Is Mini Golf the Secret to the Metaverse?
Originally published on LinkedIn on May 23, 2022.
Location-based entertainment (LBE) is the theme of the Licensing Expo 2022—the world's largest licensing trade show for intellectual property professionals—which feels appropriate for many reasons.
This year, the ”metaverse” trend is on everyone’s mind. James Ngo, EVP, franchise management, Legendary Entertainment, is quoted in a recent Licensing Expo article, seeing these digital experiences needing to be balanced by “real-world experiences” that are “meaningful and longstanding.” In that same article, Trevor George, CEO, Trevco, notes the need for there to be a bridge between the physical and the digital world.
What if there already was a bridge? And what if that bridge was in a virtual reality mini golf course?
What we are seeing for one of my clients, Mighty Coconut, which designs, develops, and publishes the most popular and critically acclaimed multiplayer game on the Meta Quest, Walkabout Mini Golf, is that the virtual reality mini golf course has become that sought-after third place, that bridge between the physical and the digital world.
Just a year and a half after launch, Walkabout Mini Golf is enjoyed weekly by hundreds of thousands of people in over forty countries—thanks to the ease of social play and sense of presence.
In Walkabout Mini Golf, families reunite, board meetings take place, classmates hold reunions and lovers propose, playing across a variety of imaginatively constructed mini golf courses such as Arizona Modern in the desert and Tethys Station in outer space, and from the Gardens of Babylon to the valleys of Shangri-La.
Recently, the developers of the game launched a re-imagined main check-in experience called “Welcome Island” designed as a social gaming catalyst, with practice putting greens, a driving range mini game, and even a raft ride.
Players are loving the ability to just hang out, and Forbes wrote that the “update transforms Walkabout Mini Golf from a mini golf game to a mini metaverse.”
Later this year, ardent fans will get to explore places together they’ve only ever experienced looking at a stationary screen. With the release of upcoming licensed branded courses, fans will get to putt their way across the Goblin Kingdom in Walkabout Mini Golf: Labyrinth from Jim Henson’s iconic 1986 film, and roam (and play through) the starkly beautiful Myst Island to solve its mysteries and puzzles in Walkabout Mini Golf: Myst.
Walkabout Mini Golf is a theme park set in a mini golf course, set inside a putt-a-verse of multiple locations. Virtual reality and embodied presence provide us that sensory experience we need, and allow us to deeply explore worlds that weren’t available to us before.
As we seek ways to experience play in its grandest purpose, to explore and create and connect, let’s stay open to all the ways in which presence can be felt, and how audiences today are already seamlessly moving in and out of different versions of the world. As far as LBEs go, fans discovering and creating memories in stories and worlds they love, whether IRL, online or both, while connecting with people they know all over the globe is about as good as it gets.
Michele Martell is the founder of Martell Media House PLLC, a business and legal consultancy in entertainment, toys and licensing, and has represented brands ranging from The Muppets to the WWE to Mighty Coconut.