Plenty of industries were severely hit by the pandemic in 2020 with consumer-facing businesses such as location-based entertainment (LBE) venues closed for most of the year. LBE specialist Sandbox VR was one such business, declaring bankruptcy and then reemerging at the end of the year. Today, Sandbox VR has announced its plans for 2021 which include opening its first location in Las Vegas.
Sandbox VR plans on opening the location in Grand Canal Shoppes inside The Venetian Resort Las Vegas early this summer, whilst looking to operate 15 locations by the end of the year. The company’s virtual reality (VR) full-body custom range from Amber Sky 2088 where you have to defend the Earth from Alien swarms or Curse of Davey Jones with an adventure on the high seas.
“As one of the leading retail and entertainment destinations on The Strip, Grand Canal Shoppes is excited to bring Sandbox VR to guests this summer,” said Janet LaFevre, senior marketing manager of Grand Canal Shoppes inside The Venetian Resort in a statement. “This is one of the many immersive new experiences The Shoppes has to offer and we look forward to bringing our guests even more offerings to discover new ways to indulge while enjoying a brief break from reality while visiting our destination this year.”
Sandbox VR currently has several locations open including Chicago and Austin, which have seen increased demand of 30% from before the pandemic. To encourage footfallits locations are ensuring complete sanitization of equipment and private rooms for each group as well as limiting bookings to reduce contact between groups and mask-wearing at all times.
Sandbox VR – San Francisco
“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.”
As Sandbox VR continues to bounce back and remain positive, VRFocus will keep you updated.
In the first of a two-part report observing the current immersive Out-of-Home entertainment scene for VRFocus, Kevin Williams‘ latest Virtual Arena looks at the re-emergence of LBE though the popular free-roaming entertainment trend. Evaluating the pitfalls, and the early fallers, and those operations that have re-opened and hope to define the next phase of business.
While some pontificate that location-based VR has probably taken a terminal hit from COVID – at the same time we have reports on the reopening of venues in Asia and Europe and even America, and see the return of the audience, though in tentative numbers. One aspect of the successful growth of LBE VR before the ravishes of the global health crisis closed all forms of social interaction and entertainment, was the growth in interest of “Arena-Scale”, also dubbed “Free-Roaming” or in Asia “Walking Attractions”. Players donning powerful backpack PC’s and taking part in multi-player immersive experiences. The compelling nature of these experiences were such that major venture capitalists had vied to invest considerable sums in the early developers of this genre of immersive entertainment.
But even before the global-pandemic suspended business, cracks in the business proposition of some arena-scale operations had started to manifest. Gradually exiting lockdown and the issues that impacted some business plans has been magnified, and we start to see the damage inflicted by a loss of revenue. While some of these immersive operations are facing more permanent closures, others are seeing renewed interest in their offering and a new arms race to dominate what is still seen as a lucrative opportunity.
The “Next Gen” virtual playing Arena: Image credit: Bandai Namco
The Landscape Ahead
Seen as one of the first exponents of the concept of immersive, free-roaming experience – The VOID tantalized the investment and operations community with a dream of transporting groups of players into a magical virtual environment, (what the company labelled “Hyper-Reality”), powered by their claimed unique “redirected walking”, with physical effects and props. Seen as one of the prominent representations of the growth in interest in free-roaming immersive experiences – the company had high profile investment, initially from the Disney’s Accelerator fund, including business mentorship that saw development resource through ILMxLab.
The VOID has been heavily dependent on the development resources of ILMxLab for most of their content, with only Ghostbusters, and horror-experience Nicodemus developed internally (in partnership with Ninja Theory), receiving mixed reviews. It was however the draw of the big IP and crafted VR experiences based on blockbuster movies that drew the attention. Much of their hyped original design hardware would have to be scaled back to reverting to off the shelf hardware, such as their tracking system from OptiTrack or their headset, in reality, being made with components from an Oculus CV1 unit, eventually under license, (after a planned in house design was abandoned). The company at its hight operating some 17 facilities offering a selection of Walt Disney movie IP VR experiences. But the sites opened seemed to offer conflicting information on their actual success, and cracks started to appear.
