Eddie Lou is the founder of Sandman Studios in Beijing, and he is also the founder of the Sandbox Immersive Festival that took place in Qingdao China on June 23-27, 2018. I was able to travel to Qingdao for the festival, and the next seven podcasts will be focusing on some of my take-aways about VR in China.
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Rough Transcript
[00:00:05.412] Kent Bye: The Voices of VR Podcast. Hello, my name is Kent Bye, and welcome to the Voices of VR podcast. So I had an opportunity to go to Qingdao, China for the Sandbox Immersive Festival. I was sent over there to give a talk, but also I had a chance to see a number of the different narrative virtual reality experiences that were created by local Chinese people there. But this festival was organized by Eddie Lau, who I had a chance to talk to last fall in San Francisco. And Eddie is somebody who's in Beijing, he's creating these different narrative experiences, and he's trying to really bridge the East and the West. And he was able to bring out about 40 different people from around the world to come to Qingdao, China for this Sandbox Immersive Festival. So I'm going to air this interview with Eddie as well as a number of different interviews that I've done with people from China over the last year and a half or so and kind of focus on some of the insights that I've got from China now that I've actually been able to attend myself to just have a small taste. China is something that is such a huge topic and I don't know if there's any way to really come up with the canonical story as to what's happening with China. But now that I've had a chance to actually go to Qingdao and go to the immersive festival and have a number of interviews, I'm going to just be unpacking some of what I take as to what's happening in China and how it kind of fits into the overall virtuality ecosystem. So that's what we're covering on today's episode of the Voices of VR podcast. So this interview with Eddie happened on Thursday, October 27th, 2017 at the Virtual Reality Strategy Conference in San Francisco, California. So with that, let's go ahead and dive right in.
[00:01:48.371] Eddie Lou: My name is Eddie Lo. I'm the founder of Sandman Studios as well as Sandbox Immersive Festival. I'm actually based out of Beijing most of my time, but I occasionally travel to other parts of the world to communicate and connect with VR creators and anyone working in VR.
[00:02:09.995] Kent Bye: Great. So you're kind of like a community organizer. Just before we started interviewing, you're kind of like the equivalent of a Karl Krantz or a Cosmos Scharf. But instead of in LA and San Francisco, you're in Beijing, in China. And so you're really, I guess, connecting the community, holding events. And so what can you tell me about what's happening with VR in Beijing?
[00:02:30.077] Eddie Lou: Well, it's a lot of things happening right now. Because China is a very big country and we have a very active and big community out there in China in terms of developers. Beijing is one of the biggest places for developers. But also Shanghai and Chengdu and some other places. But Beijing is the biggest and more diverse. We have a very diverse developer community over there. and Beijing, we have so many events and people there and it started to kind of coming down a little bit because you know VR is getting a little bit of a like downside slope at this moment so we have a lesser of activities over there but still it's a very active community and everyone is working in VR is very enthusiastic about it. And it's just that the Chinese VR community is a little bit isolated. We're not that connected to the Western community. So what I'm actually trying to do, along with my colleagues and co-workers like Rebecca and other people, what we're trying to do is to connect the community developer in China with people here in the US and also in Europe.
[00:03:43.176] Kent Bye: Yeah, and so you're here in San Francisco. We're at the Virtual Reality Strategy Conference. And you were moderating at a panel about the education in AFAN region. So maybe you could talk a bit about what were some of the topics that were discussed in terms of what's happening with education in VR over in China?
[00:04:00.040] Eddie Lou: Well, the panel was actually about location-based, but VR has been widely used in China as well. It actually started from games, obviously, but apart from games, there are a lot of applications on the real estate side because a lot of companies are trying to use it to visualize. real estate properties and to be shown to other clients. So, real estate becomes very popular and education started to grow quite a bit as well because now there are a couple of companies trying to use virtual reality experiences to be introduced to the general and middle school to get them try VR experiences through like a history class and astrology kind of content. But, you know, education is a very complicated system in China, so there is a long way to go, but there are a couple of companies trying to break through this territory. But the biggest business we've been actually discussing actively recently is the location-based businesses in China, because we have so many people, we have such a big population, 1.4 billion people there, and everyone is very entertainment-savvy. People always go to the most exciting form of entertainment. And VR is definitely one of them. So there are quite a few companies trying to figure out a way to set up these locations to introduce VR experiences to a consumer. It's the most feasible, most viable way to bring this content to, to introduce VR to consumers. It actually started quite some years ago, starting from 2015, and now we're actually in the second phase of location-based virtual reality centers. And it's still growing pretty rapidly, but also some of the old ones are dying, but some of the new ones are coming out with a new mindset to run these centers.
[00:05:54.513] Kent Bye: Yeah, I'm curious to hear a bit more about why you think the ones that died died off, and the ones that were successful, what were they doing that was different?
