Today is the day that the press embargo lifts on Two Bit Circus.
A lot of digital ink is going to tell you what the new Two Bit Circus micro-amusement park in LA’s Arts District is:
A reimagining of a classic arcade, supercharged by VR and escape room style games, complete with a robot with a liquor license and enough space to throw a very raucous party for all your fun loving friends. With the mixture of food, drinks, and games there will be the comparisons to Dave & Busters, and callbacks to Chuck E. Cheese — which has a legacy connection to the place.
There are already excellent in-depth pieces up by Bryan Bishop and Juliet Bennet Rylah that cover all the bases. So instead of treading the trail our friends have blazed, I’m going to take a more personal approach and take a crack at telling you what this moment means for immersive as a movement.
For as long as I’ve known Two Bit Circus co-founders Brent Bushnell and Eric Gradman they have been integral parts of LA’s immersive entertainment movement. 2BC the company have spent years getting their hands dirty experimenting with new ways for people to have fun. Their games tend to match their ethos: asking players to throw themselves fully into it the way the creators do with their work.
What’s alway been most endearing about Bushnell and Gradman is that these guys are both makers and target audience. They seem to live to share the joy of play with the whole damn world, and with the imminent opening of the micro amusement park on September 7th they’re finally cutting out the middle man and doing just that.
You see, 2BC the company has built attractions and installations for a lot of other companies and venues over the years. They’ve collaborated with video game designers and immersive theatre creators. Played host to meetings of creatives and countless beta tests of new games. In the earliest days of NoPro I knew I could turn to Bushnell if I had missed a show and get an honest assessment of whether it belonged in the newsletter or not.
With the opening of the park 2BC is giving the play loving weirdos of Los Angeles a home of our own. A place where behind every door another possible world awaits: it could be a bayou, a spaceship, or a mysterious mineshaft. Where the school cafeteria, your local pub, and the VR kit you wish you had were all just steps away from each other.
Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz has this thing about the “Third Space” — that’s the place that isn’t home and isn’t work. It’s what Starbucks aims, and yes manages, to be for a lot of people. In some parts of the world that role is filled by the public house. For a good number of Southern Californians that place is Disneyland. Two Bit Circus is set up to be that for immersive entertainment fans.
There’s a whole side to the park’s business model that involves opening their doors to the creative community — both digital and physical. On the digital side of things you can see that as the credits roll on a video game built on top of Two Bit Circus’ custom hardware: the indie devs get their due. The physical side, for the moment, takes a little sleuthing. An innocuous toy bubble dispenser actually sells adventures. Both point to the company’s plans to use the venue as a platform for creatives to experiment. There are already plans in place to bring immersive theatre performances into the park, making it a ready to go venue in a festival atmosphere for producers.
It’s hard to properly underscore the opportunity that is in front of the creative community here.
On the VR side of things alone the number one problem for game and experience designers is that there aren’t enough consumers with the hardware to really justify the cost of development. Two Bit Circus has the hardware by the bucketful, and they’ve got it in just about every configuration imaginable. For those who — like myself — wish they had the space and cash for a full VR rig, the cabanas are that “Third Space” compromise. They’re something I’ve been hoping to see emerge into the marketplace on their own, and that they are wrapped up inside a space with escape games that will play host to immersive theatre is just the cherry on top of the sundae.
The best news of all is that this is just the flagship. 2BC is looking to take this show on the road and open other instances of the park around the country but the one in LA is the laboratory. The cradle from which other mad inventions will spawn. The local community in Los Angeles — both the creators and fans — will now shape what Two Bit Circus becomes. We’ll have access to the megaphone effect that Bushnell and Gradman have created by putting a stake in the ground and making a gathering point for all the wondrous stuff that makes up immersive.
I don’t know what we did to get this lucky, but I’m glad we are.
Two Bit Circus opens to the public on September 7th in Downtown LA’s Arts District. Admission is free, each game and experience is sold separately. A special Sneak Peek preview takes place August 27th -30th, with $50 game value cards on sale for $25 for those dates. Reservations required for the sneak peek.
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