I can’t wait for the meow wolf internship arcade in New York

It is not typical to get news for you through a video game from the 80s on your phone. But this is Meow Wolf for you. In a small pixelated game that looks like the old arcade game Double Dragon, Gangs and police officers come after you. But if you survive, you will find the actual message: Meow Wolf, a bizarre immersive multimedia team that Makes playgrounds in the real worldis expanding to New York. This is a strange way to deliver the message, but I’m excited – because I have been living in New Jersey and hoping for Meow Wolf to come east for years. But we will all have to wait – probably until 2028, although Meow Wolf has not indicated a specific opening date.

Beyond how many hallucinogenic and compelling, I have discovered previous places of Meow Wolf, it seems that the site of the sea port on southern streets in New York will push the territories of things I am deep: video games, mixed reality and layers of technology, which will be combined with the sports and the physical ones in which they are sports, which are the same. Quite.

Meow WolfIf you have never been in one, it is a series of massive art installations mixed with interactive games and secrets. Imagine if a dream is no more and the escape has a supernova and it has become an intercessive rave. Each Meow Wolf location has a different topic, and so far all destinations are located in the West: Las Vegas, Colorado, New Mexico, Texas and a Los Angeles, which comes in a year or two. New York is the first Eastern Maya Wolf and will be strewn with technology.

“The main markets like LA and New York, they have always been our radar; they have always been the dream of ours,” the founder of Meow Wolf told me and vision director Vince Kadlubek in a phone call. The location in New York will focus on video games and arcades seems to be (among other things), including the plotzo storyline, an intercessive king of rats that sprouts in other places on Meow Wolfand participates in strange arcade spaces. When I visited Meow Wolf’s Grapevine, Texas Location in 2023, a strange small arcade-filled room with gaming art games, one of my favorite places of detention. I cannot imagine what a more complete explosion can be in a space, which can be dozens of rooms and several stories. Meow Wolf locations are never really a specific thing – local artists get up every place to mix different ideas together, so expect very unexpected – but if the game is a big part of this one, I’m very in it.

Plotzo was created as a mascot for the early arcade experiments of Meow Wolf, as Benji Gary, co -founder of Meow Wolf and Senior Art Director. But the space in New York will be the PLONTZO headquarters, such as “the place where, like the home, actually lives or resides,” he says, calling Plotzo’s performances, “This crazy plague that is like a spread throughout the multipression in all these iterations.”

This will also be a big experience – according to Kadlubek, the relative square footage will be at the level of experience of the Las Vegas and Denver convergence station, which feel massive and casual. The Denver Convergence Station is 90,000 square feet: these are places full of digging mysteries and small secrets that you are likely to miss the first (or fifth) time.

Mixed reality playground?

Meow Wolf seems to use the location in New York to further press what Cadlubek calls a true vision “mixed reality”, something that the company has been playing in various forms for some time. Meow Wolf made your VR Minigolf Course’s own experience And he had extended applications for real phones. But a different level of interconnectedness of virtual to real connections seems to be on the road when the location of New York is finally opened, probably in late 2027 or early 2028.

“The New York project will push the boundaries of technology and the cross-reality between the exhibition itself and the experiences beyond the walls of the exhibition-connectivity that makes it the most ambitious project we have tried,” Kadlubek says. “The opportunities to create a true ecosystem of mixed reality – we are only further when it comes to the possibilities of this, we have always dreamed of it.”

It is difficult to say exactly what this means, but according to Kadlubek it can include holographic technology for displaying a bean network of phones and specific spots in the exhibit, AR on phones or even VR.

Cadlubek refers to Magic Leap headquarters in 2018A space I also visited as an early sign of how promises could be a combination of real and virtual. Magic Leap’s vision for AR was ultimately insufficient, but similar to Willy Wonka a mix of ideas and interaction sounds like an area that inspires the team even now.

The team admits that these are things that are still a little jump. “At the moment, I can tell you that the things we strive to do here in New York are not even possible to do today,” says Jose Tolosa, CEO of Meow Wolf, who is also a resident of New York.

Video games, reality bleeding and phones in the mix

The development of the New York project simply launches the nature of how Meow Wolf develops its locations is emerging, using many local artists who help to bend the spaces in the things that the internal team improvise around. In this sense, it sounds that it is still a mystery, even for Mew Wolf.

The Meow Wolf phone app, which already has some strange things buried inside it will be a large part of it. “There are many plans regarding how the application in the center will be,” says Tolosa. “This will be the connective tissue.” Meow Wolf is already exploring Quest’s prototypes based on location using the application, and these sound like deeper parts of everything that comes. Some of Meow Wolf’s places already use fee cards to enter screens hidden around spaces.

Meow Wolf could also get into the publication of own video games, something that hinted at the game of a message in New York, and recognized by CEO Tolosa and founders Cadlubek and Dumba. Meow Wolf already Partnered with VR Minigolf Mighty Coconut Games Developers, and the indie game scene already looks like a perfect research match (my recent game addiction, UFO 50already feels like something I crawled from Meow Wolf as well Panic Playdate).

However, video games that live and even outside the physical space could push the whole thing into territories reminiscent of ARG (alternative real games), a genre of interactive play in the real world, which extends into places and media, and often feels like an alternative plan of reality – the Janrov Meow Wolf is already playing.

“The dominant winner of storytelling is currently video games. Thinking how it extends into IRL, you know what video games look like if you move it from the couch and from the smartphone and connect it back to it,” Kadlubek says for the whole experience.

This is already a trend in themed parks: Super Nintendo World, which opens an extended version in Orlando New epic universe Themed park later this spring, explores some of these ideas with wearing groups and physical interaction with the environment. You can hit the blocks and do things. Disney’s Star Wars: Galaxy Edge There are also some games related to the phone. Disney hoped to succeed in this idea of ​​live video games about the already closed Star Wars experience with Star Wars Themes known as a galactic starS

Meow Wolf’s proposal can get much more sophisticated and more intriguing unleash. Kadlubek says about the efforts of Disney and Universal “We regard them as something like scratching the surface. And when you have a specialized indoor space, you have many more opportunities than when you are in the land of the themed outdoor park. We really focus on the opportunity that is now possible when you have a fixed space of traffic jam in that it is in a state of mixed reality forward. ” Gerry talks to me about his mania with the graphic styles of Sega Dreamcast or Katamari Damacy when he comes out. There are already many games around other places on Meow Wolf and they are quite sliding and strange.

I was impressed that the previous places of Meow Wolf were able to mix a chaotic sensory overload, interactive quests, photograms and cold areas in a way that seemed to allow ourselves and everyone else to go to everything at your level and not feel interrupted by others. But as far as Meow Wolf is concerned, it comes up with game ideas or concepts of mixed reality that could dream of a world that Ar glasses You still can’t reach? This happened at Art Experiens and before and I can’t wait to see what was happening with him in New York.