#1824: 「Amsterdam 1652: The Hands Of The City」— LBE向けのキャラクター主導型・歴史体験

The Voices of VR Podcast. the hands of the city. So this is an immersive story that is produced by ENTR, E-N-T-R, which is a new location-based entertainment location place that's located in Amsterdam. And so doing a number of different collaborations with Backlight and other kind of local directors. Nienke is someone I've had on the podcast a number of times. And so we had a chance to sit down with both Nienke, the director, as well as Vincent, you know, the producer, to kind of talk about their latest iteration of the 17th century experience within Amsterdam. And so I had previously done the pilot program, which I am airing in this previous episode in 1823. It changed completely a

lot things that happened within the final version, which was much more narrative driven. And that piece that we're much more exploring aspects of agency and activity. And so a lot more of this inner gravity of earth, but more fire, where you have more focus on that open world exploration and agency and kind of like the more no more ability to kind of roam around a space and take in the stories. This one is a little bit more of Earthwater, so again, the center of gravity of being immersed into this historical context, but a lot more character-driven in this case, so a lot more of the story-driven, character-driven, you're more on rails going and being introduced to each of these characters, and at some point near the end of the experience, you get to choose whatever character you resonate most with in order to continue to get a little bit more of a tour of the city with that character that you kind of choose. In the first iteration of the pilot, it was a little bit more difficult to have these stronger connections with the characters because you're kind of in this open world context where it's more of a cut scene that was interrupting the interactions that were available. And so this is much more attuned where you're kind of standing still and kind of receiving

the dialogue bits in the story. There were some scenes where there were some kind of invitations to interact and participate. And I think it's this existential tension between this type of LBE where you want to satisfy the need for people to have those interactions and engagement. but sometimes those types of interactions and engagement can be in conflict for you receiving and listening and paying full attention to the story that's being given. So it's a bit of a balance of to what degree are you asking people to do this kind of actions that are filling their mind up with cognitive load versus being able to kind of receive the story without making it feel like you're just kind of standing around listening to people talk at you the whole time. So there's this tricky balance of taking you on a spatial journey, providing you some interaction and participation, but also allowing you to kind of receive the narrative that's being given. So, we're covering all that and more on today's episode of the Wistens of VR podcast. So, this interview with Nienke and Vincent happened on Saturday, September 5th, 2026, at Venice Immersive in Venice, Italy. So, with that, let's go ahead and dive right in. Hello, I'm Nienke uit Gabroeren, and I'm the director-writer of Amsterdam 1652.

And I produce and direct work very broadly. This is my first multi-user location-based entertainment piece. Boom. And I'm Vincent Slangen. I'm the founder of Enter. And we present and we co-create location-based VR experiences. And we opened just a museum in Amsterdam, 2,000 square meters, doing PC VR. And we created with Nienke our first VR experience that's in competition here. Nice. Maybe could each give a bit more context as to your background and your journey into the space? I think my journey began at least 10-ish years ago when I was just a big fan of It's a Dog Lab, savoring and enjoying all the pieces they programmed there. I'm an autodidactic artist. I studied film at university, but the making and the creating kind of came after. And I think through more transmedia, kind of interactive explorations,

around 2017, I kind of bumped into VR and the title Rosipne was my first one. And from that, it kind of started developing as one of the main things I do. And at the moment, next to working with Enter, I also run a studio called Studio Zap. I have a different background. I actually come from a bank. I worked in a bank in New York. When I was in New York, I went to this immersive theater show called Sleep No More. and well, when I visited that experience I thought I need to do something with this kind of storytelling where you are at the center of the story that's why I came up with VR because in VR you can also put people in the center of the story and when I did some more research into VR because I didn't know anything about it stumbled upon all the opportunities that were there it's free roam, it's multi-user the quality has improved a lot in the years and I saw that there were a lot of moving pieces and I didn't see all the moving pieces in a higher quality coming together yet.

