Stinger Report - 19/10/2020

TSR Newsletter | October 19, 2020

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-- The Stinger Report: Service Message --

The Global Digital Out-Of-Home Entertainment (DOE) Sector covered in The Stinger Report .

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Kevin Williams

Publisher, The Stinger Report (TSR)

Reinvesting in the Entertainment Landscape

Part 8 | # 1042

Report Skinny

Redefining the new phase of immersive entertainment coverage in The Stinger Report; and in this eighth part (the second of a two-part series) we look at the impact and re-emergence of the VR free-roaming (Arena Scale) business, concluding by looking at the new developments and the next phase of business.

Main Report

Continuing the coverage of the impact that free-roaming Out-of-Home Entertainment is having on the re-emerging market, and we see that major IP and a continuation of business are driving the market. While many tried to paint the post-COVID LBE VR market as doomed, the reality is that the market has started to re-emerge from lockdown and is seeing a return of its audience, while the operators who have survived the loss of business now look to the investment towards the next phase of establishing their prospects.

- The Re-emergence of the Free-Roam Business

Establishing a full suite of VR entertainment experiences for the various needs of the entertainment venue business has been a constant challenge for many corporations. One of those who has established an important place in the market is VRstudios. Along with the company’s enclosure and free-standing VR platforms (‘ATOM’), they have also defined backpack VR arena experiences with their ‘FLEX’ VR game arena platform. The platform supports from four to eight players, in either small 25’x25’ or big 40’x40’ arenas, using the company’s Attraction Management Platform (AMP) to integrate the hardware support, working with the HTC VIVE headset and HP backpacks. The company, before the pandemic, had installed the first ‘FLEX Arena’ system in partnership with entertainment chain Dave & Buster’s, demonstrating the value of adding a new attraction and revenue source to otherwise underutilized space. They utilized D&B empty party rooms, repurposed with the VRstudios ‘FLEX’ system, into free-roaming attractions for the venue, able to quickly by converted back when needed. This level of flexibility is opening the opportunity to venues of all scales to include a free-roaming arena in their offering. As with all their range, ‘FLEX’ is supported by the company’s overarching Attraction Management Platform (AMP) that handles content and operation of their systems – and also supports the VR sports competitive element of their platform, brining an eSports capability to the ‘ATOM’ and ‘FLEX’, and free-roaming experiences, in general. VRstudios, along with their association with Cineplex (owner of Player One Amusement Group), have just announced both a new distribution partnership with adventure and trampoline park manufacturer and designer Fun Spot, along with a partnership with technology company Cleanbox Technology to ensure their safety and hygiene strategy.

Nomadic VR – the company had initially wanted to develop its own game content, but after an initial process, reverted to a partnership to license a version of the popular zombie shooter from Vertigo Arcade (‘Arizona Sunshine: Contagion Z’), (adults $30). But soon the reality of what they offered impacted the plans of the operation. Long before the pandemic, Nomadic had closed its Orlando flagship venue (only open some eleven months) and plans for Las Vegas and Los Angeles sites were shelved. The company had opened a second site in Asia, signing an agreement with 4DX to open in the CGV Gangbyeon multiplex in South Korea – the fate of that site, post-COVID, is still to be determined. At the time of the transition, Nomadic had been contemplating developing licensed game content for its venues and, in development with partner VRWERX, was creating an experience based on the popular ‘Mission Impossible’ movie franchise. Obviously, this game never saw the light of day, as the operation pivoted away from facility operation.

Nomadic, once linked to plans for a second US-based LBE VR installation in Las Vegas, and the experimental entertainment venue AREA15 has been shelved, to be replaced by a new LBE VR entrant. But the company has built on the valuable lessons it has learned from operating in the sector and, during 2019, partnered on a major installation with Oculus and ILMxLabs – creating a pay-to-play LBE VR experience, ‘Vader Immortal: Lightsaber Dojo’, based on the consumer VR experience ('Star Wars Lightsaber Dojo'), as a training game, pop-up installation, with 10-minutes for $10. It was temporarily placed at Simon centers and Cinemark theaters locations. In September it was announced that, following this initial test, Nomadic and ILMxLabs would be partnering to make ‘Lightsaber Dojo’ more efficient for family entertainment centers and arcades to operate, working with VRsenal to create an upright tethered version (more details in our following report). Nomadic is using its experience in software, as well as operation, to define a new future direction for the business post-pandemic. With a change of core management, the company is working to build on its software and operations experience to create new endeavours.

