DreamPark, the creator of what it calls “the world’s largest downloadable mixed reality (XR) theme park,” stated it has raised $1.1 million in seed funding.
The funding will speed up DreamPark’s mission to make Earth value enjoying once more by remodeling strange areas into extraordinary adventures by means of blended actuality know-how. I obtained a demo of the sport in Yerba Buena Park in San Francisco and it made me smile. It additionally made me suppose it was a part of a reasonably good plan to persuade property house owners to get extra out of their leisure venues.
However we’ll get to that in a bit. Lengthy Journey Ventures led the funding spherical, with participation from Founders Inc.
The corporate is the brainchild of Aidan Wolf, CEO of DreamPark; Kevin Habich, cofounder; and cofounder Brent Bushnell. They got here up with the thought whereas working at Two-Bit Circus, a zany leisure venue in Los Angeles run by Bushnell. Bushnell inspired the thought, incubated it and have become a cofounder.
The DreamPark founders (left to proper): Brent Bushnell, Aidan Wolf and Kevin Habich.
Positioned on the forefront of blended actuality innovation, DreamPark stated it’s capturing a big early benefit within the world XR (prolonged actuality) reside occasion market, valued at $3.6 billion in 2024 and projected to surge to $190.3 billion by 2034 at a 48.7% compound annual development fee (CAGR). This explosive development trajectory presents a chance that DreamPark’s know-how and enterprise mannequin are uniquely designed to deal with, the corporate stated.
“We’re building the world’s largest theme park – one that exists everywhere and is accessible to everyone. We want to make getting out to play worthwhile again,” stated Bushnell. “This investment allows us to expand our footprint of access points across the country rapidly, develop partnerships with premium IP holders, and continue enhancing our technology to deliver magical experiences that bring people back to real-world spaces.”
Bushnell is the eldest son of Atari cofounder Nolan Bushnell. And the youthful Bushnell is aware of the prices of investing in bodily properties, as he runs Two-Bit Circus in downtown Los Angeles. It’s constructed inside a bodily warehouse, and Bushnell’s firm has to pay for that property — even weathering the pandemic. However with DreamPark, he can reinvigorate a bodily venue with out investing something in a brand new property. Against this, a brand new digital actuality leisure venue can price greater than $1 million to open.
Palms-on demo
DreamPark foundes in Yerba Buena Gardens park in San Francisco.
Wolf and Habich, and Bushnell’s sister Alyssa Bushnell, confirmed me the DreamPark digital theme park in San Francisco within the park close to the Metreon constructing. There was a live performance happening on the time and it was very noisy. However the sport labored tremendous anyway.
Trying down at my toes, Wolf stated the QR code on the mat on the groun was an “access point.” That’s the place you’ll be able to scan and enter the digital world. The corporate continues to be constructing a entrance finish for distributing the headsets, however folks will have the ability to carry their mixed-reality headsets from house and play the identical content material.
“We’re setting these up all over,” Wolf stated. “Once an area is mapped, it’s there and you just show up and play. The big difference here is that DreamParks are places. They exist in the real world.”
Don’t be shocked should you see folks doing this quickly.
The mapped space was round 50,000 sq. toes within the park, so it was a fairly large sport house. Quickly, the corporate will break into 100,000 sq. toes for the sport with one other replace. That’s about 10 instances the restricted measurement of Meta’s VR headsets.
“We’re going way past the usual limits,” Wolf stated. “I think this fundamentally changes what mixed reality means. Now it’s not this living room experience bound to the couch. It’s an actual world to walk around and explore and touch. Once we get people there, we’re gonna really see that cognitive shift, where now augmented reality (AR) is something I can go out and experience, like enjoying a concert.”
The cofounders gave me a headset to put on. The primary one didn’t work, however a second one functioned tremendous. It was a modified Meta Quest 3 headset that was locked down so it could play simply the DreamPark sport. It took a short while to load after which I appeared by means of the headset. Due to the outward-facing cameras, I used to be in a position to see the park in blended actuality. That meant I didn’t journey over something as I walked round.
I held the headset to my brow and appeared round. I might see a Mario-like set of bricks floating within the air, and floating digital cash alongside the bodily path. I began strolling round and choosing up the cash and tapping the bricks to gather factors within the sport. I didn’t go the place there have been folks mendacity on the grass, however I didn’t handle to navigate to some lava pits in the midst of the park. The founders identified that far-off from me, on the Carnaval live performance stage, there was a boss. Usually, if there was no live performance, I might have waltzed over to that location and engaged in a boss struggle.
DreamPark overlaid on the Third Avenue Promenade in Santa Monica, California.
The graphics had been rudimentary, 8-bit model, and but I didn’t thoughts it in any respect because of the novelty of seeing them overlaid on the true world. Nonetheless, I used to be reluctant to go strolling within the lava pits, as that was a foul concept within the digital world and I by some means felt like it could be a foul concept to stroll there within the bodily world.
“Our graphics are more cartoonish, but our Wizard theme has a more realistic look,” Wolf stated. “We’re creating four theme parks.”
One among them is a sci-fi Crash Course, which is an impediment course. And DreamPark is working with a associate as nicely. There’s one with a psychedelic theme and one that’s ambient enjoyable.
It’s simple to show the expertise right into a multiplayer sport. You may, for example, race across the park and full a timed expertise in competitors with your mates.
The enchantment of a digital overlay on the true world
DreamPark mixes the digital and actual worlds.
DreamPark transforms bodily places into immersive mixed-reality environments by means of its community of entry factors: bodily markers, like QR codes, that, when scanned with a Meta Quest 3 headset or cellular gadget, unlock digital overlays on real-world areas. The corporate has already established profitable installations at Santa Monica’s Third Avenue Promenade and The LA County Honest, with deliberate expansions in Seattle, Orange County and several other expos and company occasions.