The company had seen a churn in management, with the revolving door of top executives. Also, behind the scenes the operation had been haemorrhaging finances, plans for a permanent London site was abandoned near completion, and a total restructuring of the operation. Deals were signed with the shopping sector to place a new model of the attraction that was hoped to address the difficulties of audience retention. Things, however, had not gone as planned for The VOID operation, with numerous major executive departures and claimed venue expansion abandoned. Sources suggested that investments were being stretched and revenues were not proving as expected. By this time, the full impact of the global health crisis by March 2020, and all 17 VOID facilities had been at the time temporarily shuttered. But then things started to take a new turn, sources revealed information that one and then a second The VOID facilities on Walt Disney property had posted notices announcing their permanent closure and that all assets associated with Walt Disney were to be removed.
The shut-down order posted on The VOID Disney locations doors. Image credit: WDW
An incredible silence has enveloped an operation that was once so prolific at promotion – while the US venues remained closed, with no information at this time on what the situation of their reopening will be, with only the Malaysia (Genting) venues had reopened for business since August. The VOID Malaysia site had removed all their Disney themed experiences only offering ‘Nicodemus’ and ‘Ghostbusters: Dimension’. And that was all the information that could be garnered at this time. Many will try and paint this as a bigger problem with the free-roaming VR sector, there seems to be a pattern emerging from the initial operators that expensive IP and a problematic business model has been accentuated by the financial impact of the COVID Lockdown.
There is another recent recipient of investment and mentorship from the Disney Accelerator fund that is based in the arena-scale VR sector. Japanese start-up Tyffon has opened their own Tyffonium – Magical-Reality Theater – a backpack VR experience centre. While less well-known than the other Disney Accelerator investment in VR attractions, the operation had developed internally three attractions which they operated in their two Japanese venues. Much more aimed at a theatrical, sensory experience, looking at young couples as a key demographic, offering three game experiences that support up to four VR players for 30-minute durations. The operation would go on to raise their Series A round of funding – added to the previous investment this saw the company valued at $12 million by the end of that year. With this investment, the operation had received publicity towards a plan to open in the US. By March of this year, the Japanese operation had entered lockdown, with plans for the US operation still on the drawing board, and their 35 employees furloughed, though the facilities did reopen by October.
The unique couples focused VR game experience from Tyffon. Image credit: Tyffon
Another of the early pioneers, wanting to carve out an empire for themselves was Dreamscape Immersive. Described as a “Virtual Reality Experience Like No Other”, the company took on a movie theatre style of approach to offering their unique platform – having amassed an impressive cadre of investment from powerhouses from the movie industry. Investors also included AMC and IMAX – cinema legends looking at the concept of LBE VR, to address flagging movie ticket revenue. Along with an impressive lobby presenting the VR experiences on offer like movies – the guests in groups of six would enter donning rooms, putting on their PC backpacks and wearing foot and hand tracking devices based on the Vicon system. Then once inside the VR room, would put on their headset (originally the Oculus Rift CV1, but later the company would migrate over to theHP Reverb platform) – the environment offering physical effects within the space that mirrored the high-quality virtual experience rendered for the players.
Dreamscapes’ facility operation had opened first in Los Angeles, as part of the Westfield Century City shopping mall in the shadow of an AMCtheatre, in Dallas and Columbus, and then venturing to Dubai. This UAE-based location reopened in July and has seen strong returning audiences – proving the health of LBE VR post-COVID lockdown. October will see the US chain of stores also reopening. But following the upheaval in business following the health crisis the corporation revealed the acceleration of plans for a brand new initiative. Dreamscape Immersive, partnered with Arizona State University (ASU), to launch ‘Dreamscape Learn’. The concept is for “Immersive Education” avatar-driven VR experiences being offered to both campus-based and online courses; planning to start with introductory biology and eventually expanding throughout the sciences and beyond, (vetted by top professors and learning scientists). The plan will utilize the immersive VR story lead experience of the VR company married to the educational platform for students and explorers to create a unique learning environment (immense VR “laboratory”) which will see virtual pods created to traverse students around virtual environments.
