Everything Immersive This Year — 2018
A year of milestones in immersive theatre, escape rooms, theme parks, mixed reality, and more
We know that things are happening in Immersive-land all the time and that you count on No Proscenium to bring you the news every week, especially with our digest of all things immersive, “Everything Immersive This Week.”
So as we enter the home stretch of this year, No Proscenium now brings you the highlights month by month in 2018 across XR, escape rooms, theme parks, immersive theatre, and more. It’s everything immersive this year!
We’ve also included some statistics on all of the immersive works NoPro tracks, including some insights about the 700+ experiences we covered this year:
Whew! What a year. Hasn’t it been amazing?
Thanks to all of you for reading the site and newsletter and listening to the podcast. We couldn’t do it without you, or the support of our community. NoPro relies upon the support of our generous Patreon backers to cover these immersive experiences all across the USA, Canada, Mexico, and beyond. Help us put out the podcast, newsletter, reviews, interviews, and more, in 2019. Join now!
And now, without further ado…
No Proscenium’s 2018 In Immersive
January
The VOID launches their second free-roam, hyper-reality experience Star Wars: Secrets of the Empire in collaboration with ILMxLAB. In this social VR experience, teams of four players collaborate to complete a shared mission in the Rogue One movie world while inside a built set, complete with wind, heat, and other experiential effects.
Eliza McNitt’s Spheres, a three part VR series produced by Darren Aronofsky, is acquired by CityLights in a deal valued in the “low-to-mid seven figures” after showing at Sundance’s New Frontier Program.
HTC unveils the Vive Pro during the Consumer Electronics Show, allowing owners of the room-scale VR system to finally go wireless at home by using an adapter.
The Santa Fe-based arts collective Meow Wolf releases the news that they’re opening up a Meow Wolf facility at Area 15 in Las Vegas! They follow up that announcement with another one: an upcoming Meow Wolf facility in Denver.
Former members of Oculus Story Studio officially announce the founding of their new VR studio, Fable, with their first project being the Oculus-funded Wolves in the Walls, a piece where the Fable team collaborated with Third Rail Projects after experiencing Then She Fell.
The Saw Escape Room, based on the “Saw” movie franchise and created by Egan Productions and Lionsgate, opens in Las Vegas. The experience features multiple Saw-themed rooms where players can hear Jigsaw’s voice and solve puzzles by working together.
The first annual Immersive Design Summit, put on by No Proscenium, Epic Immersive, and First Person Travel, is held in San Francisco, California, drawing 200 attendees from the genres like immersive theatre, live action role playing, escape rooms, virtual reality, and more.
February
Windy City Playhouse opens their immersive soap opera Southern Gothic, where audiences can wander around a custom-built house on stage during a 1960s suburban birthday party. The production goes on to become Chicago’s only long-running immersive show, continuing into 2019 and moving into a new permanent venue in the South Loop.
Buzzfeed releases a huge exposé on sexual assault committed by patrons on performers and staff at Sleep No More, covering 17 incidents in a story that reverberated throughout the immersive theatre community.
March
The documentary Meow Wolf: Origin Story makes its festival debut at SXSW; the film tells the story of the Meow Wolf as it transforms from a punk rock-influenced, anarchist artists’ collective into a multi-million dollar-generating enterprise with additional future branches planned across the nation.
Audiences across the country get exposed to a vision of a futuristic, networked virtual reality world with the release of Steven Spielberg’s Ready Player One, based upon the novel by Ernest Cline. The main character, Wade Watts, spends most of his time inside of the OASIS, a massively multiplayer online role-playing game in VR.
HBO, in collaboration with agencies Giant Spoon, mycotoo, and more, creates the town of Westworld’s Sweetwater in rural Texas. The activation SXSWestworld is a huge multi-day experience involving multiple storylines, over 20 buildings, and 60 actors.
Perry Farrell announces plans for an enormous, music-focused immersive playground in Las Vegas named Kind Heaven inspired by Southeast Asian culture; the expected budget is rumored to be over $100 million.
