Sandbox VR, the location-based VR attraction, announced it’s opening 25 new locations as a result of a partnership with Apparel Group, the United Arab Emirates-based fashion and lifestyle company.
The partnership is described as a “massive franchise deal” with Apparel Group, which has 85 brands and more than 2,200 stores across 14 countries, including much of the Middle East, South East Asia, India, Pakistan, Egypt and South Africa.
The collaboration will begin by opening 25 locations in the Middle East by the end of 2028, Sandbox VR says, owing to what founder and CEO Steve Zhao calls “an overwhelmingly positive response at our locations across the US, Europe, and Asia.”
For now, Sandbox VR operates in over 46 global locations, 18 of which launched in the last 19 months. It has also opened franchising opportunities in the US and internationally.
“We are excited to embark on this partnership with Sandbox VR, a company that stands at the forefront of virtual reality innovation,” said Neeraj Teckchandani, CEO of Apparel Group. “This collaboration is not just about expanding our portfolio—it’s about creating groundbreaking experiences that merge technology and entertainment, offering our customers in the Middle East and beyond something truly exceptional. Together, we are setting new benchmarks in the retail and entertainment industries.”
Sandbox VR has celebrated a few successful licensing deals over the past year. In September 2023, the company partnered with Netflix to launch a Squid Game-inspired experience, called Squid Game Virtuals. The company says Squid Game Virtuals was its fastest experience to hit $1M in sales, noting that in its first two months the game generated $4.56M in ticket sales.
More recently, Sandbox VR and Netflix did a limited-time takeover of its London location to celebrate the release of Rebel Moon — Part Two: The Scargiver, where visitors previewed the world of Rebel Moon in a full-body VR experience.
Sandbox VR, the location-based VR destination, announced its multiplayer experience based on hit Netflix show Squid Game is coming to Sandbox VR locations starting September 29th, featuring a number of its deadly mini-games.
Update (September 19th, 2023): Starting September 29th, Sandbox VR locations will host groups of up to six players to compete in Squid Games’ deadly mini-games, such as ‘Red Light, Green Light,’ and ‘Cross the Glass Bridge.’ The studio, which develops all of its VR content in-house, says we can also expect “surprising new twists that expand on the world of the series.”
After each game session, players will also get a personalized highlight video capturing their virtual in-game reactions and recapping how their own Squid Game story unfolded.
Since the original article was published, Sandbox VR has now grown to over 40 global locations, 18 of which launched in the last 12 months. You can find more info about Squid Game and other VR experiences on the Sandbox VR website.
Original Article (February 8th, 2023): Netflix’s most watched show of all time will soon have its own location-based VR experience, which will let fans take on the role of Squid Game contestant.
Set to roll out to Sandbox locations in late 2023, the location-based VR game promises “pulse-pounding challenges” where users compete against each other to be the last one standing. What’s more, game sessions include personalized highlight videos capturing in-game reactions for post-game review.
There’s no trailer for the Squid Game VR game, although the company’s hype video should give you a good idea of what to expect:
Sandbox’s locations feature motion-tracking technology, which captures the movements of a player’s body and props, such as guns. Its haptic system also provides players with added realism to go along with the large room-scale VR experience.
The company currently features six proprietary experiences based on both exclusively licensed IP (Star Trek: Discovery), as well as in-house experiences. All Sandbox VR experiences are developed by an in-house gaming studio, which tailors the company’s social experiences for groups of up to six users at a time.
The Squid Game licensing deal is likely the direct result of its $37 million Series B funding round from November 2021. The company has made a strong rebound from the stagnation caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, seeing the company’s eventual reemergence from Chapter 11 bankruptcy following debt restructure.
Sandbox now operates 30 VR locations, spanning major cities in North America, Europe, and Asia (see update). The company says it’s launched a dozen such locations over the past twelve months, making for one of its largest growths spurts.
Sandbox VR, the location-based VR destination, announced that its most popular experience has generated $23 million in ticket sales in the last 12 months.
Launched in the summer of 2022, Deadwood Valley is said to be the company’s most cinematic game, letting players defend against a horde of zombies as a squad.