A capture of the ‘Dreamscape Learn’ immersive VR laboratory. Image credit: Dreamscape
Numerous developers of arena-scale platforms had already started the process of redressing their business model to embrace new verticals. One of the front-runners in the development of IP based arena-scale VR experiences was the new operation SPACES. The company retained a wealth of experience having been spun out of DreamWorks Animation back in 2016. The corporation saw investment from Tencent and other leading players launched its first arena-scale platform with Terminator Salvation: Fight for the Future, opening the first permanent location in San Jose and then a temporary installation in partnership with Cinemark. Also, SPACES had signed agreements with SEGA JOYPOLIS to install its VR experience at their Japanese sites. The operation was in the process of redefining their offering following feedback as the global crisis hit, but its innovation continued, and pivoted during lockdown to create a ground-breaking VR based video conferencing product. The interest in this product was such that SPACES announced in August that the company had been acquired by tech-giant Apple, for an undisclosed sum.
Sandbox VR had been a prominent name in the LBE VR business, coming from a meteoric rise supported by the Alibaba Entrepreneurs Fund, and raising some $68m and $11m round of investment. With this investment, the operation focused on both improving the level of experience on offer, signing a licensing agreement to use major IP, such as releasing an experience based on ‘Star Trek: Discovery’. In total some 8 venues, split between Asian sites and their first few US locations, offering four-player backpack PC VR, using Oculus Rift CV1 headsets. But following the lockdown, Sandbox VR (Glostation USA Inc.) filed for Chapter 11 protection in August, this was on top of the previous announcement of the loss of their original CEO and 80-per-cent of their workforce. It was revealed that the company had started to reopen its venues, promoting new safety measures to ensure guests and staff post lockdown. The restructured management evaluating a plan of survival with the VR centre (single attraction) model.
Players beaming into Sandbox VR’s Star Trek: Discovery adventure. Image credit: Sandbox VR
While not getting the same publicity as other arena-scale installations in the West, one of the first VR ZONE free-roaming offerings developed by Bandai Namco and being shuttered at MAZARIA is Dragon Quest VR. Developed for the original VR ZONE brand back in 2018 the videogame is based on the popular RPG property, with four-player PC backpacks (HTC Vive headset) – it’s one of the few arena scale installations that use wholly unique player interfaces representing the shields, and swords of the game. This was not the only Arena Scale VR attraction Bandai Namco developed – with a Ghost In The Shell property, (‘Ghost In The Shell: Arise Stealth Hounds’) back in 2017. Going on from the closure of their MAZARIA facility, the corporation is reappraising its approach to VR and immersive entertainment, with new plans to be revealed soon that could see new free-roaming properties.
Players working as a team against the bosses in Dragon Quest VR. Image credit: KWP
Other Japanese amusement factories that operate their own venues in the territory have been attempting to jump onto the arena scale bandwagon. CAPCOM with its PLAZA CAPCOM chain of sites has added the CAPCOM VR-X areas to their landscape, and with that created a unique arena-scale VR experience based off corporation owned IP. Biohazard: Valiant Raid (better known in the West as Resident Evil) launched last year, the four-player experiences negates the use of cumbersome backpack PC’s for a restricted player space using tethered HTC Vive headsets and customized controllers.
