Corporate employees can find themselves in a dog-eat-dog world, unless they become skilled team players.
Corporations have already included as part of their annual budgets expenses for team building workshops or seminars, to which they expect their employees’ participation and attendance.
More often than not, corporate employees find these activities boring and tedious. Not so if the team building activity is laser tag.
Laser tag is a team activity popular with people of all ages, where players try to score points by firing “laser guns” at targets.
The laser guns are usually hand-held infrared-emitting devices, and the infrared-sensitive targets are embedded in packs worn by each player.
Just like paintball and airsoft, laser tag plays include combat simulations and role-playing games.
However, laser tag is considered to be less demanding and less painful than paintball, because roughhousing or running in indoor laser tag arenas is not allowed and physical projectiles are not used. Still it is a very demanding and a very effective fitness activity.
The targeting device used in laser tag employs infrared technology much like the one used for household remote controls. Each targeting device emits an infrared beam with a unique identifying signal, which is then recorded by the target when hit by the beam.
Scoring and playing rules are all controlled by a computer system, along with switching from one game format to another or from solo play to team scoring.
The computer technology also allows for greater flexibility in game customization by allowing different characteristics or individual player preferences to be inputted into each targeting device.
Laser tag can be played indoors or outdoors. Indoor arenas often feature large dark rooms lit by black lights and designed with many walls and other obstacles, often following a particular theme. Players in indoor arenas are sometimes guided in taking aim by a visible laser built into the targeting device, much like a laser pointer.
Indoor arenas are more restrictive due to their physical dimensions; the equipment’s overall design is focused more on performance and game play. Outdoor playing fields have the same concept in design as paintball fields.
Since outdoor field dimensions are larger and surface are much rougher than those of indoor arenas, equipment must be designed to function well at longer ranges, have higher output power, and be more durable.
Indoors or outdoors, there are various game formats that can be played in laser tag. Death matches, where one team tries to take all the members of the other team out, are commonly played.
Tactical missions, with its various objectives and goals, are favorite game formats in team building activities. Whatever the format, lessons in cooperation, communication, fun and trust in teammates are incorporated into the game; these lessons provide the framework for building a stronger and better team.
