Yep. What are they doing that one? There is a few different things you can do in there like it usually starts out with a job at fast food place which can be pretty fun and funny because kids always mess around there like they don't necessarily do what they're supposed to be doing. But yeah you can actually cook in that game. It looks very cartoonish. It's not looking like the most impressive game even though there are some impressive games very immersive but for some other reason they're not the most played games at the store. Your focus on virtual reality and that being just opening up insane amounts of possibilities and it already is being applied in so many industries like you said where do you see that you know as it becomes democratized as more and more people take augmented and virtual realities for their work life so it you know becomes basically a part of what we do every single day. It increases creative ability when I don't have to use this laptop but instead I can just have a beautiful 3d space in front of me that I can just go and edit video in and be creative in. Where do you see that all going? You mean like time frame wise and like experience wise like on a daily basis we're all going to be in those environments engaging with each other. Well I can tell you this much we're not going to see that anytime soon. A couple decades. Maybe a decade from now there is a possibility of that if you want to have photorealistic graphics quality right now currently it's kind of sort of possible in VR it just of course you're going to have some limitation to that because due to the hardware limitation the game developers for instance they have to cut corners right now so they can make a more realistic graphics but it will be a much smaller space where you're going to be able to see all that graphics and vice versa like you want to have like a bigger world the graphics are going to have to be downscaled. So like in our store we do have some graphics graphics cards installed in VR systems that are pretty much the top of the line and you can play some graphics intense games already but I would also say even those cards do struggle. So one nice thing about the VR this is where it's going to explode probably if not already exploding is the entertainment industry which we are at right now. We've been noticing more and more bigger companies coming to this market. Facebook buying Oculus. Yeah but that one like that that sort of news is more towards you know like it's more about the households individuals. I'm talking about more like a lot more serious which you cannot obtain at home. We're talking about like commercial great. Oh yeah like the ones in like Hollywood where they're doing some crazy things around like doing like volumetric capture of like a human or like an object and they can just bring that into the computer. Yeah the Hollywood is the Hollywood is actually using using this to do the film in. I think it's 80 percent of all of current film is already CGI. There is a good chance of that. You can probably see some videos where the people are like covered in the nets and they have this like a sensors on the bodies. So that's that's how they use a VR and in that regard they have to use very expensive cameras which are very hard to obtain just because of the costs. Those are the red cameras or which cameras enable that kind of film. It's a special capturing hardware cameras basically and the resolution is insane there. So that's why you can't just like buy one of those pieces for home. We're talking about hundreds of thousands of dollars for the equipment but the companies are making it more affordable for businesses currently even though it's still like I mean the prices I do know some of the prices for some of the commercial VR systems it can go as high as $450,000 for a setup which would not make a lot of sense in a smaller communities but we are in a smaller community so we have to we have to look for something that's more like competitive price wise and there are solutions like that. So like right now the systems that we have it's not a commercial type of like a commercial grade over set up because the software is not like a third not like a proprietary software that we're using. When it comes to the commercial grade once they usually develop the game specifically for the hardware that they supply and that type of software slash games you can't replicate anywhere else so you can't you can't obtain this for for home. It doesn't matter how much money you're gonna spend on your system you just wouldn't be able to access it because the library like subscription to those can cost tens of thousands of dollars annually so that's something to keep in mind. So then is a lot of what is right now being used at the edge by like Hollywood and other major organizations that are able to afford this equipment that's slowly being democratized seems like more and more we're gonna see CGI being used these like volumetric capture of a human and then me being able to like just click and drag you through an actual like virtual reality and then also throwing objects in there that have been volumetrically captured and then me just being able to make whole videos from just completely digitally through libraries. The problem with all the things you just described is the power like you you have to have enough power in your hardware to to perform all those activities and it's simply not possible currently. There is a few I would almost say like a gimmicky hardware pieces that are available but there are more they're designed more for like entertainment for more than anything. Basically the challenge for the VR currently to bring it to the public in general is the hardware like you what would be convenient for you to use. We're talking about the glasses or we're talking about like a headset I mean I just don't picture somebody going around and wearing a headset on the street. Contact lens. Contact lens may be but then what's gonna render all all the graphics for you. 5G. 5G. That brings the problem as well. There was numbers of companies that tried basically installing the rendering hardware somewhere like basically somewhere remote. The idea behind it was let's say you just using your laptop to game you just have to connect to this company server which would be rendering all the graphics. That unfortunately does not work. You have to have something basically that's not remote. Even right now it's actually pretty challenging because even right now for example HTC Vive Pro sets like a VR sets they do offer the option of going completely wireless. Basically it's called a free roaming experience and the problem with that one is yes it's cool like basically you have to install the battery on top of your set and you're connected via Wi-Fi to the computer. The computer has to be in close proximity still and the problem is even over Wi-Fi and Wi-Fi is much stronger than in a random internet connection. So even over Wi-Fi there is a bandwidth problem. There is a bandwidth limits because you can tell like when you're wearing that you can tell that the graphics aren't as great and all of a sudden you have a latency slash lags. So you will be noticing all of that. For now wired versus wireless. So I mean it's possible to make I think a Microsoft has I think it's called HoloLens. Yeah the HoloLens too. Yeah they've been doing with this idea it's extremely expensive I think it's about three five thousand dollars. And it's not even as as good as you would imagine like it's nowhere near close to an actual VR headset. First of all. We'll talk about this AR is really cool. Yeah yeah that one is kind of like cool idea to have it and of course the they had to overcome some obstacles