One of the largest of the Japanese amusement and gaming corporations is SEGA, and they have invested heavily into VR attractions for their facility business. Under the SEGA Joypolis VR chain, operated through CA SEGA JOYPOLIS (the co-Chinese and Japanese partnership), the company has deployed several third-party VR attractions. At this time SEGA’s amusement GM division has not created a unique VR platform of their own, favouring in representing other developers’ products as they evaluate the opportunities provided by this technology. The Asian market has seen the adoption of the term “Walking Attraction” when describing arena-scale VR experiences, the PC backpack offering freedom over tethered enclosures. Such operating systems include Mortal Blitz for Walking Attraction, developed by Skonec Entertainment. SEGA had also fielded the system from SPACES (as mentioned above), and later the Zero Latency free-roam experience in several Joypolis sites.
Zero Latency is one of the earliest to see the opportunity and unique compelling nature of free-roam VR entertainment. The company deploying their first facility in 2014, and then went on to establish and defined their unique up to eight-player immersive arena experiences, amassing a considerable library of seven popular games. Emerging from the global lockdown, the company has continued to plough a course in this sector. Developing their own backpack harnesses, haptic game controllers, along with the needs for appropriate briefing, loading, and unloading of players, staff training, all packaged in a franchisee offering operations have added to their entertainment venues. The company announced a major partnership to bring AAA content to their platform, Ubisoft – creator, publisher and distributor of interactive entertainment and services revealed that it would be bringing its million-selling consumer game license to VR with Far Cry VR: Dive into Insanity. This LBE VR experience for up to eight players takes them back to Rook Islands, the setting of‘Far Cry 3 for some intense action. Working in partnership to develop and implement their multi-player combative experience with Zero Latency, the game will be released across their 45 venues in 22 countries during 2021.
Image credit: KWP
This concludes the first part of this extensive coverage; we will now look at the rest of the sector and the new entrants bouncing back into business after lockdown in the following coverage.
Virtual reality arcades and other out-of-home VR destinations have been some of the worst affected businesses during the COVID-19 pandemic. Sandbox VR, one of the most well-funded in the industry, has been no exception, as the company’s US-based subsidiary Glostation USA Inc. filed for bankruptcy back in August. Now it’s come to light that Glostation has been reorganized, effectively pulling itself out of Chapter 11 bankruptcy.
Update (December 10th, 2020): A representative from Sandbox VR tells Road to VR that, as of late last month its US subsidiary, Glostation USA Inc.’s court-approved reorganization plan has allowed it to emerge from its Chapter 11 bankruptcy, which was filed in August 2020. Sandbox VR tells us the company was able to restructure remaining debts to stabilize financials and continue to grow its operations.
According to Bloomberg, to keep doing business the California-based Glostation is receiving funds from parent company Sandbox VR Inc, which includes a restructuring amount of $13.6 million of secured debt.
With an effective vaccine on the rise, it seems backers are hopeful for a possible resurgence of the company’s location-based VR facilities. The original article reporting the company’s Chapter 11 filing follows below:
Original Article (August 14th, 2020): Sandbox VR does business in the United States under the name Glostation USA Inc., which has filed for Chapter 11 (along with a number of associates) at the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Woodland Hills, California. The news was first reported by The Wall Street Journal.
Sandbox operates multiple locations in North America and Asia, and hosts both branded VR content such as its Star Trek: Discovery experience and in-house developed games. Experiences last around 20 minutes and can accommodate up to six people per session.
Despite having already reopened a handful of locations recently it appears the damage of staying closed for such an extended time has taken its toll on the company. Back in early June, Sandbox VR CEO Steven Zhao told Protocol that the company had effectively lost “100% of the revenue,” something that led Sandbox to lay off 80% of its staff. Former CEO Siqi Chen and a number of the company’s developers also left the company.
Since its founding in 2016, Sandbox has garnered over $80 million in outside funding, with the most recent round led by celebrities such as Justin Timberlake, Katy Perry, Orlando Bloom, and Will Smith. Sandbox was also funded by Andreessen Horowitz, Alibaba, Floodgate Ventures, Stanford University, Triplepoint Capital, and CRCM.