[00:06:03.183] Eddie Lou: Oh, the first batch of location-based VR centers back in 2015 and 2016, a lot of them are actually not that knowledgeable about VR. Some of them are just, you know, following the trends and they've heard about, okay, VR is a very interesting stuff and it could make money out of it just by setting up these little locations to run the experiences. So a lot of people rushed into this area without having enough extensive knowledge about VR. So they're actually running into troubles because they don't really know how to provide a good overall experience, not just the content itself, but also overall experience to a consumer. And then they can only do one-off businesses because people go to these centers, they come out, and they will never go back again. One of the reasons is that they don't provide a good overall experience, but also the content itself is, you know, has very low quality, which, you know, caused them nausea, you know, discomfort. So they won't go back again, and these locations actually started to die out. But that was like starting from 2015 and 2016 and now there are new VR centers coming out because these operators, they're more knowledgeable and they actually study VR quite a bit before going into this business. And they're now also trying to acquire a great collection of quality content to bring those to the consumers. But still it's very early stage of the second wave. They are still testing out whether these experiences is suitable for the consumers out there and actually how to increase the throughput to make the business viable financially and overall sustainability of the business.
[00:07:52.757] Kent Bye: Yeah, I've noticed that even some of the location-based entertainment games that I've seen, maybe something as simple as a wave shooter, you get in there, I get bored after a few minutes, I've seen a lot of wave shooters, it's nothing that, you know, exciting or great, that's sort of like, to me, kind of like the lowest common denominator in terms of VR experiences, like, in terms of the extent of imagination put together as some sort of like, you're going in there and you're shooting at things. I played one game here at the VR strategy conference where the graphics weren't amazing but you were just like these cats and you're sort of these Tetris blocks coming at you and you have to like dodge the other people and it's sort of like it started to be like an immersive game with other people, it's social, it's doing something that was a little bit different. I'm not quite sure if that's, you know, quite the thing that's gonna be the breakout hit but something like within Life of Us where you're kind of with other people and you're able to kind of have this social experience together with another person while you're going on a story and then being embodied in all these different characters. It was such a an arc that felt like that was a type of experience that could connect people in a new completely different way and started really pull into some of the embodied sense of presence as well as emotional presence and social presence that I feel like just turning into a game doesn't quite get. So, I'm curious to hear your thoughts, because you come from a background of storytelling, if that sort of narrative component is something that you think may be something that gives a more holistic experience or something that goes beyond just a wave shooter?
[00:09:24.520] Eddie Lou: Yeah, sure. I mean, because the first batch of content, they're all kind of shooter in nature. Well, it becomes pretty popular at the beginning, but I still think that the shooters have a relatively niche audience. People will love shooters, but these shooters will not actually, how should I say, will not broaden the audience of VR. where I'm actually working on narrative storytelling. It doesn't mean that we actually do a very linear work, but actually to implement an experience that with a narrative imbued in the experience, trying to engage with the audience emotionally, so that they can have a very good experience overall. I think, you know, just before you mentioned about this, you mentioned about the Life of Us from Chris Milk. I do think it's very, very important to implement experiences that is shared among people. Because if we think about these location centers, people are not going into these locations alone. They usually go with friends, either with boyfriends or girlfriends, other people. So they do actually want to have experience that is shared among their friends. And I think Life of Us is a very good example. It's distributed in Sundance, right? And I think it's a very good example of showing people how these experiences can be shared among friends. And people will always remember these moments that are shared among people, not something that you just go through alone. I mean, people will actually memorize those moments in more, how do you say, They're stronger or more visceral exactly exactly so I think these some of the locations right now in China They're also trying to develop like shared experiences, but still right now what I have seen from China is still shooters Unfortunately, but what what we are trying to do right now or experiment with is trying to implement in narrative experiences for a group of people whether there was a real live actor inside similar to immersive theater or complete virtual. But we do believe that first stories can actually drive more people to go into experiences rather than just a shooter. And also the social aspects is a must. to actually introduce VR to a wider audience because people can share, not just share the experience during the experience, but also after the experience they can talk about it and they can engage with each other in a more closer way to bound them closer through a social experience.
[00:12:07.927] Kent Bye: Yeah, and so for you, you're helping organize the community there in Beijing. But you're also someone who wants to make experiences. So do you have plans to open up your own location-based facility? Or is this something where you're trying to create content that would be going into these location-based entertainment centers to be able to actually do that?
[00:12:27.817] Eddie Lou: Yeah, I'm now trying to run a location because we are a content development team in the studio. Because running a location is a completely different business and we need to have different people with different mindsets and skillsets. But for us, we're trying to build or trying to develop a narrative story that can be deployed to locations that can be experienced by multiple people. But, you know, it's pretty challenging to actually develop such a narrative story for multiple people. But what we're trying to experiment is still the storytelling side of content creation. But we're still learning the techniques from various art forms, including theater, or even escape rooms, too. We're still in the process of doing that. And we're also trying to experiment with different kinds of interactions that is implemented into the experience by a set of small tests. right now. So one of the experiences we're trying to develop is based on a Tai Chi philosophy. The Chinese Tai Chi is not the martial art part. It's actually the philosophy of Tai Chi. By guiding you to perform certain Tai Chi poses to change the environment around you, it's more like a meditative kind of experience. But what we're trying to do is to find the relationship between your emotion, your interactions, between that with the emotion yourself. This is something we've been testing out right this moment.
