
When will experiences replace movie theaters? - AndrewDucker
http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/experiences
======
roc
The spy 'experience' described is just a theme park ride or haunted house with
different set dressing.

The reason there aren't more of them is that the described mechanics are so
cost-heavy that it would be prohibitive to scale and operate on an ongoing
basis. It's challenging enough to make a museum/theme-park ride that shuttles
a dozen people through an 'experience' on a track without the line becoming
prohibitively long. If you multiply the time taken to 'experience' the ride by
having people go through at their own pace and only one or maybe two at a
time, the costs would soar and the line would be absurd.

Haunted Houses skew more toward the described spy 'experience' than theme park
rides, but even still the flow is carefully designed, there are no wrong
choices, rarely obstacles and even with ticket prices and lines notoriously
unpopular, almost none can afford to operate without the artificial scarcity
of an impending holiday packing demand.

There are very good economic reasons why theme parks and haunted houses stick
to experiences on rails and in groups.

~~~
joe_the_user
Indeed, the obvious way that society has found to achieve these things is ...
video games.

It's eerie how now that computers are intertwined with our lives, the idea of
an advancing _virtual reality_ , able to give interesting experiences, is not
something people fax poetic about anymore. The computer has already been
assigned to some other category in most people's minds. Yet virtual reality
will still advance and eventually give nearly any experience we might imagine.

~~~
Willwhatley
What I take to be your mistake ('fax' for 'wax poetic') is an intriguing
Freudian slip in this context.

------
PaulHoule
I think these sorts of experiences burn out -- somebody has got to do a huge
amount of work to create one and then how many times do you want to do it?

For instance, some people set up an indoor mini golf course with blacklights
in a storefront at the mall near my town. My 9 year old and I went there maybe
three times -- it was a cool idea but we weren't going to do it every weekend.
They didn't quite last a year.

Similarly, a ski area that's a three hour drive from here set up a "ropes
course" where you can put on a harness and climb up into thre trees. We had to
pay for gas and a hotel stay plus the ticket and then my kid had a panic
attack in the treetops and had to be talked down. Cool experience, but not
something I can do every week.

The experiences which work out the best are the ones that we create for
ourselves with a low budget -- like the frozen pond we discovered in a nearby
state forest that we've been skating on or the radio transmitter club that a
local amateur radio club is organizing this weekend.

~~~
lliiffee
> how many times do you want to do it?

Well, I've been to the St. Louis City Museum he talks about many times and I
can't imagine getting tired of it. (Enjoy sticking your arms out and getting
rolled upside down in an antique gigantic wine barrel? Or sliding down
frighteningly steep slides intended for transporting shoes? Or crawling upside
down in a thunderdome style metal rig on the roof of the building? Or watching
a several hundred gallon barrel fill with water until it tips over? Or
climbing in metal chutes outside a hundred feet in the air to arrive at a
plane suspended in midair by cables? I do!) However, there are few (if any)
other places like that.

~~~
poppysan
Love that place... It is a well designed experience, and you can find
something new each time. This is what increases experiences replay value.

------
icebraining
I've never been at an "experience" where I could suspend my disbelief.

Taking the given example, when watching a movie, I can believe Matt Damon is a
spy. I can't make myself believe I'm a spy. Whenever I'm in such situation my
brain screams at me how ridiculous the premise is.

Experiences where I don't have to believe something ridiculous - playing
paintball, for example - are enjoyable, but they don't replace movies, not by
a long shot.

~~~
PaulHoule
A spy is the last thing I want to be.

There was a time I was on mailing lists and chat rooms where I know some of
the people were connected with intelligence services and national police
agencies, not just which ones.

At this point your life gets weird... People call your wife when you're not
home with caller ID blocked and try to trick your wife into installing malware
on your computer, etc.

It might be a little exciting at first, but the trouble you can get into in
that life just isn't worth it.

~~~
pavel_lishin
Charles Stross wrote, in an introduction to a book, about the difference
between James Bond and real spies, and pointed out that they are on the
complete opposite side of any given spectrum.

