Meta4’s VR & More

Minority Media Rebrands & Positions Itself for Growth & Opportunity

Meta4 Interactive has emerged from Minority Media, the award-winning, Montreal, Canada-based game studio established in 2010. For Meta4, the global pandemic acted as a change accelerant. The company quickly pivoted to remote work and leveraged that to attract exciting global talent.

Meta4 is an independent studio focused on developing original intellectual property and games for location-based entertainment venues as well as mobile, console and VR platforms.

“We have long been an agile, innovative independent game development studio and we look forward to continuing to blaze new paths as Meta4,” said CEO Vander Caballero. “The brand change is all about the evolution of the company to grow our customer base and deliver immersive entertainment everywhere players play.”

This multiplatform approach is an evolution as well as the culmination of their experience in video gaming. Under their previous Minority Media brand, the company developed a groundbreaking Play Station Network fantasy adventure game, Papo Y Yo, in 2012. In 2014, Vander re-oriented the company to focus exclusively on VR entertainment, launching Time Machine VR, the first VR game made in Canada, to great acclaim. The title became one of Steam VR’s top VR titles, surpassing $1 million in revenue.

“This represents a great opportunity for Family Entertainment Group to offer visitors to our locations a portal directly into the universe of an A-list entertainment property. Transformers is a powerhouse brand with a huge recognition factor that will attract many people to try VR.” – Rich Pankey, VP of Games and Tech Services, Family Entertainment Group

Chaos Jump: A Leap into LBE VR

Chaos Jump

At the IAAPA Expo 2018, the company debuted Chaos Jump, their first product for location-based VR. This 4-player VR arena designed with curb appeal and an optimized footprint in mind, was much smaller than many of the VR arenas. In the game, adventurers battle a robot army determined to stop them as they travel across space and time to retrieve gold from exotic worlds. They followed that with a distribution deal with industry heavyweight Betson and Reclaim!, a game described as “the next evolution of laser tag in VR,” which first won over operators at Bowl Expo 2019.

Meta4 Interactive’s Transformers VR Battle Arena

Transformers Roll Out!

During IAAPA Expo 2019, the company debuted Transformers: VR Battle Arena in collaboration with Hasbro. Transformers: VR Battle Arena is the first small footprint VR system with a blockbuster brand and the only attraction in the world that enables players to play as a Transformer robot. Until recently, big brand VR experiences had only been offered in tourist venues and big cities as standalone destinations. The Battle Arena delivers Transformers VR gameplay in an affordable multiplayer attraction, thereby democratizing blockbuster VR for locations everywhere. Consumers aren’t necessarily looking for VR, but they do want to connect with their favorite characters so deeply that they jump at the chance to interact with them on a deeper level.

Transformers: VR Battle Arena, the game that shares its name with the attraction, enables players to become a heroic Autobot or unleash their inner Decepticon in a player-versus-player (PvP) battle.

A sneak peek at Meta4’s new Transformers VR game.

New Transformers Game for IAAPA ’21

The Meta4 games team developed Transformers: VR Invasion during the pandemic and lockdown of 2020 and it made its tradeshow debut at last month’s IAAPA Expo. The company says the game fulfills their promise to develop additional Transformers adventures for LBE venues with different characters and new play modes. Transformers: VR Invasion delivers collaborative gameplay that enables guests to be part of the liberation squad of humans fighting alongside well-known Autobots like Optimus Prime and Bumblebee, as well as Grimlock, the leader of the Dinobots powerful strike squad.

“An out-of-home multiplayer virtual reality game is an exciting way to put fans right into the middle of the larger-than-life action associated with the Transformers franchise. Now anyone can become the heroic Autobots Optimus Prime or Bumblebee or unleash their inner Decepticon by stepping into the role of Megatron or Soundwave for a massively fun battle on the epic scale fans have come to expect.” – Casey Collins, GM & SVP of Entertainment and Licensing at Hasbro

New Games at “No Cost” Through 2022

Throughout 2022, Meta4 says it will deliver exciting new VR games for the Transformers: VR Battle Arena at no additional cost. New games will arrive automatically to drive repeat play from guests and keep the arena fresh and compelling.

Michael Zaidan, VP of business development and global sales, said the company plans on putting out four titles in the next year. While the company’s focus is on location-based entertainment, he said they also recognize opportunity elsewhere.

“We believe that we’re very vertically integrated studio,” Zaidan said. “We can speak to users at locations, in home-based games and on mobile. We’re one of the few companies that’s in all of these places. You really need to look into all of these markets as cohesive.”

Multiplatform Meta4

Caballero has grand plans for Meta4 Interactive, which became the new name in part due to the metaphors the company uses to tell stories through its games. It also alludes to the metaverse, which Caballero describes as “your presence in a virtual world.” “Interactive,” of course, was added to explain the basic function of these types of games.

“Metaverse and location-based entertainment have something in common,” he explained. “The metaverse is social and interactive. Kids stay there because of their friends. It’s a social network where they move from world to world.” That can be in the physical world or the virtual world.

“At TEEG, we are always looking for new games and new concepts to enhance our guests’ experiences. We chose Transformers: VR Battle Arena because the Transformers franchise is well known worldwide, and it is a small footprint attraction that is ideal for our large venues.” – Ana Giron, TEEG’s Purchasing Manager

Going forward, Meta4 will focus on three market segments:

1. Location-based entertainment and creating the software (platform, games) and hardware for multiplayer VR machines.

2. Games for at-home consumer VR.

3. Games and content for the metaverse.

In October, in time for Halloween, Meta4 Interactive developed Night Fair, a survivor horror game built entirely in Fortnite Creative and available to hundreds of millions of Fortnite fans around the world. Caballero said the goal of the metaverse is for seamless connectivity – allowing players to jump around from world to world.

Meta4 also has plans to launch the at-home VR game Transformers: Beyond Realities for Steam VR and PlayStation VR. This new Transformers title which will feature a full campaign and hours of gameplay.

Zaidan noted: “We want to blur the lines of immersive entertainment by delivering great games wherever players gather, whether they are at home playing on a console, on their phone on the go, donning a VR headset in their living room or out in the physical world engaging in a premium immersive attraction at their favorite amusement venues.”

“We really like Minority Media, now Meta4, as a company. They give such great support and we like their smaller footprint arena better than the competition. It’s got amazing curb appeal and awesome gameplay.” – David Larson, Managing Partner, Autobahn Indoor Speedway

Meta4 continues to expand its footprint in the LBE market with game systems in FECs and other amusement locations in the U.S., Canada, Europe, Asia, Australia and the Middle East. Zaidan added that the company is happy to be working with Betson and Amusement Source International as distributors in their various markets.

For more information on Meta4 Interactive, visit www.meta4.games or email info@meta4.games.

Meet the Meta4 Interactive team…