[00:13:54.790] Kent Bye: When you say motion yourself, are you actually doing biometric data of what's actually happening inside of your body so that there's a connection between what's happening literally inside of yourself and that's being represented within the environment somehow? Or what do you mean by inside of you?
[00:14:08.718] Eddie Lou: How you actually engage with your emotion through movement and through interactions in the experience. We definitely do want to analyze how this is happening through analytics. But I don't know how to do that actually because I think it's still very difficult to actually assess how your state of motion will be. Maybe through mind reading. I'm not sure how these EEG technologies evolve right now. Basically, what we're trying to do is to create an experience that is very emotionally engaging through a simple movement and interactions in the space.
[00:14:48.571] Kent Bye: Yeah, just going to the Experiential Technology Conference, there's a couple of indicators of emotion. One is galvanic skin response, which tells you the intensity of motion, but it doesn't tell you the emotion. And the other thing is that facial expressions are one indicator of emotion, but there's also I feel like, again, I think it's probably largely an open problem in terms of being able to actually to quantify something that's fundamentally a qualitative experience. But yeah, that's sort of like down the road. But it sounds like that you're generally trying to kind of create a holistic experience that's giving people at the end of it more of an emotionally centering experience rather than something that is having them express their agency and vanquish enemies.
[00:15:29.985] Eddie Lou: Exactly. That's exactly what we're trying to do because we are, the whole team is actually trying to find ways to engage with the audience in a new way that is different from traditional game storytelling. But it's a complete, we're still experimenting, we're still trying to find a new way to do that. We're on an exploratory journey, actually, for this. But also, one of the reasons why we want to do that is because I think most of the developers trying to do... Well, I think some of the indie developers are trying to figure out ways to provide very unique experiences, but most of the developers right now are... I'll say they're pretty traditional in a way. They actually wanted to bring a game into VR just to translate it like very directly into VR. But I do think because VR is a different medium comparing to games or film, we need to think from ground up how to find the best way to engage with the audience using VR as a new medium rather than as a game. This is what we've been trying to do. And we're also trying to, because I'm also a community organizer, we're trying to group people together and also discuss and share the ideas we've been discussing on how to better tell a story, how to better engage with the audience emotionally through these events. And we're going to do a bigger festival that is focusing on that next year.
[00:17:00.240] Kent Bye: What have been some of your favorite VR experiences that you've seen?
[00:17:04.265] Eddie Lou: My favorite? Dear Angelica is one of my favorites because the time I watched that, it really blew my mind because the way it expressed the feeling and engaged with you in such a stylized way. That was actually it kind of opened my eyes when it's debuted in Sundance That's one of my favorite and also I got a couple of favorite and all of us is kind of inspired me as well on the multi audience side And then is the piece that is called Alice, Interact Play, that is privately shown in Cannes and now is one of the official selections for Venice Film Festival. It has a real live actor inside to interact with you, but also the person is physically in the same space with you. It's really a very, very unique and interesting experience for me that I've never tried before. It opens my mind, it opens my eyes too.
[00:18:06.065] Kent Bye: Yeah, I saw the Draw Me Close, which was at Tribeca this year. And I didn't have a chance to go to either con or to the Venice Film Festival, which I heard other people tell me that that was their favorite experience that they saw was that immersive theater blended with this VR. And I do actually think that this is going to be a realm when you're actually having these interactive experiences where you're actually able to participate. The Draw Me Close experience wasn't necessarily exploring, like, interactivity per se because it was more about you being embodied with another actor and embracing in a hug and having a intimate physical collocated space but the narrative of it was like the actor was really in dialogue sort of talking almost in third person as to what was happening almost like a Greek chorus sort of narrating the experience as it was happening so it was less about the actor living into the experience and it was more about her also narrating who you are and what's happening. But what was the interaction like with this Alice project that was showing, which I understand was kind of like the Alice in Wonderland, but what was the interactions like?
[00:19:15.256] Eddie Lou: I actually tried both experiences, Draw Me Closed as well. Alice is a little bit more fun. Draw Me Closed is a memoir because it's actually a piece that is a tribute to a creator's mom. It's emotionally engaging too, but in a different way. Alice is a little bit more playful because you're going into, I don't know if I can tease it, but basically the main kind of interaction is the dialogue between you as Alice, with the main virtual character in the experience. What I've found out is that the setting, the virtual setting, the virtual world is not very complicated. But what I can only remember from that experience is the conversation between me and the actor. Because it was so interesting. It engaged with you in a very private and intimate way. It made the experience very unique and very personal to you. So you can remember very strong and clearly about the experience. I can't remember anything about the setting, but I can remember the entire conversation between myself and the actor.
