How Another World Built the Largest VR Arcade Network in the World, with CEO Vasily Petrenko

Bob sits down with Vasily Petrenko, CEO of Another World, the free-roam VR arcade network that has grown to roughly 400 signed partners in 50 countries, with more than 300 locations open and another hundred in build-out. Bob has now visited three of them, in Koh Samui and Kuala Lumpur, and every owner he met was opening more. Bob trusts that kind of leading indicator over any industry research report, so he invited Vasily on to find out what is driving it.

Vasily started as a bioengineer in a Siberian science town. In 2014 he and his friends opened their city's first escape room, made their money back in two months, built a comedy escape room everyone said would fail (it became the top room in the city), and turned their workshop into an escape room supply business. In 2018 a two-minute free-roam VR demo sold two contracts before the game even existed. That product became The Deep, merged with the Another World brand in 2020, and the network took off.

Then the conversation gets tactical about what head office does for operators. A sales training program lifted call-to-booking conversion from under 20 percent to 45 to 60 percent. The company sets up Google and Facebook campaigns for partners, and a social media team turns their raw phone footage into ready-to-post reels every week. Network-wide partner revenue grew around 49 percent in a year, with individual locations ranging from $10,000 to $40,000 plus per month. And one Polish partner cracked corporate sales with a subscription: local companies pay around $1,000 a month to send ten employees at a time into off-peak weekday slots, so ten contracts cover the bills before the weekend rush even starts.

Bob pushes on the audience quadrants VR arcades still miss: date nights, and the daytime cultural crowd buying tickets to Horizons of Khufu and Titanic. The Gate in Paris sold 2,000 Titanic tickets a month on top of an unchanged gaming business, and that case frames the royalty and exclusivity negotiation Vasily is already having with Eclipso and Hololabs, plus his early conversations with Disney and Warner Brothers about bringing major IP into the network.

Chapters:

• 00:00 Intro: how Bob found Another World in Koh Samui and Kuala Lumpur
• 01:55 Leading indicators: three venues visited, every owner expanding
• 03:40 Origin story: a bioengineer opens Siberia's first escape rooms
• 04:55 The comedy escape room everyone said would fail
• 06:25 From motion-sick demos to The Deep's first free-roam game
• 09:15 Why VR still hasn't taken over the escape room industry
• 12:15 "VR is just an instrument": selling a good time, not a technology
• 13:25 Birthday parties: solve the parent's problem and the sale is done
• 15:00 Corporate events: the North York three-hour format
• 17:05 Merging The Deep with Another World
• 19:20 400 signed partners in 50 countries, and the cost of growing that fast
• 21:00 The scientific method applied to arcade operations
• 22:50 Sales scripts, role-play coaching, and weekly reels from head office
• 25:00 Partner economics: $10,000 to $40,000 plus per month
• 28:30 The sales training that tripled booking conversion
• 30:10 The four-quadrant audience model
• 33:55 PvP done right: Schmuter and Kernel
• 35:50 Tournament strategy: a national championship from 20 locations
• 38:10 Events mix and the Polish partner's corporate subscription unlock
• 42:40 Your game guides are the product
• 43:05 AI for corporate sales outreach
• 48:15 The silver quadrant: cultural experiences and third-party content
• 50:00 The Gate in Paris: 2,000 Titanic tickets a month
• 51:35 Royalties, exclusivity, and the case for scale
• 55:20 Disney, Warner Brothers, and the wrap-up

Guest:

Vasily Petrenko, CEO and co-founder, Another World: https://another-world.com
Find Vasily on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vasily-petrenko/

Another World is a LEXRA member. If you're building in location-based XR, join the leading companies collaborating at https://lexra.org