Nobody wants to pretend they're a spy. Everyone wants to pretend they're James
Bond.

~~~
scott_s
Robert Baer's book "See No Evil" ([http://www.amazon.com/See-No-Evil-Soldier-
Terrorism/dp/14000...](http://www.amazon.com/See-No-Evil-Soldier-
Terrorism/dp/140004684X/)) also does a good job of this. Yes, he did get a
crash course in arms and explosives while at The Farm (if I remember it
correctly, he actually characterizes it as "terrorist school"). But what CIA
case officers actually do is convince other people to spy for them - they
don't do the spying themselves. They can't, because everyone knows they're
American, since their cover is usually that they work for the US State
Department at the embassy.

Baer also points out that a CIA case officer's job is unique in government, in
that their explicit job is to convince someone else to break the law. Not US
law, of course, but still: their job is to convince someone else to commit
treason.

~~~
icegreentea
In the previous decade, the CIA has been expanding it's paramilitary officers
too though. Less convincing people to spy, and more blowing stuff up. More of
the action and cool gadgets part of James Bond.

------
toddh
Going to the movies is an experience. It is the experience of the process
itself (friends, meals, conversation, fun) and the meta experience of living
someone else's experience on the screen. Is that really so bad?

------
jessriedel
People don't go to the movies to experience adventure, they go to the movies
to be told a story.

~~~
cbs
I had the same thought, but I take it even further,

Most people also don't go to be told a challenging story, they want something
simple, quick and easy like popcorn.

I don't really know how to find the source, but I once read that netflix
customers will put movies they feel they should watch (like important pieces
of cinema) into their queue, but when they arrive the customer let them sit
around longer before watching them than a generic mindless entertainment
flick.

~~~
ctdonath
Bingo. If I'm up for a complex meaningful story - of which there are many in
my queue - I'd rather go _do_ something. Dropped the DVD subscription in favor
of streaming-only precisely because when I'm brain-dead enough to want to
watch something I want to grab something suitably unenlightening from a menu
of options, not whatever highbrow disc is sitting on my shelf collecting dust.

When the Great Netflix Psychotic Break happened, about a million customers
came to the same conclusion.

------
WA
In Germany, ropes courses gained a strong increase in popularity over the
recent years. They are pretty fun and you can "magically fly" through the
forest. You get this harness and can lock yourself into 300 feet long ropes in
30 feet heights and just fly from tree to tree. I'm sure, you can find them
also in the US. If you get the opportunity, check one out.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ropes_course>

~~~
timmaah
One of these was built recently in my backyard. Looks like great fun and they
do good business. (Though I'm not going to pay $100 to tour the woods I hike
daily for free)

<http://www.smuggs.com/winter/amenities/canopy-tour.php>

Another ski area just built a huge indoor waterpark.

There are tons of these types of adventurous opportunities out there. Movies
are for the lazy.

~~~
timjahn
Not sure if you've ever ziplined before, but the experience is totally
different than hiking. Ziplining is definitely worth experiencing.

------
delinka
When people become less lazy. And when it's not so stinking expensive. Most
people locally find a $10 ticket to a movie egregious. Nothing you can
'experience' is so cheap, nor is it close. The nearest metropolis with all
these experiences is about 45 minutes away - so time, fuel, ticket price ...

People are lazy _and_ broke. And fixing 'broke' doesn't usually fix 'lazy.'

------
Yhippa
There's already a pretty good proxy for this: video games. Want to make your
own story? Try D&D.

------
ctdonath
If you want "experiences", they're there for the taking at any cost from free
to $OMGk.

The problem isn't so much providing them (although other posters address the
issue of cost), it's whether the customer does, in fact, want to do his part.
Go to a movie theater, look around, and ask what percentage of attendees
would, in fact, want to spend the next 2 hours going thru an approximation of
what they're going to sit there, mouth agape, staring at. Most wouldn't, even
if they could - which most couldn't.

The opportunities for experiences are there. Skydiving. Romance. Wilderness
adventure. World travel. Competition. Artistic expression. Whatever. Spend as
much or as little as you like, in both time and money. I've seen all kinds of
"experiences" appear and flourish in a few decades. Lots of people participate
in them, as the height of our culture allows and facilitates unprecedented
indulgence in luxury "experiences". Oh, they may not be as objectively
exciting, but subjectively they can be fantastic (first time I did paintball -
about the same price & duration & space as a high-end movie - it sure wasn't a
James Bond film, but instead of "that was neat, now what" I drove around the
city loop twice screaming in residual endorphin rush).

The key is audience participation. Anyone can jet off to exotic locations for
wild times for just a few days' salary, and for even just the price & time of
a movie go leap out of an airplane or take a romantic walk. Most, however,
would rather push a button and say "here we are now, entertain us."