It’s been so successful, Sandbox VR says the experience has now surpassed $23 million in ticket sales across 30 locations, and is projected to make $100 million in lifetime sales.
All of the company’s multiplayer VR experiences have been developed by in-house gaming studios, allowing teams of up to six players to tackle a host of missions in games such as Star Trek Discovery: Away Mission, Curse of Davy Jones, Deadwood Mansion, and Unbound Fighting League. An experience based on Squid Game is also set to launch sometime in late 2023.
In addition to recently opening its second in-house gaming studio in Vancouver, the company says it will also start letting third-party game developers to create titles for its location-based platform starting in 2024.
Billing itself as the world’s fastest growing location-based VR company, Sandbox VR is now operating in 43 locations spanning major cities in North America, Europe, and Asia, a dozen of which launched in the last 12 months.
The pandemic may have almost destroyed the location-based entertainment (LBE) industry but venues have bounced back with new and exciting virtual reality (VR) content. One company that rose from the ashes was Sandbox VR in 2021, with gmw3 reporting that plans were underway for a UK expansion. Today, that plan has taken another step forward revealing that the first London-based venue will arrive this summer.
Sandbox VR London will feature the same free-roaming technology and content that’s made the company’s other venues so popular. Visitors will don full-body trackers and use haptic guns to shoot zombies and go on swashbuckling adventures with friends.
The London venue won’t entirely follow the same recipe as the other venues though, it’ll offer its own unique features. It’ll be the first Sandbox VR establishment to provide its own food and drink menu, with the beverages served by robotic bartender IG-1, who can serve up to 80 drinks an hour with guests placing their orders using in-built table terminals.
Adding to the drinks experience, Sandbox VR London will be serving up special cocktails based on Sandbox VR’s videogames such as Zombie Apocalypse from Deadwood Mansion, alongside cocktails from cocktail brand, Bottle Proof. And when you’re hungry there’s going to be an extensive pizza menu and delights from London based food brands.
As for the titles you’ll want to play, up to six players can jump into a game at once, whether that’s the aforementioned Deadwood Mansion, licensed experience Star Trek: Discovery, Curse of Davey Jones, or Unbound Fighting League. All of them are unique to Sandbox VR which makes the UK launch so exciting, it’ll be the first time British VR fans can enjoy Sandbox VR on home soil.
There’s no specific date for the launch but Sandbox VR London will be based at: The Post Building, Museum St, London WC1A 1PB, open all week, the latest until midnight on Fridays and Saturdays.
When gmw3 has further details regarding the opening of Sandbox VR London we’ll let you know.
The pandemic may have almost destroyed the location-based entertainment (LBE) industry but venues have bounced back with new and exciting virtual reality (VR) content. One company that rose from the ashes was Sandbox VR in 2021, with gmw3 reporting that plans were underway for a UK expansion. Today, that plan has taken another step forward revealing that the first London-based venue will arrive this summer.
Sandbox VR London will feature the same free-roaming technology and content that’s made the company’s other venues so popular. Visitors will don full-body trackers and use haptic guns to shoot zombies and go on swashbuckling adventures with friends.
The London venue won’t entirely follow the same recipe as the other venues though, it’ll offer its own unique features. It’ll be the first Sandbox VR establishment to provide its own food and drink menu, with the beverages served by robotic bartender IG-1, who can serve up to 80 drinks an hour with guests placing their orders using in-built table terminals.
Adding to the drinks experience, Sandbox VR London will be serving up special cocktails based on Sandbox VR’s videogames such as Zombie Apocalypse from Deadwood Mansion, alongside cocktails from cocktail brand, Bottle Proof. And when you’re hungry there’s going to be an extensive pizza menu and delights from London based food brands.
As for the titles you’ll want to play, up to six players can jump into a game at once, whether that’s the aforementioned Deadwood Mansion, licensed experience Star Trek: Discovery, Curse of Davey Jones, or Unbound Fighting League. All of them are unique to Sandbox VR which makes the UK launch so exciting, it’ll be the first time British VR fans can enjoy Sandbox VR on home soil.
There’s no specific date for the launch but Sandbox VR London will be based at: The Post Building, Museum St, London WC1A 1PB, open all week, the latest until midnight on Fridays and Saturdays.