[00:20:20.640] Kent Bye: Yeah, when I was at Tribeca and saw Draw Me Close, I was surprised that the National Film Board of Canada as well as the National Theatre in London had collaborated on this project because I had always imagined that some of this blending of immersive theatre would be operating at scale so that you would eventually get to the point of having an artificial intelligence character and having somebody like a one-on-one interaction in a theater piece just felt like that was not going to be like a sustainable in terms of throughput. But at the same time, it's actually kind of the most compelling type of experience you can have. You go in there and you have a one-on-one experience and so this is kind of perfect for a location-based entertainment experience where you have this totally unique experience where you go and you have it. It may be a short five, 10 minutes, but it's something that's very visceral and interactive and personal that it actually really sticks with you. And it sounds like this immersive theater and the location-based entertainment is, I feel like these two worlds are going to be colliding more.
[00:21:20.330] Eddie Lou: Yeah. I think that what the problem has to be solved is that, just as you mentioned, it's a very interesting, engaging piece, but it can only have a very limited number of people that actually go into that experience. For example, in Venice Film Festival, if you book for the experience, throughout like five days of screenings, there can only be like 200, 300, I can't remember. It's a relatively small number of people. Yeah, like 40 people a day. Yeah, exactly. So the problem with that is that if you create a one-on-one experience, you can only have such a small number of people can go into that. But we're trying to kind of figure out, I think it's also a problem that everyone in this working in this discipline is trying to figure out how to create or how to design experience that can be told in this kind of interactive way, but also facilitate more than one people. I think the team that's behind Alice is working on a solution that can be experienced by a large group of people at the same time. You know, immersive pieces like Then She Fell or Sleep No More, they always facilitate a group of people, right? But the way of telling a story is different, but I think what we're trying to figure out is a way to provide a narrative that can be experienced by a group of people. We don't know the answer yet, but we are on the way of finding the answers.
[00:22:44.925] Kent Bye: Yeah, yeah, I know just imagine the thing that pops in my mind is just this at least in the United States here I'm not sure if it's similar in China But so much of our commerce has been moving online so that you have these big huge retail spaces and malls that at some point as we move into more and more immersive content we may be in a situation where a some of these malls just go out of business because some of the things where you actually want to get a spatial experience of the content before you buy it, that problem may be solved by having these immersive technologies that are now in the home, which in 5, 10, 20 years from now, that could lead to this environment where we have all these large physical retail spaces that need to be repurposed into doing these immersive experiences, either location-based entertainment, So, both Then She Fell as well as Sleep No More. Sleep No More has like a hundred different rooms and two warehouses that, you know, people are kind of running around. And you can pretty much go anywhere you want. And Then She Fell is similar, but it's a little bit smaller, but there's only 15 people that can go through that. And so it's a little bit more like a clockwork structure, is what Noah Nelson calls it, where you kind of like... Each person kind of experiences fragments that, in aggregate, are pretty much the same. But the order in which they see them are different. And so different ways of structuring the narrative such that you can have that throughput that's either completely structured, like Benshee Fell, or completely unstructured and more exploratory, like Sleep No More. And that that kind of requires a level of VR technology that we don't even have yet. And that if you're going to go to that level, then should you just have an immersive theater piece? I guess with the VR, you're able to really take someone into these other realms. And I just imagine us running around these huge spaces and then designing stories and narratives that really match that level of technology.
[00:24:40.879] Eddie Lou: I truly believe these technologies will come to us just in time. I think the technology is advancing at a very fast pace already because, for example, the wireless solution. I didn't expect a wireless solution for a number of years, but it's coming out now already. So I think whether it's wireless, different kinds of haptics, they're going to come in the coming years. But the challenge is still how to design or create an experience that can really engage with the audience and people will actually have a very good memory about it and can be shared too. I think this is the bigger challenge. Obviously, we do have to work with all these kind of technologies to work with them in a very close matter to actually use them in the most optimized way. But what has been lack out there is the number of people who's actually trying to figure out a way to tell a good narrative. I think that's what's been lacking. I do kind of understand that because these storytellers, it's very difficult for these storytellers to catch up with those technology advancement because it's changing so quickly. Even for us, you know, we have a relatively technical background but still very difficult to catch up with everything. It's more difficult for these traditional storytellers too. But I just think that we need to have more people to come into this space to create things. But back to the earlier comments you mentioned about these locations. I definitely do think it will be one of the most viable way to bring these kind of experiences to consumer in locations. And you know for the real estate business is huge in China and there are so many so many malls. But now they're facing a very hard time of declining because people no longer buy goods in shopping malls. They just buy through Alibaba, through these online platforms. So they have a very steep drop of traffic to these malls. So they are looking for all kinds of ways to boost their traffic up again. So what they've been currently doing is opening up more restaurants. because restaurants cannot be replaced by e-commerce, right? And also they are doing all kinds of exhibitions and shows in these shopping malls and actually cutting down the number of shops, like retail shops in this big complex. So these malls become a destination for, like a one-stop destination for entertainment, for experiences, like experience-based entertainment and consumption. So I do think VR fits perfectly into this environment. People go to this complex for spending money. They have a natural mindset to spend money in such an environment. Whether it's buying clothes, whether it's go to a restaurant, watch a film. And if they go to these VR centers, they will pay. Because it's the natural logic of this business complex. So we do have this opportunity to actually work with those shopping malls and complex because they do have a good demand. And we also do need an environment to introduce these experiences to consumer in a more logical way. And I think that's the most logical way to bring VR to market.
