eure Setting the Stage T you find you 0: A HOT auGusT N Evanston, 7 Elmwood. You spy a store ing what it might be, step mander Francisco” pri ‘mouths some words of greet You nod in that general direction but deck he strange surroundings as you take a few ‘The walls are bare, the floor Gement after a summer rain ed 1 your focus to the ve mander’s platform, where fourteen PCs wi on keys combined with the TA yelp goes up from one of the six souls w sens before them: “Go away, you greasy-hai42% The Experience Economy brains! he yells, as you reflexively jump behind a pillar. Feeling, foolish, you realize the taunt was aimed not at you but at an ‘unseen combatant sparring with the truly greasy-haired piece of animated humani in there? Carefi mild obsce before you. Another person mutters,“"Who’s fou're not getting off that easy!" A third shouts is, punctuated by the occasional repeatable word ‘As you walk around, desiring a closer look at both the human beings and their cybernetic appendages, you see that every PC has a nameplate: Toby, Fergie, Grape Ape, and—somehow you knew this was coming—Larry, Moe, and Curly: The screamer bangs away at Eastwood, the mutterer at one named Buddha. You glance back at Commander Francisco and notice for the first time that behind him are a number of shelves filled with row upon row of software boxes. Here, more names greet you: Diablo, Red Alert, Warcraft I1, Command & Conquer. Ah! That’ it! They're all play ing some computer-based game against each other, “It’s called Quake," the Commander announces, having watched your explo- tation ofthe place and now sensing your need to know: “Ie sre of an electronic version of capture the flag” You finally understand the attraction of this place and soon gain vicarious enjoyment from watching the players play. Three on three, the virtual oppor ke nts, physically seated less than twenty feet apart; battle in a virtual arena by means of a local area net- work, or LAN. You sce the excitement in each players face, the ty of human and machine working as one, and finally the joy that resounds in the one final cry of the victor as he vanquishes his last opponent. While disappointed in their loss, the also-rans all too happily begin anew: Hesitand axiousy, eager ‘you inform the Commander that you wish to join them. You sit down at a station and begin to experience the play for yourself. rative, written in the second-person style endemic to cer more or less describes the real-life Setting the Stage * 43 LAN Arena as we first experienced it It was the kind of place like many others that dotted the urban landscape in the late 1990s, where fora fee people played computer-based games against like minded competitors. Commander Francisco Ramirez—who, in addition to being our host, was also one of three co-owners— explained that one could join in for $5 to $6 per hour and that regulars could select annual membership plans ranging between $25 and $100 to receive discounted rates, reserve a spot in the LAN Arena Directory, and play in occasional tournaments Despite the evident popularity of the LAN Arena, we couldn't help getting the feeling that the place resembled all the mom- and-pop video stores that mom-and-popped up across the coun try twenty-five or thirty years ago. The self-owned and -run local video store is now largely a historical curiosity—an_ interim solution —thanks to the creative destruction of alternative formats and innovative distribution and merchandising programs created by bigger enterprises. Not to mention industry consolidations, culminating in the wide swath cut by Blockbuster to gain the Iion’s share of the nascent industry’ revenues, Then, of course, Blockbuster faced yet newer competition from outlet-free Netflix ‘and its time-based pricing model, offering unlimited viewing experiences for a monthly fee in lew of per-rental service charges (and pesky late fees) Similarly, the LAN Arena format, with players seated together terim solution before the at a common site, proved only an play-at-home games of the past gave way to the play-in- cyberspace games of today. LAN Arena offered a ready-to-play gaming environment that was less costly and cumbersome than Setting up the same arrangement at home, before the cost of faster hardware plummeted and broadband service became plen- tiful and free. Today, faster play is generally available on the Internet, and multiple players can readily participate simultane ‘ously in the same Quake game or myriad others online. Indeed,44° The Experience Economy the competitive landscape for gaming experiences knows few boundaries.! Interestingly, as direct, online, from-home competitions came to dominate the gaming experience, “LAN parties” proliferated as pop-up events in cities around the world. Evidently the now- defunct LAN Arena was on to something. The social interac- tion, the game outside the game, weighs just as importan the enjoyment of software-enabled games as it does with the old table-top board games. Technology pundits anticipate that -al-time audio, video, and tactile technologies will advance to the point that in a few years we'll be able to experience al Is and glares, teases and taunts, pethaps even interactions—y pushes and shoves—virtually as well as we now do in reality. Evidently, no cyber game experience will be complete without its attendant virtual social experience. In the meantime, the staging of these LAN party experiences in physical venues has itself become a large-scale production. At about the same time LAN Arena opened in Evanston, id Software, the developers of Quake, launched QuakeCon, Now in its fifteenth year, the event features a QUAKE LIVE Masters Cham- pionship for advanced purse for the winner), a four-on-four “Capture the Flag” competition, and an open tournament for less-sklled players—all held in an intimate 250-person arena, with others watching via streaming video. The competition comes complete with “shoutmasters” covering the action, culminating in a giant 3,000-person LAN party. ‘The future mix of virtual and physical action remains to be seen, and there is always the pos even mask the interplay between the two. In any case, not every company that stages these new experiences will be suc cessful in the short term, much less the long term. Only a few will, survive. What we don't know are which ones. Those that thrive Setting the Stage + 45 will do so because they treat their economic offering as a rich ‘brated service—and experience—and not a glorified good or will tage it in a way that engages the individual and leaves behind a ‘memory. That means not making the mistake we see time and time again: equating experiences with mere entertainment, Enriching the Experience Because many exemplars of staged experiences come from what ndustry, it's easy calls the entertainment the popular press loosel to conclude that shifting up the Progression of Economic Value to stage experiences simply means adding entertainment to exis offerings. That would be a gross understatement. Remember at staging experiences is not about entertaining customers; its about engaging them. ‘An experience may engage guests on a sions. Consider two of the most important, as depicted in the axes of figure 2-1. The first dimension (on the horizontal axis) corre- number of di sponds to the level of guest participation, At one end of the spec- trum lies passive participation, in which customers do not direct affect or influence the performance. Such participants include symphony goers, who experience the event purely as observers oF listeners. At the other end of the spectrum lies active participation, in which customers personally affect the performance or event that yields the experience. Active participants include skiers, who pparticipare in creating their own experience. But even people | who turn out to watch a ski race are not completely passive; sim- ply by being there, they contribute to the visual and aural event that others experience. The second (vertical) dimension of experience describes the nship, that unites custom~ kind of connection, or environmental rela | ers with the event or performance. At one ¢1 of this spectrum