Prior to the upheavals that rocked the social entertainment sector (and all other sectors), one of the most ambitious entertainment attractions had been London’s ‘War of the Worlds: Immersive Experience’. Based on Jeff Wayne’s musical interpretation of The War of The Worlds, this 22,000 square foot multi-level site had comprised both real actors, physical show-sets, and a number of virtual reality experiences. Groups of 12 navigate the experience for two-hours, and one of the VR attractions within this was a multi-player PC backpack free-roam experience. The groups of players confront the virtual might of a Martian Invasion Machine and progress through more of the story. This is just one of several VR experiences which comprise part of this attraction, that charges £49.50 ($64 per person). Developed and operated by Dot Dot, the attraction had seen rave reviews and had also extended its opening to deal with interest but, as with all aspects of attraction and hospitality business, it was forced to close. The facility in London is still presently closed, but the operators had been speaking of future plans, to reopen a version of the attraction – we have reached out for further information soon.

Backlight – known for its innovative VR escape game and Arena-Scale attraction, the company has not been dormant during the lockdown period and is part of the new opening news. The Las Vegas based AREA15 venue, labelled as a 200,000-sq.ft. “experiential art, retail and entertainment complex”, will be the flagship location for a brand new platform from Backlight – a 6,000sq.ft. space that will have two groups of six-person play. The ‘OZ Experience’, pop-up LBE VR installation, will utilize backpack PCs and offer a compelling attraction to support the eclectic mix of partners for this experimental entertainment venue. But Backlight has also been working on other projects launching this year, based on its VR escape gaming and new innovative experience platforms. The company is looking at rolling out its new innovative platform for wider deployment. Backlight has been covered in The Stinger Report numerous times, most recently for its ground breaking free-roaming experience ‘Toyland: Crazy Monkey’. This unique experience combines a unique D-BOX motion seat system, married into the free-roaming experience, with players taking on hordes of toy enemies as they are shrunk into toyland. This experience was first showcased at ILLUCITY, the French LBE VR venue that opened in Paris (adults €29.90 ($35)). The facility announcing continuing plans to expand, having opened their third European venue this year.

While others are re-assessing their LBE VR aspirations, other new incumbents are entering the water, and applying much of the lessons learned from theme park style attraction presentation. One of the veteran attraction manufacturers is Mack Ride (part of Mark International) and they have, over recent years, established a media-based interest. Launched in September, ‘YULLBE - Full Body Tracking Free Roaming VR Experience’ was developed by new division MackNeXT, in cooperation with VR Coaster and Mack Rides. Working in collaboration with motion tracking specialists Vicon, the ‘YULLBE’ attraction offers two unique Arena-Scale experiences and can accommodate up-to-32 users (what could be called an “Attraction-scale Platform”), the first being a fully tracked, backpack PC experience presented through the Pimax 4K VR headsets (customised for the attraction). This is a 30-minute adventurer-based game called ‘Mission: Rulantica’ (a YULLBE 30 experience with eight players, ticketed at €29 ($34)). And the second experience, using an immersive platform, is a 10-minute horror-based game called ‘Traumatica’, using standalone VR, (a YULLBE 10 experience with eight players, ticketed at €12 ($14)). But this is not a one-off installation, ‘YULLBE’ is part of a rollout of a chain of LBE VR centers across Europe, with the company looking to create its own chain of sites, building on multiple experiences developed on this, and smaller capacity versions of the free-roaming architecture.

European developer DIVR Labs has proven to be a strong developer of free-roaming VR experiences, most notable for its installation at the Hamleys Toy Store in Prague in the Czech Republic. The operation reconfigured the basement of the toy store to turn it into the ‘Golem VR’ attraction. The Arena-Scale immersive experience that was based on the 15th Century Prague folklore, where Rabbi Löw created a creature known as a Golem. The attraction employs backpack PCs, Oculus CV1 headsets, and the use of LeapMotion hand tracking, with players in groups of four traversing the virtually created cityscape, and the environment employing physical as well as virtual effects with great results. The venue is charging €17.50 ($20) per player.

Building on this success, the DIVR team started to roll out several experiences at new locations but were impacted by the lockdown of business with the global situation. Now re-emerging from this lockdown, the company revealed the first of its new installation at the Premium Outlet Prague Airport, called ‘Meet the Dinosaurs’ – the free-roaming time travelling dinosaur experience transports groups of four players back 80 million years. The unique 25-minute experience includes physical effects, such as a unique flying simulator married into the free-roaming area of 150 square meters (with players using backpack PCs and HP Reverb headsets). The attraction opened in July following lockdown, charging CZK 450 ($19.50) per player. Quickly following on from this, and the third DIVR location opened in the UAE. Located at The Dubai Mall, the latest ‘Meet the Dinosaurs’ installation is in a 150-sq.m. space, charging 130 AED ($35). DIVR is working towards rolling out its unique brand of Arena-Scale entertainment to other locations.