When gmw3 has further details regarding the opening of Sandbox VR London we’ll let you know.
Out-of-home VR destination Sandbox VR today announced an additional $37 million funding round that the company is using to support its continued expansion. In addition to its dozen worldwide locations, Sandbox VR says it’s working to nearly doubling that.
The Series B funding was led by a16z, and includes participation by Alibaba and Craft. According to Crunchbasedata, this puts their lifetime outside financing to around $120 million.
Like pretty much everyone in the out-of-home entertainment sector, Sandbox VR went through its own share of financial challenges over the past year due to COVID-19 closures. It both filed for, and reemerged from Chapter 11 bankruptcy following debt restructure.
“We are excited to use the latest round of funding for content development, cutting edge technology and accelerated growth,” says Steve Zhao, CEO and founder of Sandbox VR. “With more stores on the way, we’ll be ramping up our internal studios as well as developing our SDK to open up publishing in the near future.”
And it appears Sandbox VR is making a quick comeback. The company opened three locations in July—Austin, Las Vegas, and Shanghai—and is aiming to open ten more as it enters 2022. Currently, the company operates 12 locations across North America and Asia. Paramus (New Jersey), Toronto (Canada) and London (UK) locations are marked as “coming soon.”
The fresh funding round suggests that VR arcades may be seeing a renewal in investor confidence, although Sandbox VR is probably one of the best-positioned in the sector due to its relatively small physical footprint requirements, in-house content studio, and licensed IP such as its Star Trek: Discovery multiplayer missions.
Sandbox VR has survived The VOID, one of its biggest competitors (certainly the most flashy), which permanently closed all locations worldwide last year. Coincidentally, The VOID’s flagship space at the Grand Canal Shoppes in Las Vegas is now a Sandbox VR location.
As lockdowns begin to ease, location-based entertainment (LBE) is back on the march as people want to get out of their homes and do something different. There’s been an uptick of virtual reality (VR) focused locations either reopening or launching brand new experiences, allowing players to dive into movie and videogame franchises for the first time. Prior to the pandemic Sandbox VR was one operator that went from doing very well to declaring bankruptcy and then bouncing back by the end of 2020. It’s been expanding ever since and soon it’ll make its way to UK shores thanks to franchisee Andy Scanlon. VRFocus sat down with Andy to find out why he’s so excited about the industry’s future.
Amber Sky. Image credit Sandbox VR
Unlike some VR arcades that use generic platform management systems to offer players immersive titles from a range of developers, Sandbox VR is one of the few operators that has its own exclusive titles like Amber Sky and Deadwood Mansion. They’re all designed in-house so visitors are getting a VR experience that’s unique and can’t be found anywhere else, one of the reasons why the company was doing so well pre-Covid.
Even so, starting up a new franchise is no small task, especially when you consider Scanlon plans on opening multiple locations across the UK starting with London. Cities including Birmingham, Manchester and more are all on the cards. Initially, London will see 2-3 sites open during 2021 before moving further afield.
The following interview has been edited for clarity.
So how did you get into VR in the first place?
“Working in technology investment which I loved, that brought me to Singapore where I was working with entrepreneurs and investors, really supporting them by finding investment companies that were at the forefront of their particular industries, sorting out business models and their strategic direction.
“And quite serendipitously I found myself in a Sandbox VR venue, the one in Singapore, one of their longest-standing venues. I just remember taking off that headset for the first time after that 35 minute experience and that light bulb just being switched on. It changed the way I saw entertainment, it changed the way I saw social leisure. I’d been looking at VR for some time and to invest in a couple of companies in the UK and Singapore but I hadn’t looked at the location-based VR space at that time.
“That first experience I was with my partner and her three friends for her birthday, and it was just that moment where I saw what entertainment could be. I took that headset off and thought “this is it”, I can just see the industry evolving into something that hasn’t really been considered by 99.9% of people on the planet.
“There are around six LBE VR brands in Singapore so instantly the next day I booked to go see the other ones, went to Zero Latency went back to Sandbox and it was then that I thought “this is what I need to do“.
So how did that lead on to being a Sandbox VR franchisee?