[00:28:12.516] Kent Bye: Yeah, I live in Portland, Oregon, which has amazing food, which means that I often go out and have a full sensory experience. And I see this as a trend, both from people kind of traveling and having that food experience in Portland, but also just generally, I think people are valuing having experiences over owning or buying and consuming things, but they're able to have these experiences that give them a rich sensory experience. And I feel like these restaurants and these immersive experiences, augmented reality, virtual reality, all these things are kind of in that transition that I see as kind of like this shift from the information age into that experiential age.
[00:28:54.245] Eddie Lou: Yeah, exactly. And I want to add to the comments I previously said, the business complex in China, they usually have like a fifth of shops that are retailing, that are retail stores. And now they only have like one third. And the second third is food. And the third part will be either like for children to like play around. Basically, it's experiential entertainment, especially for kids. because there are so many kids in China. So their parents bring those kids to these places just for these kids to play around in a, whether it's like a big installation or a big exhibition where all these kids can play around. So I think these places will naturally become the best place to introduce these immersive experiences to an audience. I truly believe in that.
[00:29:46.145] Kent Bye: Are these like educational immersive experiences for children, or are they more just sort of entertainment? Or do they have like a social component?
[00:29:53.027] Eddie Lou: I would say right now the experiences that is deployed into these malls is like a curated playground for kids to play around. It's not VR attached yet, but I do believe in the near future there will be experiences that is developed, tailored for kids. But obviously it will be with an educational purpose inside because parents will pay these money for their kids for education, not for purely entertainment, I would say. You can twist a little bit to make it more educational rather than pure entertainment. So this kind of experiences, I haven't seen VR capable experiences for kids in locations yet, but I do think it will be a trend. If we can actually tell these parents these VR experiences or glasses are not harmful to their eyes. That's one of the concerns for the parents, I would say. But if we can dispel this, then it will work for children.
[00:30:53.136] Kent Bye: Yeah, and just in talking to some investors looking at the different ecosystems, as well as when I went to CES this past year, I saw that the technology ecosystem in China is just almost completely different than what it is here in the United States. I mean, I think HTC Vive is probably the one bridge where You have them both in the United States and in China. But other than that, it seems like a completely other list of players of the secondary and tertiary. And depending on, based upon some of the conversations I had from people at CES, that there seems to be different almost tiers of cities based upon how much access to resources or wealth that they have. You kind of have these different levels of quality of VR that they have available. And they may not have access to the best VR that's available. But in Beijing, in the community that you're in, Is it kind of like the HTC Vive is the major player, or are there other kind of secondary and tertiary players that are there in China that people are also using? Or do they use everything?
[00:31:53.335] Eddie Lou: I'll say HTC is still one of the major players because it has been made available to the public in China early. It was actually launched last year in March, April each time. And it's becoming available the first day in China. Oculus, I think a lot of people do like Oculus too. It's just that it will be very difficult to acquire an Oculus device because there is no official channel to sell. But at the same time, we do have to use a VPN, that kind of network, to access their server, because there are some problems and difficulties to connect to the server. Well, I think it's because of Facebook. So HTC is still the most widely used.
[00:32:37.834] Kent Bye: But we can't do that. MARK MANDEL – So it sounds like there is a black market, and then using VPNs to actually use in Oculus Rift.
[00:32:43.467] Eddie Lou: I would say yes. I would say it's like that. I don't think there is any people from the consumer. I think I would say most of the people who buy Oculus is whether it is the hardcore gamers, like they're very into this, or developers. they will need to go through all sorts of hustles to actually get the device, but also get the system set up in order to access the online stores and experiences. Yeah, so it's kind of like a black market. But we also do have our local brands, like we have Deepone, we have Three Glasses, we have HyperReal, and Pimax, this kind of brands. They're all working on their own headsets at this moment, and also like Pico. Their problem now will be to actually work with all these content partners because they don't have content partners to provide those experiences to them. They are still working on the headset on itself, the device. But actually create an ecosystem to work around these headsets is more challenging for them.
[00:33:43.412] Kent Bye: Well, it seems like if they integrate SteamVR, I know that there was a Pimax demo that was here, and they were just running Steam, so it seems like, you know, being able to run experiences on SteamVR, being able to kind of tie it into that, you know, I guess the Valve's OpenVR system there.
