Game Studios now Have an Easier Path to LBE Development With Two Bit Circus’ Park as a Platform
Best known for its micro-amusement park in Los Angeles, Two Bit Circus has announced a new initiative called ‘Park as a Platform’, for developers keen to enter the location-based entertainment (LBE) market.
The programme has been designed to streamline the process between game creation and distribution in arcades by leveraging Two Bit Circus’ micro-amusement park. The park can be initially used as a test lab for studios, and then as a physical development and publishing platform, complete with revenue share, built-in customers, and backend API/data collection.
To start with, developers can submit their projects to be part of Two Bit Circus’ Beta nights – like the recent VR-wellness experience EmbodyMove – for visitors to test out. The company will then review submissions to find the ones with the most potential.
“Getting a game in front of the public requires a lot of resources that many developers don’t have access to,” says Two Bit Circus Co-Founder and CTO, Eric Gradman in a statement. “Imagine the possible variety of public games and experiences if more developers had the resources to explore LBE. We hope that by erasing some of the obstacles and encouraging the community, we can support developers and increase the diversity of fun.”
The Park as a Platform programme launches with several projects, including puzzle title Death Squared from SMG Studio; Hidden in Plain Sight, a stealth party videogame; ClusterPuck 99, a digital air hockey game from PHL Collective; and Line Wobbler, a one-dimensional dungeon crawler controlled from Robin Baumgarten.
Two Bit Circus’ 38k square foot micro-amusement park opened its doors last summer offering virtual reality (VR), narrative-based escape/story rooms, indie arcades, an interactive theatre, and much more. VR content includes Rebellion’s Battlezone and multiplayer VR experience The Raft.
A community of entertainment and engineering enthusiasts, the company plans on opening a chain of these micro-amusement parks in the future, and bringing more developers on board to help with content can only help that endeavour. VRFocus will continue its coverage of Two Bit Circus and its LBE efforts, reporting back with the latest announcements.
https://www.vrfocus.com/2019/04/game-studios-now-have-an-easier-path-to-lbe-development-with-two-bit-circus-park-as-a-platform/