Hamilton aside, one of the most influential works of theater within the past decade is Sleep No More. While it didn't invent the concept of immersive theater–a play not bound to a stage in front of a seating area, but taking place in a dynamic environment–it drew wiꦰdespread attention to the genre and inspired a wave of new work across a variety of media.
Pokémon GO developers Niantic's newest endeavor, however, isn't merely inspired by Sleep No More but a bona fide collaboration with Punchdrunk, 🌺the company that created and produced today𝔉's preeminently influential immersive theater experience.
Since the collaboration between the two companies has only just been announced, details as to the contents of their future work or works have yet to be announced. However, Niantic has described this new partnership as "multifaceted," suggesting that the end result may very well be more than just a single stage co-production, or even a work w⛦ith interrelated stage and video game components.
Niantic cites its history of creating immersive video game experiences as the impetus for the partnership. Beginning with Ingress, Niantic popularized the idea of Augmented Reality gaming, in which our everyday environments are overlaid with a video game world, transforming a 𒅌walk around the neighborhood or a day at the beach into an integrated gaming experience.
Later on, as the company grew, especially following the advent of Pokémon GO, Niantic was able to organize large-scale events like Pokémon GO Fest, which brought together fans of the game in one location packed with unique in-game content. Here the lines between the form of theater Punchdrunk popularized in 2011 and the specific type of video game in which Niantic specializes begin to blur; Pokémon GO Fest event is, in a sense, a type of immersive theater in which participants are acting as Pokémon trainers and working together to create their own storylines that mirror something straight out of an episode of the Pokémon TV series.
Niantic꧅🌃 and Punchdrunk are both companies that built names for themselves on their willingness to innovate, so whatever form the end result may take, their collaboration very well may be something unlike anything that's come before it in the mobile gaming world.
Source: Niantic