[00:33:57.917] Eddie Lou: Yeah, I think one of the ways they can choose is to actually work with Steam because it's easier, basically. Because to build a content ecosystem is very, very difficult. So I think it would be wise for them to actually work with Steam because it spends so much time and so much money for Xbox or PlayStation 2 to, you know, build this content pool or content provider relationship. It's almost impossible for local Chinese people to do that. A local Chinese company, especially they are still startups. It's impossible. I think it's very, very, very difficult to do that. So it would be wise to work with the major content partners to bring those content to, to use their headset at the same time as experience all these content that is available already on the market.
[00:34:46.143] Kent Bye: And for you, what do you want to experience in VR?
[00:34:50.111] Eddie Lou: What I want to experience in VR? I actually want to experience like a large space, stories. That is what we've been trying to kind of figure out ourselves as well because I'm not like an FPS person. When I play games, I always go for the story-driven games like Heavy Rain or Final Fantasy, that kind of experiences because I love stories. I love narratives. So I do want to immerse myself into a world which I can explore It can be a competitive experience, but I do want to immerse myself into a world which I can explore more than combat and killing monsters. Yeah, basically experience a story. So I'm very looking forward to the Secrets of the Empire experience that is going to be debuted in Disneyland. That kind of experience is something I want to try. But I also want to try all different kinds of worlds, like World of Warcraft or different kinds of worlds that have stories inside.
[00:35:52.630] Kent Bye: Yeah, and I first met you at Sundance this past year in Park City, Utah. And you just introduced yourself and said you were from China and listening to the Voices of VR podcast. And that was sort of a moment where I was like, oh, wow, that was like the work that I'm doing here, sort of sending it out, me traveling to all these different conferences and talking to all these people. But I'm just curious from your perspective of being in China and listening to the Voices of VR and sort of like, I'm just I'm curious what you've been able to take away from the podcast, but also kind of start to spread, and if there's other listeners in China that I have from the community.
[00:36:29.356] Eddie Lou: I would say that not many listeners, but it's not because that... I think the content that you curate is super, super valuable, as I said last time. I think it's very valuable to the industry. Very, very valuable. And there is so much information in the more than 500 podcasts that is already available out there. The problem that there are not many listeners is because of language problems, I would say. A lot of VR developers back in China, it's difficult for them to listen to the whole thing and understand everything you said, especially a lot of these episodes have a lot of technical terms and specific terms like neuroscience, that kind of thing. It's difficult for them to understand, but because it's audio, and audio is a little bit difficult to translate, it's just more work to do, to translate that into text and then translate it into Chinese. But I actually recommend your podcast to a lot of my friends. I always told them you can learn so much from the podcast and from the interviews. I really hope that you can... I know you are actually working on a book. If it's a text-based material that contains a lot of insights that you've been collecting from those podcasts, I think it will be easier for people to really read and understand, because the book can be translated into the Chinese version. I really do hope you can do that so all this knowledge that you collected can be shared among the community.
[00:38:06.283] Kent Bye: Yeah, that's part of the reason why I asked, just to kind of hear that. But also, in order to translate all of the audio that I've done so far, it would cost probably around $30,000 to $35,000 with existing technology. I'm hoping maybe AI will get to the point. But the AI experiences I've seen in translating have the same issue, is that the language and the technical terms. It's just like it actually kind of needs to be a human translation. I'm hoping that at some point I applied for a grant from the Knight Foundation, did not come through. So I'm hoping that there may be other resources or funding and maybe eventually get to the point where my Patreon is healthy and vibrant enough that I could start to actually get those translations and because that would help me put out the backlog of 200 plus episodes that It's sort of like people have a back, they can't listen to that as much. But if there was transcripts, I think it would make it easier and especially searchable. And then it would make it easier to transcribe. So it's mostly like me being an independent creator and then trying to figure out ways. But that's part of the reason why I want to bring it up, is that if there's anybody out there that would like to help with that.
[00:39:14.838] Eddie Lou: I hope that we can also maybe find some partners to actually make it happen. And also in terms of the translation side, I personally have experienced a couple of products that is developed by AI companies, and they are doing very, very precise translation from voice to text, and also from English to Chinese, which I'm very surprised by how precise they are. and simultaneously too. So I will hope that maybe we can find ways to actually work on the solution to get all these information and knowledge to be transferable to audience in the Far East.
[00:39:54.357] Kent Bye: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I hope to some point come out and actually have a direct experience of everything out there as well.
[00:40:01.970] Eddie Lou: And because I mentioned I'm actually organizing a festival next year, I'm trying to create this platform for everyone to engage with not just the audience but also the community over there. The festival will be in June called Sandbox Immersive Festival. We're trying to gather up, especially people from the storytelling side though, to bring their knowledge and their insight and to kind of combine with the knowledge that we have in the community also on the market side. Also to find like a business opportunity to bridge the two. That's what we've been working on since the middle of this year to try to prepare for the next year. I think it will be a great platform for people to exchange ideas, especially because China is a very isolated ecosystem. We do actually know a lot about you, what people in the States have been working on, but I think a lot of people in the States don't know what we've been working on in China and how the landscape of our business looks like. So I hope that it can be a window for people to look into China market and work with China partners.