According to WSJ, the company was close to securing over $50 million in equity funding prior to the pandemic lockdown. This was put on hold back in March, which ruined plans for the company to open around 20 new locations.
Still, Sandbox says its reached a deal with the company’s lenders to restructure debt and reopen its locations once things eventually get back to normal. Whether there will be a ‘normal’ in the short term still remains to be seen though. Many VR arcades, like Hologate have put in more visible cleaning and sanitizing regimes that they hope will ease the public back in, but it’s sure to be an uphill battle any way you slice it.
Sandbox VR, the location-based VR attraction, will be opening up to third-party developers soon, as the company will be releasing an SDK for its Sandbox ‘holodeck’ VR attraction platform.
Sandbox operates a number of VR locations in major cities across North America as well as Hong Kong, Singapore, Macau, and Jakarta. Combining both branded content such as its Star Trek: Discovery experience and in-house developed games, Sandbox offers its experiences in 20-minute gameplay chunks for around $40 per person, accommodating up to six people per session.
The company says in a blog post that anyone with the know-how will soon be able to develop new VR experiences for its location-based attractions using its upcoming SDK.
Company CTO Idan Beck says its Sandbox SDK will have capabilities like “high-performance inverse kinematics, rigging, and motion capture capabilities,” and will include support for Unreal Engine, Unity, and Native.
Sandbox’s locations make use of a few technologies that developers likely don’t have, such as the company’s haptic guns and its multi-camera motion capture system. Sandbox says however that developers can create using more modest setups such as an Oculus Rift or HTC Vive.
Since professional motion capture can cost thousands of dollars, Beck says the company’s framework is going to “abstract away that component and put in placeholders so you can still build for VR without these expensive systems, with full confidence that things will translate correctly when deployed to our full-body motion-captured holodeck.”
Furthermore, Sandbox says its upcoming networking framework will make it possible to create a mocked-up, multi-user development environment for testing and building experiences.
“We’ll make it as easy as possible to build experiences that can take full advantage of the custom high-performance peripherals that we create for our holodecks and ensure compatibility with the HMDs and computing systems that we employ to power our holodecks,” Beck says.
Developers looking to create for the Sandbox VR platform can request access here. Beck says early developers should expect SDK access later this year.
Star Trek: Discovery fans with a SandboxVR location nearby can feel what it is like to be transported to a dangerous Star Trek away mission.
Spoiler alert: The sensation is sort of tingly — dematerialization seems to start in your stomach and then rolls in waves up and down your body until there’s a flash of light and — poof — there you are, re-materialized standing on an alien world.
If a convincing dematerialization experience isn’t enough to pique the interest of Trek fans, the Away Mission at SandboxVR includes alien encounters, investigations with a tricorder, Klingon attacks, gorgeous views of the starship Discovery in space battle, and the guiding voice of Sylvia Tilly throughout.
After the excursion, Sandbox staff airdropped a video to my iPhone produced from my trip. That’s a standard part of the ticketing package and a very nice to have commemoration of the visit.
Star Trek: Discovery Away Mission is one of several attractions available from SandboxVR, but it is the first they’ve offered from an internationally recognized franchise. Away Mission made me shiver when I felt the winds of an alien world in what was easily one of the most impressive environmental effects I’ve felt in a location-based VR experience. The phaser felt nice in my hand and I used a tricorder in my other to scan locations and look for clues.
The green walls, floor, as well as the room size of a Sandbox VR location is already a lot like one of Star Trek’s holodecks. It is fitting, then, that the first few minutes wearing the headset are set inside a training simulation to familiarize you with the game mechanics, and the iconic Holodeck archway from Star Trek: The Next Generation makes an appearance.