And I thought I really would like to do that. So that's why we thought what if we start a company that really tries to, on a scalable way, present and create a visual high quality VR experience that you can share together. And that's why I quit my job two and a half years ago. That was a bit of a rough time. so when I quit my job I put all my money that I had into a prototype and went to all the funds that were there all the investors that were there all the people I knew everybody rejected me so I went broke very broke had a few loans even with family-in-law then my girlfriend who worked in modeling said to me well why don't you just try modeling so I just made some pictures of myself and sent them to all the agencies and one of them was stupid enough to say yes so two weeks after I did like a photo shoot for Philips half naked. And I thought, what am I doing now? But it got me some money. And even that year, it brought me all over the world with the modeling.

So I took that opportunity to every place I went in the world. It's like London, New York, Shanghai, Geneva, Paris, everywhere. I went to these cultural VR experiences and saw who were working on it, what I liked, what worked in a scalable matter. And in that way we, or I back then, gathered a lot of parties that are here. So it's Nienke, the director. It's my co-founder. It's the technical parties from, it's Backlight, our co-producer. And we finally received some fundings, well, loans that are still guaranteed of. And we presented a pilot in the last year. And the public paid money to go there. And it was a real proof of concept. And with that proof of concept, yeah, we earned some more money, or not earned, but we got a big loan from a bank, Rabobank, who I'm very thankful for. And we had technology partners from the Netherlands. And now, three months ago, we opened our first venue, Nexus Central Station.

It's like 2,000 square meters, and we can host up to 1,500 people per day. Two months ago, I became a father. And last month, we were selected for Venice. And even Taiwan now. So it was kind of a rollercoaster for the past few months. And then how did you two meet then? You were both in Amsterdam. How did you come across each other in terms of being able to work together? I'm Utrecht-based, but Amsterdam and Utrecht are, let's say, close networks. And I met Vincent for the first time at a gathering for the big CICI fund that's currently kind of making moves in the Netherlands. and that's when he told me this story like hey hello I'm Vincent and I quit my job and I'm going to open a new venue and then I think it took another couple of months but Vincent got briefed by a couple of my colleagues to meet several directors and I think if I'm not correct you met about six maybe seven different directors so we also

had a coffee and the one thing Vincent said like I very particularly would like a female director because I want to make this production that can look at history from a very different angle, but also that we give space and kind of come up with characters based on historical research that never had a chance to kind of, you know, voice their stories or kind of be represented. And I was like, hell yeah. That sounds interesting. At that point, I've never worked with such a thorough historical angle. So I kind of said, yes, I think I can do that. and I think we it was just the two of us for a while to kind of figure out at least an outline for what would that entail if we find voices in the archives that we haven't heard before because Vincent's wish was the 17th century is the base that we're going to work on and there's one thing about Amsterdam and the 17th century, it's very popular there are already many, many narratives

and to our benefit the grand narratives are already told. And I could kind of limit myself with the help of four historians kind of look for, you know, those people who have daily lives in the city of Amsterdam that will pique your interest in a completely new way because daily life is what I kind of aim for. Nice. And so maybe you could tell a bit about the story and experience of Amsterdam 1652. Yes. Maybe just to briefly introduce what's very interesting is also that a few years ago the city archives of Amsterdam they released digitalized versions of all the notary papers that were there in the 17th century and that gave a very interesting insight in the actual street life back then instead of indeed the nobleman, the slavery so it actually showed the gossip of the 17th century and well there was one historian that we first, Nieng and I

walked through Amsterdam with that made a book about that. So that was kind of, I think, a bit the foundation. And from then on, we worked with several others, but you can tell better. Yes, just to give credit, that book is about daily life written by Bob Pirik. And I think from that basis, I started having discussions with Bob and some other historians. If we tell a story about daily life, I want characters that can kind of be the same people that walk the streets as you would walk Amsterdam today. So what I learned from Bob's research is how Amsterdam is kind of a walking city. Back then there were no bikes, there were a few carriages, there were of course people with horses, but mostly people just walk and walk and walk, like it's a very friendly, active city. So the characters I came up with had to do with the fact that there's the docks and the main square and some of the businesses that relate to the wealth and welfare of the city. fishing, whaling, printing and the crafts.