One of the European developers that has grown a strong following in the LBE VR, is Swiss TrueVRSystems. Having been one of the first to develop an effective free-roaming platform, incorporating multi-player and physical effect immersion, the operation has gone on to license its platform across numerous sites. During last year, the company announced plans to expand the level of capacity that its virtual worlds could accommodate, announcing the new experience ‘Tikal: Night of the Blood Moon’, which could accommodate ten-player simulations, over the 2,100sq.ft. arena. This was the fifth VR Arena-Scale experience created by the company, supporting the OptiTrack system, and running on Oculus CV1 headsets – with the use of the StrikerVR weapon system. At the time leading up to lockdown, the operation had content licensed across some 13 venues, with plans for new US and EU venues, with operations normally charging $49.99 per-person for the 30-minute experience.

In a crowded landscape of free-roaming developers, one of the early developers is VEX Solutions. With a suite of different VR applications, the company has its ‘VEX Adventure’ turnkey platform, offering a 6m x 6m virtual arena for players for up-to-four PC backpack wearing players, using HTC VIVE headsets, including the use of haptic vests. The VEX platform offers physical effects (wind, heat, olfactory and vibration) within the arena to enhance the virtual experience – offering some six available games, on average at 15 or 30 minutes of play, from developers such as ECLIPSE and Backlight Studios. Venues such as The VEX (the company’s Belgian VR arcade franchise), is running the 30-minute experiences for €25 ($29) per player.

Nerogaming an Eastern European developer that prior to the Lockdown had started to deploy their free-roaming platform. Moving forward from this and the company continues to support their ‘Polygon’ arena-scale system, able to support six players within the virtual environment, the backpack PC system connected to either HTC or HP headsets – offering three games (‘Abstract’, ‘Blackout’ and ‘Polyfun’). The company has revealed they are working on a ‘Polygon 2.0’ update with the platform including new levels for their game library, and the integration of the HP Reverb G2 headset, along with enhanced tracking – all at a lower price. The company has their systems installed in six locations from Minsk to Los Angeles, charging on average $20 per player.

Another of the backpack PC VR arena developers and operators is MASSVR – the company had established, in Chicago, its unique interpretation of the multiple player experience. Long before FORTNITE was a thing, the company had installed an 8,000 square feet VR arena in a converted department store floor plan. This Westfield, Skokie location would be joined by a dedicated facility in Bloomington, IL, offering one of the largest mass playing experiences, with some 16-players simultaneously taking part at $27 per player. The game experiences are PvP style experiences, with teams battling through environments to capture the flag – but in a unique immersive element, the games incorporate virtual jetpacks and zip-lines, as well as an assortment of weaponry. The company, with its emergence from lockdown, announced the addition of its ‘VR Champions’ high-action active game experience, with a group of eight players in a “head-to-head” competition. MASS VR has developed its own game experiences, with backpack PCs and weapons wielded by the players to achieve a truly immersive free-roaming experience.

A number of 2017 start-ups jumped hard into the prospects of free-roam VR entertainment. The concept of LBE VR proved tantalizing, although business acumen was in short supply for many; ignoring that this was not as new an industry as they had assumed, and was actually a well-established aspect of the overall Commercial Entertainment landscape.

One of the start-ups who gained some coverage was BiggerInside – the company showed its free-roaming concept back in 2019, at the IAAPA Europe event, and went on to roll out its concept called ‘Protocol 223’, using the Microsoft MR tracking system, with HP Reverb headset and HP-Z-VR backpack PC. The system had the additional element of full body and hand tracking through extensive “eXosuit” fully body tracking, favoring a softer style of play away from players brandishing weapons. The four-player game arena also included physical maze wall elements to marry the physical and virtual worlds together and created a unique PvP style of experience. Having been installed in a facility in Montpellier (The Cluster), the operation is now re-emerging from lockdown, reopening in July (offering 20-minute games charging €25 ($29) per player). The company has continued to develop, with its next two sites about to be announced, and has signed a partnership with a start-up specialized in disinfection, based on biotech aerosol, that will be employed to clean the backpacks and arena after each game.