like the power of the hardware again they have to simplify the graphics. So the graphics are very simple and it's like in our entertainment industry I am not sure how good that is. What are the other current applications that the kids and adults are coming into Galaxy gaming to use the VR for you gave the idea that is the current one of the current applications is like they can get behind like this job simulator which is kind of interesting the kids can like figure out like maybe I am interested in this like healthcare field or maybe I am interested in this technology field or whatever it is. So what are the other things that people are using the people mainly come in of course the main the main reason they come in is they come in for entertainment. Yeah so they come in to have fun they come in to escape boring reality which sometimes is the case here in our city depending on whether you do have to make a lot of your own fun in Sioux Falls. Yes I mean some people even come in to use the vacation simulator game. There is a vacation simulator? Yes there is a game that is called vacation simulator so you basically are out somewhere in the beach in VR. Of course that's not the main reason people come in that's not the main game that people want to play in VR. But of course one of the nice things about VR games is they are a lot more inverseful. So you do feel like you're actually there and there are new things. So like a lot of people played in our location for the first time they've never played VR before or if they did it would have been VR glasses for 10 bucks. So sometimes you have smart phone VR which is I mean you can't even compare those. So it's good you're opening them to the what it would be interesting to see what if you're like wearing an EEG or something you're like mapping your neural activity and then like a child gets exposed to virtual reality and just to be able to like catalog what happened to the brain during that experience because I bet a lot of creative thoughts occur like whoa what are we going to be able to do with this technology. Yeah that's true. Another one fun and actually indication like educating experience is Google VR. Google VR you ever heard about that one before? Did it? Google Earth VR. Oh that's cool. That one is really nice. It's photorealistic graphics and you can go to any place on the planet basically like you can explore. You can see the different countries before you even go there if you decide. You can drop into Machu Pichu and like look around and stuff like that. That's really cool. It is and with a nice set of hardware it does look very realistic like it's photorealistic. With a nice set of hardware you don't need to fly to another part of the world. Yeah that is true. We did have some grandma came in she is from UK she just wanted to see her homeland without like it's really hard for her to travel. Yeah so that was one interesting time when somebody used it for that basically just to to see the places where she has been like a really long time ago and she just due to some health issues she is unable to go there. That is a cool use case yeah. Yeah I bet she had a lot of fun doing that and connecting back to her childhood in those locations. Yeah it's fun even for me like to visit like to see different landscapes, countries, anywhere. That was really fun. I do it obsessively on the 2D computers although I do it obsessively I love Google Earth so yeah to be able to go in 3D I mean to be able to see the different places in the world and understand how geographies have evolved and cultures have evolved you know what their environments look like not very many places outside of suburban United States look like the suburban United States. Yeah that's very true. Another one thing that's worth noting about the virtual reality is it's different basically it's very different from gaming. First of all the crowd that comes into play VR is not gamer crowd so to speak like it's not it's not the same people that come in and play video games all day or for hours at the store. It's basically a very different type of activity in a way some of the games there they do require a lot of physical activity in a way it's almost like working out. It is like working out. There are boxing games there is music games the beat saver we are we actually have to slash cubes in the proper like rhythms yes so those those will make you work out. Sweat yeah that's good for your health it is but yeah so and it's bigger people can't it's actually like one of the nice things it's actually it's really fun I was kind of out of breath once when I was actually doing a boxing game and you actually have to like really put a lot of force into like punches there because the camera can see when you just like you know waving your hands or you actually like really trying to go so so the the camera can sense it so you cannot really cheat that that's cool so you do have to put a lot of a lot of effort a lot of our different crowds for the different different crowds yeah I would say when we were first introduction in VR here in town we thought it was going to be gamers coming in but to our surprise it was more of a couples for the date nights either usually before going to the movie or after going to the movie because we are obviously we we communicate we talk to people just like how they came about and like how what kind of games they like and we would normally find out that there is a movie that's going on but they want to do something before that and VR allows you just there because you can have a lot of fun and even in 15 minutes yeah in a game and you would normally need a lot more like to start one game when by the time it's done it's going to be like 40 minutes or so and VR offers you a lot shorter games they do have games that are appealing for families and we get a lot of families as well we have a lot of parents coming in with the with their children there is a game that's called local dojo it's pretty much Mario Party in virtual reality it's a bunch of mini games on VR and super fun mini games in Mario Party are like it gets a lot it gets a lot of playing it's super fun funny to watch and to play so even if somebody is just watching it it's already entertaining enough for them of course there are some other games that are worth noting like the series Sam the Last Hope is where you and your friend or whoever comes with you you end up on the planets and you're being moved from one planet to another you're being given a certain weapons and you just blast a bunch of enemies that are running your way it's not really like scary game it's more like a slightly spooky I would say it has tons of power ups over time when you basically you score the points after you kill the monsters and then you can buy new and bigger guns more ammunition more power ups so that one is getting a lot of playing it's very popular at the store okay so it's also cool hearing for you not only like the variety of VR applications for entertainment which just seems like the entertainment is going to like kick it off fast and then it's going to get more into industry and whatnot as well but there's also it's kind of interesting you also have really like those multi hundred thousand dollar camera sets and CGI and all that stuff so they're kind of both the bottoms picking up fast but the tops also continuing to become the more and more cutting edge is being pushed over time and then so there's also a difference between what VR people are coming into play and then what the normal like social gamers are coming in for pc and xbox one are the big ones you also have a laser tag going on we'll get to laser tag in a bit which is even a bigger workout than VR is so so on um on pc