PW-FEB20-33-AlterEyes.qxp_Feature 02/03/2020 11:20 Page 33
Product Spotlight
An immersive adventure
XR entertainment solution provider, AlterEyes presented its latest attraction, DOJO at IAAPA Expo and IAAPA Expo Europe, winning an IAAPA Expo Exhibit Award for bringing the experience to life. Here, creative director Ken Steyls reveals the thinking behind the product.
D
OJO is an immersive virtual reality playground, which offers out-of-home experiences for up to four players. It is
accessible to a wide demographic: if you are with friends, family, co-workers or even strangers, you’re in for an immersive adventure and you’ll be in it together. Cooperation and friendly competition rule in the
DOJO, where games are played not just alongside each other, but with each other. These unique social experiences ensure people show up, stay longer and return. All this is wrapped up in a state-of-the art attraction, carefully designed to give players a safe and sheltered feeling while playing without withholding spectators to see what is going on. People in this business (us included) live in a virtual reality bubble,
and we often forget that the majority of people haven’t
even tried virtual reality yet. When we were doing our extensive research, we noticed that the amount of people who experienced virtual reality or have experience with videogames is overrated. This results in the fact that most location based virtual reality experiences (LBVR attractions) forget about the first-time user experience. They focus on a gamer audience instead and have the looks and content to go with it. We went for a different approach. Many people who already experienced DOJO are glad and
The DOJO experience
DOJO comes with three great games with a high repeat appeal and we will add two new experiences every year. A constant influx of new innovative exclusive games and expansions keep the experience fresh and makes sure there is content for all ages, tastes and skill levels:
• Clash of Chefs - Chaos Kitchen: work together to compete in a delicious cook-off and prepare ordered food and drinks to satisfy your customers. It’s not all about who’s the fastest and the most skilled cook though, it will come down to good cooperation and communication!
• Loco Dojo Fiesta: a whimsical wooden world that brings everyone together for some laughs and friendly competition. You’ll compete in silly fast-paced mini-games that vary wildly in their difficulty, and time is shot to really master them!
• Pointy Ends: a medieval tournament where you’ll engage in ranged combat with each other using bow and arrow, a battle-ax, slingshot, mace of spear. Have courage, aim, dodge and beware of the pointy ends. This is our threshold when it comes to violence. It’s a fun competitive game with a lot of e-sport potential, very suitable to organize tournaments with. Park Molenheide: Saraland in Belgium recently installed two DOJO’s. A
representative Park World: “We love how DOJO makes virtual reality accessible to a more diverse audience. We are a family destination, and nothing beats families sharing fun and memorable experiences together.”
FEBRUARY 2020
actually relieved to finally see a virtual reality attraction that not only looks inviting but also offers fun and family-friendly content. To this day, most VR attractions are black neon-lit structures with a lot of violent content. Which is fine, there is certainly an audience for that. However, we decided to design a more accessible virtual reality
experience that is not only attractive to gamers but also first-time users and people
who are not that familiar with videogames.
Out of home audience more diverse We need to accept that there is a profound difference between the home VR gaming audience and the out- of-home entertainment audience. The home VR gaming audience still largely consists of young males and violent games are among the popular ones. The out of home audience is much more diverse (gender, age, experience with games and digital competence) and this needs to be taken into account when designing an attraction and its content. We offer plenty of qualitative non-violent alternatives and this actually helps make virtual reality more accessible and even convinces people, who are initially too afraid to try VR, to actually try it. For example, instead of parents dropping their kids off to play a virtual reality game, we see parents participating and play as a family in DOJO. We also find the non-violent content, especially social and collaborative content like we offer on DOJO, makes much more sense for corporate events, teambuilding and school programmes, offering a more flexible use of your VR attraction.
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