“I reached out to Sandbox and reached out to Steve (Zhao, CEO) in Hong Kong and gave my back story and said have you thought about esports and this and this, it could be bigger than 3D that IMAX always promised, a true innovation step in leisure.
“So I probably spoke at him for 20 minutes before he said ‘have you thought about being a franchise?’ and I said no but the moment he said it I knew I would 100% do it. A couple of weeks later [after looking at the market] I said I think this could be huge in the UK, I’ve lived in London for a few years, I know what it’s like to do corporate events and beers after work with your team. If you look at the UK as a whole in terms of leisure density it’s got the highest [outside of China] leisure density – so that’s the highest number of venues per capita in the world.
“And so I thought Sandbox is the leading player in the space, it’s been highlighted by the amount of money they’ve been able to raise but also the direction under Steve. Without a shadow of a doubt, it was the best experience that I had out of every VR experience I’d played to date.”
That deal was struck in 2020, mid-pandemic, mid-lockdown, you obviously had a very positive industry outlook for the future.
“To be honest, the way I think about it is that technology as a whole has been great during the pandemic to keep us connected but at the end of the day that’s always been a remote connection. This is why phrases such as ‘zoom fatigue’ have begun cropping up, people are just fed up with doing their weekly team meetings over Zoom. So the way I see it from a sociological perspective is the demand for shared group activities has only increased during the pandemic as we’ve been torn away from each other. I feel, personally – and everyone I speak to – is that when we’re in lockdown all you really want to do is go to the pub with your mates or do something with your mates and colleagues. And so we haven’t been too concerned about the sociological impact from the pandemic, we don’t think it’s going to impact social leisure shared experiences over the long term.
“Obviously we are concerned about future lockdowns, if we can’t be open that’s a concern. I don’t think that Covid will disappear at the end of this year or even next year but I think it’s an easy to overcome hurdle. Firstly due to Sandbox, as it has demonstrated across its network that most of the venues that Sandbox has they’re actually trading above pre-pandemic levels. Secondly, the actual experience or customer journey that Sandbox offers is very geared towards maintaining and adhering to safety standards when it comes to Covid-19.
“The demand for shared experience has only increased during the pandemic and we are looking to provide customers with an experience that they can enjoy with their friends and family. For us a real passion project behind the company, to build a business that can see people remind themselves why they like to go out and organise things with their friends. Because what we’re offering is better than anything on the market at the moment.”
Deadwood Mansion. Image credit: Sandbox VR
So how will the UK roll out work and what can customers expect?
“So the VR rooms are called Holodecks like Star Trek and are about a quarter of the size of a Zero Latency room [for reference]. What Sandbox does really well is it uses the gameplay and the map to walk over your [previous] steps so it feels like a different room. So it’s a smaller room but what that allows us to do is really bring this technology to city centres, focusing on where the masses are, whether that’s shopping centres or actual city centres, something most of our competitors can’t do.
“We obtained the UK franchise that gives us exclusive rights to bring Sandbox VR to this market. We’re looking to launch a large number of venues across a pretty short timeframe, across five years, starting with London but we’re looking at the whole country. Following one to two locations in London, we’ll then be looking to go to Birmingham, Manchester, Bristol, Brighton, all kinds of large cities where we think the technology will do well.
“We’re looking at city-centre locations at around 6000 to 10,000 sq ft, we’d like to have around four to five Holodecks in each venue. That allows us to offer multiple start times, we’re not just reliant on one or two Holodecks, people can arrive and leave pretty quickly. What we’re looking for is to build this social environment where people are coming and going, there to enjoy the VR. In addition to the VR, something that’s not being done across any Sandbox venue in the world, none of them currently offer food and beverage. We will be the first Sandbox venue to offer food and beverage, to not offer that I think would be a misstep. So we’re looking to develop a really futuristic venue with a robotic bartender, we want people to feel like they’re entering London 2068, so very cool, very futuristic.”
VR has that futuristic vibe but how do you get around the general public’s uncertainty regarding the tech?
“As long as you’re aware of that you can focus and design your marketing campaigns around that, you have to make sure you spend more time on the education piece rather than the “come to Sandbox VR”, it needs to be “what is location-based VR?” What I really like about it, and I don’t know whether it is because I’m an optimist, is that the lack of awareness of it ensures that the gap between post-experience and pre-experience is greater because people don’t have a clue what they’re getting into.