and xbox one a lot of kids are coming in to play for tonight I mean there's like just obviously a ridiculous amount of games league of legends right so like yeah so walk us through what they're coming into play that kind of thing um they are the gaming market is extremely tough currently um like yes it's a multi they call it multi billion dollar industry but at the very same time there are just so many games to choose from so the it's it's it's kind of like a rough market for our publishers slash developers to even bring the games because no one knows how well it's gonna sell because the market is oversaturated with the cheap or absolutely free games and right now there are two free games that just dominate the rest of the games um and that would be fortnite and epics legends um fortnite is obviously everybody knows by now probably developed by epic games and they have their own software distribution system there are so many distribution systems now too like back in the days steam 14 years ago it was just steam uh now we have steam you have ubisoft you you play that's another one that's digital software or distribution system yeah there is um um epic launcher yeah there is a Bethesda launcher this is a Bethesda launcher not sure why they decided to to start offering their own launcher it was not the greatest idea and because you know what's the point everyone we only have like five games to choose from i don't know i think blizzard has their blizzard yeah blizzard had they on for a while again they they don't have as many games it kind of it kind of actually probably does the opposite for them because currently they're called blizzards activation or activation blizzard and all the newest call of duty titles are being released strictly on blizzard app that means you cannot obtain it on steam and a lot of people just refuse to purchase it on blizzard or even start their own account they just will not leave or they will not leg up to steam you can if you're if you're once if your computer is powerful enough you could say log it into steam you can you can't they just refuse they just refuse to they refuse to have too many lunches because right now if the people are being pushed because they want to be their own everyone wants to have their own yeah launcher imagine this logging into and all this that's what the apps are like right now looks like the social accounts facebook twitter link in instagram it's just like that yes everyone wants to have their own but be their own platform and stuff yeah which is um which is certainly not uh not the best idea like i i don't see that hulu amazon hbo there's the same thing on videos except except we're talking more like a distribution for a game for games yeah people once they when once they're very comfortable and in you know like having one or two um distribution software uh accounts they don't really feel like leaving or not even talking about leaving then don't feel like making another one on top of this like i personally i do have blizzard account i have steam i have origin origin that's another big one and i i actually strongly believe that the reason battlefield sales aren't aren't as good on pc or i should say bad because i remember the the year when it first released battlefield 2 there is we were running out of licenses for that game we had to get like 40 accounts for it but then when battlefield 3 got released even 10 copies were not getting played uh and at that time the game was being released on origin client uh people just didn't want to make their own accounts for it and they were forcing everybody to get the client to be able to buy the battlefield so like i'm already buying the game and then you want me to get your client to if you have to like buy it instead of just download it and make an account no you you you you do i mean you buy it and you download it but you still have to go to the hassle of creating your own account and people don't like this so how about um when you have something how many total stations do you have right now on p on for pc we have um our over the years our pc number like originally started from 20 it went to 40 and then i would say more like due to the lack of space uh the consoles were in more demand we started out with like eight consoles at some point uh the number of consoles essentially increased uh currently we have 34 consoles consoles yeah and we have 28 pc so we had to those are big numbers yes we had to bring the number of pc is down so let's so let's explore this so then when you have let's say you like these kids want to come in and play like league of legends or fortnite or madden there's so many possibilities right and you're talking about like you having to own specific licenses right you have to own like if they want to if 10 people want to play league of legends but you only have like eight licenses purchased that type of thing how does that work it's that one is actually pretty simple for for a lot of these games that are free we don't have to provide any licenses at all they just you just log in with your own account and you're good to go what about when there are like licenses when it's a license for example games like battlefield for instance would you have to pay 60 per license that you have to pay 60 per license we don't get any discounts on the games we don't get free games either so usually we have to pay the full price on games and even though we're basically like a spot where the games get exposure for for developers slash publishers uh very often they they don't think that we have any effect on on a bottom line so they're like well we we don't really have any interest in working with the gaming centers but monster works with you the energy drinks monster to to a certain extent just at least a little bit so there's some at least some people see the value in what yeah yeah yeah okay so then what happens with like battlefield and like with the battlefield license system we have a software license management system in place it's a third party yes it's a it's a software that we basically were one of the sponsors of it was developed by one company and basically what it does is let's say if you have 30 pcs and you only have 10 licenses for battlefield game it will automatically distribute those license keys slash accounts to the to the machines running and once you reach number 10 it will stop doing that yeah that's once once somebody stops playing the game it will instantly become available again yeah so somebody else can forget any yeah that's cool so but how do you know how many licenses to buy for a game like based on what popularity yeah you just yeah you just based on popularity if you see the game is getting more playing you keep running out of licenses constantly it's easy to add you just buy more games just buy more licenses and then put it into the management system and it'll distribute that's pretty cool so then okay so you have to have a management system that has all of the games plus all the licenses that is constantly being tapped into as people want to use it or get logged out of it log into a new game it's a pretty complicated system you guys also have some extreme internet speeds 500 megabits per second up and down yeah we originally we started out with 20 megabits download speed back in 2005 upload rate was right around five megabits per second so like when we moved to our fourth location we decided to bump up the speed a little bit and we were able to to get a pretty decent price for it too even though it's still really a lot like it's our built when probably quadruple yeah from when it was before like before we our internet speed was 250 megabits per second down in I believe 25 up on the cable model yeah and now it's