Gel Blaster, a company that aims to reconnect people with the joy of physical play, is making waves in the location-based entertainment industry with its innovative new product, Nexus.
Nexus is an innovative, immersive, highly interactive gaming system bridging the gap between physical and digital gameplay. It combines the thrill of traditional blaster games like paintball and airsoft with the technological sophistication of video games, creating what Gel Blaster describes as a “real-world video game.”
Steve Starobinsky, SVP of trends and new markets at Gel Blaster, speaks to blooloop about Nexus’s development and its potential to revolutionise the gaming experience.
Gel Blaster takes a new approach to play
Gel Blaster was founded with the belief that “play can heal the world.” The company sees a world where video games and screen time have monopolised leisure activities, leaving traditional forms of play struggling to keep up.
“Video games have become so awesome and addicting that real-world experiences struggle to compete with them,” says Starobinsky. In response, Gel Blaster aims to create new ways to play that rival and complement the immersive experiences of digital gaming.
At its core, Gel Blaster is about physical activity, community, and competition. The company designs its products to foster these elements, helping people enjoy being active and engaged in the real world.
“We believe that the world has become stagnant with how we play,” says Starobinsky. “Often, manufacturers take the easy way of recycling ideas instead of doing the challenging work of building a new category, a new way to play.” Gel Blaster aims to shake things up by offering a new play experience that combines the best aspects of traditional and digital gaming.
In the early days, people could only play video games at FECs or arcades. “That’s where it all began. But over the last 40 years, as video games have come home, the arcade relies on other ways to bring people in. As the first real-world video game, Nexus will give FECs that next boom, that next cycle where consumers can only play their favourite Nexus game inside our FEC launch partners.
“We’re obsessed with play. We’re obsessed with physical activities that allow you to have a real-world experience with friends or family. So, we are levelling up all these familiar concepts that the video game industry has captured amazingly.”
The genesis of Gel Blaster
The idea for Gel Blaster was born from a personal experience that founder Colin Guinn had with his children. Guinn, who has a rich history of innovation as the former chief innovation officer for DJI, the world’s largest drone manufacturer, noticed that his kids were spending a lot of time on their tablets, playing games like Fortnite. He introduced them to paintball to get them more physically active, which sparked the initial idea for Gel Blaster.
“Colin said, ‘Let me show you Fortnite in real life’ – he took his oldest son to play paintball, and they loved it and bonded over it. He saw something special and distilled it down to the fact that paintball had peril and real-world stakes. That kept people engaged and coming back, even though it was expensive, painful, dirty, and far from the city.
“He then took his younger son, who was nine years old. He loved playing with Nerf as a kid. But seemed to have aged out of it at around eight years old. It stopped being cool. There were no stakes. But when they played paintball, he got shot in the neck under his helmet. So, of course, he returned to playing Fortnite on his iPad.”
That was the first ‘aha’ moment for Guinn. He wondered if there was a way to create a blaster experience that was less extreme than paintball but more engaging than Nerf. This question laid the foundation for what would eventually become Gel Blaster.
“We created the first Gel Blaster in 2020, and it was successfully funded on Kickstarter,” says Starobinsky. “We just wanted to see if people liked this new blaster experience.” It turned out they really did:
“In 2020, we did $330,000 in sales. Then we started putting it on Amazon and got them into some retailers. And in 2021, we did $5 million in sales.”
The Nexus experience
Nexus, the company’s new product, is not just another blaster game—it’s a fully immersive, real-world video game experience. “Phase One was, do people like shooting gel balls at each other? Phase Two was to create the technology it would take actually to have a video game in real life,” Starobinsky says.
“We started building Nexus in 2021. The idea was to combine Gel Blaster, which has the best parts of paintball but none of the worst parts, with the digital scoring of laser tag and create a video game-like mechanic. And unlike our previous strategy to sell gel blasters to retail, we would make Nexus exclusively for the location-based entertainment industry.”
Nexus is designed to bring video games’ competitive and engaging elements into the physical world. It offers a unique experience that combines the best of both.
The system is built on a mesh Wi-Fi network connecting all the blasters and vests, allowing real-time hit attribution. This means that players not only feel the impact of being hit by a gel ball, but the system also tracks who hit whom, adding a layer of digital scoring integral to the gameplay. “We now know who hit who, and that part is very exciting because that was all new technology,” says Starobinsky.
This Nexus technology has led to over 120 patents, creating a significant competitive advantage for Gel Blaster in the LBE market.
Immersive gameplay
One of the standout features of Nexus is its ability to create an immersive experience that keeps players fully engaged. “There is nothing more immersive than being hit with a physical projectile repeatedly,” says Starobinsky. Unlike other forms of entertainment, where players might be distracted by thoughts of their everyday lives, Nexus demands full attention. It pulls players into the game in a way that is both physical and mental.
But the immersion doesn’t stop there. Nexus incorporates familiar video game elements such as load-outs and power-ups. Players can customise their blasters to behave like different weapons in a first-person shooter game. Each load-out offers unique attributes like damage, rate of fire, and ammo capacity. “This is so new, yet so familiar,” Starobinsky adds, emphasising how the system blends the digital and physical in a way that feels intuitive to gamers.
