Audiences are keen to participate in immersive entertainment
Super Nintendo World, Ren faires and D&D: Immersive entertainment is having a moment
On the Sunday, Aug. 3, 2025 episode of The Excerpt podcast: Forget passive viewing. Audiences today want to step inside the story. From Super Nintendo World to Stranger Things pop-ups, immersive entertainment is on the rise. But what defines an “immersive” experience—and why is it suddenly everywhere? Noah Nelson, publisher of No Proscenium and co-founder of the Immersive Experience Institute, joins The Excerpt to explain.
Hit play on the player below to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript beneath it. This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text.
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Epic Universe Announcer:
Beyond the Skate Final World of Play, with epic fun to fill your day.
Dana Taylor:
What you just heard was the moment excited bands were welcomed to Super Nintendo World at Universal Orlando, one of five new worlds that are part of its new theme park, Epic Universe.
Hello and welcome to The Excerpt. I’m Dana Taylor.
Today is Sunday, August 3rd, 2025.
This is just one example of a growing focus on immersive entertainment experiences across the country. Here to share more about what goes into creating an immersive experience and why they’re having a moment for audiences is Noah Nelson, a publisher of No Proscenium, a community of writers that follow all things immersive. Noah’s also a co-founder of the nonprofit, the Immersive Experience Institute.
Thanks for being on the Excerpt, Noah.
Noah Nelson:
Thanks for having me, Dana.
Dana Taylor:
First, tell us what defines an immersive experience? What qualities are required for something to fit into this category? And briefly, what’s the history of this art form?
Noah Nelson:
We have a pretty broad definition over at No Proscenium, in part because there’s so many things in the category. It’s pretty simple. If you put the audience on the same plane as the action of the experience, so they’re not on the outside looking in, but they’re inside of it, it’s all around them, they’re a part of it, they’re pulled in, they’re taking part, then it’s immersive.
And as far as what the history of it is, it’s been going on for some time. There are immersive theater experiences you can find in the late 1970s and in the ’80s There were shows in Los Angeles and New York that were running for a decade, back then. There were some experimental things even before then.
And you can point to the rise of theme parks. Disneyland is celebrating its 70th birthday right now. And it’s pretty undeniable when you look at it that that was, in the States, the beginning of what we now call immersive entertainment.
Dana Taylor:
It seems like the immersive experience is having a moment. Is this related to pent-up demand from the pandemic still? Or are there other forces at play here? And also, what new entertainment categories are you seeing immersive spread to?
Noah Nelson:
I think you really hit something there. It’s funny, when we look at some of the audience data that are coming out of some of the regional performing arts centers, the first thing that came back after the pandemic were the immersive experiences, was the experiential divisions of some of these institutions. In part, because it was the first thing that could come back.
Immersive experiences are extremely adaptable. They can happen outside, they could happen with social distancing. And because of that, people started to discover that there were new ways of gathering, new ways of being entertained, new ways of telling stories. And that lit a spark.
You also had this whole groundswell that had happened before the pandemic with things like escape rooms. there isn’t a town in America that doesn’t have an escape room. And escape rooms are part of immersive entertainment.
And there are all kinds of lessons that have been learned from escape rooms that have made their way into places like Epic Universe. You look at Super Nintendo World and all the ambient gameplay that are in that part of the park, all that gameplay that people do with those power bands, a lot of that is the gameplay you might do inside of an escape room.
So designers are taking these lessons that folks are experimenting with in a mom and pop escape room somewhere in Tennessee and applying that to a theme park in Orlando. And then, next thing you know, you’ve got a performing arts center in Denver presenting monopoly life-size. And that’s not something I made up, that’s something that actually happened.
Escape rooms to theme parks: immersive entertainment is booming
Forget passive viewing. Audiences today want to step inside the story.
Dana Taylor:
Is there a co-creation element to immersive experiences?
Noah Nelson:
For a lot of them, yes. Not every single one. But the ones that, we at Proscenium enjoy the most. And I think a lot of the folks who become enthusiasts and who seek out immersive experiences by name, they have that element.
And what we mean when we say co-creation, it means that the audience can put a little bit of themselves, or sometimes a lot of themselves, into the work. On the one part of the spectrum. That can mean something as elaborate as a live action role-playing game. Some people might be familiar with those from movies like Role Models, which came out in the late two thousands. Or it can be as simple as just stepping outside of yourself for a little while. Or taking up a little quest that someone gives you.
Something that a lot of people fall in love with is this thing called Ghost Town alive at Knott’s Berry Farm in Southern California. When I was a kid growing up in Orange County, Knott’s Berry Farm was like the other theme park, other than Disneyland, that you would go to. And Ghost Town is like the oldest part of Knott’s Berry Farm. And a few years ago, they took this part of the park, and got a bunch of actors, and started coming up with these little quests, and a daily newspaper that changed over a few times a day, and a train robbery that happened. And you have all these kids running around the park passing love notes between characters and getting involved in these storylines. And it looks like something that would happen in World of Warcraft online, except it’s people playing in the theme park in this big sandbox. And it all ends in a hoedown at the end of the day. So, some people come back five, six times over the summer to play. And there are other theme parks that are looking at that and seeing what they can do with that format.