As a life-long Trek fan who enjoyed Star Trek: Bridge Crew the few times I actually played it, I have to say there’s almost no comparison to make between that at-home VR game and Away Mission other than bearing the Trek name. Sitting at a bridge console and trying to keep the ship from exploding is not the draw of space travel and certainly not the fantasy of Star Trek I wanted to embody and experience in VR. When I think of Star Trek, I think of teleportation and away missions to strange new worlds, and that’s exactly what Sandbox convincingly delivers.
The SandboxVR location in the Woodland Hills area of Los Angeles creates a powerful weather effect for Star Trek: Discovery Away Mission.
There were a few momentary hiccups — at various points my phaser stopped shooting, my avatar’s hand curled back in on itself, and a foot tracker fell off. These glitches were momentary — I raised my hand per their instructions and the problems were fixed pretty quickly. Unlike some other location-based VR spots, Sandbox doesn’t use physical guardrails, so you’re kept from walking outside the safe area solely through software design. What Sandbox lacks in physical barriers, though, it makes up for in great body-centric haptic effects. Its vest provided the incredible dematerialization effect as well as a startling close encounter with an alien life form that I won’t spoil.
There’s some extraordinarily light puzzle-solving here that amounts to nothing more than pointing at various parts of the environment with your tricorder. This is enjoyable from a role-playing perspective, but it is also not the least bit challenging. There’s superb voice acting for multiple starfleet characters and Tilly provides a familiar grounding throughout the main story that helps add some emotional weightto it. This is only a surface-level story, though, without the kind of intriguing twist or mystery that drives interest in so many Trek tales. I can’t say the Klingons you encounter here are the scariest or even the most exciting alien encounter even in the overall Away Mission, but they do seem to have slightly better aim than the Stormtroopers at The VOID. There’s a nice touch in Away Mission which allows you to revive a downed friend by just putting your hand on their shoulder.
Star Trek: Discovery Away Mission VR Review Verdict:
Impressive and memorable body-centric haptic effects deliver a fully embodied Star Trek experience with some surprising thrills along the way. Away Mission lacks depth in its story but lives up to its name to offer a satisfying realization of some of Star Trek’s most memorable ideas. You’ll embody a starfleet officer shivering on an icy alien world and I imagine that feeling is all that matters to a lot of Trek fans out there. Sandbox got that part right. If you’re a fan of Star Trek, and in particular Star Trek: Discovery, it is worth finding a SandboxVR location and taking the trip.
Sandbox VR, the location-based VR attraction, announced an additional $11 million in funding from some of the biggest household names in entertainment and investment.
Sandbox VR says in a press statement that their latest investment brings their total funds to $83 million, including the Series A round earlier this year that netted the company $68 million from Andreessen Horowitz, Alibaba, Floodgate Ventures, Stanford University, Triplepoint Capital, and CRCM.
The most recent funding round was led by David Sacks of Craft Ventures and the Andreessen Horowitz Cultural Leadership Fund, with additional investors including Justin Timberlake, Katy Perry, Orlando Bloom, Will Smith, Honda Keisuke, Dreamers Fund, Michael Ovitz, and Kevin Durant & Rich Kleiman of Thirty Five Ventures.
“We believe that VR is finally ready to take off as a mass-market phenomenon in malls, where it can be optimized for a social experience,” said David Sacks, co-founder and general partner at Craft Ventures. “We chose the Sandbox team because of their background in game design; their VR experiences have a level of interactivity — with both the VR world and other players — that we couldn’t find elsewhere. We believe that Sandbox VR is poised to become the first VR experience for millions of consumers around the world.”
The company currently runs centers in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Vancouver, Hong Kong, Jakarta, Macau, and Singapore. Locations in Austin, Chicago, Dallas, New York, and San Diego are marked as “coming soon” on the company’s website.
The company says a total of 16 total locations are however planned to open by the end of 2020.
At the beginning of the year Hong Kong-based Sandbox VR, a provider of location-based entertainment (LBE) using virtual reality (VR) technology, managed to raise a rather substantial $68 million USD from an investment round led by Andreessen Horowitz. Today, it has been revealed the company has managed to secure a further $11 million from Silicon Valley as well as several A-list celebrities.
