Revenant Hollow: Integrating Technology into Location-Based Horror Experiences

I've been wanting to talk about Revenant Hollow from a technological standpoint for a while now. I know I've talked about this a lot, maybe just never published anything. If so, that ends today.

So let me start with the short version. Revenant Hollow is an interactive location-based entertainment experience, initially focused on the horror genre. The seasonal Halloween market. Haunted houses, scare attractions, thriller stuff. It's a way to incorporate technology into the more theatrical, story-based attractions, the jump-scare, walkthrough kind of experience.

From a broad technological view, the experience involves virtual reality, augmented reality, automation, robotics, and Internet of Things. It's a way to connect mixed reality software with physical space, and because it's location-based, we can wire IoT devices into anything mechanical. Scare props, lighting rigs, whatever you can imagine. There will be an IoT component in all of it.

I've spent several years planning, designing, and doing some amount of R&D, although extremely rudimentary. More like labs than a true proof of concept. Some of them actually got mature, but it doesn't matter. It's ancient history. What matters is the design and the objective and the plan, because it's been so long that everything I might have developed has gone stale. Every bit of technology I was working with has had multiple leapfrog moments. Virtual reality in particular has entered a whole new era.

First-Gen Oculus and the Pre-COVID World

When I was experimenting with virtual and augmented reality, the frameworks, the languages, the libraries, everything in the mixed reality space at that time was early first-generation Oculus, first-generation Vive. That whole era. The only thing most people knew about mixed reality was Pokémon GO, which was probably the most sophisticated, mass-adopted, mainstream pop culture breakthrough product in that space. Consumer-facing, at least. There was probably a lot of really high-end business-facing stuff, like Magic Leap. And Microsoft always had experimental mixed reality technologies. But that's where we were.

So much has happened since then. This was around 2019, pre-COVID. COVID is to a large degree what knocked me out of the game with what I was working on. And you've got to think about what all has changed. It's not just the software. It's hardware devices, and it's artificial intelligence. Oculus in particular has been important because it's a consumer-facing platform, and it really matters what devices people actually know about and adopt.

Your Phone Is Already a Scare Prop

There's a mixed reality component where people's phones become an integral part of the experience. Not like "we have a website and an app and a login where you can buy tickets." No. Your phone is actually part of the interactive experience.

Think about scare props in a haunted attraction. You've got lights, speakers, little servo motors like Christmas deer motors that are often repurposed for zombies or whatever you can imagine. Your phone is all of that in your pocket. Your phone has lights. It has sound. It even has an additional component: haptics with its vibration ability. And then you think about all the other technologies you can tap into. Geolocation, for one. Cameras, for another. If you can begin to integrate a phone's capabilities into the experience, you start to realize it unlocks all kinds of functionality. And the location-based context gives us a lot of ways we can cheat.

Nodes Behind the Walls

I had designed a specification for facade walls. A part of a good professional scare attraction is being able to create facade walls, and a lot of this stuff is so theatrical. That's one thing that's really exciting about it: if you have any interest in theater, whether that's as an actor or in wardrobe or building props, it's all valuable and interconnected.

Every facade wall shares a similar underlying structure, and a part of that structure can fit standardized technology. Really, think of them as nodes. I think that's actually the terminology I used. Every so often you'd have a node, and that node would have standard things you'd expect: a Raspberry Pi or an Arduino or some kind of network repeater.

Why I'd Ditch the Wiring Now

One thing I would absolutely change about the initial plan is the electricity infrastructure. I had always envisioned this as having conduit, running wiring to things. I went all in on it. We're going to expect conduits, we're going to accept that we're going to have wiring. And that actually had benefits because it meant no batteries. All the consumer-grade scare products use disposable batteries, so I was naturally apprehensive about considering batteries at all. And running conduit gave us an additional benefit: if we have electricity infrastructure, we can run network infrastructure too. Every conduit could carry high-voltage and low-voltage wire. Power outlet wire, data cabling, maybe even speaker wire.

But now I would call bullshit on that. That's dumb. Batteries are so good now that we could plan each node with a battery capable of lasting eight hours or whatever's practical, powering all the electronics. The only exception would be pneumatics. You're going to need a compressor for those, and that actually makes more sense in the new model anyway. One big central compressor in a well-muffled location, and you just run air from there. No power cables. Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and battery advancements have made running electricity infrastructure seem silly.

From Seasonal Horror to the Augmented Reality Sports Complex

Revenant Hollow fits into a much bigger long-term plan that ultimately results in what I call the Augmented Reality Sports Complex. The strategic objective of the Revenant Hollow initiative is to develop software and expertise, to build hardware, and to learn. We want to gain real capabilities in connecting mixed reality experiences with location-based, interactive, theatrical entertainment. Solving meaningful problems in that context gives us the ability to apply everything to things that are non-seasonal and less genre-specific. Not everybody's into horror, and Halloween isn't all year.

The sports complex would be a permanent facility where local people can travel to, meet up in person, and also interact with remote users in other parts of the world. One of the important features is syncing experiences across locations by standardizing the architecture of the complex.

I've always thought about this, ever since my kids were babies. I grew up at the tail end of the golden age of arcades. Shopping malls, movie theaters, arcades. It wasn't the golden age, the late '70s, early '80s. I grew up late '80s, early '90s. So I never saw the golden age. But I went to some pretty badass arcades, and some of my most fond memories as a kid and a teenager are hanging out at arcades, even if it's just a little offshoot of a shopping mall. Going to movie theaters. These kinds of location-based entertainment experiences.

And what happened was I watched this generation consensually plug into the Matrix. Just staying at home. My generation was more of a balance between going out and meeting people in public places and console gaming from the house. It wasn't until I was a teenager that online gaming became a real factor. There were always people who would get online and play Doom, but it wasn't massive. You didn't see mass adoption online until Diablo, and probably Unreal Tournament was one of the biggest breakthroughs.

Then I grew up, became an adult, had kids, didn't have as much time for games. And when I saw this whole online world take off, I'm like, nobody's getting out anymore. Everybody's just staying in their basement. And look, that's awesome. I would never say sacrifice that, because I was right there with Unreal Tournament. I was right there with the original Diablo. I saw the magic of online gaming as it became something real. It was magical. I will never deny that. But it took something away that a whole generation missed out on. I want this next generation to know how badass it is for it to be normal that you hop on your bike or hit your ride or just drop in on some place where other kids meet up and hang out all day. Especially on a Saturday or every afternoon. There's always snacks and games and movies, and gaming was always a serious component of that.

That's where the Augmented Reality Sports Complex comes from. Combining next-level networking with a resurgence of location-based entertainment. And the first phase is Revenant Hollow, because it's seasonal, it's straightforward, it's genre-specific. It has enough constraints to make meaningful progress, and then we use the advancements, the research, the development as a stepping stone toward the permanent facility. The standardization of architecture, technology, hardware, and the software product that comes out of it will get us there.