all fiber optics that's great it's now a fiber optics business business line 500 up and down yeah it's so fast so you can handle can can you then handle like all you have you know about let's say 60 total like units consoles we can handle all with this kind of a speed technically you can handle even 300 consoles or PCs simultaneously playing yes that's pretty crazy yeah they don't use as much as people normally think like they you do use a lot of speed connection speed when you download the patches or download the games but when you actually are in the game normally you never go about you never go more than five megabits down at the same time and one megabit up usually that's the top per system how did you initially in 2005 even decide that you wanted to get involved with this who were you growing up that also got you interested in gaming um well I mean I was kind of a gamer myself when I when I was in school and when I went when I was in college we were hosting a lot of LAN parties and that that did seem like it was something extremely fun that's what people really enjoyed doing and at that at the time it was kind of like a right timing for that as well there was a lot of games coming out around 2005 we had a new counter strike source being released we have Battlefield 2 being released so those were all major titles that were very promising um at that time not a lot of people could afford a really nice gaming systems so the business concept was basically just to rent the systems out to users and they would come in and play together it was very inexpensive like at that time the pricing was about four dollars per hour or you can get three hours for I believe ten dollars back then so it wasn't it wasn't expensive for somebody we're already doing LAN parties and this is popular let's just make it into a business and and host our LAN parties in there and then see if other people want to come kind of thing no I would not say it was like we're already making a LAN parties the last time I was I was I was involved in hosting a LAN party before that was probably 1999 okay so it was popular yes I knew it was popular and I knew it was something that people would probably enjoy doing considering the lack of entertainment in the city here you couldn't really do much I mean the city size was big enough to sustain this kind of a business model but probably only one Galaxy gaming like yes I would I would say I would say so so like there was of course a competition that magically opened up just a week after we opened are they gone now yeah they're gone now it was a gamers computer gaming center they were they were in a better location than us like I when when I originally opening and going through the business plan I didn't want to risk at the same time too much so I decided to opt out for kind of like okay location for the business in the residential area which later kind of I mean later I've noticed that it was probably not the best idea to do it this way the competition opened up across from movie theater so there were there were constantly packed and then it created created this vibe overall that they were the first and we were we just kind of like open afterwards but that was completely different there I mean you could you could actually say that we opened at the same time because it's just a weaker part but they only lasted for a little over three years and then they ended up closing I think they had some management issues and whatnot because according to some customers there was not a lot of equipment that wasn't like up kept well yeah yeah so so you were constantly then you have to constantly then either update in like you know purchase new graphics cards or purchase new processors purchase new licenses you're constantly man how does this yeah this is a tough business model you know you have to buy all of the equipment but then you have to constantly basically every year you have like a big you know more licenses more graphics cards more pros etc but you're also selling the older ones so that you're like you know you have an ecosystem at least other people you're selling yeah yeah um we you don't actually have to change the hardware as often as you might think every what three five years yeah somewhere around like three five years that would be a fair estimate as far as the games go you don't really have to buy the games like we don't really have to buy the games there's a lot of free games that are gonna be played when when the games that you're essentially buying cost like the yes they do cost money but when they don't get played as much as the free games then you start re-evaluating like why do we even need to offer these games when they don't get as much played anyway yeah yeah like the the Gears of War for is a good example I think the last one I played was three Gears of War yeah Gears of War it's highly claimed game it's and it's consistently getting extremely high scores everywhere on the reviews all it was doing on our store is just collecting the dust nobody would touch it yep it didn't it didn't matter Gears of War two three or four uh people just did not have an interest here in our store when did you incorporate laser tag what year laser tag uh when we're moving toward the third location um which is the one by century theaters yes kind kind of like in that area um I decided that it was it was a time to introduce uh another type of attraction for somebody that might not find gaming as appealing uh basically I was looking for attraction that you can't really replicate at home gaming you still can replicate at home you're just not gonna I mean of course you can't have six x boxes at home or six gaming PCs but not everybody needs one like there is a lot of people that instead of going and being social they're just playing at the basement uh and they don't don't go out just stay and talk to the friends on the mic so that's that was the time when uh the mic and basically online gaming has been becoming extremely popular uh versus the year 2005 uh around that time a lot of LAN features of the games were actually started getting removed from the games like you could you could still join people over the internet but on a local area network it started going away why do you think that is um because the internet has become uh more accessible for everybody in 2004 2005 not everyone had a decent connection speed to be able to play at home so that was obviously one of the things but as times went by everyone had access to the fast internet connection and it was right around 2008 2009 um at the very same time when we were moving calling like our name back then used to be galaxy LAN center it was based local area network name and the feel of that started fading away because it was like LAN what does that even mean anymore uh so and especially when considering introducing laser tag uh to the city it it was just um I felt it was a good idea to change it to galaxy gaming um and I think the only other laser tag center was giggle bees yes back back then uh but by the time that we're actually opening um the new location giggle bees was already closed down yeah they were using a very old laser tag very old laser tag basically laser tag from the 80s and laser tag I mean it has its own history um at some point I would say sometime between like 2002 2012 somewhere on there um the laser tag uh has been going through some rough times because they I mean everybody remembers how goofy those guns looked like they look goofy and the vast kind of look goofy and uh and in general the setup would always be some some spaceship which was like that the idea has become so old and people just like yeah it would get old pretty fast how did you pick your template theme that