We met Jay Kong at the Sandbox Immersive Festival in Qingdao where we got to talk to him for all too short of a period of time.
Jay is from Shanghai, and has been tracking the exploits of immersive creators in both China and the United States for a while now, as the following Q&A can attest. His company Illuthion has made some bold announcements about “immersive world” theme planning for China’s “characteristic town” new urban projects and partnerships with Western immersive start-ups like Epic Immersive and Whisperlodge.
He comes to immersive from the film and SFX business in China, where his career has seen him co-found companies and work with major companies on projects both in the film world and now in the immersive one.
We used email to interview Jay, and got some insight into the way he sees live and digital immersive are being approached in China, where elaborate city-scale plans and epic productions are par for the course.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
No Proscenium: So what is Illuthion and what is the company’s vision for immersive work in China?
Jay Kong: We call ourselves a dream-making company that creates immersive experiences for scenic spots, theme parks, commercial real estate and various commercial spaces in China. Illuthion has been established for two and a half years and our business is mainly based on B to B service solving two key problems for commercial entities.
First, it is well known that the Chinese mobile market is mature and almost every demand can be satisfied on networks while traditional shopping malls, museums and various activities have lost their attraction to young people. We help these spaces become more interesting by adding various types of immersive experiences.
Second, tourism has become an emerging and booming market since last year. After merging of Chinese ministry of culture and tourism, national policies, venture capital investors and real estate developers are optimistic and continue to raise capital in this industry. Even our government has encouraged resources to develop Characteristic Towns in the countryside to control the overgrowth of the real estate industry. Though Characteristic Towns are called “characteristic,” in fact many scenic spots in China are not literally characteristic. High-quality experiences are still extremely lacking. Therefore, Illuthion is developing a series of projects in the form of Immersive World.
The concept of Immersive World is similar to HBO’s Westworld. We have constructed different Chinese style virtual worlds for our clients according to the history and our imagination of scenic spots. Some of our clients have many different scenic spots. We also develop stories to connect all the different virtual worlds like the Marvel Universe where each story exists independently and has a unified and continuous world behind it. In the space aspect we make the scope of the experience bigger and bigger in Immersive World while in the time aspect we extend the immersive experience to a lifelong period. Stories from Immersive World drift with time. The players will constantly receive information from that world via social networks and other media. They can be pushed into and revisit the world at any time. If you’re going to make a comparison, I think Evermore park in Utah is similar to our Immersive World concept. At the moment, the biggest single project we’ve ever planned is a 1,500 acre near-future Sci-Fi style spot.
NoPro: Do people over there see live immersive/theme parks/VR as all part of the same thing, or is it still seen as distinct industries as it is here?
JK: I think China and U.S. are the same in this regard. Live immersive experiences, theme parks and VR belong to three different industries respectively. There are hardly no intersection between them in China. What’s worse is that I cannot find any activities making chemical reactions like FOST (Future of Storytelling) Summit or the Immersive Design Summit here. So I hope the Immersive Design Summit be held in China one day. I am also discussing with Steve from Epic Immersive about launching a course of interactive narrative in China.
NoPro: What got you interested in immersive work in the first place?
JK: My last co-found company was a CGI production company that produced feature films, animation serials and visual effects for Hollywood and the local market all year round. In the process of outsourcing service, I found myself getting further and further away from creating exciting content. When my company was acquired by Dreamworks in 2014, I began to look for new directions. At the very beginning, I built an in-house system called ACGBUG which is a information collection and analyzing system about future entertainment using deep learning technology. Over time, contents of immersive experiences grew.
The first immersive experiences that attracted me were of course Sleep No More and Then She Fell. What’s more, a lot of immersive experiences appeared almost at the same time such as ARG Ingress (produced by Niantic Labs), Forest Lumina (which is the first version of Moment Factory’s new media interactive immersive experience), Tokyo Metro Escape (which is an open space escape game in subway stations), immersive horror theatre Delusion, immersive school (whose concept is based on World of Warcraft), Witches School (which is a Harry Potter style LARP) and etc.
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They gave me a broad roadmap of immersive industrial and an unpredictable future. It led me to make the final decision to start the business. So far, our in-house system has collected more than 4,100 influential immersive experiences. It means that the global immersive industry is literally booming.
So far, our in-house system has collected more than 4,100 influential immersive experiences.
NoPro: How is immersive — both physical and digital — viewed in China?
JK: The word Immersive or Immersion is widely known in China and has been misused even. Many exhibitions and business events use it as a marketing buzzword. Those instagramable immersive popups and immersive performances using mapping projection or the other new media technology but without sense of interaction are controversial. Subjectively, the meaning of Immersive is blurrier for more and more people now.
On the other hand, I have counted all the live immersive experiences in China by September 2018. You could see immersive LBE (such as immersive real life game, immersive escape room, murder mysteries, LARP and ARG), immersive new media art and immersive theater almost represent what is Immersive or Immersion all in China.
NoPro: There’s always a lot of talk here in the States about VR in China, what’s the reality on the ground there?
JK: I know there are many mainstream media reports say that Chinese offline VR market is the largest market in the world and many American teams provide VR content for China. In some way, it was. There were nearly 50,000 offline VR experience stores in China at the peak of the market. But the happy times have gone. High quality LBVR like The VOID and Dreamscape have never appeared in China and the offline market has begun to shrink now.
NoPro: China’s is so much bigger than the U.S. in terms of population: how would you say the current market for live immersive compares?
JK: I’m lack of revenue data of both country, so it is difficult to compare the scale of market between China and the US. But I can say some other data for reference. By September 2018, the number of companies producing immersive experience is about 210 and the number of projects is about 380 (same projects in different areas are not double counted). Some Chinese media has estimated that the scale of Chinese immersive industry will reach 100 billion RMB in 2022 according to Chinese overall offline entertainment market scale.
NoPro: What’s in the immediate future for Illuthion, and what’s a little further on the horizon?
JK: We are planning four Immersive Worlds for our clients. The themes are human-AI war, Chinese myth, horror world and Prosperous Dynasty. We are also working on some smaller immersive experiences such as Secret of Tang Palace, Infection and the immersive museum on water. We are particularly eager for overseas partners to participate in our projects. I am glad that we have signed cooperation agreements with Epic Immersive, Whisperlodge, KG, Woowa and some other companies. Illuthion will introduce their projects and invite them to co-create projects in China. And personally, I really like new concept species such as Evermore park, Two Bit Circus, Pseudonym Productions, Meow Wolf, Darren Lynn Bousman’s projects and many many other projects even I don’t know. Hope we can work together in China for some big ideas one day.
I always call immersive experience the tenth art. It comes from narrative and interaction, but takes us to a brand-new different format of experience. As for the future, we are not keen on chain replication and expanding. We will eventually focus on one or two special projects. How to balance the scale of experience (1000 people…10000 people, or more) and the depth of experience is our next task which is the key to the future immersive experiences in my view. So we’re cooperating with a company to develop AI narrative applications at the moment.
And finally, thanks to Noah for introducing me and Illuthion to all of you. Our door is always open.
Find out more about Illuthion on their web site.
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