Europe-based Varonia has developed its ‘Virtual Games Park’ system, offering an up to 3,000sq. m. free-roaming platform, with game experiences such as ‘Contagion VR’, ‘Virtual Arena’, ‘Legend of Faragor’ and ‘Wild Odyssey’. The company also launched a new title, ‘Contagion Origin’, which is a 40-minute experience compared to the average 20-minute experiences, for as many as eight and even 16 players, wearing HP G2 PC backpacks, the HP Reverb VR headset and unique “Varonia Gun rifle”, charging some €15 ($18) per player (having dropped their licensing fees to help the operators). The company has licensed their system to some 35 venues in France and Spain. Before lockdown, Varonia was investigating the application of eSports, using its platform, and expanding reach of operators, along with creating new game experiences, working towards the reopening of the venues that field their system, and looking towards future opportunities wider afield.

The VR arcade scene has striven to broaden its appeal, looking for the latest innovation to keep relevant. The ability to offer a turnkey Arena-Scale offering to the widest audience, has seen the free-roaming genre added to the libraries of content providers. One of the established facility management and content providers to hundreds of VR arcades, is Synthesis VR and, in August, the company partnered with Secret Location, to launch a free-roaming, multiplayer version of their previous popular content, releasing ‘Blasters of the Universe: Infinity Forever’. This attraction takes the original wave-based shooter and brings it to the world of Arena-Scale, allowing the developers to expand the experience for up-to-four players, making it the perfect entertainment for Location-Based Virtual Reality Businesses.

As previously reported, other developers have started to offer free-roaming plug-and-play solutions for operators wanting to add this level of entertainment to their facility. As we covered in the first of our venue visits after lockdown, the escape room scene has embraced VR; and we had seen that Vertigo Arcade, along with an Arena-Scale version of their popular ‘Arizona Sunshine’, had released the brand new title ‘Ghost Patrol VR’ – also for four players and also as a simple turnkey VR arcade addition. Vertigo Arcade had worked closely with Nomadic on a unique version of the popular title, creating ‘Arizona Sunshine: Contagion Z’ as an exclusive version only for its LBE venues. Charting the major movements in the LBE sector of late and, just as we went to the wire, news came from the Dutch games parent. It was announced that Vertigo Games Holding had 100-percent of its shares acquired by Koch Media GmbH Austria - a wholly owned subsidiary of Embracer Group AB (more commonly known as THQ Nordic), for $59.3m. The operation acquiring a suite of game development studios and media interests in the territory and is now looking to the opportunities in the VR sector, as well as Asian interests.

The ability to offer the best technology to achieve the needs for immersion for free-roaming experiences has seen specialist development. Along with dedicated VR headsets and backpack PC providers, companies such as StrikerVR have developed haptic weapon systems that can be used in conjunction with the backpack PCs and VR headsets, to add a high level of immersion with realistic recoil and effects. Likewise, the creation of the very arena that the players inhabit, with the moving floors and special effect emitters, has been packed for use. MediaMation is a specialist 4D cinema and media-attraction developer and has taken its skills from 4D effects attractions to create the ‘MotionFloor’ – a highly flexible motion and haptic modular arena floor system, that allows effects to be represented to the free-roaming environment users, and all controlled through the company’s ShowFlow control software. Where companies such as DreamScape and Sandbox VR have created their own arena effects, MediaMation now offers a flexible, off the shelf, plug-and-play solution for new operators.

Other major developments continue to underpin the more positive nature of this sphere of immersive tech following the upheaval. For example as seen with SPREE Interactive. Despite COVID-19, major venue openings have been taking place and, in August, SPREE Interactive, in partnership with Pixomondo (Hollywood FX house) and broadcaster giant ProSieben, launched the ‘Mission to Mars’ attraction at Forum Schwanthalerhöhe, Germany. This is an example of a pop-up retail unit installation, of an immersive 10-player free-roaming VR experience. ProSieben's popular ‘Galileo’ television program is recreated in the immersive sense, with a 15-minute VR experience which has guests take on an adventure to investigate humanity’s possible survival on the red planet. The attraction employs PICO standalone VR headsets, and SPREE’s unique architecture that alleviates the need for backpack PCs. It opened in August as the European LBE VR scene re-emerged from lockdown, and this €7.50 ($8.85) per-player experience has proven a very popular attraction, with audiences seeing over 60-percent capacity, leading the mall owner HBB to expend the attraction until the end of November. So popular for visitors to the mall to try VR for the first time, SPREE has also packed the attraction to support kid-centric quick-play VR titles (‘Jump A Cheese’, ‘Anteater’, ‘Firefighter’ and ‘FruitSplash’) for a €2.00 ($2.36) per-player price. This pop-up installation is part of several new international installations, building on the company’s immersive patented architecture, and more details will be revealed shortly).