So I came up with Cornelius, kind of a guy in his midlife crisis. He's a whaler, a captain of a ship and he broke his leg. He's recovering, he's skipping a season, he's wondering if he will ever get back to his journeys to Greenland to kind of look for new pods of whales. And then we have Marie, the printer, she's a widow and that's a very particular detail that was quite important because what the Dutch culture is kind of known for is that women and men had like equal amounts of I say contributed to the economy of the household But thanks to these archives that were digitized we could understand that way more detailed and way clearer But the one crucial thing of patriarchy back then is that a woman could only kind of own a business when her husband would have been passed away. So she became a widow. She's running the printer. And then the third character is Esperanza, a free black woman, which is one of the voices we only recently in the last five to six years are beginning to understand better

because of the work of historians that really go the extra mile in their own time to kind of understand what the black community was like in Amsterdam. So she's, for me, also a very exciting character. I wrote her that she came to the Netherlands with a sugar trader, a Portuguese sugar trader, who went bankrupt. In that way, she could kind of negotiate freedom. But now, in all that freedom she has, there are a lot of insecurities and life is also quite unsure. But I think through that lens, I think we can tell a very fair story about the hardships and also the strength she has in doing that life. And so coming from outside of Amsterdam, maybe you could explain to me as an American why Amsterdam in the 17th century? Why did you sort of hone in on that as what you wanted to focus in on? because in Holland we tend to believe that Holland was the most important place for 100 years but it wasn't, it was a very short period but in that short period it was the global city of world trade

so that obviously has its strengths, has its weaknesses but everybody can agree on that it was a very interesting time to be there And everybody could be interested in how would it look like if you were there in the middle of all that chaos, that energy, those different energies, all the migrants that went to Amsterdam. So I thought, well, if we do something about the history of the Netherlands, that would be a very interesting time frame. No matter what angle you take, it's the energy that really could be very interesting. Yeah, I think that's the thing. And you said there's a lot of existing narratives and there's a fire in this piece. I don't know if that's what you're referring to, that there's other stories about that fire, but maybe just elaborate on the existing stories that have been told, but you wanted to take a different route, but just maybe get a bit more context of what happened. Yeah, for sure. Well, this time frame of like 1650 to like 1710, it's kind of a period of time where science, the arts, the trade kind of exploded in possibilities and opportunities and wealth.

and a few of the famous names are like Spinoza, there's the famous Captain Trump and the sea wars between the Netherlands and England. There are the big writers like Joost van Vondel. These are all famous because they were celebrated in their time. They are slightly better archived. They're men, they're white, you know. There are all kind of these benefits on what their position was in history and how we still have access to their original, you know, their personal documentation and how everyone wrote about them in the Times. And these grand narratives, I think, are already well placed. The Rijksmuseum, the Amsterdam Museum, the big film productions, they all spent a lot of time on, you know, conveying that big war at sea with Michiel de Ruiter. And they're epic and they're interesting, they're extraordinary because the explosion of innovation and new ideas, You can compare it to 2026 in the sense that they encountered such radical new options like we do today, for example, with AI or VR technology.

It's exciting to tell those grand narratives. I realized when I was preparing the concept to pitch to Vincent, there's a lot of competition in those narratives. So I kind of wanted to go in the shadows of what is not really told. Like, if I think about myself, when big changes happen in the world, I'm not a famous person. But how do I deal with that? How does it come into my life? Maybe I act on it, maybe I don't. So I started wondering if you have people who are connected to these industries that were making big shifts. But, you know, they were like just a person doing their life. I felt we could make the picture more complete. Also, me, myself, as a director, kind of engaging with that perspective and kind of understanding what is the most humble perspective you can have on the street in an Amsterdam. And then those ideas of Spinoza kind of come to you, you hear them or whatever. That's also where I started wondering, do I actually understand my own history? Because I know these grand narratives and I embrace them for the beautiful philosophy and, you know, the results.