------
morisy
Don't get hung up on the "immersive theater" examples: Similar arguments would
have been used to shoot down YouTube and the social web years ago. Instead, I
think there's a lot of ground to be covered in lightly immersive, highly
tailored experiences that reflect and tell stories through and about you, your
friends and your environment. Narrative art doesn't need to be pinned to a
screen, and neither does the magical shared experience of theater.

------
gosub
The "experience place" that I would like to go to is like a kindergarten for
hackers, a "hackergarten". It would let me play with many things that are too
much of a commitment to do at home, like gardening or small woodwork or
microcontroller electronics, and also it could have micro-courses, like a 2
hour lecture on magic tricks or kite building or simple chemistry.

~~~
daralthus
You can go to workshops organized by hackerspaces or fablabs. Or you can look
around and find a meetup you like.

<http://hackerspaces.org/wiki/List_of_ALL_Hacker_Spaces>
<http://fab.cba.mit.edu/about/labs/> (seems to be missing some places)
meetup.com

~~~
daralthus
Also I would like to mention <http://www.super-marmite.com/>
<http://letslunch.com/> and all the other eat/cook with somebody
opportunities.

You don't have to be a spy or somebody else to have some adventure. That idea
is limited, just combine it with some other needs and there you have it.

------
neilk
Burning Man is, in theory, devoted to interactive art. But, speaking from
experience, those sorts of artworks are incredibly hard to create. In the Bay
Area we have an interdisciplinary art community that can pump them out on a
regular basis, but the costs to people's personal lives are immense. (Not to
mention that people who like to create this sort of stuff rarely want to run
it on a regular basis. They want to be Imagineers in their spare time, not
full-time carnies.)

And what do we get when people show up? People seem to enjoy _looking_ at the
bizarre interactive stuff -- it gives them permission to be freer -- but most
people, it seems, want formulaic experiences. They like dancing at sound
camps, intoxication, and riding around on art cars in costumes. Which is just
a typical Friday night clubbing, only more so.

But rather than criticize them for being unadventurous, let's look at what
makes these experiences work. Music was invented a few hundred thousand years
ago and there aren't many more direct routes to people's pleasure centers.
It's also evergreen; a sound camp can swap DJs every few hours and have a
different experience in the same environment.

Complicated art or interactive installations do their thing, but if you have a
five ton sculpture that whirls boulders around, well, that's what it does.
Rarely can they be as protean as a music hall or a movie house, or your
personal computer.

The best you can do is some sort of hardware/software combination, like the
Cubatron series, which has had various incarnations as a sort of 3d screen
saver build out of LEDs. Syzygryd is an interactive, collaborative music
sequencer in the shape of a giant sculpture that lights up and shoots fire.

Perhaps the best urban interactive experiences will be like that -- there
might be some expensive hardware built component, but they need to plug into
some inexhaustible source of new ideas too.

------
pchristensen
Movies trade gargantuan fixed costs for low marginal costs. Probably a
trillion dollars over the last 100 years has been spent making, distributing,
and screening movies. Theaters are a channel where a studio can expect to put
$100M in and get $75-200M out, $10 at a time. (more if you count shady
Hollywood accounting). Not only do unique experiences have much higher
marginal costs, there is no channel or business model for huge amounts of
money to invest in producing these experiences.

To put in perspective, he listed 2 experiences that might have thousands of
visitors a week. Eyeballing last week's box office results, it looks like
~$150M across major movies. That means _15 MILLION_ people went to the movies
last week just in the US.

Movies are a cost and effort-effective way to be entertained, and a
predictable and profitable way to invest huge amounts of money. That's why
there's everywhere.

------
michaelfeathers
One thing that is amazing to me is how theaters are really pushing to fill
seats with special event viewings and attempts to rent out their theaters for
meetings, and all the while, if they actually had a stage in their theaters,
they could probably make money in off hours with local productions.

------
xlevus
I've been to two 'Immersive Theater' 'experiences' which sound similar to the
spy experience mentioned in the article. And I found them rather contrived.

The actors stick to a script, and any attempt to interact or change the
outcome of the experience is largely ignored. If I wanted to be ignored I'd go
to the cinema, musical or a normal theater production.