It’s fairly low cost to create new places. All they actually should do is scan an space, overlay a digital sport full of easy video games, after which drop a mat with a QR code on the property so folks can scan it and begin enjoying the sport. For property house owners, this implies they will draw folks again to their location, getting them to re-engage with the place as a result of folks need to play a digital sport on the bodily place. It’s a strategy to improve the worth of a bodily property, utilizing digital leisure.
Bushnell pitched the thought for DreamPark on CNBC’s Shark Tank tv present. The sharks didn’t go for it, however the publicity from the present helped floor traders, Bushnell stated. (The Bushnell household goes to look at Augmented World Expo in Lengthy Seaside, California, in June).
“As a longtime investor, I have seen countless pitches promising to merge the digital and physical worlds, and DreamPark is the first that truly delivers on the real-world metaverse,” stated Cyan Banister, cofounder and common associate at Lengthy Journey Ventures, in an announcement. “Aidan is a visionary builder of immersive systems, and Brent is a pioneer in playful public spaces, making them the perfect team to make emerging tech feel human, accessible, and unforgettable. They’ve cracked the code on location-based AR, delivering a 10x experience that’s as magical as it’s scalable. This isn’t just immersive entertainment; it’s a whole new category.”
The funding comes when retail landlords and occasion venues search progressive options to drive foot visitors and improve engagement. Whereas typical VR venues price over $1 million to construct, DreamPark delivers a completely immersive, multiplayer expertise that pays for itself in its first month of income.
DreamPark in Santa Monica.
“Our capital expense is like one of a hundredth of our competitors, which is amazing. And then this lets us move astronomically faster than everyone else. I kind of believe in a Nintendo philosophy, which is, they take antiquated technology, but they use it in a new way that makes it valuable. We’re using access points,” Wolf stated.
There’s no building or everlasting infrastructure required. It’s a radically extra inexpensive strategy to flip underused areas into high-impact locations.
“We’re not just creating engaging content, we’re building a platform that revitalizes communities by giving people a reason to gather, play, and connect in physical spaces in real life,” stated Wolf. “DreamPark bridges the digital and physical worlds, creating a new category of play where the magic of virtual worlds enhances real-life connections. We’re reimagining what’s possible when the spaces around us become canvases for shared adventure and imagination.”
The seed funding will assist DreamPark’s aggressive enlargement plans, together with deploying entry factors throughout new places, launching partnerships with main IP holders to create branded theme park experiences, and increasing the corporate’s fleet of rental Meta Quest 3 headsets items nationwide.
DreamPark is rising the event crew to speed up content material creation and platform capabilities. DreamPark’s management crew brings deep expertise from firms together with Two-Bit Circus, Smiley Cap, and SNAP, Inc., positioning them to execute their formidable imaginative and prescient of making the infrastructure for worldwide mixed-reality leisure.
The place it’s going
What alien know-how is that this?
Bushnell stated the crew has been working for round two years. However the founders have been concerned with AR for greater than a decade. They confirmed up at Two-Bit Circus and began making mixed-reality video games, which have in mind bodily actuality as a sport house. There are about 10 contractors within the firm engaged on content material.
They discovered that gamers are pleased to put on the headsets for half-hour at a time, notably when they’re enjoying with buddies.
“We see ourselves more as a tech company than like a location based entertainment company. We hope to stay small as a core team while still reaching millions or billions of people,” Wolf stated.
The video games are in a personal alpha testing section now.
“I would say that the headset we currently have in our hands is the exact headset we need to bring this to the masses. So the nice part about the company we’re building is we aren’t waiting for some like watershed moment,” Wolf stated. “We’re not waiting for anything now. We’re just getting it into lots of places where people already congregate.”
DreamPark is popping out with an app that may let customers scan their native park after which begin utilizing that house as a degree, Wolf stated. However DreamPark itself will create partnerships with among the finest locations itself and get permission to do the sport on the properties.
At Two-Bit Circus, for example, DreamPark might prolong the leisure into the out of doors car parking zone, giving extra sq. footage for leisure.
Bushnell had an excellent second when he was enjoying an AR sport with drift racing on a racetrack within the Two-Bit Circus car parking zone. He famous that blended actuality doesn’t have the Achilles Heel of VR, which is that it makes half the folks nauseous.
“That was really the moment that broke my brain for mixed reality,” he stated. “We were on actual drift bikes, pedaling around collecting coins. And I went twice around that thing, chasing after somebody else on a drift bike. And, you know, my heart rate was at 150. And I was just absolutely going bananas. And I took the headset off, and all that world that had motivated me to pedal my ass off was gone. It just really felt like this is not just going to change entertainment. This is going to change therapy and fitness and learning.”
Bushnell stated so many different kinds of leisure are primarily based on deploying big quantities of capital. However this type of theme park may very well be up and working in a matter of minutes. Bushnell believes folks might be pleased to purchase tickets to get an opportunity to play. He stated his four-year-old child loves it, as does his 82-year-old father.
DreamPark is including digital leisure to actual venues.
To me, it felt a bit like the start of the world of Cyberpunk 2077, whereas Bushnell stated it reminded him of the Korean drama, The Recollections of Alhambra, the place folks put on contact lenss shows and have an journey overlaid on actual streets.
“These are beautiful places naturally. Let’s augment them with a little more cool storytelling, and you’re off and running,” Bushnell stated. “The world is lonely and isolated, We think of this a path to being social again, getting people out in public. And we want to invite landlords of all stripes to host DreamParks.”
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