But I have actually no clue on what did it do in the time. And maybe this actually didn't reach anyone who was not part of the elite. Maybe that actually took longer. So some of the research that I encountered, that's the fact, because not everybody was literate. You know, this traveling of ideas don't go in equal circles, if you know what I mean. Like not everyone kind of hears the exciting stuff at the same time. Which means that the way Cornelis, Marie and Esperanza kind of made their life decisions, the fire of the big city hall. The old city hall kind of, in a poetic way, kind of marks the moment where the idea that Amsterdam wants to be very radically gets shape. It's not officially a breaking point in the era because the city council already had plans for a new city hall for a very long time and the fire was kind of a convenient way to kind of accelerate the plans. But going from a very cute medieval-looking town hall

into this majestic Renaissance, you know, big palace. While we, at that time, we didn't have a king. So Amsterdam was kind of really putting itself down like we are the center of the world with this brand new city hall. Kind of for them, for Cornelius and Maria in Aspergerance, it was kind of the most tangible moment where they're like, ah, we're really getting into something different now. Like my life will kind of have new pathways. That's my interpretation. And what I really liked about this idea was that because we really focused on the citizens of Amsterdam, this new city hall was actually the first city hall or like a palace that was built not for a king but for its citizens. And the fact that Amsterdam put so much money together to build such a palace for its citizens was a very nice metaphor to show that the citizens of Amsterdam were in charge actually. And, well, if you be very honest, it was a small group of citizens, but it was a citizen instead of a king.

And that was very something cool to zoom into, I think. Yeah, and so I had a chance to see the previous iteration of the pilot at United XR last year. And I remember we had a chat about it, and there was a lot more free roaming exploration. And in this version that you're showing at Venice, it seemed to be a little bit more narrative-driven, in the sense that I'm introduced to these strong characters and I go along with them and that there seemed to be, in the previous iteration, a little bit more of that sleep no more, roam around, and maybe you'll encounter someone, maybe you won't, or you'll have people that are there. But it seemed like, in this version at least, I was able to have a clear sense of each of these individual stories. Then later in the piece, I still have that ability to roam around, make some choices, decide who I want to be, my docent to take a little guided tour, which is really nice because I ended up with the printer, and I was like, oh, this is the perfect person who's very much in alignment with the type of things that I would be interested in in terms of talking about censorship and the book publishing and just the ability

to get introduced to some of these characters and to learn more about the city through their eyes, which is really nice because there is an opportunity to make a choice in this piece. But I'm curious to hear about some of that early feedback on the pilot that you got that moved you away from more of this kind of game-like free-roaming into a little bit more of a structured narrative, at least in the beginning, that opens up there at the end? Yeah, so this was really what our pilot was all about. We were really seeing, like, what does the public want, what does the audience want, so that we can build upon that and create the full experience. And what we've noticed was that when people go to a movie, go to an experience, in the end, they want to experience a story. and in our pilots we left it very open which means that people could experience the moments there and experience it was very open what they experienced but in the end it was nice to have a narrative that whatever they choose in the end they could say

hey I've experienced this so that's what we tried to do we didn't want to leave out the free roam that we did in the pilot so we still have indeed some free roaming in there but our aim was to still get a few narratives in there so that it's kind of a mix. I think we had success with the pilot so it also came as a small piece of criticism like oh, I didn't really experience the story it was more like an open space but with those remarks the additional sentence would follow I wish I could have joined that character and go a little bit deeper in the pilot so the concept of the pilot test chapter was kind of you come to a market you can step forward to a character and kind of learn a tiny thing about their life then you go into a tent you meet one woman that has like a micro narrative about how the ladies and the women kind of built the city then you come out of there and you're suddenly at a fair and it's night

and it's atmospheric and it's funny and weird and they're acrobats and theater players but people really kind of were switched on already because of the beautiful world building and kind of the variety of characters but there was one very persistent thing I wish I could stay longer with such and such character and I think people really appreciated the shortness of it the pilot was about 10 minutes but that depth of really connecting kind of really, you know I apparently kind of piqued the curiosity I was not fulfilled so we had, I think in the summer we had a couple of conversations with Vincent and backlight that maybe it would be interesting to find a way to make that deeper in the extension or the new concept and then I took the liberty to propose a completely new concept. Yeah and to be fair that's also fully on Nienke because Nienke pitched the concept of doing three different storylines and I really really like that idea because it is that mix. It provides

an opportunity for the players themselves to choose what kind of story they want to follow So it means that we didn't leave it too open so that there's no or less narrative. So we have narratives, but multiple narratives. So we branched it a bit. And I think, to be fair, in the future, I would hope to even deepen that more so that we can have more branches. But obviously, the interesting balance should be on you don't want for a broad audience. You don't want to branch it too much and make it too complex because we have a lot of visitors that are 55 plus. But if you don't know exactly about the complex branching structure and it feels very natural, I think there is a real opportunity. Yeah, because as you're going through the spatial journey of this piece, which I think it worth mentioning that you have an inter at least in the location entertainment set up here you have how big is the room that you have here It 8x8 8x8 And your space that in Amsterdam how big is that room