Power-ups and loot are also integrated into the gameplay through smart targets around the arena. These targets can grant players temporary advantages like double damage or health boosts, adding a strategic layer to the game. The vest has a near-field RFID chip so players can build their profile on the app and log in when they play.
“The system captures all their stats: accuracy, total knockouts, wins and losses.”
These dynamic elements keep the experience fresh and exciting for repeat players.
It is also significant for the FEC operators:
“This becomes the marketing engine for our FEC partners. For instance, if I’ve been to a venue and set the high score for the week, and then I’m sitting on my couch on Thursday afternoon, and someone rolls in and defeats my score, I get a pop-up on my phone that says ‘Your score has been defeated. Come to the FEC now and get double the XP’. We can bring customers back to our launch partners with a higher frequency without them having to lift a finger.”
Nexus in the real world
Since its launch, the Gel Blaster team has tested Nexus in various LBE venues with impressive results. Main Event, a family entertainment centre chain, was the first to adopt Nexus, and the impact was immediate. In just the first month, Main Event saw a fourfold increase in throughput compared to the previous year.
“If you just isolate the Monday to Thursday number, it was larger than their total July 2023,” Starobinsky says. This success has led Main Event to commit to a chain-wide rollout across all 78 locations, a testament to the game’s broad appeal.
The response from both players and venue operators has been overwhelmingly positive. At Main Event’s Austin location, where Nexus was first introduced, over 17,000 people experienced the game. Feedback has been glowing. “We have a 94% satisfaction rate,” says Starobinsky. He also notes that the game appeals to a wide demographic, from young children to older adults.
Following the success at Main Event, Gel Blaster has rolled out Nexus to other locations, including Gatlin’s in Tennessee, which serves a tourist-focused audience, and Golf Land in Northern California, where it has been integrated into a mini-golf FEC. The latest installation is at Kings and Queens in Westchester County, New York, marking the fifth beta location for the system.
Building a sense of community
The company is focusing on building a global community through gameplay, encouraging players to create teams and compete globally.
“What we are seeing is that this play pattern is very addicting. People are going to create teams and squads. People are going to compete. We will be fostering this global movement through play by activating the kid within. So, it starts with the Nexus app and the avatars they create. Then it’ll move through to recognising the player of the week, the Player of the Month. For instance, we can have Team UK versus teams from the Czech Republic versus teams from Mexico.”
The company is accelerating its international expansion, with its first European location set to open later this year:
“Our first location in Europe will open on 15 December in Prague at The Playground. This venue used to be a Hamleys store. They’ve rebranded themselves into this 60,000 square feet destination, half of which is the world’s most epic toy store, and the other half an amazing FEC.”
Gel Blaster & Nexus: moving with the trends
Looking to the future, Starobinsky says that Gel Blaster considers AR the next significant technological advancement to integrate it into its gameplay.
“We believe that the next great consumer technology is augmented reality. AR will transform humanity. In our play pattern, you have to wear eye protection. So, we already have a prototype of gel blasting in AR. So, when a player blasts someone, they can see the health bar above that person go down. Or, instead of shooting a portal, they can pick up loot from the ground. In AR, we can have augmented reality bunkers. You might not even need all of the physical buildouts that you currently do now.”
Nexus allows venues to maximise physical spaces by switching between different game modes, such as laser tag and gel blasting, catering to various audiences and demands.
“That means operators can de-risk the entire thing by having two attractions in one physical space. We are the hot new thing, and we are the incumbent. The physical projectile, or rather the feeling of it, is software-controlled. So, our FEC partners can run our hardware in laser tag mode with the switch of a button. Laser tag is now a game mode under Nexus and can dynamically shift to the real-world demand of that particular location.”
On risk, he adds: “Gel blasting, from an insurance perspective, is categorised as soft play. Insurance costs can erode your profit margins for other high-thrill attractions like trampolines, rock climbing, or go-karting. Not with Nexus.”
Looking ahead
With Nexus, Gel Blaster is poised to redefine the LBE market by offering a gaming experience that bridges the gap between digital and physical play. The company’s innovative approach has garnered significant interest from venue operators. As more locations adopt the system, the potential for Nexus to become a staple of modern entertainment grows.
“We are meeting the customer where they’re at,” says Starobinsky, highlighting how Nexus is designed to appeal to the same audience that loves video games but is looking for something new and exciting in the real world. By bringing the familiar elements of video games into a physical space, Gel Blaster is creating a new form of entertainment and setting the stage for a new way to play.
As Gel Blaster continues to expand Nexus into more venues, the company is focused on maintaining the quality of the experience and ensuring that it remains engaging and fun for all players.
In a world where digital and physical play are often seen as separate entities, Gel Blaster proves they can coexist—and even enhance each other. Nexus is more than just a game; it’s a new way to experience the thrill of competition, the joy of physical activity, and the satisfaction of mastering a new skill.
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