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Being There

Welcome to Being There, a column on the emerging world of immersive entertainment — from virtual reality and theme parks, to haunted houses and interactive theater. Written by The Verge senior editor Bryan Bishop.

Dreamscape Immersive wants to bring location-based VR to the masses, starting with a shopping mall

By Bryan Bishop
10 comments / new

Elgato announces a professional $199 light rig for Twitch streamers and YouTube creators

By Julia Alexander
8 comments / new

Chained mixes virtual reality and live actors to tell a dark Christmas tale

By Bryan Bishop
2 comments / new

How Two Bit Circus is turning its 21st century carnival into one giant game

By Bryan Bishop
2 comments / new

Delusion: Lies Within mixes movies and immersive theater to create a creepy, campy VR adventure

By Bryan Bishop

How a creative think tank in Austin is developing a new generation of interactive storytellers

By Bryan Bishop

A day in real-life Westworld from a host’s perspective

By Bryan Bishop
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The SimuLife Diaries, part eight: I sacrificed myself to save two worlds

By Bryan Bishop

The SimuLife Diaries, part seven: I stopped an evil megacorp and had a neon rave

By Bryan Bishop

The SimuLife Diaries, part six: I had a home-cooked meal with a family that doesn’t exist

By Bryan Bishop

The SimuLife Diaries, part five: I just brokered a tech deal worth $1.29 billion

By Bryan Bishop

The SimuLife Diaries, part four: I have my own personal Tyler Durden

By Bryan Bishop

This stream has:

The SimuLife Diaries: a four-day immersive story adventure

By Bryan Bishop

The SimuLife Diaries, part three: I was kidnapped by anti-technology anarchists in Austin

By Bryan Bishop
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The SimuLife Diaries, part two: I found a stranger from another dimension in my hotel room shower

By Bryan Bishop
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The SimuLife Diaries, part one: I’m a transdimensional doppelgänger

By Bryan Bishop
2 comments / new

Dreamscape Immersive’s Alien Zoo takes guests to an interstellar Jurassic Park

By Bryan Bishop
1 comment / new

With Star Wars: Secrets of the Empire, virtual reality is finally ready for prime-time

By Bryan Bishop
8 comments / new

How a secret Los Angeles club hid an interactive story inside a music festival

By Bryan Bishop
1 comment / new

I spent seven months living inside a conspiracy thriller and it’s not over yet

By Bryan Bishop
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Why haunted houses are Hollywood’s next big thing

By Bryan Bishop
2 comments / new

Hollywood and AMC theaters are betting on VR with Dreamscape Immersive

By Bryan Bishop
1 comment / new

The future of entertainment is here, we just don’t know what to call it

By Bryan Bishop
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How HBO’s Westworld installation made fans ‘the center of the universe’

By Bryan Bishop
1 comment / new

Disney wants to build a Westworld for Star Wars fans

By Bryan Bishop
13 comments / new

Alejandro Iñárritu’s VR installation is an emotional, harrowing border encounter

By Bryan Bishop
5 comments / new

Movie theaters are becoming roller coasters, whether you like it or not

By Bryan Bishop
39 comments / new

Disney is betting big on theme parks, but it needs to make up its mind

By Bryan Bishop
8 comments / new

How two Disney Imagineers built a better escape room with The Nest

By Bryan Bishop
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I spent four days inside my own personal horror movie at The Overlook Film Festival

By Bryan Bishop
2 comments / new

Disney’s Star Wars land will be ‘immersive,’ but what does that actually mean?

By Bryan Bishop
4 comments / new

Cults, chaos, and community: how The Tension Experience rewrote the rules of storytelling

By Bryan Bishop