Dana Taylor:
I know that you’re not a designer, but in terms of designing an experience, what are the main things that you would keep in mind if you were working on a project?
Noah Nelson:
So when I teach up at the California Institute for the Arts, the main thing I tell my students is, focus on the moment. People remember moments. Experiences are made of out of what the audience remembers, what they take away from it. The audience’s memory of the experiences is what the experience was. And so if you focus on the moment, then you’ve got it.
If you’re worried about the lore, if you’re worried about the big elaborate story you’re telling, if you’re worried about all those things, you are going to miss what they’re actually taking away. So don’t worry about all of that. Worry about the impression you’re making on them. And that usually boils down to these little tiny interactions, which often comes about by the interactions that are happening between performers and guests.
Dana Taylor:
What about access? Are there considerations given to making sure people of all economic levels can take part in these kinds of experiences?
Noah Nelson:
That is an issue that the space really faces. I think we saw a lot of concern when Star Wars Galactic Starcruiser came onto the scene because it was a luxury experience with a high price point, and that shook people up a lot, wondering, “Where is this all going?”
There is a big range inside immersive that goes from small scale stuff at fringe festivals around the world that can cost you 10, $15, all the way up to weekend-long experiences that can range in the hundreds to thousands of dollars.
You can find things out there. It isn’t necessarily easy to find. One of the things that does drive the costs on this is that it can be fairly, for lack of a better word, artisanal. You are paying for performers’ time. And that means it’s high touch. It can cost a lot to have someone perform for you.
When you got to ask yourself, is it worth it for someone to be doing that kind of labor? On the other hand, there are some things that can be automated that can have, not have a lot of people involved, although those things don’t necessarily have the same level of magic to them, necessarily.
But as a practice, there’s a lot of things inside this world, inside this space that people can do and perform for each other that don’t take a lot of money, but can be done as a gift for each other. And that’s something that I’m hoping to see grow. So it’s not just a matter of being a commercial trade, but also being something that, as a practice, as a cultural movement, continues to expand.
The way you see in tabletop gaming. There’s a lot of folks who just play D&D with each other. It’s not all about conventions. It’s not all just about people buying product or just watching shows online. It’s about people getting around a table and playing together. The same way it’s about people making experiences for each other.
Dana Taylor:
And finally, Noah, how do you see immersive entertainment evolving? What excites you here?
Noah Nelson:
Oh, there’s a lot that is possible. One of the things that’s really exciting right now is that we’re starting to find what the middle of all this looks like. We have the big entertainment companies making large swings, Universal did just open up Epic Universe and built a whole theme park around the idea of chasing immersive experiences. And they’ve done a whole lot of work with Nintendo World and Darkmoor, which is. The Universal’s Monster’s Land, in order to really push those ideas forward and they’re going to carry that into other spaces.
They’re also opening Universal Horror Unleashed in Las Vegas at the top of August. And they just announced that they’re going to expand that brand into Chicago. So they’re moving beyond the idea of just this in theme parks, but also having satellite locations of this work year round in non-theme park resort areas.
There’s a lot of potential here for that thing to pop up in more places. Like I said earlier, there’s potential here for this as cultural practice. There’s a lot of room for performing arts presenting companies to establish a touring circuit for some of the work that already exists. We see this with companies like Darkfield, which do some really advanced work with audio. They’re already touring in places like Denver, and Dallas, and North Carolina. And they come out of the United Kingdom. And they’re already moving around the states. That work is starting to get established. There are other companies doing that kind touring. And we are excited to see more of that.
We’re excited to see more festivals. We’re excited to see more location-based entertainment. The Netflix Houses are about to be established. The first one in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania. They’ve had a great success with their touring shows around Stranger Things, Bridgerton, and Squid Game. And now, they’re going to have these permanent spots where their various experiences are going to be under one roof. And then they can swap those out as they move through their cycle of shows. So we expect those to do fairly well because of the way their touring shows have done.
And the thing is, we think the audience is ready for it. These kinds of experiences have been around for a long time. They, until now, have popped up, had success for a while, and then disappeared, had their time in the sun, were treated as a fad, and then went away.
But they’ve stuck around now, for a while, and become a format. And so now, we get to see what happens when they stick around longer, when the infrastructure is in place, when there’s a workforce that understands how to work on them, how to do it, there’s some codification around labor that’s happened. There’s a real industry that’s forming. And that is exciting, in and of itself. So, some real roots have been laid in the past five years. And we expect them to keep getting deeper.
Dana Taylor:
Noah, thank you so much for being on The Excerpt.
Noah Nelson:
Thank you, Dana.
Dana Taylor:
Thanks to our Senior Producers, Shannon Rae Greene and Kaylee Monahan for their production assistance. Our Executive producer is Laura Beatty. Let us know what you think of this episode by sending a note to [email protected]. Thanks for listening, I’m Dana Taylor. Taylor Wilson will be back tomorrow morning with another episode of USA TODAY’s The Excerpt.
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