Making ‘Virtual’ Centers a Reality : Entertainment: A Disney descendant and partners plan a chain of high-tech amusement spots.
Tim Disney, grandnephew of Walt Disney, has found a business venture that would make his legendary ancestor proud. He is buying a majority interest in a Chicago company that has helped invent a new form of entertainment based on “virtual reality” technology.
The company, Virtual World Entertainment, already operates a unique video game-cum-amusement park attraction called Battletech, located in a Chicago shopping center. For about $7, players strap themselves into a jet fighter-style cockpit laden with electronic controls and video screens and battle it out with other players in an elaborate war-simulation game.
Disney and his partners plan to expand the concept and build an international chain of “virtual reality centers” that would offer Battletech along with one or two other high-tech role-playing games. The group plans four new centers in the United States in 1993, the first of which will open at a yet-to-be-chosen location in Los Angeles next summer.
Joining Disney in his new venture are Andrew Messing, former director of corporate investments at Shamrock Holdings, the Disney family investment vehicle, and Charles D. Fink, a former vice president at Walt Disney Pictures. Jordan Weisman and Ross Babcock, co-founders of Virtual World Entertainment, retain an equity interest in the company and will remain as president and executive vice president, respectively.
Disney said in a press release that he plans to use Virtual World as the foundation for a “diversified media company that incorporates film, television, interactive home games, comic books and a wide variety of consumer products.”
Exact terms of the Virtual World deal were not disclosed. But Messing described the investment as “significant” and said it was in excess of $10 million.
Tim Disney, a film producer who is the son of Roy Disney Jr., was unavailable for comment.
Virtual reality is a set of technologies that allow people to block out reality by immersing themselves in a computer-generated world. The concept, originally developed by the military for flight simulators and other forms of training, has gained increasing attention in recent years for its potential uses in the computer and entertainment industries.
Earlier this fall, Paramount Pictures announced that it would build virtual reality centers based on the Star Trek theme. Paramount will work with Edison Brothers, an arcade-game company, and the Alameda-based video game software firm Spectrum Holobyte.
But the virtual reality business has had its setbacks as well. One of the technology’s pioneers, VPL Research of Foster City, was recently swallowed up by Thomson of France when it couldn’t repay its debts.
Weisman, of Virtual World, said he expected all the major motion picture companies to get into the virtual reality entertainment business. He describes the firm’s new breed of entertainment as an “interactive storytelling experience,” because every game unfolds differently, according to the actions of the players involved.
Indeed, the Battletech experience includes not just the game itself, but an elaborate introduction to draw the player into the fantasy environment and a post-game review of the action that includes a computer printout.
Already there are Battletech books, and Disney and his partners see the licensing possibilities for Battletech and other new games as a major opportunity.
Messing said the Chicago Battletech center, which has sold more than 300,000 tickets since it opened more than two years ago, has had heavy repeat business, with 60% of the revenue coming from 5% of the players.