While David Sacks and Andreessen Horowitz led the round this time they were joined by some very famous names including Katy Perry, Orlando Bloom, Justin Timberlake, Will Smith, Kevin Durrant (NBA’s Brooklyn Nets), Michale Ovitz and Keisuke Honda (a football player).
“We’re incredibly honoured to be able to work with some of the most talented and influential artists, athletes, and actors in the world,” said Sandbox VR founder and CEO Steve Zhao in a statement. “Their support is a vote of confidence that our platform will one day become the new medium for the future of sports, music, and storytelling.”
Currently operating seven locations across the world (Hong Kong, San Francisco Bay Area, Jakarta, Macau, Singapore, Vancouver and Los Angeles), Sandbox VR has previously said it plans on bringing that total to 16, adding locations like New York, Chicago and San Diego. That extra cash will certainly help as setting up these specialised locations isn’t cheap. The company does use off-the-shelf VR technology inside open rooms for a free-roaming experience, very different to competitors like The VOID which provide a ‘4D’ experience with props, doors, wind and heat for added immersive effects.
Sandbox VR does create content in-house, however, so you can only play its titles at Sandbox locations. Having already created multiplayer experiences like Curse of Davey Jones, Amber Sky 2088 and Deadwood Mansion, Sandbox VR recently revealed Star Trek: Discovery Away Mission, a team-based experience created in partnership with CBS Interactive. A 30-minute experience featuring Mary Wiseman reprising her role of Sylvia Tilly, Star Trek: Discovery Away Mission is expected to arrive by the end of the year in select locations.
As Sandbox VR continues location expansion plans whilst adding further content to its roster, VRFocus will keep you updated.
Hong Kong-based company Sandbox VR added $11 million from an investment group including well-known celebrities.
The strategic funding from a16z and Craft Ventures brings the total raised by Sandbox from investors to $83 million, according to the company. This latest funding is led by David Sacks of Craft Ventures and the Andreessen Horowitz Cultural Leadership Fund. Additional investors include Justin Timberlake, Katy Perry, Orlando Bloom, Will Smith, Kevin Durant with Thirty Five Ventures and the Dreamers Fund.
Hollywood Connections
The addition of celebrities to the investors backing Sandbox, with influence spanning popular music, film and sports, opens up the possibility of collaborations for the VR-focused entertainment company. In a call with Sandbox CEO Steve Zhao, he said he sees adding these individuals to the company’s investor list as potentially helping them with the development of future content.
“It just makes conversation much easier if they’re also an investor,” Zhao said.
Star Trek and PvP
Sandbox does full body tracking with haptic vests and accessories and they are preparing to open Star Trek Discovery: Away Mission and a new player-versus-player game called the Unbound Fighting League. Zhao says they have eight locations open now, both as franchises and Sandbox-operated spots, and they are planning to open eight more in the coming months. Sandbox offers mixed reality footage to guests as part of the standard package to commemorate the visit.
You can see UploadVR editor David Jagneaux in the video below kicking some of the simulated creatures coming toward him.
Finding Market Fit
The market for location-based VR entertainment remains experimental with both well-funded startups and mom and pop arcades exploring the draw of replacing reality for a little bit. A combination of fast-changing hardware, the cost of software development/licensing and the competing lure of low cost but high quality home entertainment means operators are faced with a lot of options on their path to paying rent and drawing in both new and repeat visitors. The VOID, Zero Latency, Dreamscape Immersive, and Spaces are just a few of the companies in the same area as Sandbox, each with their own approach to testing the market and seeing what works.
Earlier this year Sandbox announced its first major funding — $68 million –backed by Andreessen Horowitz and Zhao recounted his efforts starting in 2017 to find a market fit.
We’re hoping to test out Star Trek soon as well as the PvP game from Sandbox. We’ll report back with impressions as soon as we have them.
