Which software and games should you choose for the best Arcade experience?

You're about to embark on a new adventure: starting up a virtual reality arcade! You've got the coolest and latest VR equipment set up, your space looks fantastic and well-maintained, and you've got friendly staff ready to welcome your new customers and provide them with an enjoyable VR experience. But then you start a game and suddenly it's a bit of a letdown... Because when you launch a game, it needs to load for a few minutes first, then you start a tutorial, and only then can the user start playing. And then the time is already up!

In a VR arcade setting, it's important to offer your customers the right VR games. Of course, there are hundreds of games available, but you don't want to offer all games at the same time. Think of it like a card game: you don't show your entire hand all at once. Therefore, make a selection of games that you think are fun and that you'd like to offer. With the following points, we provide some guidelines on which to base your game selection.

You can offer VR games by theme. Consider specific games for children, the elderly, or young adults. While 16-year-olds might love a zombie shooter, older people might enjoy walking underwater or taking a walk on the moon. Therefore, determine which games or experiences you want to provide for each target group you are targeting. That way, there's something fun for everyone!

In addition to dividing your target audience, you can also choose to offer theme games. Think of special horror nights during Halloween, a Christmas game during Christmas, or a fun VR animated movie during Easter.

VR arcades often host groups. Think of friend groups, company outings, and children's parties. You want everyone to be able to play with the VR headset, so don't choose games where a player spends a quarter of an hour starting the game. In a VR arcade, you want games where someone just has to press "start" and can then immediately start playing the game. After a few minutes, the players can switch and a new player can start (for example, to try to break the previous player's top score).

Your VR arcade will attract a very broad audience: people who have experience with virtual reality or people who have played a PlayStation game before, but also people who have never seen a VR headset in their lives. By offering games of different levels, you can give all users, regardless of their experience with VR, a fun experience. For instance, you don't want someone with no VR experience playing a complicated zombie game where they don't know how to shoot or reload guns. For people with no VR/game experience, it's recommended to play a game where the controllers are rarely, if ever, used. Consider an experience like theBlu or a game like Beat Saber; where you only need to wave your controllers and don't have to press any buttons.

Depending on how you set up your arcade, choose single-player games (games you play alone) or multiplayer games (games with multiple players). Both variants of games have their pros and cons. The advantage of a single-player game is that it is much easier to set up. You are not dependent on another player, you have much less risk of connection/start-up problems, and you have a huge range of games to choose from.

The fun thing about multiplayer games is that you can see each other in VR. In some games, you play against each other, while in others, you have to cooperate to win. This gives the game a whole new dimension and is especially fun if you play with someone you know (for example, in a group of friends). A good example of a multiplayer VR game is Arizona Sunshine.

A new trend in the field of virtual reality is VR escape rooms. More and more developers are responding to this by releasing cool games. Some escape rooms can be played individually, but there are also many escape rooms where you have to work together with several people to solve puzzles. At the moment, there are two game developers offering VR escape rooms professionally: Ubisoft Escape Games and ARVI VR.

Nothing is as annoying as having to manually start up different computers and games. As an operator, you don't want to have to go to a computer with a keyboard, especially not when you have to control multiple VR cubes at the same time. Therefore, choose a software management system like SpringboardVR. This system is specifically built for VR arcades and is used worldwide by the most leading arcades. With the software management system, you can control various gaming stations from a central computer (the server PC). This way, you don't have to physically stand next to a VR cube, but you can simply start and close games from a computer, laptop, or even tablet.

Games cannot be used commercially just like that. For example, if you buy a game once via Steam, you cannot offer it in your VR arcade. To do this, you need to pay per use to the game developer. The price for this is entirely dependent on what the developer asks for it. In general, popular VR games cost more per minute than less popular or known games. We have written an extensive blog about this. Click here to go to our blog about game licenses.

As a final tip, we suggest looking at which games are popular at successful VR arcades. These games are popular for a reason (probably because they meet the above criteria). The aforementioned platform SpringboardVR provides a complete overview of the most popular VR games. We therefore recommend taking a look at this so you can get an idea of the most popular games. Click here to go to the overview of popular games on SpringboardVR..