that's another thing uh when we were opening that to that the the location in 2010 uh because of the gaming part of the business we wanted to be appealing to the gamer crowd as well uh so at that time the call of duty series games were extremely popular usually popular so the decision decision was made to make it more like a realistic combat scenario it was even the equipment that we were using was called battlefield life um it's Australian company that designs uh completely independent guns uh like they are not connected to the laser tag system like they're not connected to the special software they just go off the radio signal there are some drawbacks of course like you don't really get to see the the scoreboard so you're not gonna have that and there was also a limitation on what kind of gameplay scenarios you can do so we would always be stuck with the um the mission that in Call of Duty it was called search and destroy yeah single life but yeah it was basically a team elimination that's what we're playing and unfortunately not a lot of people were liking this um this mission because if you're not if like if you're not a very good player in laser tag you will get discouraged pretty fast and easy and because you will rush you'll get eliminated and you'll have to sit and sit out and wait until the game is over exactly so even though it was I mean for that time it was really cool the guns were looking very realistic they looked and felt and sounded like the real guns um daytime kind of came to the end as well the arena we felt it needed some change like we looked at who the customers were mainly and we did like for the customer crowd we had a lot of younger kids coming in so we decided to look for something that would appeal to both adults and the kids at the same time and that was the delta strike equipment which we ended up getting um they they don't look too goofy they look actually fairly modern but at the same time they're very safe they have like a rubber noses they're not heavy so they're fairly light and they just I mean they just look and sound cool when you use them they also have tons of different gameplay scenarios even the zombies and that's what people like um the of course the the most play we see is the team deathmatch or a delta one shot is basically you just like go in and you just stop shooting everybody and at the end of the game you will you will see the total scores so it's basically even if you're not the greatest player you're not going to get discouraged because even if you get eliminated you're back in the game in about five seconds or so once you've gone um hit points get restored automatically you're back in the game but at the very same time we wanted to go with something much cooler for the design of the arena itself um I decided to incorporate both ancient city and the jungle the company originally offered either jungle or the ancient city but I felt like we with this size of the arena we should blend in both and that's what we ended up doing and people are really liking what we did yeah ancient city jungle themed laser tag it's a really cool it's also it's also very unique because even if you go to Minneapolis Omaha or Des Moines you will not find this kind of a design you will not this kind of a quality of the arena itself it's completely interactive it has video base stations which essentially are interactive power ups so you just come up to one and if it has any power up available like energy shield or rapid fire you shoot at it and your gun instantly instantly gets it gets it you don't have to actually like physically press any buttons so that's where you know that it's interactive completely yeah if you shoot at certain objects in there like we do have targets you also see the effects come off as well as getting extra points so that's what makes our inner very unique and the capacity is also pretty impressive our old one we could only have 16 players in a new one we have three guns 15 on 15 yeah you can go 15 on 15 but with this software that we have it allows us to have up to nine teams simultaneously so if some business comes in groups of threes or something yeah groups of three like different departments or just like a groups of people coming in just like random walk-ins on the weekends we can put them all on different teams if we want to that's cool yeah nice this is cool this is like the really it's the future of immersive experiences yes a lot of people are really pumped about that type of yeah people do enjoy when like when you do get more immersive experience people do enjoy that a lot and it kind of shows like we were getting extremely busy the moment that we opened up we had a lot of returning traffic as well when did the new location open it was open February 22nd this year yep so just six months in ish yeah six months in congrats and people are loving it i mean it actually like i really like knowing the fact that our arena that actually basically became like a landmark in in a city so you can tell that the so falls actually has a better arena than any bigger cities in the quad states yeah at least that's how it is currently yeah good job good job that's so cool and it's also nice to see the kids coming in and passing fun time together this type of stuff i want to ask you this question because there's so much backlash that's currently going on around like gaming in general and some people say it's like the worst form of escapism and all that kind of stuff and i come i come to the defense you know i care a lot about nuance so yeah there's some people that are just choosing to live in like most of their time in like virtual realities which is like okay sure they're doing that maybe they don't want to learn physical physical skills in the physical world but at the same time there's interesting skills that are picked up from gaming there's a lot of really like first of all your motor skills and being able to like your dexterity with your hands your motor skills you have to be able to find like really tiny things that are happening on like a screen and be fast or fast response time to that yeah there's team tons of team based skills and objective based skills that have to happen resource management that has to happen so i want you to talk about like the benefits as well yeah well the resource management would be a big one there are some games that are based around like how to how to do the budgeting economy build strategies yeah a lot of a lot of things you basically don't don't learn at school yeah you don't learn yeah man resource manager at that school yeah the resource management would be very useful and there is a lot of games that are like this obviously the communication team work would be the biggest one biggest benefits in gaming but of course the motor skills as well depending on what kind of games you're playing of course but yes so it's more than just entertainment you do develop some some management skills definitely it also of course will will depend on the games that you're selecting and we do have we do have quite a good selection of real-time strategy games yes which is huge on resource management the teamwork that kind of stuff then what about would you say is the this like this proclivity that we have to tend to play games that have like weapons in them or that have us just obliterating other are you talking about the violence in games what's your thoughts around that well to me personally the violence in the games of course you're gonna it's natural to see it in games it's a way for people to like release some pressure to blow off some steam so to speak because there was an actual study like I mean of course every time there is some shooting going on in a in a school or elsewhere