We are entering that time of the year when the demand for GameTruck is at its peak. This year however we are seeing unprecedented demand. The idea of a private party with all your friends seems to be resonating with a lot of people. With demand so high however, it can be extremely challenging to get the time and date you want on the Calendar. But, with a little creativity and some flexibility – we can work together to make something amazing happen.

Stacey Knight, who is absolutely the queen of booking agents, is not only friendly and knowledgeable, she’s also creative and resourceful. To protect the innocent I have changed the names, but the facts of the story remain the same. Emily called looking for a party for her daughter. 

“Hi, this is Sarah’s mom. I am hoping to get onto the calendar for your outdoor LaserTag party. We need Saturday, sometime in the afternoon,” Emily told Stacey.

Stacey replies, “Happy to help; let’s take a look to see what we can do. How old are the kids?”

Emily, “Sarah is turning 13 and she’s more of a outdoor, sporty girl. But she isn’t into gaming.”

Within seconds Stacey locates the franchise closest to this parent and pulls up the calendar. Right away she sees demand is super high, the calendars are nearly full across the board. But creativity craves constraints. Stacey has an idea.

Stacey says to the mom, “Cool! Well, our LaserTag has already sold out for the afternoon times, we only have later evening around 7/7:30PM.”

Emily, is of course disappointed. She was already picturing her daughter and her friends roaming around the back yard playing LaserTag, “Oh really, darn,” She says. “I’m afraid it’ll be too late to host it!”

Drawing upon her own personal experience as a mom and a customer, Stacey shares her experience with Emily. “Not necessarily! I have girls and they LOVE our LaserTag! We’ve had a lot of birthday parties with the LaserTag.

Our favorite event was for my daughter, also named Sarah, for her Sweet 16! She has a November birthday and asked for a bonfire. So, I bought a bunch of Glow sticks, put them into a bowl & let the kids decorate themselves with the various sticks I bought just after Halloween, put together a Smore’s Table, Hot Chocolate Bar, ordered a bunch of pizza, and had beverages for the kids. The LaserTag team showed up, setup the field, and we had a GLOW PARTY! It was the best party, because it was darker and you couldn’t see the kids, but you could see these streaks of light running around.”

Emily’s ton is suddenly upbeat. Given a new vision for something memorable and unique, she’s re-energized. “Oh my gosh, I LOVE THAT!” But then she realizes it’s March. “Where am I going to find those GLOW STICKS!?”

Stacey has already pulled up a browser and is searching, “Let’s Google it real quick…here are a couple sites to check out.” She sends Emily the links. “And it looks like they have expedited shipping offered if you want them sooner!”

Emily is decisive, “Let’s do it!”

They booked the event and by all accounts had an absolutely fantastic time. 

Obviously getting our first choice is best, however some of our most memorable events have come from working with parents that are able to be creative and find times and dates that work. As we head into the busy months, experience shows that a little flexibility and creativity can make for an memorable celebration.

Lately I have had several parents reach out to me to ask me about video games, esports careers, and opportunities for their sons. Over the last fifteen years, I have learned a few things about coaching young boys, and young men but also, I have had the great privilege of working with some amazing people in the industry. It is my sincere belief that we as a nation, and a civilization will achieve our maximum potential when strong women and strong men in equal number can come together and work on solving the hard problems that face us locally and globally.

I say that because I do not believe encouragement is a zero-sum game. I believe decency and respect can be delivered in equal measure if we make those choices. Why am I saying that? Because I believe I have something to say about boys and video games, and I want to make it absolutely clear this should in no way take away from the support and momentum for girls and women to participate and play video games. In fact, what I love about esports is that we have the opportunity to create balanced, integrated, inclusive competition and programming that is open to anyone. 

Many parents are hearing about esports, and they are hearing things like some video game tournaments are filling stadiums, or one kid winning $3M in a Fortnite Tournament. They might have even heard about some schools offering college scholarships for esports. However, the number of parents who see video gaming as a viable path to college remains small, which is not surprising given that tuition assistance for competitive video games is only 4 years old.

