Petaluma Profile: Local millennial takes virtual reality on the road

I’m sitting in a fold-out camping chair in Aaron Kendall’s garage, getting ready for a virtual roller-coaster ride.

“If you start to feel sick, just close your eyes and it will all go away,” he advises.

Okay, I nod with my headset, and off we go. At first, the ride seems pretty mellow, mostly hilly like Thunder Mountain at Disneyland. I duck as a few boulders fly over my head. And then we soar over a granite edge as steep as Yosemite’s Half Dome and my stomach drops. Feeling a little queasy, I take his advice and close my eyes - which works momentarily - until I open them again and I’m flying off the rails in a free fall.

By the time I take off the headset, my hands are sweaty and I’m right back in Kendall’s garage, in the suburban Petaluma house where he lives with his parents and dog Mocha. In the past half-hour, I’ve played a light-saber drumming game (picture “Guitar Hero” meets “Star Wars” on a taiko drumming stage), a trippy 3D painting game, a grocery-store shooter game and a climbing game called “To the Top.”

But the roller-coaster ride is definitely the best rush of the day.

If all goes to plan, Kendall’s Virtual Frontier, a rare mobile virtual reality gaming business in the Bay Area, will bring the same thrills to parties and corporate events all over the North Bay.

“My goal is to just get people to try it,” Kendall says. “Once they put on the headset, they’re sold.”

Five years ago, when Facebook bought the VR-startup Oculus for $2 billion, it seemed like virtual reality would be the next big thing. But even though Oculus’ new wireless Quest device launched this summer for $400, it still hasn’t transcended tech geekdom into a household phenomenon.

That’s where Aaron Kendall comes in.

Instead of shelling out several thousand dollars for more sophisticated headsets, computers, gear and the gaming platform, customers pay around $125 an hour for two gaming stations he sets up at a party in your garage or backyard under a tent.

At first, it might seem counterintuitive - you go to a party to socialize and then you disappear into an alternate universe? But Kendall has designed it as a group spectacle, with large flat-screen TVs so everyone can watch the player’s game in real time.

“I try to make it a lot of fun for the spectators, too,” he says. “When you’re in the headset, you can still hear other people talking. Like when people are playing ‘Beat Saber’ and they’re messing up, people in the crowd will yell, ‘No, you gotta do this or do that!’ And they’re laughing with them and practicing for when it’s their turn. It’s definitely more of a social thing, rather than when you do it alone.”

At a birthday party, it’s the modern day extension of pin the tail on the donkey or swinging at a piñata blindfolded - only your eyes are covered by a headset as the rest of the party eggs you on.

“Except it might be a lot safer than some of the piñatas I’ve seen at birthdays,” says Carlos Tovar, an organizer of Casa Grande Project Graduation who brought in Kendall to set up virtual reality gaming at the party for graduating seniors this past May “to take things to the next level.”

“The kids loved it. It’s like Wii on steroids,” says Tovar, referring to the physically active Nintendo gaming console that occasionally left gamers with tennis elbow.

Likewise, Virtual Frontier was a huge hit at this year’s Petaluma High School Project Graduation. “It’s funny how if you’re just watching the person playing, they’ve got these crazy antics that don’t make any sense and then you see what they’re doing on the screen, what they’re playing and it’s entertaining for the whole group,” said Rita Schaefer, Petaluma High School Project Grad president. “It’s kind of the same reason you watch charades.”

A Casa Grande alum and San Jose State business major, the 23-year-old Kendall originally dreamed of a brick-and-mortar VR arcade, but as he drew up business plans the mobile option seemed more viable. With the help of five investors he bought all the VR equipment, a van and several carts he customized with his father, Jeff Kendall, who worked in the tech industry and is now in the film industry.

Kendall’s carefully curated lineup of games range from simple to complex and are totally immersive. “I wanted to include smaller scale things, too,” he says. “Like an art game where people can paint in a 3D scape, so that people who weren’t interested in shooting zombies could still have fun with VR.”

During parties and events, Kendall guides gamers through the VR experience. Sometimes that means he’s almost like a referee in gladiator fighting games like Gorn.

“It’s really bloody, but almost in a cartoony way. In the past, people get scared and they start running away, so it’s hard to keep them inside (the 5-by-10 virtual grid),” Kendall said, as testament to the reality people feel while playing with the device. One time, “I was trying to keep my brother away from hitting the edge, and he accidentally hit me in the face!”