Bryan Bishop of The Verge takes part in an interactive, sci-fi immersive narrative called a “SimuLife” which runs over the course of four days during SXSW; he writes an eight part series about his experience, which was created by Jeff Wirth and Deep Dive Austin, and sponsored by Meow Wolf.
Joe and Anthony Russo’s company, AGBO, announce an expansion into interactive location-based entertainment by teaming up with The Tension/Lust Experience team to develop new immersive experiences, destinations, and brand partnerships in Las Vegas.
No Spectators: The Art of Burning Man opens at the Smithsonian Renwick Gallery, bringing the festival alive through room-sized installations which take over the entire building.
Haunted attraction company 13th Gate in Baton Rouge opens its newest escape room experience, Cutthroat Cavern, to the delight of enthusiasts, who are stunned by the epic Goonies-esque set. It gets named one of the top escape rooms in the world later in the year by The Top Escape Rooms Project, a survey of enthusiasts.
The Guardian asks if LARP (live action role-playing) can save the world in an article, as part of a series on possible solutions to some of the world’s most stubborn problems.
April
Geoff Sobelle’s objects in mirror AR closer than they appear premieres at the Tribeca Film Festival in the Storyscapes competition. The experience, based upon his theatre show The Object Lesson, uses augmented reality to invite audience to reflect upon the relationship between new media and archaic objects using an interactive, self-paced installation.
Baobab Studios and Mathias Chelebourg premiere their free roam, immersive theatre-virtual reality piece Jack: Part One (a reimagining of the Jack and the Beanstalk fairytale) at the Tribeca Film Festival as part of the Storyscapes competition. Participants interact with a live, motion-captured performer in the VR world; the work gets the attention of award-winning actress Lupita Nyong’o, who agrees to voice the giant in the upcoming Jack: Part Two.
And the Brooklyn-based iNK Stories wins Tribeca Film Festival’s Storyscapes award for their multi-sensory, free-roam VR experience Hero; in this mixed reality experience for one, participants experience the harrowing bombing of a Syrian village and are presented with the choice to rescue a stranger from the rubble.
Secret Cinema in London celebrates its 10th anniversary with its most ambitious undertaking ever: bringing to life the world of Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner. The popular immersive cinema experience brings dystopian future-LA to an East London Warehouse for 16 weeks and eventually takes in a reported £4.8 million at the box office.
Aaron Bradbury’s Vestige, a VR documentary about a woman dealing with the death of her husband, is acquired ahead of its premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival by the Other Set. The film was created using Depthkit’s volumetric capture technology.
Alejandro Inarritu’s Oscar-winning Carne y Arena opens up for a limited engagement in Washington, DC; the intense VR experience takes participants through the experiences of migrants crossing the Mexico-USA border.
Escape Entertainment acquires Paradiso, the immersive theatrical escape room experience with a ARG component, created by Michael Counts in New York City. The new company begins operations as the Immersive Activations Group (IAG).
London-based game-theatre company differenEngine (Heist, The People’s Revolt) shuts down despite being on the cusp of opening a new horror show, The Hollow Hotel.
May
VR rhythm game Beat Saber is released by indie studio Hyperbolic Magnetism and goes onto become one of the highest-rated games on Steam, selling 100,000 copies in the first month. Adi Robertson of The Verge later calls Beat Saber “game of the year.”
Oculus releases their previously-announced, standalone, 3 degrees-of-freedom headset Oculus Go at F8, Facebook’s Developer Conference, in a surprise announcement. Oculus then also drops the enormous news that they’re working on an upcoming immersive theatre-VR project with live actors; it’s described as Sleep No More meets hit video game Journey in an interview with CNet.
Disney announces that the new immersive Star Wars-themed land, Galaxy’s Edge, will open at Disneyland in summer 2019, with the Disney World version following in the late fall of 2019.
Immersive theatre stalwarts Bricolage Product Company in Pittsburgh mount an immersive, sensory-friendly show The Forest of Everywhere, specifically designed to accommodate kids on the autism spectrum and their families.