The Trap – One Kind of Relationship for Boys

When I started GameTruck sixteen years ago, I did not see the problem as clearly as I see it today. I started GameTruck because I thought the video games in family entertainment centers were expensive and awful. I started GameTruck because I wanted to share the awesome experience, we had at the game studio with more people. But I also started it because boy’s birthday party concepts seemed to be limited to Laser Tag and Bowling. On the other hand, girls had an enormous number of party concepts to pick from. Everything from American Girl Parties to Princess Dress Up Parties and more, plus everything the boys were into like trampoline parks, and laser tag. I believed GameTruck as a concept would fill a void left by the declining pizza-arcade industry. Boys love to compete, and outside of sports they did not have many options. 

There were other factors that lead to GameTruck’s long term success, but it was that one idea: Boys love to compete. Only within the last few years have I seen that boys not only love to compete, but they are also practically only allowed to compete.

Author Robert Bly, in his book Iron John [1], wrote:

Contemporary business life allows competitive relationships only, in which the major emotions are anxiety, tension, loneliness, rivalry, and fear. 

This pressure to compete has created some interesting challenges for boys. One of them especially is the collapse in access to sports.

No New Teams

When I started GameTruck I also looked at Macro-trends. I believed that increasing parental concern of child safety, in part sparked by pictures of missing children on milk cartons scared a generation of parents into needing to know where their children were at all times[2][3]. One consequence was that team sports became the de facto way to exercise and socialize your child safely with adult supervision.

The trouble is, as demand rose, access all but collapsed. 

Some things are so big they hide in plain sight. Over the last 50 years, the power 5 conferences have not added a sports team. Let me give you an example. When I attended ASU in 1984, they had the largest single campus in the country with 19,000 students. Today, ASU boasts over 105,000 students enrolled. And do you know how many basketball, baseball, and football teams they have? 5 times the enrollment, a massive expansion in campuses. And they have one of each, the same number they had 70 years ago. Yet over the last 50 years the United States has doubled it’s population and tripled the number of kids attending college.

In our local middle school, 145 sixth grade students went out for the boys baseball team. That’s 10 children for every available slot on the team. 14 were picked. The next year, only 20 went out. According to the Aspen Institute, by January 2020, 70% of 11-year old’s will have fallen out of team sports.[4] (Unfortunately the Pandemic only made this worse [5])

Where did 125 children go?

We all know. They play video games.

What is really shocking about these numbers is how rapidly the decline happened. In 2016 the age of self-selection out of sports was 13[6] and a few years before that it was 15. 

I have spoken to parents, both friends and acquaintances that had the same experience. Their child love to play ______ (pick a sport) and at middle school a hundred kids tried out and only a few were chosen. That was the end of their participation and enjoyment in sports.

And this is the issue… if you can’t compete who are you? If the only relationship available to form friendships is rooted in competition… then what happens to your friends when you can no longer “play” together?

Online gaming creates systematic isolation to keep people safe

Even as kids fall into video games, there is another challenge. No publisher wants to introduce you through matchmaking to someone who could walk over to your house and meet you. That would be too dangerous. It is better to scramble matchups and obscure connections. Some publishers go so far as to make it practically impossible to even play with friends at all.

They work awfully hard to keep everyone anonymous to each other. But this means, to play with (i.e. compete) friends, you must already have them. However, it was Robert Bly’s quote that gave me insight into why we see so many athletes game.  Cutthroat sports competition is not all that much fun either. When you are competing with team mates to start, that is also a form of competition that can be characterized by anxiety, tension, rivalry and loneliness. 

Playing together

Hopefully, you are by now getting a sense for the scale of the problem. It was this systematic and random playing against strangers that motivated me to create GameTruck. I wanted a safe environment, at your house, where kids could play together with their friends, in person. And I believe and the science supports that play is deeply human. 

