Weekend warfare: Mount Pleasant resident brings shooter games to real life

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Zach Dickerson lives out video games on the weekends.

The 29-year-old Mount Pleasant resident created his own real-life game called IRcombat. The game, which is a mixture of laser tag, paintball and class-based first person shooters, uses hollowed out airsoft guns filled with electronics and infrared sensors.

“I wanted it to feel like a video game,” Dickerson said.

About six months ago, he finished developing the game with different guns, power-ups and game types, he said. The guns even include sound effects that play when players fire or are hit.

He said he’s invested about $6,000 into the game and about 600 hours of creation.

“I used four weeks of vacation last year on it,” he said.

The game uses LED lasers to track shots fired at other competitors. All participants wear a hat which acknowledges if they are hit by the shot or not. Players’ hit points are depleted as they get hit, making it similar to a video game. He even created grenades with different effective ranges that can be tossed at entrenched enemies.

“If you can’t aim, you aren’t going to win,” he said.

He said he plays throughout the mid-Michigan area, but started the game primarily in Mount Pleasant. When he originally was testing the equipment in Chipp-A-Waters Park someone called the police on him, he said.

“I had run-ins with the Mount Pleasant Police … The guns are fairly realistic looking,” he said. “I e-mailed the police and they told me to put a lot of bright orange on them.”

On Saturday, Dickerson gathered a group of people to play the game at Pine River Paintball inSt. Louis.

Jan Oster, owner of Pine River Paintball said both times he has had groups together to play it has rained but that hasn’t stopped them from having a good time.

Oster invited his nephews Mason Sterling, 15, and Andrew Sterling, 12, of Breckenridge, out to play the game.

“I’ve really enjoyed it,” Oster said. “It’s for a younger generation. I think it’s a fun game.”

Matt Cooper, an Alma resident and CMU alumnus, played for the first time on Saturday. He said the game delivers on what he
expected.

“It really is like a live-action video game,” he said.

Dickerson’s sister Leigha said it was her first time playing and despite the rain she had a good time.

“It’s pretty cool, I didn’t like playing in the rain but it’s a lot more in depth than I imagined,” she said.

Zach said he doesn’t plan on marketing the game, but instead would like to keep it more of a hobby on the weekends.

He said typically he charges $5 to $10 for a game. He sets up games on IRcombat’s facebook page and has made more information available about the game at at www.ircombat.com.