SPREE is one of the first to successfully deploy LBE VR with the use of standalone headsets, deploying the PICO system. While there had been, during the build-up to 2020, numerous developers looking at entering LBE with their interpretations of no-backpack PC VR free-roam, many have been weighed down by the hurdles of adoption, politics and, eventually, the impact on new operations from the global health crisis. Away from the technology adoption, issues has been the false hope of utilizing the Oculus Quest standalone platform; due to corporate politics, that proposition was snatched from developers’ hands literally at the last moment, as new terms of use conditions were applied. Oculus owners, Facebook, is totally divesting itself from interest in multi-player commercial entertainment (as covered in detail by previous Stinger Report coverage).

For some developers, they have moved to a licensing model where they leave the purchase of the VR headsets to the operator, and just offer licenses to be able to download and deploy the game experiences they have developed – negating possible sanction from Oculus. Other developers have started the move onto alternative headsets. One of the first to receive publicity of this approach was Modal VR – first with its own creation, and later in partnership with HTC to use, exclusively in the West, the HTC Focus Plus, 6DoF tracked standalone headset for their game ‘PING!’ and other experiences ( on average at $10). Aspirations of developing a free-roam attraction were muted, but after short lived installations in Las Vegas and at Two Bit Circus, the company would eventually abandon these efforts by 2020.

Hyperverse – had heavily promoted its interpretation of what was needed, with the “full-immersion free-roam VR park” concept. The company had achieved initial success with installations as part of existing entertainment venues in Moscow, Chelyabinsk, New York, and Samara, and the operation had initially raised some $1.5m in investment. Hopes of being a turnkey solution was difficult, as the water became crowded with more start-ups entering the free-roaming arena. The operation offered three free-roaming experience for between two and six players, over 25-minutes, for 4,000rub ($53) at venues such as Moscow’s ArenaScape. Even before the health crisis, the company was pivoting towards a no-backpack PC solution, with experimentation of a standalone (Oculus Quest) style variant. Now, as the market reopens, information on if the company will continue in this vein was hard to come by.

While most Arena-Scale investment has been for LBE VR as seen in these reports, there are new applications for free-roaming experiences being developed for the arts. It was revealed recently that in London, The Royal Opera House (ROH) has been developing the first “hyper-reality opera” in partnership with Figment Productions (known for their work in theme parks and attractions). The free-roaming VR experience will place the user in the heart of an original operatic, artistic creation (inspired by the freeing of Ariel, from The Tempest). The arena-scale application incorporating 4D effects married to the immersive experience, is called ‘Current, Rising’.

It is scheduled to open later this year in the Linbury Theatre, part of the Opera House in Covent Garden, London. Audience insight research will be undertaken by StoryFutures, led by Royal Holloway, University of London as part of this UK Research & Innovation funded project. In what has been described as “historic stagecraft and cutting-edge technology” – the theatre will be charging £20 ($26) per audience member in groups of four in this immersive operatic experience. A full review of the experience and the elements that have been created will be coming soon in the Stinger Report.

What This Could All Mean:

One of the key aspects of the latest phase of development in LBE VR has been the adoption of free-roaming applications. What industry specialist KWP has dubbed “Phase Five” of the latest adoption of VR into the commercial entertainment landscape, where vast cumbersome and technologically complicated free-roam arenas were deployed. In many cases, employing camera-based mapping and tracking of objects in a complicated ballet is usually referred to as SLAM (Simultaneous Localization Mapping). With advancements in technology and the simplification of the process, the ability to track multiple users within an arena has been achieved, and the cost reductions are being applied towards creating cost-effective solutions.

How much of this will see the replacement of the backpack PC for a wifi 6 standard streamed VR experience is debatable, with the current achievements of the technology. Also, the argument for standalone (mobileVR) against full performance of high-end (PC) VR arena experiences is an ongoing discussion. The explosion in interest in standalone with the Oculus Quest 2 reveal, and the pending PICO, Samsung, Panasonic, and possible Sony entrants into this field, makes for a contested and interesting debate. Though the quality and fidelity compromises are such that PC backpack solutions seem to be with us for the medium term.

The new generation of FAM (Flexible Arena Mapping) platforms will drive the investment in more free-roaming installations. No matter, the consumer VR scene hopes to encroach on the experiences achievable with free-roaming, such as with “Co-Location” – the unique entertainment offering from this installation in a commercial setting, able to accommodate large simulations and playing environments, with unique physical effects, and creating impressive PC-based VR immersion, are still highly compelling, and unbeatable.