June
The award-winning theatre company Third Rail Projects (Then She Fell, The Grand Paradise, Ghost Light) mounts their most ambitious project yet with support from The Macallan; in Behind the City, two participants at a time take a guided tour through Manhattan finding unexpected spaces and intertwining stories, while interacting with a cast of 17 performers in over half a dozen different spaces.
Experiential art pioneers Odyssey Works hold their first master class in Mexico, bringing together a team of multidisciplinary artists to create a tailored, personalized experience for one person in the span of one week.
London’s Time Run announces a 17,000 square foot escape room experience based upon the BBC’s Sherlock; Sherlock: The Game Is Now will be designed in collaboration with co-creators Steven Moffatt and Mark Gatiss and executive producer Sue Vertue. The game is originally set to open in late 2018, but is delayed into 2019.
The VOID announces a multiple location expansion across the USA and Canada encompassing nine new locations, including Austin, Philadelphia, and other cities.
Punchdrunk mounts its newest immersive experience in London: Small Wonders, a family-friendly show about a woman attempting to preserve her fading memories by building miniature models.
Jesse Damiani, founder at large of VR Scout and CEO of Galatea, writes a groundbreaking essay on the long term effects of virtual reality and augmented reality on user experience design.
Magician Joshua Jay opens his interactive, site-specific promenade magic show Six Impossible Things at the storytelling studio Wildrence on the Lower East Side of Manhattan to sold out crowds. The production goes on to extend twice into summer 2019.
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July
Artist Mel Chin attempts to create an outdoor HoloLens-powered AR installation in Times Square in middle of summer, as part of a year-long series of works. The technology is beset with problems in NYC’s sweltering heat.
Amazon Prime creates an epic, heart-poundingly real installation to promote Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan at San Diego Comic Con where participants can repel out of a helicopter, zip line down a building, and more — with a VR headset on.
Alice’s Adventures Underground by Les Enfants Terribles travels from the Vaults in London to Shanghai as the company creates a Mandarin language version for China.
Warner Bros Abu Dhabi launches a brand-new theme park on Yas Island in the United Arab Emirates, where visitors can meet DC’s Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman, and more. The entirely indoor park was developed by Miral Asset Management at an estimated cost of $1 billion.
Selfie factory The Museum of Ice Cream partners with Target to sell a line of MOIC-themed ice cream flavors at Target stores nationwide; the Instagram palace will announce later that summer that its San Francisco location is now permanent.
The smash hit Immersive Gatsby in London, an interactive adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic jazz age novel, becomes the UK’s longest running immersive show.
August
XR creators and fans finally get their hands on the Magic Leap One Creator Edition. The fabled AR headset receives mixed reviews once it hits shelves.
No Proscenium drops a curated list of 25 Immersive Companies and Creators to Watch in NYC.
Popular Japanese art collective TeamLab — who opened the first museum dedicated to digital art in Tokyo — announces that they have signed a lease in NYC and plan to bring their work to Industry City in Brooklyn.
Art collective Meow Wolf announces a partnership with Elitch Gardens Theme & Water Park to bring a new “dark ride” named Kaleidoscope to Denver in April 2019.
Immersive theatre company Third Rail Projects quietly mounts a pop-up immersive show inside of a U-Haul truck at the annual Burning Man Festival; tickets to the intimate Medicine Show can only be obtained via word-of-mouth.
September
Two Bit Circus’ permanent facility in downtown Los Angeles has its grand opening; conceived by Brent Bushnell and Eric Gradman, the space mixes together elements of arcades, nightclubs, restaurants, bars, and escape rooms. It includes a robot bartender, experiential games, classic arcade games, as well as VR “cabanas.”
Oculus announces their first standalone 6DOF system, Oculus Quest, to launch in early 2019, which will be an all-in-one untethered headset retailing for only $399.
Disney premieres its first ever animated VR short, Cycles, at the Immersive Pavilion at SIGGRAPH.
The VOID/ILMxLAB announces their five next upcoming projects will leverage IP from both Disney and Marvel, starting with Wreck-It Ralph.
The interactive, live theatrical theme park Evermore has its soft opening despite ongoing construction. At this new “experience park,” visitors interact with performers, go on quests, and become a part of the world of the park.