“You can only do that with a high degree of confidence that the product and the experience are good enough. You don’t need to educate everyone to the nth degree that they know exactly what they’re going into but know that just through word of mouth, that once people do it once they’re going to tell all their friends and post on social media.”
With 14 Sandbox VR locations open worldwide when will the UK venue debut?
“That’s the big question. We’re targeting Q1 2022, likely a soft launch gearing up to a hard launch at the end of Easter. Then site number two during the summer and possibly squeezing in a third by the end of the year.”
S&box is an in-development sandbox game/engine designed as a sequel to the legendary Garry’s Mod (2006), a game that turned Valve’s Source Engine into a multiplayer playground and content creation tool which has spawned games, memes, and machinima. In the latest s&box development update the studio revealed the latest additions to the software’s VR support.
Update (December 2nd, 2021): In the latest development update for s&box the team offered a glimpse of several VR improvements that have been in the works.
The first is a foundation for a fully VR-compatible interface. Developer Matt Stevens shared the latest work on adapting the game’s interface to be compatible with VR controllers. The result is that the game’s main menu is now fully controllable in VR without any other changes.
While this is essentially just emulating mouse control with a laser pointer, Stevens says it’s the result of using the engine’s VROverlayPanel API, which allows interface elements to be drawn on top of the underlying scene. These panels can be optionally mounted to a player’s controllers and are also interactive with a laser pointer to simulate mouse input for interactive elements.
Stevens says the VR Overlays are “ideal for HUDs or menus that should be local to the player’s VR space.” Developers can use the same underlying system for building their own game-specific VR-compatible interface with s&box.
While not exactly VR specific, developer Laylad says they’ve ported the glass shattering tech from Half-Life: Alyx—which most of us in VR land have enjoyed punching and pistol whipping—into s&box.
This was one form of destruction alongside another where the developer experimented with a voxel-based destruction system that is fully networked which means it could potentially be part of gameplay.
“This could be extended in the future to support glass, wood, bricks etc,” says Laylad. Exactly what physics-destruction features the engine ends up with seems yet to be finalized, but these are promising experiments. Physics is especially fun with the hands-on nature of VR, so it’s great news to see that they are thinking along these lines.
Of course beyond the VR and VR-ish stuff above, the team detailed a bunch of other work done to s&box over the last month which is an interesting read if you’re into game/engine development or modding.
The prior update, which covers fully-body tracking in s&box, continues below. Beyond that, the original article details the background of s&box and initial VR support added back in June.
Update (September 1st, 2021): In the latest development update for s&box the team highlighted the latest VR developments being built into the engine.
The team has added VR controller and tracker tracking allowing basic hand tracking and full body tracking via additional tracking pucks. Tracking can be used to animate characters inside the game, as demonstrated by developer @gvarados, who has also added early support for VRChat avatars inside of s&box.
The addition of VR controller tracking includes support for finger tracking from Valve Index controllers.
The studio says VR input in s&box is currently built around the input paradigm of Rift, Quest, and Index controllers (as they share a similar button/stick/grip layout), though both SteamVR and OpenXR have clearly identified the need to abstract the input layer so that developers don’t need to create custom bindings for every VR controller out there. S&box might ultimately need to do something similar down the road.
The original article, which details the background of s&box and initial VR support added back in June, continues below.
Original Article (July 28th, 2021): Released way back in 2006, Garry’s Mod is still a massively popular multiplayer sandbox game that allows players to create and share content built with a combination of in-game tools and modding extensibility. Conceptually it’s similar to something like Roblox or Rec Room, where players have significant flexibility in building their own universe of fun things to do together. The game still finds itself regularly among the 100 most popular games on Steam.
The Garry’s Mod development studio, Facepunch, is also behind a little-known game called Rust (2018), which has become a phenomenon in its own right.
Creator Garry Newman has been pondering a sequel to Garry’s Mod since at least as far back as 2015. And while development has been on-and-off over the years, things have picked up considerably since 2020, with Newman and other developers at the studio posting detailed updates on the game’s development, now called s&box. The Facepunch team says its goal is to “create a worthy Garry’s Mod sequel.”
