The Magic Behind Sandbox VR's New Squid Game Experience

You're planning a night out with friends and want a unique experience. Karaoke? You've done that. Paintball? Too messy. Escape rooms? Too much pressure. Then someone suggests a holodeck, but those don't exist—or do they?

Sandbox VR is a location-based virtual reality (VR) company with more than 40 locations in cities worldwide. At each Sandbox venue, you can enter a holodeck, don a VR headset, and participate in one of eight unique experiences utilizing full-body motion capture, haptic technology, and VR. Sandbox's experiences include the sci-fi-themed "Amber Sky," the fantasy-themed "Seekers of the Shard: Dragonfire," the zombie thriller "Deadwood Valley," and now, in partnership with Netflix, "Squid Game Virtuals."

Did you watch the "Squid Game" TV show and wonder what it would be like to play Red Light, Green Light, or to cross the Glass Bridge? Now, thanks to Sandbox VR and HTC VIVE, you can. This is the story of how Sandbox VR partnered with HTC VIVE to bring Squid Game to life in location-based VR.

The Challenge

Sandbox VR was founded in 2016. At the time, VR was in its infancy, and VR devices required a wired connection to a computer. Sandbox VR's founding team asked themselves how they could create a truly unique VR experience.

"We considered lots of ideas, and then finally we thought that if we can do full body tracking, you can see your hand, your leg, your movement, and you can see your friend and also touch your friend in the virtual world, but, actually, you can really touch in the physical world as well," says Kimkind Yeung, SVP of Product & Technology, Sandbox VR. "It's a very unique experience that people cannot do at home."

Working with one of the earliest VR devices, Sandbox VR created a PC in a backpack solution that allowed users to move freely with a headset. However, this cumbersome solution restricted movement and limited the kinds of experiences Sandbox VR could offer.

Fast forward to 2021. The Korean web series "Squid Game" became a massive worldwide hit. Before long, Netflix sought partners to create new, unique "Squid Game" experiences. One of those partners was Sandbox VR.

Sandbox VR wanted to create an experience that would allow guests to actually play the "Squid Game" games, immerse themselves in that world, and be able to see and interact with other guests. To do so, they knew they needed a better tech stack than bulky VR goggles and a PC backpack.

"Because of the nature of "Squid Game," the most important thing that we needed was lightweight hardware for the comfort of our guests and the ability for the motion-tracking to be on point," says Bryan Price, Senior Director of Operations, Sandbox VR.

The VIVE Focus 3 was exactly what they needed.

The Solution

Sandbox VR spent eleven (and a half) months developing their "Squid Game"-derived experience, " Squid Game Virtuals ," working with Netflix throughout.

"Netflix was a really fantastic partner for us with 'Squid Game Virtuals' because they gave us a lot of creative freedom to explore the space," says Michael Hampden, SVP of Content & Creative Director, Sandbox VR. "Initially, we started with a concept that was a little bit closer to the original series in terms of the feeling of it being a little bit lonely, a little bit scary, and a little bit too apprehensive. Then we started to play with that, and we had feedback on it. We talked with Netflix, and then that led to the concept of 'Virtuals' where you're in a virtual world, and you're testing these 'Squid Game' games before they're going to be used in the real competition."

The result is a game where guests can interact with mini-games based on scenes from the show, like Red Light, Green Light, Crossing the Glass Bridge and several other new games created specifically for 'Squid Game Virtuals'. Sandbox VR offers its guests a level of immersion and flexibility like they've never seen before.

"Using the power of the Focus 3, we can absolutely have people moving around the play area much faster and interacting in entirely new ways," says Hampden. "So you're taking steps across the Glass Bridge. You're running during Red Light, Green Light. Just doing all these options and having that proximity with other guests without having to have this backpack swing around completely changes the way the game feels."

He continues: "We find the HTC VIVE solution to be very intuitive, both in the hardware setup and how intuitive it is for the guests, including simply being able to wear glasses with the VR headset, which is not something that's common with a lot of other headsets. Then, the clarity and intuitiveness of the controls and things like that made the overall implementation or integration with our store teams and their ability to execute with the guests a lot easier. We like to say on the operation side that we want the hardware to work so that our store team can really just focus on what they're there for."

Results

"The reaction from our guests has been out of this world," says Price.

According to Hampden, the secret sauce of 'Squid Game Virtuals' is the entire package: Sandbox VR's expertise combined with the technology of the VIVE Focus 3. But it all starts with the Sandbox VR culture.

"We have a really strong culture of innovation, and we always challenge ourselves with each product that we do to try and really learn and prove new things in the location-based VR Space," he said. "Every time we approach a new creative project, we're trying to push the envelope and find out what our guests can handle."

This culture of experimentation and innovation is, of course, augmented by having a technology partner like HTC and a VR headset as capable as the VIVE Focus 3.

"The visual fidelity is a really big thing for 'Squid Game Virtuals,'" says Hampden. "When you see those characters that you're playing, and you see their facial expressions change when they're getting hit by a spike ball or falling into a pit. That visual fidelity is a real highlight because we have the VIVE Focus 3 and the ability to stream content from these high-quality PCs to the headsets and have the visuals just really come through well and with low latency."

It's not only the guest experience that has benefitted from HTC VIVE, but the technical experience as well. According to Yeung, managing a fleet of HTC VIVE headsets is simply easier than managing other devices.

"HTC is very good for the B2B side," says Yeung. "The VIVE [headset] is a consumer product, but it also has a backend system, which is good for B2B."

VIVE's backend allows the Sandbox VR team to push updates to all of their headsets simultaneously over the cloud — a feature many other consumer-only products don't have. Without this feature, Sandbox VR would have to send a technician to every store to update every headset in that store one at a time. But with HTC, it's a "click of the button in the cloud — finished."

"That is just one of the strong reasons for us to use HTC," Yeung says.

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