they blame let's blame the games first let's blame games it's so much nuance here there's guns that are being sold illegally to people it's because the guy was playing Call of Duty it's it's definitely not the case I would say in like really serious world repercussions of people dying yeah I do see I do see a lot of adults that have no clue a lot of politicians are trying to blame a game and it's basically part of the problem how it's how basically like the main the main reasoning is that at least what they're trying to use as because the people that play video games cannot serve the support from reality and this is as far from truth as you can yeah going going and purchasing guns kids do yes yeah black market gun sales has way more to do I think with this kids do understand this like even the very little kids understand that the game is the game and reality is reality yeah just because you're playing the game no one's going to be jumping on the car and driving people over like they do in GTA they understand that this there are consequences in reality this is why they have a lot of fun doing all these games where do you think the motor skills and the resource management all these other things where do you think they have most applicability to life the resource management and teamwork where do these have most applicability well the resource management definitely will have with your pocketbook yeah yeah because I mean in the in the game it's very simple you waste your army in a game and then you didn't you didn't care to to harvest the crops and I didn't didn't care to to extract the coal from the mines and you ended up with no money and now you only have one soldier so that one I mean you can you can obviously bring to life because if you can't manage your spending the habits you can manage resources and you're gonna have the same results in real life as far as the team team working which you which you have to do a lot in in a lot of in a lot of games and you have and you had to do it in a lot of games before it can actually be very useful at fork place we even have some businesses coming in to do a team work and they actually play video games together like they separate and groups and then they play against each other so there is all I mean the team works has always been important and a lot of business and a lot of businesses so obviously you you can benefit from from learning that in games too what was the other we did motor skills motor skills it can be useful of course it really depends what you do for a living yeah how about yeah looking back at my life I totally see how like motor skills like the fast speeds have helped me so much with everything else that I've been doing in my life the attention and these how you find things like that's another thing yeah like the visual yeah visual attention your sense your sensitivity to acute changes how about the reaction time in it reaction timing yeah how about um we were talking about teamwork there's more and more games that are like you know throwing teamwork out the window like this with fortnite this battle royale mode is all about individualism and it's it's uh like it's it's a you only get one life mode like you once you die you have to wait until to respond until everyone else and then the everyone just slowly and steadily is you know uh so you know is it around sixteen or a hundred or like there's like bigger sizes it goes it's a variance in terms of size of players and then but the map sizes get smaller and smaller as it closes off the map size as the player count decreases so point and then and then so so talk about this like also tendency towards these like individual individualistic game modes too uh yeah I mean it no doubt there are most popular games right now um I'm not biggest fan of those kind of games like I'm um I'm never you'll never see me play battle royale games I usually just play a team-based games I play games like battlefield I still play League of Legends where it's all about teamwork so I enjoy having a team to work with uh so I'll probably be the the wrong person to ask about yeah yeah battle royale and see people's tendencies to merge that you know what I want to um hear your thoughts on is where we're moving with uh games like Stellaris I like I like that game because it teaches people about like universe design or civilization design it takes people outside of planet earth a little bit even I think more than like other games do where you're literally able to simulate out universes and transit between planets and stars and go and explore the different evolutions of life so it kind of broadens people's perspectives away from just one biological evolution around a star what do you what do you what do you see like stories like that can be super expansive for people's creativity and possibilities they can be but the person has to have like a will for a capacity for imagination um sadly those games aren't as popular it's almost like they are for too much information to handle and apprehend interesting yeah so unfortunately uh those games don't get played as much like and we and we're talking the the number of people that are willing to play them is such small that we don't even offer most of that that kind of a game content so you you later you have to keep in mind the public attention span yeah it's uh it's not getting any um higher it's actually getting reduced like people lose their interest so fast nowadays in things so the the long strategy games just take too much daytime like the last game that was somewhat close to the one that you just described was spore and it was released I think around 2008 or 2009 it was getting quite a bit of playing or a store back then but then you know trends change they do and so this juxtaposition between what a a game that has a ridiculous amount of information versus ones that are like in a sense these like battle royale style fortnites they're really fast they're really little bit of information you just need to know how to you know just to find enemies and take them down and try to win that round and then go to play another round so so it's kind of like the style is going with the attention span of of the civilization kind of interesting um how about with uh like the graphics increases have been so profound over the last 50 years we went from just pong to these photo realistic gameplays and we're going we're talking about computer graphics and all stuff yeah at the very beginning does it feel like this itself is already an 80 year long simulation for you like an 80 year long virtual reality experience for you no it does not and I also have to add the the monitors keyboards mice tv's they're not going away they're i think so yeah they're still they're still going to be there for a very long time for like two decades you think um i don't know if it's going to be for the two decades but definitely for one at least it's it just more like it's the most convenient everything else that tried to come up with is usually pretty bad like it's usually just some gimmick um you you probably remember about 10 years ago or so the tv makers were pushing hard for the stereo like a stereo glasses for the tv's remember that what was on the tv it's like a stereo effect where you put like a stereo glasses oh my gosh i remember yeah we we had some manufacturers and included on the video basically sending one to our store and people would play with those like yeah cool man and that just moves on to the next one like those didn't last at all they would try and have like a four person movie when like it has a way i would say it has a very unique um market uh i mean that that technology like you you go to the movie and sometimes like if i if i know