Discussing Virtual Reality Experiences and VR technology. An independent and unofficial VR subreddit. I’ll preface by saying I don’t really understand Dave and Buster’s market strategy very well, so maybe my thoughts don’t hold muster, but that said, I don’t see VR working out for them in this current incarnation. Initially, I was excited to see them incorporating VR technology into their arcades, but that was until I tried it. This isn’t a review of the experience itself, which was a cool little 5-minute ride, but more an assessment of what I think it’s trying to be and why it won’t work. Here’s a little synopsis of the ride, which you can skip if you want to avoid spoilers. The Jurassic Park ride takes you on a motorized journey through the park leading up to the events of the latest movie. You’ll see all the famous dinos, which you will tag with your controller for cataloging. There are fans that blow air, and your seats move, culminating in your jeep teetering over the precipice of a cliff. End synopsis. The goal is to make their patrons feel like they’re really visiting Jurassic Park. Clearly, a lot of engineering and resources went into developing and delivering an experience that D&B hoped people would be willing to pay extra to see. It takes up a fair bit of space,the hardware itself is pretty impressive, and a dedicated attendant operates and administers everything. It’s quite an undertaking, really. Trouble is, nobody was really interested in doing it. There was no line, and my wife and I had our pick of the four available seats. I only saw 2 other people take the ride in the hour or so that I was there. Worse still, it wasn’t generating any attention from the other patrons. It was quite unlikethis promotional photo. One of the issues in VR in general, and in particular here, is it doesn’t do a great job of conveying to outsiders what is being experienced on the inside. From the outside, it just looks like people wearing headsets getting jerked around to and fro. There are no screens showing what they’re seeing, or audio playing what they’re hearing, it’s an incredibly isolated experience. I think they would be better served by having both visible, and perhaps even better, a green screen that could project the attendants into the action for outsiders to see. They could even sell the videos on a flash drive to be shared on social media. The bigger issue here, in my opinion, is that they over-engineered an incredibly immersive experience that is ultimately passive and has no replay value whatsoever. You buy the ticket, you take the ride, and you’ve basically seen all there is to see. There’s nothing to gain from trying it a second time. To really be successful there needs to be some incentive to go back for more. Your presence inside the world needs to have an impact on what occurs there, but it doesn’t. Given the amount of resources devoted to operating it, the space, the hardware, the dedicated attendant, I do not see this paying off for D&B and I imagine it will fall to the wayside, they will write off VR as a flop, and we’ll never see it there again. What I think they should have done instead of building this huge experience and engineering proprietary tech to deliver it is pick a pre-existing game from the Steam library and play it like everyone else does. I guarantee, if they had been showcasing Beat Saber instead of Jurassic Park, not only would they have had more people playing it, but they would have generated a crowd of on-lookers who feel like they are connected to the experience, waiting for their turn. It would have saved them considerable money and space, and given patrons incentive to keep playing. In conclusion, D&B could have better leveraged the existing technology to deliver what VR already does so well. Being able to move your body and have an impact on the game world is so much more immersive and satisfying than a passive ride. There was no need to reinvent the wheel, and when that wheel goes flat, I don’t foresee D&B reinflating it again. Edit: Interesting tidbit: D&B spent multi-millions on this thing.https://variety.com/2018/digital/news/jurassic-world-vr-expeditions-dave-busters-1202831448/