The Star Trek franchise has seen a resurgence over the past few years, mainly thanks to the quality of the new films. Ubisoft tapped into this with its virtual reality (VR) title Star Trek: Bridge Crewin 2017, providing a decent home co-op experience. While it provided good bridge-based gameplay, there was no face-to-face action, heading down to a planet, phasers ready, to deal with classic alien races like the Romulans or some unknown menace. That could be about to change thanks to location-based entertainment specialist Sandbox VR with Star Trek: Discovery Away Mission.
Coming to Sandbox VR locations this fall, Star Trek: Discovery Away Mission is a team-based experience created in partnership with CBS Interactive. Working closely with Star Trek writers and stakeholders, Sandbox VR hopes to make this the ultimate Star Trek experience for fans of the franchise.
Up to six players can be part of the U.S.S Discovery’s crew, finding themselves sent on an away mission to an alien planet. Utilising Sandbox VR’s free-roaming technology, players will be armed with phasers and a tricorder to help them complete their mission, running around fantastical worlds doing their best Star Trek impressions.
“We want to communicate that this isn’t like any virtual reality you may have experienced or heard about before…this is something bigger and better. For those that may not know what to expect with the graphics, the equipment, etc, we can describe the experience like it’s meant to be…it’s not a game, it’s not a movie, it’s not traditional VR, it’s a full-body experience that completely transforms you, where you become the experience itself,” explains Sandbox VR CEO and Founder, Steve Zhao in a statement.
Star Trek: Discovery Away Mission is directed by Michael Hampden, lead designer on Blood & Truth, with Mary Wiseman reprising her role of Sylvia Tilly. No footage of the title has been released just yet or whether the storyline will tie-into the series in some way.
The experience will launch in Sandbox VR’s Hong Kong, San Francisco Bay Area, and Los Angeles locations in the fall of 2019, a full worldwide release is planned shortly after. Having announced a $68m Series A investment round in January, Sandbox VR will be opening new locations across the US including NYC, Austin, San Diego and Chicago. A total of 16 are expected to be open by the end of 2019. For further updates on Star Trek: Discovery Away Mission, keep reading VRFocus.
Sandbox VR, the location-based VR facility, today unveiled a new Star Trek multiplayer game that, unlike previous Star Trek VR titles, is a free-roaming experience.
As reported by Variety, Star Trek Discovery: Away Mission is slated to arrive this fall at existing Sandbox VR locations in Hong Kong, the San Francisco Bay Area and Los Angeles; the experience will roll out in new locations in New York, Austin, San Diego and Chicago at a later date.
Unlike the franchise’s ship-bound VR games Star Trek Bridge Crew (2017) and Dave & Buster’s exclusive Star Trek: Dark Remnant, Away Mission tasks up to six players with beaming down to the surface of an ice moon to investigate a distress signal from a lost spaceship.
Being on the surface of a presumably hostile moon means phasers are involved, along with series’ iconic tricorders. Game designer Michael Hampden says it will feature some combat situations, however the game’s focus is more on collective problem solving than just single-person shooter scenarios. “We are trying to recreate the Star Trek experience,” he told Variety.
USS Discovery crew member Sylvia Tilly (Mary Wiseman) lends her voice to the experience, which is said to lasts for around 30 minutes.
Sandbox VR takes a different approach to location-based VR pioneer The Void, which features large-scale tracking volumes, interactive sets, and real-time effects. Instead, Sandbox VR focuses more on greater scalablity, owed in part to its reduced complexity and physical footprint.
Star Trek Discovery: Away Mission is the company’s first branded VR experiences, which was built in partnership with CBS Interactive. It comes alongside three in-house developed IPs: a futuristic shooter, a haunted house, and an underwater treasure hunting adventure.
Sandbox VR hasn’t mentioned how it’s going to price the Star Trek experience yet, although the company typically charges around $40 per person for a 30-minute playsession.
