After striking a deal with ViacomCBS, now Paramount, Lititz-based MajorMega created a virtual-reality game based on popular cartoon character SpongeBob SquarePants and the undersea world of Bikini Bottom.
The two-person arcade game debuted at a convention in Orlando, Florida, said Michael Bridgman, a co-founder of the gaming company. “It was really well-received and we got a ton of orders.”
Then came the hardware part – the metal, wood and plastic that goes into a game that is nearly 12 feet deep and seven feet wide. “We can’t just push a button and suddenly it’s in the cloud for everyone in the world to access,” Bridgman said. “This is a whole different kind of scale.”
MajorMega managed as best it could, leaning on many vendors in the Lancaster area. But in order to really grow, MajorMega knew it needed a partner, Bridgman said. It found one in Bay Tek Entertainment, a family-owned amusement company in Pulaski, Wisconsin, near Green Bay.
Bay Tek purchased MajorMega earlier this year for an undisclosed sum and is moving the Lititz company’s manufacturing operations to Wisconsin.
MajorMega’s creative team will stay put at Rock Lititz, according to Bridgman. “I think they respected the culture of Rock Lititz and the creative energy that pulsates through this place, and they wanted to leave all that intact and make sure that we were uninhibited,” he said.
Indeed, Bay Tek comes from a similar environment. It is a subsidiary of The Village, a group of companies in manufacturing, entertainment, real estate and investing that share a 385,000 square-foot campus and about 400 employees. Their signature products include the arcade staple Skee-Ball. Its investment arm, meanwhile, is a founding partner of Titletown Tech, which funds early-stage, high-growth startups in Green Bay. The fund’s other partners include Microsoft and the Green Bay Packers football team.
“We are so excited to welcome this exceptional team to ours,” Holly Hampton, Bay Tek’s vice president, said in a statement about the acquisition of MajorMega. “I know they will seamlessly integrate into the Bay Tek family.
Bridgman said he initially met Hampton at a trade association event in Chicago. The two companies began collaborating with a third company on a project that never took off, he said.
Despite the setback, Bay Tek and MajorMega kept talking about future projects, Bridgman said. That’s when he and his partners realized that the team at Bay Tek had never played MajorMega’s first product, the Hyperdeck, a four-person VR gaming platform that incorporates wind, motion and heat.
Bay Tek execs flew to Hersheypark in spring 2023 to try it out, Bridgman said. “They were blown away.”
Talks between the companies shifted from collaboration to joining forces, Bridgman said. “I think they saw the value in what we had created.”
Bringing the heat
Bridgman co-founded MajorMega in 2013 with Sean Hennessy.
They started out developing interactive websites but had their eye on video games early on. When they laid out their 10-year goals, for example, they included creating video games for astronauts, Bridgman said. “Sean and I were both space nerds.”
They eventually turned to creating VR games, which led to development of the Hyperdeck, which measures 17 feet by 18 feet. The company began working on a smaller product before the Covid-19 pandemic. Those experiments led eventually to the SpongeBob SquarePants game, which Bridgman described as two games in one. One player drives a delivery vehicle through Bikini Bottom, while another fires Krabby Patties at hungry people.
“Our thought there was to capture replayability,” Bridgman said. In other words, players finish the game, learn their friend had a different experience and then want to play again. “The best games are the ones that people play over and over again,” he said.
Under the aegis of Bay Tek, the team at MajorMega plans to continue creating new games, though they have already achieved their goal of creating video games for astronauts – sort of.
In 2023, the company installed two Hyperdecks at the Johnson Space Center in Florida. As part of the VR experience, players start on Earth, experience a rocket launch, land on the moon and begin mining for minerals.
“I won’t spoil the whole thing, but catastrophe strikes and they have to escape the moon,” Bridgman said.
Is he worried about the proliferation of VR headsets that let people play games at home?
Not really. “I actually think that VR in the household is helping us,” he said.
Consumer headsets like the Oculus and new Apple Vision Pro help acclimate people to the VR experience, making them more likely to try it when they are out and about, he said. Plus, the Hyperdeck adds motion and environmental effects that are not easily reproduced in a living room.
“So, the more people enjoy VR at home, the more people are likely to say, ‘Wow, I wonder what it’s like when we have all these other things, the motion and the wind and the heat,” Bridgman said.
