We’ve all heard of skirmish and paintball but Queensland company Battlefield Sports has taken the concept of make believe armed conflict to new heights with their own brand of live-action gaming.
Founder Peter Lander drew on his own gaming background and developed an award-winning and internationally successful business that combines technology and the basics of battle.
"It evolved from gaming, role playing, miniatures, and then later on I tried some laser-tag and some paintball and it's really morphed all those things together into a game" Peter says.
"By 1999 we'd developed enough equipment to go and run games and that was just in Cairns, locally, and we got up a website and people around the world were really interested in what we were doing so it's really evolved from that.
“We've always been entrepreneurs, and going 'this is really working', locally, and with interest around the planet."
Battlefield Sports infrared weapons, patent-pending sensors and inflatable barricades have proved a hit with gamers in Australia and overseas. The company now uses Brisbane as a test bed for new ideas.
"We do school fetes, we run backyard parties, games in the woodlands like this. We have the inflatable barricades and forts,” Peter says.
“We do quite advanced team building exercises for corporates and we also do a lot of corporate fun and that has its team-building aspect as well and that's a great ice breaker.
“People naturally start communicating, just playing one of our simple games, but if it's a board of directors, then the live-action role play is really appropriate for maybe 10 or 12 people.
“But we've done corporate groups for 200 people at once, a hundred a side, and that's really fun. Whatever someone's thinking about doing around the world, we've got some experience in that area to help them with."
Rather than sell franchises, Battlefield Sports supply customers with advice and equipment, in a package designed to suit the customer’s own business model.
"It's a matter of providing tools and techniques that enable people to use their own ability and ideas. There are people running mobile operations and backyard parties, all the way to people running a dedicated location, where they've spent a million dollars just kitting out the environment to make it really authentic."
Over 35 operations in Australia are using the company’s equipment, and numbers overseas are growing constantly.
"There's currently 27 countries, there's over 200 sites around the world using our equipment. That's growing at approximately one per week on average. The sites are hard to define. Some of them are fixed sites and others are mobile, some are indoors,” Peter says.
The company’s growing list of awards has been a great advantage when dealing with overseas clients, he says.
"The Smart State Awards and particularly the Australian Technology Showcase Award which we won last year was fantastic, but we've received export awards as well for exporting the equipment, which is made in Australia.
“So that helps us a great deal because it gives us a lot of credibility to the international customers, that we're a real business and it's really successful.
“It's been fantastic that an idea that I've had for 20 years has evolved and actually come to reality. However I'm still inspired, we've got a lot more ideas in the pipeline.”
"It evolved from gaming, role playing, miniatures, and then later on I tried some laser-tag and some paintball and it's really morphed all those things together into a game" Peter says.
"By 1999 we'd developed enough equipment to go and run games and that was just in Cairns, locally, and we got up a website and people around the world were really interested in what we were doing so it's really evolved from that.
“We've always been entrepreneurs, and going 'this is really working', locally, and with interest around the planet."
Battlefield Sports infrared weapons, patent-pending sensors and inflatable barricades have proved a hit with gamers in Australia and overseas. The company now uses Brisbane as a test bed for new ideas.
"We do school fetes, we run backyard parties, games in the woodlands like this. We have the inflatable barricades and forts,” Peter says.
“We do quite advanced team building exercises for corporates and we also do a lot of corporate fun and that has its team-building aspect as well and that's a great ice breaker.
“People naturally start communicating, just playing one of our simple games, but if it's a board of directors, then the live-action role play is really appropriate for maybe 10 or 12 people.
“But we've done corporate groups for 200 people at once, a hundred a side, and that's really fun. Whatever someone's thinking about doing around the world, we've got some experience in that area to help them with."
Rather than sell franchises, Battlefield Sports supply customers with advice and equipment, in a package designed to suit the customer’s own business model.
"It's a matter of providing tools and techniques that enable people to use their own ability and ideas. There are people running mobile operations and backyard parties, all the way to people running a dedicated location, where they've spent a million dollars just kitting out the environment to make it really authentic."
Over 35 operations in Australia are using the company’s equipment, and numbers overseas are growing constantly.
"There's currently 27 countries, there's over 200 sites around the world using our equipment. That's growing at approximately one per week on average. The sites are hard to define. Some of them are fixed sites and others are mobile, some are indoors,” Peter says.
The company’s growing list of awards has been a great advantage when dealing with overseas clients, he says.
"The Smart State Awards and particularly the Australian Technology Showcase Award which we won last year was fantastic, but we've received export awards as well for exporting the equipment, which is made in Australia.
“So that helps us a great deal because it gives us a lot of credibility to the international customers, that we're a real business and it's really successful.
“It's been fantastic that an idea that I've had for 20 years has evolved and actually come to reality. However I'm still inspired, we've got a lot more ideas in the pipeline.”