[00:41:14.723] Kent Bye: Yeah, yeah, I definitely want to find a way to make it over there to that, because I feel like what you're talking about is this more narrative, emotionally engaging content. And I think that it's going to help broaden both the appeal to the VR and to these location-based entertainment systems. So people who are working on that type of content, I think, could both either come there and both experience this content, but also get a sense of what's happening in that marketplace there.
[00:41:42.651] Eddie Lou: Because I really believe that we are a story-driven species. I've also read a couple of articles and books about it, because we've grown up with stories. You know, because when we're in bed, when we're little boys and girls, we listen to the stories that mom told us, right? But in the ancient time, we are telling stories, our ancestors telling stories, by, you know, sitting near the fire and telling stories through voice. So I just think that our mind is wired in a way such that we actually consume stories all the time. We love to be engaged or immersed in stories. So I do think stories will actually bring more people to any kinds of technologies, emerging technologies.
[00:42:33.442] Kent Bye: And finally, what do you think is the ultimate potential of virtual reality, and what it might be able to enable?
[00:42:41.075] Eddie Lou: Well, I've been listening to this question so many, so many times. Personally, I think VR is both a medium as well as a technology. It can do so many things, but for me, You know, as I said, I love stories. I want to be engaged in a story using virtual reality. So I do want to, for certain moments, I want to live in a story or I can become someone else I can never become using virtual reality. that is living a story for a period of time, not forever, then it becomes like Matrix, that kind of thing. But I would love to experience a story in a way that I can never experience using VR.
[00:43:28.786] Kent Bye: Is there anything else that's left unsaid that you'd like to say?
[00:43:32.367] Eddie Lou: I just do think that because China is such a big market and people in China do want to work with the West, I think people in the West do want to work with China as well. But we just have different cultural backgrounds and there's always cultural barriers. But I just think that there's a huge demand on both sides to work with each other. So we just have to find a way to how to bridge the two. Because we have market here, there, and we have such a big consumer base. And we have so many creative talents over here in the States. So we just have to find a way to get content funded, created, and distributed to the right consumers. You know, it's a long way to go, but I just hope that I can help. As a person, I can't do that much work, but I'm just trying to find a way that can help with that in a systematic manner. Awesome.
[00:44:31.571] Kent Bye: Well, Eddie, I just wanted to thank you for coming on and joining me today on the Voices of VR podcast. It was great chatting.
[00:44:37.625] Eddie Lou: Thank you so much. Yeah, I would love to invite everyone to come to China and just to see for yourself.
[00:44:45.148] Kent Bye: Awesome. Thank you. So that was Eddie Lo. He is the founder of Sandman Studios as well as the founder of the Sandbox Immersive Festival that just happened in Qingdao, China. So I have a number of different takeaways about this interview is that first of all Eddie really went above and beyond what I was expecting somebody to be able to pull off Eddie really, you know had a huge faith to really want me to be there and it ended up with that I was able to at the last minute attend so I only had a chance to spend about 72 hours in China So I didn't get a chance to really settle in and see all of the things that I wanted to see or talk to all the people I wanted to talk to But that said there is a lot of really interesting thing that's happening in China I have a number of different interviews where I'll be impacting this more But China is a place where there is a quite a lot of interest and being able to see these immersive and virtual reality Experiences, it seems like that there is a pretty big arcade market But a lot of the arcade are really focusing on these shooters and Eddie is really trying to push the narrative forms forward and talking to other people to There is interest from these different collaborations from the East and the West, but that they still want some localized content. So Eddie did a curation of probably around 50 different virtual reality experiences, and about seven of them were locally produced there in China. And I had a chance to see the six out of the seven. Just because of the logistics, I didn't get a chance to see many of the other ones. There was rain the second day, and the entire second day of screenings that I was there, at least, got canceled. And I missed the entire first day just because it was a travel day for me. So the experience that won the best Chinese experience is called Xin Nong Taste of Illusion, and it was just really well produced and had a great aesthetic and a really great story, and I just really enjoyed it. And I was actually really just impressed with the production values. So one of my experiences of being in China, I guess I was a little naive in terms of not doing a whole lot of research before going. And so there is the great China firewall. And there are a number of websites that I use every day that I didn't have access to. Everything from Gmail to Google to Facebook to Twitter, all these social media Networks are blocked in China and you can't get to them unless you have a VPN so it was kind of interesting to be inside of China and to have that direct experience of Being cut off by a lot of these different services that I use every day and then at the same time, you know there's this strong emphasis of Chinese sovereignty and Because they were blocking these major internet companies. They were able to really foster their own competitive landscape whether from Baidu or Tencent and and all these competing companies that have this entire ecosystem that's built in within China. A lot of people were using WeChat there, which is from Tencent, which is kind of the equivalent of like Google Maps and, you know, Skype and Twitter and Facebook. It kind of bundled all into one app and pretty much everybody that I interacted with wanted to know if I was on WeChat and that seems to be the best way to keep in touch with people there in China rather than giving them a business card. You could just get your WeChat QR code and be able to stay connected to people that way. So I was able to get hooked into the WeChat and connect to different people there