the movie is gonna have a lot of cool visuals i will probably choose to go over to the 3d i mean they call it 3d more like a stereo movie i will go then but like it's it's not something i would want to have at home so it's exactly the same kind of a concept with uh with the monitors and um you know like they they just not gonna have anything they're not gonna have any glasses they just put on and and and play like this uh just uh just to add to this the VR gaming is completely different than actual like a traditional gaming yeah you can't play longer than one or two hours yeah you will get tired that one person tried i think being in vr for a week or something and then record and then like afterward you can probably have some serious physiological differences i mean you just think about this when you play in the vr you get a lot more information than you you are receiving a lot more information you're completely there you get the information both eyes your brain is getting tricked so it does put some strain uh and so you do actually get tired you get tired much faster than you were just sitting and relaxing on your couch and playing with the controller it's completely different yeah you just can't do it for hours the VR you can't do it for hours in a sense you're tricking your brain into teleporting into a new reality just being next to your eyes uh right here it's literally next to your eyes it will like you will get tired the eyes will get tired you're you're tricking your brain you're teleporting it yeah into so like if somebody thinks that uh you know in five years we're not even gonna have any consoles not gonna have any pc is just gonna have a bunch of VRs in our store for example it's simply not gonna be the case in 20 years it's gonna be such different stuff oh 20 years we will see yeah we'll see how well you don't think this is already a virtual reality or simulation you feel like what do you what do you how do you feel about that concept elaborate a little bit more that this our life is already a simulation or already a you're talking about the virtual reality part yeah is our life already you know after you die are you gonna just be like oh that was such a fun game and then no i don't i i honestly don't think that you don't think that you think this is a product of biological evolution that we have consciousness and yeah yeah yeah just evolution it's just evolution okay at least that's fine that's you that's my personal take do you ever feel like um that this is one big like artistic expression of god or creation or source or anything like that with all of us being our own little paint strokes on the canvas does it ever feel like that it does it sure it does tell us more about your relationship with that well i don't even know where to begin i mean of course i did i did i did study a lot of like history evolution dinosaurs and all that i mean it's it's just never in the equation how we became what we are and where we came from and i'm afraid we won't be able to answer that in our lifetime so and there there you go i mean i i enjoy watching the movies where they i mean like the one that was actually really that really impressed me was um um primates as you've watched that one have you have you seen it one more time prime primates oh my gosh yeah this is so good yeah it's it's very underrated but it it makes you wonder all those questions like where we came from if we were and then like so i watched that movie multiple times i didn't watch it just once then i went to youtube to see what others were saying about it and it's like and of course somebody has to take it to the extreme so like if we were designed by the engineers or like if we were designed by um uh what was the race that they called there i forgot titans maybe so they were they were also designed by engineers and then this guy keeps going further and further so who who made the engineers somebody made somebody made a source yeah and it's just like i mean it's just gonna be like a never-ending story but for me it's very hard to believe that i you just came to be from like this little explosion that made like one sale that became like two cells and ended up being flies and then you know so we just i mean like whenever i've watched some so to so to say documentary about you know like dinosaur era how like well this is how we're just gonna prove you that evolution actually goes on right so but they had this hedgehog right uh or i mean some reptile um and it just happened to like like it just happened that it just wanted to to to immerse itself so much or with with the environment that it started changing colors over time like millions of years passed by and then no it's not true the million does that yeah but it's like they're trying to tell you that it used to not be able to do this and then it was trying and genetically mutated to be able to do that well can you kind of can you genetically mutate we've genetically mutated a lot over the last six million years yeah but we didn't i mean we were mutating right now by using vr and yeah all the stuff but but remember like with all those cool features that you know like let's say the frogs that can grow a leg you know if it gets chopped up like do you think they had enough brain power to do that no yeah like or or like they couldn't do it before and then millions years later i would just suddenly have it oh that's a long period of time max and in genetics does a lot of interesting things so you're saying the chameleon for example if we're taking a million right like it used to not be able to change the color then to avoid prey yeah and then i try like i really wanted to do it it's a survival mechanism yeah yeah and same thing with those um those there's sea creatures that do the same thing they when they latch onto a rock they can change to the same color of the rock to avoid prey but what basically the the commentaries are trying to say that they used to not have this ability yeah well that's the general idea so like the combinator just biology yeah you just really want to want this right because the ones eventually yeah it's just oh it's interesting it doesn't sound too you know realistic because like some chameleon wanted to like start changing colors right and then the combinator changed a bunch of different options and then the one that exists the one that the one that lived on the longest because they could do that feature ended up propagating its genes further that's the general theory of it it's a theory because like why this why this one can do it but the other types that are like similar to that can't like yeah yeah how about with i just i'm curious about this question now do you do you ever feel like our disconnection from nature from the air that we breathe the water we drink the food that we eat the love that we have for each other do you ever feel like that disconnection is the reason why we have so many of the issues in our world well the human brain is pretty complex so we do a lot of unnatural things so it's kind of like a i guess part of the business part of the tree growing crooked out of the planet which is yeah yeah well and you know the the brain is very like the human brain is extremely complex it is totally and there's a lot of things that can go wrong with it arguably the most complex thing and then the civilization remains even more complex so how about what do you think is the meaning of life meaning life well that's a good question and we everybody tries to come up with their own answer for this like to have their own purpose to do good you know that kind of thing um but there is no proof currently that there is any purpose of life just to like live on and have basically something that's left