Where to go from here

I have been a huge advocate of parents playing video games with their kids. In talks I have given from New York to California, I advise parents to do two critical things.

1. Get in there and play with them. I call this building a bridge to their world.
2. Help them build a bridge from their world to their future.

Step one is easy. Jump in. Get in there and start playing. You’d be surprised what you can learn about your son’s inner life when you get them to talk with you about video games. It is kind of funny. I sat down to write about step two until I realized none of this information from my public speaking is on my blog in the context of GameTruck – so I had to “set the stage” as they say. I wanted to make the case for why I feel our sons are feeling intense isolating pressure to form relationships based in competition and the stress that is causing. Add to that the loneliness that can come from online only play and the challenge of making friends with your cohorts, and I do believe GameTruck is a small but important step in the right direction, bringing kids together with their friends to play.

But what’s next? I will start a series outlining how video game play relates to education, careers, and yes, possibly even esports. My intention is to give you resources to help you and your child make the most of their gaming, and how to avoid getting lost in it.

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References

1. ‌Bly, R. (2015). Iron John: A Book about Men (3rd edition). Da Capo Press.
2. Jin, L. (2020, December 18). The Rise and Fall of the Missing Children Milk Carton Campaign. Medium. https://medium.com/the-collector/the-rise-and-fall-of-the-missing-children-milk-carton-campaign-4e9228d34cb7
3. Ta, L. (n.d.). The missing kids milk carton campaign started in Iowa. Des Moines Register. Retrieved April 18, 2021, from https://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/crime-and-courts/2017/09/04/missing-kids-milk-carton-campaign-outcome/627165001/
4. Survey: Kids Quit Most Sports By Age 11. (n.d.). The Aspen Institute Project Play. Retrieved April 18, 2021, from https://www.aspenprojectplay.org/national-youth-sport-survey/kids-quit-most-sports-by-age-11
5. Aspen Institute’s Project Play Report Shows Kids Are Losing Interest in Sports During Pandemic. (n.d.). The Aspen Institute. Retrieved April 18, 2021, from https://www.aspeninstitute.org/news/press-release/state-of-play-2020/

Miner, J. W. (n.d.). Why 70 percent of kids quit sports by age 13. Washington Post. Retrieved September 24, 2020, from https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/parenting/wp/2016/06/01/why-70-percent-of-kids-quit-sports-by-age-13/

It is somewhat hard to believe, but GameTruck was invented before the smartphone. That’s right. Before Apple announced their exciting new “gadget”. Apple was the maker of quirky computers and amazing music players. No one in their right mind would consider buying a phone from Apple. And then the iPhone came out in on June 29, 2007 almost a year after we had performed the first GameTruck party.

During all the amazing changes, I believe there is one reason GameTruck has remained as popular as ever. Yes, there are all the features and benefits – the convenience, the video games, and the very cool gaming theater. If you ask our customers, gamers, franchise owners, and coaches what makes a GameTruck party so special, you are likely to hear something along the lines that, “it’s the experience.”

This is a very illustrative word, experience. Not because what it says, but because of what it does not say. Isn’t everything and experience? How can you not have an experience? After spending a lot of time thinking about this, I believe the reason you hear this word over and over again, is that the structure of a GameTruck event triggers a deep seeded psychological need we all have. It is in this depth of feeling that we lose our preciseness of language.

This for example, is one of the reasons that describe food and wine tastes can be very difficult. It is not only that we might struggle with the vocabulary. Our taste buds are connected to the oldest part of our brain, the part farthest away from language. We often struggle to articular what we are experiencing. Simon Sinek in Start with Why makes a similar argument about decision making. The part of your brain that is responsible for making decisions is not the same part that is responsible for language.

He cites the example, when we talk about someone we love like a spouse and say, “She completes me.” What, are you missing a kidney or something? No. But there are emotional states that evade our ability to define them with language. I believe this is why we see the word “experience” used so often, because we are trying to describe a series of intertwined events and emotions that produce a positive memory we wish to hold onto.

What Is The Experience?