in China. I did a couple of interviews while I was in China and over the last couple of years, I've actually had more of an opportunity to talk to people from China when I go to events like CES. And there is a little bit of a self-contained and insular ecosystem that's also being developed within virtual reality there, both from a hardware side as well as the content, I think is something that isn't as well-funded, but that's where I started to see a lot of different United States companies going over there and starting to build these different partnerships. There's a lot of different companies that I can think of that have gone over to China to get investment from China. It seems like that because there's a ton of people there in China, like 1.4 billion people, it's like 25% of all the world's population live in China. And so these cities, Qingdao, it had like 9 million people that live there. I mean, that's like larger than New York City. So it just had like these huge just like apartment buildings and just a ton of people So then everybody is on their cell phones when I was there just like everybody is like walking around on their bikes just looking at their cell phones all the time and so it seems like that there's a split generation gap between the different ages there and that the young people are are totally hooked into technology. They have a lot of influences from the West and Western culture. And I think they're both hungry for media and entertainment. But I think one of the things that I was picking up on was that there are also strict guidelines around the sovereignty around the different content that is presented to people of China. And so I think they want things to be either locally homegrown or or stuff that can pass guidelines, their content guidelines, which is, you know, they don't have the equivalent of what we have in the United States, which is going to the ratings board. They basically have their censor board that has a number of different guidelines you can look up from the state administration of press, publication, radio, film, and television. and they've released certain guidelines to give you a sense of some of the things that they do and do not want. But it's interesting to see how much influence both these types of guidelines can have on the larger entertainment ecosystem because China is a bigger and bigger market. There's a bit of either wanting to, in pre-production, not even do anything that is going to trigger some of these Objections that may come up they do have these different cuts and edits of the films that do end up showing in China or Some things are just you know beyond reproach that you can't even get distribution there something like Deadpool for example is a film that Wasn't suited enough to be shown in China So it was really interesting to kind of see also at the same time how there was a bit of, I guess, knowing the rules, but knowing how to do workarounds for the rules. Eddie had kind of mentioned there about Oculus and that there's no official channel to get Oculus hardware into China. But if you're a developer, there's, you know, you have an extra incentive to be able to try to get actual the hardware and make sure that whatever you're creating works on that Oculus. hardware, but you also have to have a lot of VPNs even to get onto Oculus and Oculus Home and just to even get into the store because Facebook is blocked. You know, if you look at China has a declaration of their sovereignty and one of the things that they wanted is to mitigate the influence of Western colonialism through the different types of surveillance capitalism techniques used by Facebook and Google and some of these other American companies. And so You don't have access to them. You can't get access to like YouTube or Gmail or Google. You do have Yahoo. So that was what I used to be able to search while I was there. But even sites like DuckDuckGo and other alternatives, it's just more difficult to have access to the outside world. So it was interesting to hear from other people who are working within the technology industry because there are like government-sanctioned VPNs that they have access to because, you know, sometimes they actually need access to some of these things like Amazon Web Services and to be able to, you know, upload these files to be able to run their technology companies. But it seems like people who were there, especially a lot of expatriates who were there, You know, there's ways that people find to have VPNs and get access to things beyond the great firewall of China. But while I was there, I was just having the direct experience of what it's like to be cut off from the outside world in different ways. And for me to really notice the different technologies that I use that were not acceptable to be used within the context of China. So if anybody is ever planning on going and traveling to China, you have to either make that decision for yourself, find alternatives for you to be able to communicate with the outside world or to get a VPN or something like that. So, uh, but I, I just, uh, kind of savored having the direct experience of what it was like to kind of stress test what I had access to, what I could see and what I couldn't see. So I'll have a number of different interviews. We'll be unpacking other insights about China. I think, you know, like I said, it's kind of impossible to, you know, have a singular story about, you know, what is happening in China. But I was able to take a number of different interviews and to have my own experience of China. But I would just say that, you know, there's a lot of really interesting stuff that's going on and stuff that I can see how there may be a shape and influence of how What's happening in China is going to be impacting the entire entertainment ecosystem from Hollywood into video games and whatnot. And that I see that there's going to be increasing numbers of bridges coming from the East and West going both ways. So I'll be kind of diving into what we can learn from the East and from China in some of these other interviews. So that's all that I have for today. And if you enjoy this podcast, then please do spread the word, tell your friends, share this podcast out on WeChat, share it with your friends on Twitter, just spread the word and just, you know, I'd love to get more people from China aware of this content and You know, if you want to support this podcast, then you can support me on Patreon because this is a listener supported podcast. I am a community journalist that is supported and funded by my listeners. And so if you enjoy this type of coverage, then please do consider contributing to my Patreon at patreon.com slash voices of VR. Thanks for listening.