It's also 8x8, but we have seven boxes. Okay, okay. So you have a standard size that you're using to set this, but you have people that are going in. And when I went in, I came in right after a break. And when I saw it at United XR, there was already people that were in there. and I think by the time I was ending, there was also other people that were in the shared space. Is it similar, again, that you have an ability? Like how many people can you have at the same time over in the room? Because I think there was three at a time that were going, but over the course of an hour, how many people can you get through one of the boxes? Yeah, so the first thing we did with Backlight and Nienke was, okay, let's start with throughputs and scalability. And what we see is that in terms of size, you have columns. That's a big problem in location-based VR. There's a lot of columns that have a space in between of 8 meters, and you have a lot with 6 meters. So what we actually do is we have experiences of 6x8 and 8x8. I think that's the best standard in my vision. So just to clarify, because I know that you want to have a big wide open space,

but you can't have a wide open space unless there's support beams and columns. So what you're saying is that because there's columns, it's better to have like a set smaller size rather than to do like a 20 by 20. Exactly, exactly. So with that scalable format of 6 by 8 slash 8 by 8, we thought, okay, how could we get the highest number of throughput in? And that's, well, you can make spaces within that 8 by 8, and everybody goes in an order through them. But we can also reuse space. The only problem is people could see each other. And in our experience, because it's PC VR, You can choose a character and you see each other as the characters in that experience So what happens now is that there's four groups of four in the 8x8 Different groups can have three different moments where they are in the same space But they are in their own experience in a different scene The cool thing is that doesn't matter Because other players just see different characters that are walking in the 17th century

so when I tell people this normally they say well why don't they bump into each other and my answer is always well if you are walking in a very crowded market why don't you bump into everybody because you see them and you walk past them so the cool thing is that if you look into a box of hours you see three four different groups that totally don't know each other and they're sometimes standing so close to each other but it just feels natural because I mean they see each other and they feel safe. Yeah, because in the experience, you see the nameplates of the people that are in your little pod, but then you see other people that are in other pods that have like a green light, like a hula hoop around them that is indicating that it's an actual person, not a virtual character, and that you can't just walk through them. But I think people figure that out at some point, even if they do bump into each other, that it's a way of having these bizarre, like open roam spaces that there may be multiple people that are walking through. And then they're at a different point in the narrative, but you're in a more advanced part of that narrative or vice versa. They may be ahead and you may be behind.

But at any rate, you're able to have this kind of free roam space within this conceit, but have the throughput. So yeah, it's pretty elegant solution to, I think, otherwise you end up feeling like you're just completely on rails in a way that this at least gives you the sense of the ability to kind of move around a little bit. But that seems to be a way that is also a constraint that is put on you in order to like design the experience differently. So just curious to hear from some of the feedback, you know, how you were able to then, how do you structure these more isolated narrative parts and then more of the interactive parts? And yeah, just curious to hear around what you had to do in terms of writing the story in order to make it work with these constraints. I have to say, I think that knowing the constraints at the beginning of the process really helped find the poetry within that. Because as we all know, like limitations can lead to very creative and beautiful decisions. So I think the process we went through is a tango between writing the script and then I discuss it with Backlight,

with the lead animator, Sébastien. He would build kind of like a gray box version of some of the scenes, and he kind of made a full layout of the 8x8 situation where we started plotting, like, how much space could this scene possibly have? If we start at the docks, like, where in the box would we place this? and how do we get people to the square. So he really, in collaboration with me and the art director, Julien, we kind of figured out the order of the scenes, which, of course, I had a very particular story idea for, where we really engineered together a way that you could meet every character one by one. So you really have that time to kind of feel connected and start caring for them, because that was a very crucial thing to make the second half work. so that was kind of a limitation for my directorial vision that you need to have enough time to calibrate and understand who are these people so like it's a clockwise route you're walking