I believe that what the gamers are experiencing today, and why the party experience is so powerful for them, is that we are delivering on a profoundly human need to see and be seen by the people in our social circle.

Yuval Harari in his amazing book Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind points out the incredible power of story to link humanity together. The historical record is clear that human beings have been social animals for tens of thousands (possibly hundreds of thousands) of years. Jordan B. Peterson in his latest book points out that our mental health may depend upon how successfully we are integrated into a robust social network.

With so much communication forced online or through narrow voice channels (throwing away up to 55% of the interpersonal information available in ordinary human communication). Essentially, more than half of our communication is non-verbal.

A GameTruck event does something unusual. It unites people who normally would only place separately, to play together in the same space. And one of the things we have learned during the past 12 months, is that face to face, in person human interaction has a special power to connect us.

Joseph Grenny showed me that office environments are designed to bring people together to form relationships. It is in the casual, unstructured interactions that friendships are made and strengthened. When we are aligned by common interest, and we have time to interact, this is when our tribal power is at it’s strongest.

Like Marbles In A Jar

According to Psychoanalyst and theologian [[Roger Moore]], all people, but especially preteen boys have a need to not only play but display. There is a need to be seen, something that rarely happens in online gaming. Somewhere along the way, male relationships have been condensed into a single axis. Socially boys and men are expected to reduce their relationships to competition only. However, human beings are wired for richer, cooperative and collaborative efforts as well.

Within the space of a GameTruck party, playing side by side, the players can begin to reconnect with those needs to be see and be seen. To borrow a phrase from Mr. Grenny, the players are like marbles in a jar. They interact because they have to, but also they want to. It is this unstructured interaction that leads to stronger relationships and friendships. Yes there is competition, but there is also negotiation, cooperation, comradery, and collaboration. And it is all supported by rich, visual communication and feedback. 

The experience that I believe most people refer to is the profound sense of being embedded in a likeminded community that can express a wider range of interactions and relationships aside from anonymous cut through competition. Everyone plays. Everyone works together so everyone can play. This socialization around mutual interest enhances the bonds between the players. This is fertile ground for friendship.

Summary

The next time you have a GameTruck party, or you get invited to one, when you see the kids play, don’t just think, “they’re having fun.” You might also pause to listen, spend some time and watch how they interact. There are high fives, jumps, cheers, and yes, while there is always a little good-natured competition, can you see the validation that comes from the Adult Coach appreciating the achievement of the players? Can you feel the energy as the players suddenly have access to the full range of interpersonal communication available to them? Can you sense the potential energy build as they realize they share interests, and get the chance to explore those common bonds unfettered? This is the experience we are talking about. The sense of being deeply connected and aligned with people who have our wellbeing in mind and at heart.  This is how friends are made.  

And delivering this experience is what we have been delivering for 15 years.  Perhaps that is why we are still as popular as ever.

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References

1. ktmoelle. (2017, October 6). Taste In the Brain [Text]. https://askabiologist.asu.edu/taste-brain
2. Sinek, S. (2009). Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action (Reprint edition). Portfolio.
3. Harari, Y. (n.d.). Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind. Retrieved March 9, 2020, from https://www.amazon.com/Sapiens-Humankind-Yuval-Noah-Harari/dp/0062316117/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1583793092&sr=1-1
4. Voss, C., & Raz, T. (2016). Never Split the Difference: Negotiating As If Your Life Depended On It (1st edition). Harper Business.
5. Grenny, J., Grenny, J., & Grenny, J. (2020, November 30). No one is talking about the real problem with working from home. Fast Company. https://www.fastcompany.com/90579969/no-one-is-talking-about-the-real-problem-with-working-from-home

Power Posing Is Back: Amy Cuddy Successfully Refutes Criticism. (n.d.). Retrieved March 9, 2020, from https://www.forbes.com/sites/kimelsesser/2018/04/03/power-posing-is-back-amy-cuddy-successfully-refutes-criticism/#70da9113b8ef