Mark Stutzman is an experienced entrepreneur and product executive with more than 20 years experience as a digital strategist, product specialist, and executive technologist. He is the chief technology officer for the immersive entertainment complex, AREA15, in Las Vegas, Nev.
Stutzman took to the stage at LDI2022 to describe the process of creating the attractions in one year, and the priorities the technologies he chose needed to support.
The Project
We opened in September 2020, and our goal was to create an immersive experience where guests transcend from spectators to participants. How do you build that? Well, there is a ton of invisible technology that makes a seamless guest experience. No one had really done this before. I’m a 30-year software start-up guy but it was an interesting challenge to think about the traditional limitations in a space and how do we address them and personalize amazing experiences?
We really thought about how to reinvent what the guest journey feels like from the first impression on social and ads and shares from their friends, then how do we meet those expectations and exceed them?
The AREA15 operating system is the foundational tech that was built to power that crazy idea.
We knew we couldn’t compete with the Strip, but, the Strip is about standing around and looking at the spectacle. You don’t engage with it, you look at it. At AREA15, the guests create their own journeys. For us it is the fusion of art, commerce, storytelling, and technology.
We are curators, we didn’t invent all of it. We spent years traveling the world and looking at the best immersive experiences on the planet and brought it together on one roof. We designed Area15 to be a black box, a blank canvas, so we can switch things around and add new things.
A year before we opened, not a single thing piece of technology had been purchased, or a person hired.
Our Requirements
Very stable Wi-Fi, because all transactions happen over Wi-Fi.
Tons of kiosks for self-service ticketing and tenant integrations into our system for Meow Wolf and Duelling Axes etc.
A ticketing platform that can handle events and time-based ticketing because, for example, Birdly happens in 5 minutes increments, and DJ events at different time intervals.
Everything is cloud based. We don’t have a server in the building because we want to scale this company for different areas.
Everything has to be modular – if a piece of tech doesn’t work out we need to be able to take it out and plug in something else. I only bought one-year software licenses because if it didn’t provide the best guest experience we needed to be able to ditch it and replace with something else. We did this with ticketing because the API was not flexible enough.
The user experience for all our applications needs to feel the same. It means the best guest experience. It doesn’t matter that its 18 different cloud-based systems, the customer feels as though it is on one AREA15 operating system.
Data is our religion. We pull data daily from 30 different core systems. With full panels for all business from the day before, we create aggregate customer profile in our CRM and all our systems can see that data and understand it.
The consolidated guest profile. The more we understand who you are, the more we know what we can recommend to you and provide what you want. It’s not an “evil algorithm” but we do use machine learning. The AI can pick up on things we can’t. if we are going to have six or seven venues across the country we need to know how to service our guests.
Although the servers are off-site, we have people onsite who run around all the time fixing things so we don’t have any down time.
Some Of The Experiences
- Meow Wolf
- Haley’s Comet – a powered zip line
- Dueling Axes – how can you go wrong with a bar and axe throwing?
- Five Iron Golf – virtual golf
- The Beast - An food hall in partnership with Todd English
- Oddwood Bar - with 30ft tall LED programmable tree
- Particle Quest – an immersive art-meets-gaming experience.
- Birdly – A VR ride
- Wink World - Psychedelic art house meets carnival funhouse
- Little Miss Nasty Rock and roll burlesque show
- Brainstorm