“I fixed VR rendering, since starting the project we had worked a lot on improving some rendering flexibilities for Source 2 and adapting it to work for what we want but never validated for VR until now. Getting VR in a good state has always been a concern for us and I’m glad now that I’ve tackled the initial work to have it supported,” he wrote.
Pavlovic admits that proper rendering for VR is only the first step in truly adding ‘VR support’ to the game. For now that means it’s pretty much a ‘see-only’ experience, but going forward he notes that the work “opens the door for us to experiment with [VR] and build something that everyone could enjoy and build upon.”
Despite the COVID-19 pandemic’s persistence, location-based VR entertainment company Sandbox VR is planning to open a new site in Las Vegas this summer, literally filling in The Void’s old spot.
The company, which operates multiplayer VR experiences based on original IP and brands like Star Trek, has signed a contract to open a site at the Grand Canal Shoppes inside The Venetian hotel. This was one of a handful of locations that VR competitor The Void once occupied with experiences themed around properties like Star Wars and Marvel. But the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020 ushered in an era of difficulty for the VR arcade industry and both The Void and Sandbox VR along with other location-based VR businesses faced closures across the globe.
Sandbox VR Las Vegas Site Coming
While the pandemic continues, Sandbox is betting on near-term recovery in the US to bring its business back to health. However much uncertainty remains surrounding the pace at which the world can recover from COVID-19. Sandbox has reopened certain sites in the US and is taking booking again but, as long as the pandemic persists, location-based VR experiences could be a risky proposition in terms of hygiene and distancing. For its part, the company stresses that bookings will be kept separate from other parties, equipment will be sanitized and mask-wearing will be required.
“We have been incredibly fortunate to have been able to survive such a devastating year for everyone in the retail and entertainment industry,” Steve Zhao, founder and CEO of Sandbox VR, said in a prepared statement. “The pandemic has been so isolating for everyone that we are confident once it is safe to gather with friends and family from different households they will be looking for social experiences that offer some fun and escape from the difficulties that 2020 brought.”
Sandbox VR, the out-of-home virtual reality destination, went through a rough patch this past year as the company both filed and subsequently emerged from Chapter 11 bankruptcy following debt restructure. With the United States doing fairly well in terms of COVID-19 vaccinations now, the company appears confident in getting back to business as usual soon, as it plans to open a new location at the Grand Canal Shoppes inside The Venetian Resort, Las Vegas, in addition to operating 15 locations worldwide by the year’s end.
The Las Vegas location is slated to open in “the early summer of 2021,” the company says. Due to the pandemic, Sandbox VR was forced to close all of its locations and lay off most of its staff.
Its rebound strategy is one that may become fairly common in the coming months for battered (but not dead) businesses, namely Sandbox VR aims to fill commercial real estate locations that have also been hit hard by the pandemic.
Thankfully, the company is comparatively lean, as its multiplayer VR locations don’t need require elaborate 4D sensorial gadgetry like its ill-fated competitor, The VOID.
Interior of a Bay Area Sandbox VR location | Image courtesy Sandbox VR
The VOID had to permanently close all of their locations worldwide—including its flagship store at the Grand Canal Shoppes—when the company encountered similar financial trouble last year. There’s little hope of The VOID getting back on its feet either. The company’s website is down mere months after Disney abandoned it entirely, and its holding company isn’t showing any appreciable signs of life.
Sandbox VR on the other hand is portraying a fair bit of optimism now that vaccines are being administered en masse. The company says it’s seen a 30% increase in demand from before the pandemic at their current locations outside of Chicago, Illinois and in Austin, Texas since local governments lifted restrictions.
“We have been incredibly fortunate to have been able to survive such a devastating year for everyone in the retail and entertainment industry,” said Steve Zhao, founder and CEO of Sandbox VR. “The pandemic has been so isolating for everyone that we are confident once it is safe to gather with friends and family from different households they will be looking for social experiences that offer some fun and escape from the difficulties that 2020 brought.”
It may be a long time until beleaguered VR arcades see pre-COVID levels of support, but with one of the most well-funded VR startups out releasing such a broad opening gambit, others may take heart in knowing there is money to be made in the near future.
