The $350 million Galactic Starcruiser will shut this year – but experiences that combine the real world with online gameplay could still fly
• Don’t get Pushing Buttons delivered to your inbox? Sign up here
Next month, Disney’s immersive Galactic Starcruiser “Star Wars hotel” in Florida will shut down, less than two years after opening. Best known for being horrendously expensive – $4,809 for a couple for two nights, or a mere $1,500 a person if you fit four to a cabin – most have dismissed the Starcruiser as yet another of Disney’s recent spendthrift follies.
When I heard the news of its closure earlier this year, I rushed to book one of the remaining cabins. My path into the games industry was by playing alternate reality games (ARGs) that mixed real-world actors and events with online gameplay; I’d go on to make ARGs such as Perplex City and, more recently, augmented reality games like Zombies, Run! Even though I hadn’t been impressed by the Starcruiser’s marketing, I was desperate to see what an estimated $350m budget had produced.
About Author
More Stories
‘We need dramatic social and technological changes’: is societal collapse inevitable?
How I beat overwhelm: I deleted my email app – and my sleep suddenly improved
OpenAI lays out plan to shift to for-profit corporate structure