By Michael “Buzz” Balzer, The Bezerk Company, with a foreword by Adam Bezerk.
Adam Bezerk
We live in the Golden Age of “R”. VR, AR, MR, XR… the world of technology continues to bring us new and more amazing versions of reality. Ultimately, we believe it is Augmented Reality (AR) that offers the greatest potential for the real-world destinations our industry creates. Seamlessly blending virtual content with physical landscapes is truly the best of both worlds.
But what about the OG R, good old Virtual Reality (VR)? VR gets a bit of a tough rap in the industry. But if you look at it a little differently, there’s still a lot of potential there. Michael “Baz” Balzer, Lead Creative Director at Bezark, is looking to realize just that potential by exploring VLBE (Virtual Location-Based Entertainment).
The VR era
It’s been about a decade since VR emerged as a viable entertainment medium (even longer if you include the custom experiences created by companies like Disney in the ’90s). Even before consumer VR headsets were in homes, many in the location-based entertainment (LBE) space were exploring the promise and potential of this new technology. It wasn’t long before VR experiences began appearing in theme parks and other attractions around the world. But it was only then that the “reality” part of VR started to come into play.
Guests who expected a shared social experience found themselves isolated from friends and family once they put on their VR headsets. High maintenance, sanitation, and equipment costs affected revenue. The complexity and clumsiness of the headsets affected capacity. And yet, guests were fully immersed in new worlds, empowered with new capabilities, and enjoyed the freedom and agency the medium offered.
So it’s fair to say that the first decade of VR in LBE has had both good and bad. But despite the operational challenges, the creative potential of the platform remains compelling. VR can create bold new storyworlds. Those pesky laws of physics become more of a guideline. And we can really focus on individualizing the experience, giving our guests the sense of agency and empowerment they crave.
So the $640,000 worth question is: how do we resolve this paradox? How do we fit this low-throughput technology into a high-throughput business model? Maybe the answer is to reverse the equation. Maybe it’s time to bring our design skills into the virtual space, or maybe the answer is a new product: VLBE.
What is VLBE?
The basic premise of Virtual Location-Based Entertainment (VLBE) is simple: treat virtual spaces just like show buildings on land or in the sky. Create immersive, shareable virtual experiences that can be enjoyed and monetized in familiar but entirely new ways. Just like physical places, our goal is to create engaging worlds that get people “out of the house” and create fun memories with friends. The only difference is that instead of getting in a car, you put on a VR headset.
Once you change that mindset, VR’s limitations turn into advantages. Throughput goes from limited to infinite. Operational constraints and complex loading processes disappear. What remains is the freedom to stretch your imagination and the opportunity to reach a wider and more diverse audience.
A VLBE is a place where gravity is irrelevant, impossible cantilevers can exist in architecture, show spaces can have an infinite number of secret passages and interactive elements, and fully mobile characters take the place of animatronics.
The VLBE format doesn’t just remove limitations, it opens up new possibilities for LBE designers. The stories we design can incorporate a high degree of personalization. We can build environments that encourage experimentation, reward curiosity, and respond persistently (even permanently) to guest actions. We can introduce elements of expression, empowering guests to redesign the world to their own liking.
The social aspect of VR is still in its infancy but growing fast. A few of us at Bezark have been meeting in VR every week for Mighty Coconut’s amazing Walkabout Minigolf, a fun twist on the classic game set in a fantastic cartoon-esque environment that defies gravity and scale. We jump online from living rooms in three different states and laugh at each other over terrible golf scores. This became a revelation and a mission statement of sorts: simple activities with lots of social interaction. VLBE will be a place for friends and family from all over the world to come together.
And now is the perfect time to bring this kind of concept to the VR industry. The number of home VR headsets is growing every year. Currently, immersive versions of traditional video games dominate, but other types of experiences exist on the platform as well. There’s a lot of experimentation happening, from interactive movies to educational experiences. We have an opportunity to define a new category of virtual experiences based on design principles long established in the industry.
What does the future hold?
Of course, this is not to say that VLBEs can replace old-fashioned, in-person travel destinations – on the contrary, these experiences can coexist and support each other.
As VR matures, the challenges plaguing in-park installations will likely be ironed out, and AR will likely make the leap and achieve the right mix of physical and virtual magic that attractions require. But now that VR has established itself as a viable home product, we’d do well to plant our flag and claim some of that virtual space for ourselves.
This isn’t a VHS vs. Betamax issue. Both mediums will survive and thrive in the future. Giving LBE fans a virtual place to satisfy their virtual desires seems like a win-win. And it sounds like a lot of fun.
For part one of this miniseries, click here.
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