“My name is Dave Stott and I am an urban gamer.

I created KO-CHA because I was concerned about…(gonna sound like a knob here)…the long term health effects of sedentary gaming and loneliness.

I am aware that making a phone app is not the obvious solution to these problems…but in my naive Antipodean mind I thought:

‘If I could just create a free paintball gun (safe enough to use in parks and public spaces) I could entice young gamers outside to have active, face to face fun with each other.’

(Cringey yes, but well meant)

I settled on an AR phone app because:

  1. They are free to download on the one thing carried by most teenagers.

  2. Flying data poses no danger to bystanders.

  3. Phones are so ubiquitous in public spaces their use is practically invisible to security guards and people around you.

My logic told me:

‘If I walk and don’t laugh too loudly…I could have a shoot-out in a library.’

And that was the clincher.

That’s when I Googled ‘how to make a phone app’ and got to work.

Designing and funding KO-CHA from my earnings as an industrial climber, I brought on Antiblanks in April 2020 to do the coding on the project.

6 years on, KO-CHA is a comprehensive toolbox for playing awesome combat games everywhere.

And yet…because of the noise online…most young people are still completely unaware that the world is now a plump battlefield open for the taking.

So all you gamers out there who think you’re intrepid…stop giving it all the big guns with your fingers and thumbs. The hardcore games are out  in the real world now!

Some of us are playing Fortnight in Green Park; Capture the flag in Waterloo Station; Art Heist in the National Gallery. We’re battling Matrix-style through the London Underground and taking out Tom Cruise at film premieres.

There are a million parks and scraps of woodland and wasteland in this world…and the best Phone Tag games have yet to be played.

I dare you, therefore, to play better games then an old old fuddy like me.”

Dave Stott

(Dave works as an industrial climber on London’s premier landmarks, running KO-CHA games at the weekends.)