Virtual Reality in Los Angeles

Enszer, Greta

Piper, N. (2017). Los Angeles’s New Circus Act. Bloomberg Businessweek, (4517), 44–46. Retrieved from https://search-ebscohost-com.libaccess.sjlibrary.org/login.aspx?direct=true&db=bth&AN=122159348&site=ehost-live&scope=site

For my colleague's birthday, he invited us to the new Two Bit Circus in Los Angeles.  Seeing as it was a school night, I did not think I could revisit my twenties, galavanting the city when I had to wake up early the next day and teach.  But after visiting their website, I thought, this could be one of those LA events that you don't want to miss and is the reason you endure the high cost of living here. 

Having never experienced virtual reality, I never realized the VR craze.  Well, after putting on the VR backpack and headset, I was transported to Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.  So real.  I felt like I was walking over a rickety wooden bridge with skeletons jumping out at me.  For only $7, this is one of the best experiences in Los Angeles.  I'm not saying it beats swimming in the ocean, but I am considering a field trip here for my high school library advisory committee.

Of course, I wanted to know more about how this business came to be.  While we were there, companies had sponsored bonding nights for their employees.  They were given game cards loaded with money!  This is not what happens in public school events. 

Brent Bushnell, the co-founder of Two Bit Circus, is the son of Nolan Bushnell, founder of Atari and Chuck E. Cheese.  Intel Corp. invested in Two Bit Circus after Bushnell and Gradman

provided games, robots, lasers, and the entertainment at a few of its events. 

Two Bit Circus has raised $21.5 million in venture capital since it incorporated in 2012. (Nolan Bushnell isn’t an investor, but he has a seat on the eight-person board.) For their first location, the founders have signed a lease on a 50,000-square-foot warehouse space in Downtown L.A.

The high tech adult arcade includes a 30-minute “story room,” a variant of the popular type of adventure game in which players have to solve a series of puzzles to exit a locked room.  There is also be a 1,000-square-foot virtual reality arena where guests compete against one another in video games. Unlike in regular arcade games, which have a limited set of outcomes, the plot lines in the VR games vary, so visitors have a reason to come back.