Reflector Entertainment launches their new transmedia universe Unknown 9 in advance of New York Comic Con; the properties include a comic book series, podcast, and alternate reality game which brings participants to a live event at the McKittrick Hotel, home of Sleep No More.
German photographer Boris Leist publishes LARP, a book of portraits of characters from the live action role rlay community; the book is a culmination of nearly four years Leist spent “in world” as a monk.
October
Curious Voyage, a three-day theatrical adventure, takes audience members from Barrie, Canada to the streets of London, UK in an immersive adventure that ends with a surprise musical performance. The production is a collaboration between Talk is Free Theatre, Outside the March, and DopoLavoro Teatrale.
The first ever L.E.A.P Con, Magic Leap’s conference in LA, shows off what’s to come from the mixed reality company, including a Star Wars Porg-centric experience and a collaboration with Meow Wolf around a mixed reality sculpture named “The Navigator.”
The gallery show SPATIAL REALITY, quite possibly the biggest art show of virtual, mixed, and augmented reality ever, opens at the sp[a]ce gallery in Los Angeles showcasing over 25 different interactive XR works from a variety of artists.
Four friends travel to Moscow to attempt to set the record for most number of escape rooms attempted in a single day for Guinness Book of World Records. They eventually exceed their original goals and play 22 different rooms in a single day.
The Mile Long Opera, a site-specific promenade work conceived by architecture and design studio Diller Scofidio + Renfro and composer David Lang, stuns New Yorkers with a thousand singers spread out over the entire length of the High Line.
XR startup North announces their take on fashionable augmented reality glasses with the launch of Focals.
November
VR/AR pioneer Nonny de la Peña, the CEO & Co-Founder of Emblematic Group, is named WSJ Technology Innovator Of The Year; she has been nicknamed the Godmother of VR for her 2012 piece Hunger in LA, which was showcased at the Sundance Film Festival on a prototype VR device which would eventually become the Oculus Rift.
ONEDOME, a mixed reality art venue, opens in San Francisco, with their first show, The Unreal Garden.
Disney announces a huge expansion plan for their six parks and resorts worldwide, including Disney Cruises. The company is estimated to spend $24 billion over the next five years.
Ubisoft Escape Games officially releases their room scale VR escape room set in the Assassin’s Creed world, Escape the Lost Pyramid. The game is available to play at licensed operators across the USA and Europe.
Denver holds the first annual Denver Immersive Summit, featuring speakers from No Proscenium, Meow Wolf, and more.
A giant spider and minotaur takes over the streets of Toulouse in France in a large-scale immersive art project, The Guardian of the Temple.
Incoming students at Savannah’s SCAD now have the first ever opportunity to major in augmented, virtual, and mixed reality through a new “immersive reality” degree.
Niantic relaunches “Ingress” as “Ingress Prime” after the runaway success of “Pokémon Go.”
December
Madison Wells Media Immersive opens its immersive theatre-VR hybrid experience Chained by Justin Denton (formerly of Here Be Dragons) in Los Angeles. During Chained, participants can step into the world of A Christmas Carol and interact with live actors in VR.
Oklahoma City’s Factory Obscura announces a new permanent facility and show MIXTAPE, to be created in conjunction with the Flaming Lips. It’s projected to debut March 2019.
Meow Wolf announces a new Washington, DC location to open in 2022; this will become their fourth location after their expansions to Las Vegas and Denver.
IMAX announces the closure of their remaining IMAX VR arcades in Los Angeles, Bangkok, and Toronto, in Q1 2019.
Virtual reality startup Dreamscape Immersive—which is backed by some of the biggest names in Hollywood — opens its first permanent location in Los Angeles, with three multiplayer VR experiences at launch.
Josephine Machone and Punchdrunk release The Punchdrunk Encyclopedia, a compendium of materials drawn from the leading immersive theatre company’s past 18 years of work. It is the most definitive compilation of information about Punchdrunk to date.
It’s been a great year in immersive. Let’s make 2019 even better.
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