after you you're gone you see part of like the meaning is to leave something yeah like kids or like um or like you also have this interesting butterfly effect that you've had on on kids and adults that have come into galaxy gaming that have had experiences with you that have been been able to go and tell their people hey i played vr it was so interesting or this laser take experience whatever you know so you're leaving behind that well this is i mean the the business that we're in in a way is um we're not selling like a cool equipment i mean yeah we do actually because we do sell gaming PCs uh like a custom built ones but mainly what people leave like what people remember when they leave like they live memories they like they they live with memories they live experiences something that they haven't before it is kind of like an interesting feeling that i know in that you introduced people to some some experiences and memories because um i mean what you can't really have much fun here definitely because the the the weather i mean we don't live in a in a tropical climate yeah we don't really live in the most like um friendly environment here six months of freezing cold temperatures yeah and then two months of extreme heat uh and just in general like i mean even in like in like i've been traveling myself like i i do go to florida quite often but even they don't really have specifically like a very similar type of entertainment that we do offer here like in i mean technically we're like when you look at the our business model we're hybrid gaming slash entertainment center um you definitely don't have anything like this in san francisco i'm pretty sure we don't have a combination of laser tag with no pc game where they are yeah we're currently the only entertainment center that is basically like a hybrid pc console uh vr and laser tag i do like that that's a really cool combo yeah but um i guess i guess what i'm what i was trying to say is that uh the the memories we still have some kids coming in um that started coming in back when we first opened and everyone still has a lot of great memories from all those days playing games together or playing laser tag or experience in virtual reality for the first time are you considering a second city to open another gaming you know no it's uh it it it takes too much of a personal approach that i don't think that franchising or like having a second location in a different city uh would be a great idea a lot of this is a personal approach and if somebody was to open similar like a business that would be similar to this you would have to invest a lot of like a personal approach there that's cool so like i i don't see this type of business succeeding if you just have like uh basically like a faceless corporation um and definitely not the business where you can get away with um you know being like a very simple without any interaction kind of like what you get in mcdonald's or burger king no totally not like that so it's um it's it's very personal approach and even like the staff members that we have um no one is like alike um everyone is different and uh customers do remember pretty much every one of them you're creating memories and leaving those behind i love that what about what should like i mean just an example to say um we were different we're basically the first ones and so forth to introduce the virtual reality to the community and a lot of people like you'd be surprised how many people never travel anywhere like don't leave the state so coming into experience of virtual reality um in 2000 you know like in 2018 for 2019 is worth something yeah especially because that they will likely remember that that was the first place that they had to experience because in a decade when it's all over the place you were the one that helped first bring it to them which is huge and hopefully it expanded their creativity they're their idea of what's possible and um that's a big part of this too is leaving memories that expand people's creativity their ability to find meaning and and bring their full gifts out to the world what about um a skill that you think kids and adults should learn as we go into this crazy exponential technology era uh don't lose themself in the social networks try to communicate more in person and in our days you notice more and more people are just too attached to the phones too uh too attached to the social networks uh more than anything so that's kind of like uh i mean i don't know if it's gonna it's gonna change anytime soon but you may have noticed like a lot of people don't even answer their phones anymore they prefer texting or messaging and you lose out on a lot when you actually not like talking to somebody over the phone um you you don't always get this full picture of what they're trying to tell you so there is definitely a lack of communication uh because of the i mean social networks are obviously part of that what do you think is the most beautiful thing in the world the most beautiful things in the world i honestly never thought of that um yeah i don't think i'd be able to answer that question you can take your time think about it for a little bit most beautiful thing in the world and we're talking about like like a visual um i'll probably see the view of our planet from like a spaceship nearby so something along those lines and why i don't know it just uh and just gives you like a very overall picture of uh uh of what we are so so to speak um i mean it's kind of hard to explain why i think um you know that specifically this picture here i guess it was because it probably shows life yeah it's the famous overview effect photo when we first saw the earth yeah from space and it was like everyone has that we ever know has lived in you've probably you've probably seen like uh there is a like what i really enjoyed there is one video that i really enjoy watching it so it's a time lapse of of the earth like shows basically like a night time all the lights on it that's really gorgeous yeah so i love half of the earth is lit the other half is at night with the lights and then it just moves so fast and then and it also shows how tiny it is it shows how tiny the rock is even though it's huge it's also tiny and eight billion of us now on it and hopefully we can expand more move more consciousness more meaning more creativity birth more people out into the cosmos like all these games are all about you know a lot of them are about that so this was a lot of fun i feel like you know we went all over the place on gaming and yeah and your in your life and trajectory and bringing this forward and meaningful experiences you've brought to people max thank you for joining us on the show yeah it was my pleasure to be huge pleasure yeah thank you thank you everyone for tuning in we greatly appreciate it we'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments below on the episode let us know what you're thinking also have more conversations with your friends your families co-workers people online about gaming and about the future of gaming about virtual reality about laser tag about really cool meaningful experiences being able to bring those to people around the world faster check out the links in the bio below the galaxy gaming dot com also their instagram facebook and twitter profiles check those out support the artists the entrepreneurs the spiritual leaders the organizations that you believe in support simulation our links are below our paypal cryptocurrency patreon links are down there also you can design merch and get paid all that is down there and go and build the future everyone manifest your dreams into the world we love you very much thank you for tuning in and we will see you soon peace