Other experiences, e.g. Clay Shooting, treetop walks, jetboat rides and the
such are generally prohibitively expensive to do once a week, and aren't
really accessible unless you live close by. At least with the cinema I can
afford to go once a week, see something different each, and it's a short
walk/train/bus journey from home.

~~~
catshirt
this is disingenuous. there are other elements to immersive theatre than being
included in the script. would you say the same about going to a play?

that said, i've been to shows where they use the audience. it depends on the
production. likewise, i'm sure there are some movies you enjoy and some you
wouldn't.

------
sselby
This is sort of what Sleep No More <http://sleepnomore.com/> is doing and it's
pretty successful. It's also in a place where that sort of thing can thrive.

~~~
misuba
The OP called this out by the theater company's name, Punchdrunk, and
dismissed it as "pretentious."

------
sayhellolondon
Secret Cinema are already doing this in London, they create the full
experience immersing you in the feeling of the film with unique locations and
themes.

Here's what they did for One flew over the Cukoo's nest -
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-nHZAZZqOqM>

Likewise Bugsy Malone - <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SOnswf7XaOE>

------
rdouble
The 5 Wits thing mentioned sounds a lot like the Jejune Institute in SF.
There's a whole city in the desert called Las Vegas that was explicitly
designed as an experiential entertainment venue. One could argue that entire
areas of New York have become theme parks offering constructed urban lifestyle
experiences. Related, the way Americans consume travel and outdoor recreation
is very engineered for specific experiences.

------
sopooneo
The logical extreme (depicted): <http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119174/>

~~~
smacktoward
I was thinking more <http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0070909/> , myself...

------
lesterbuck
If you want the flying experience, there is Thrill Park near Dallas.

<http://www.gojump.com/>

Their bungee jumping on steroids, dropping face up from 120 feet, is so scary
that it was used in studies of time perception:

<http://www.k2i.rice.edu/EventsList.aspx?EventRecord=17603>

------
gee_totes
_What am I missing?_

Dear Author: you are missing Winkel and Blaktrick
<http://www.wandbevents.com/redesign/>

They host events that are exactly the experiences you describe as missing from
the city, and they are local to NYC.

Pro-tip: Don't go to the monthly events, only go to the seasonal ones that
have a theme and story.

~~~
wotsrovert
Winkel and Balktick are great.

I'm from NYC; this past Saturday there was a secret Night Market. Not a Winkel
and Balktick event per se, but with some of the same people involved.

A Night Market is a collection of box trucks, rented for the evening and
parked together in a deserted neighborhood of the city; each truck is kitted
out with some form of experience/entertainment: one gave out perogis, another
served tea; one was called "Thunder Cube" and hosted big pillow fights; the
most elaborate one had a functioning hot tub.

The event's location was kept secret until the last minute, and attendance was
limited.

My girlfriend and I produced a truck; it was called the "Peek-a-Boo Lounge"
and was simply a place for people to sit and socialize. We used lumber,
fabric, and sofa cushions to decorate the back of a 24-foot box truck, turning
it into a two-level maze where people crawled around on their knees. There
were 2 sets of day-glo Connect Four, a pair of naughty dice (leftover from a
Valentine's Day event) and a day-glo stuffed carrot (leftover from Bugs Bunny
costume).

It took the two of us a couple of days and about $600 to build (including
truck rental). People seemed to enjoy it, judging from the laughter we heard
in back; it was childlike. We received donations to help pay for the project.

I've found it's critical to find projects with good "bang-for-the-buck"; you
want to enjoy yourself even when you're working.

These sort of "experiences" work because of the community they foster, and
because they rely on imagination; much of the 'entertainment" is really just a
cheap trick and that's part of the fun.

------
jerf
You know how everyone wonders how "unskilled" people will make money in the
post-material-scarcity future? This is one of the answers. Only one of many
answers, but one nonetheless. You can add value to someone's "experience" and
capture some of it.

------
salem
What about modernizing the arcade game experience, I would love to see this
scaled out:

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eg8Bh5iI2WY&feature=playe...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eg8Bh5iI2WY&feature=player_embedded)

------
AznHisoka
I always wanted a movie version of those Choose Your Adventure books. Go to
Theater A if you want to kill him.

------
andrenotgiant
Everyone here is talking about the limitations of scale and repeat-business
when it comes to these "experiences"

Science Fiction writers have solved these problems already, just tap directly
into the brain, Minority Report style. Now all you scientists just need to
catch up.

~~~
icebraining
_Now all you scientists just need to catch up._

No, we just need to find the small door. John Malkovich won't be amused,
though.

------
iterationx
When we build the Metaverse.

------
bwooceli
" _What am I missing?_ "

Scale.

~~~
gee_totes
or LSD

