Causing Curiosity

Mar 24
2 min read

I began the first full day of my recent California tag excursion with a visit to Main Event Montclair. As soon as I walked up to the glass-walled laser tag enclosure I saw something that caused some curiosity for me.

Do you see it? I ambiguously shared this photo to see if anyone else noticed what I did and was curious as well.

The branding on the wall is for GBN, but the packs in use are all Delta Strike Genesis. Now, this is the second time in as many weeks that I’ve had this question come up and I was starting to suspect it wasn’t just anecdotal by site.

I vested up with a couple of staff members, Myat and Raymond, who gave me some insight about what had transpired.

I was told that this is the first Main Event to open in California and they launched this location in January of last year. For the first year they opened with and operated the GBN Nexus gear, but only within the last few weeks (end of February) swapped that out for Delta Strike.

I will not speculate on the reasons, but it was quite a big deal when Main Event made the decision to change from Delta Strike to GBN, which I first heard about at IAAPA in 2024. So you can imagine it was equally as big a deal, which I had confirmed to me this week at Amusement Expo, that they switched back. Very interesting.

We went into the arena and I saw that it had been beautifully designed with an ancient ruins/jungle hybrid theme.

I tagged all around the barrels and structures, enjoying a fun early morning game to start my day.

I was observant of the portal targets that remained, though inactive, throughout the arena, simply because this is such an unusual (and unlikely) visual juxtaposition of systems.

And one of them I found myself tagging upon a staple of the Art Attack arenas I have played lately…the bridge.

The bridge, as you can see, has very visible showcasing of the Main Event logo. This is very smart and helps reinforce the brand. However, I also realized how in some cases branding your arena can backfire.

So, while I think it’s great to see a business incorporate their own logo into the arena artwork (and I feel the same about incorporating local references, Easter eggs or personalized touches), it is also a reminder that what you put on your walls is going to stay there for quite a while, so it is also wise to be judicious when making long-term decisions with your theming. Generally speaking, they do this quite well with other pieces of their marketing like this familiar slogan.

I realize the average visitor to this site will never pick up on the details that caught my eye or think twice about it if they did. For me this is not an assessment of the decisions made so much as it is a peek at what makes this an unusual arena and the capturing of a distinctively unique moment in the laser tag timeline.