but we are reusing space a little bit let's say on the left 50% of the box so you have that time with all the three characters and then the second half kind of mostly uses the other half of the box but that overlaps with the other groups And I think our main insight also when we came to the point of production that we crammed in a lot of scenes in a very little space. And I think we're not going to redo it, but I think it's absolutely a big compliment to Backlight to kind of make sure people are comfortable within the safety measurements also and have that narrative space really work. So for the people who haven't seen Amsterdam, There is, for example, first you start with a dog, so we have a huge perspective on the river, the I River, and the old tavern that you're going to visit at the end of the experience. But you get that sense of a huge space, but in realism, you're standing with a face to a wall.

So we had many discussions in kind of making sure if people wanted to bend over, the safety grid would come on quick enough that you don't have to see the safety grid all the time so there was all these very minute tweaks and then for example you meet Esperanza in our workplace but that room has more length than broadness which for me was fine but we had quite a bit of discussion like how do you make sure people feel comfortable and not awkward that they're bumping into each other because you can come in with a group of friends but you can also be with a stranger so we found very clever ways of kind of moving objects and kind of doing those very tiny tweaks on certain furniture so psychologically or kind of your non-verbal sensing system kind of feels at ease while it's still a very tight space yeah and it sounds like you had a pilot did you say you opened up three months ago is this already running or what's next for this project after Venice

or is it already running in Amsterdam Yeah, so it's already running for three months in Amsterdam. And well, we are incredibly surprised how many visitors are going. And especially that we only do 5% of tourists. So obviously a lot of people think, well, VR about the history of Amsterdam, that would attract a lot of tourists. But we wanted to make sure that people also knew it wasn't about tourists only. It's like a VR museum that has a lot more to tell than only this. this. So for us it was a real compliment that we did that and we have 95% of Dutch people and the cool thing is the amount of Dutch people, it's very widespread over categories so you have a lot of families going a lot of 55 plus people that just want to go to Amsterdam for a bit. We have a lot of grandparents that go with their children of 8 so the grandparents are with walking sticks and the children just run everywhere. So it's very cool to see how because we wanted to make it very accessible

and it's very cool to see that we see so many different people here. Yeah, and you have a mechanic of if you do run away too much then everything goes into like a matrix void space that tells you to go back to this specific area so you can continue on because if you're going outside of that space you might be running into other people. So you made it in a way that you're able to have these more constrained parts where you don't have a lot of ability to move around but these other parts where you can actually make choices in terms of like there's glimmering little sparkles that you can go over to and then either interact with things or start to click and get a voiceover, like a voice from God, more information about what's happening, about whatever you're looking at. So you can either interact with the characters or have these other parts, but there's enough of those different choices that you can't see everything. So you have to end up making these choices as to what you're interested in and ability to chase the narrows that you want to learn about. By the way, that voice of God is the voice of my girlfriend,

so I think it's a very big compliment to her. So, yeah, just curious to hear about that process of, you know, creating this possibility space of you can have opportunities to interact with the characters in pretty much, I think, every scene that you could go and have additional interactions, but there's other things that you can also kind of look at and get a little bit of a guided tour of sorts of different parts of Amsterdam. So just curious to hear about that design of those different things above and beyond just the characters. I think what Vince and I really share is that we both love the Sleep No More production of Punch Drunk. And of course that piece is no dialogue and mostly mime and choreography. So I think we were very much on the same page that when we make a more narrative experience with some options, there needs to be so you have people that really want to lean in and go full on on the character feel guided, feel supported by whatever the emotion and the invitation is on the basis of the narrative proposal but we also saw with the pilot

there are people that feel so stimulated visually that they just really want to enjoy the grandeur and kind of the vast space that's designed the Amsterdam in this area you've never seen so this balance between people really have like a narrative desire versus people that really want to take it slow and kind of figure out their own pace that's kind of like a spectrum we talked a lot about and then on that spectrum there's like an information level what i felt was really important and i think vincent supported me in it's like you want to feel invited you want to stay connected because of the emotional layer the characters give you. But also for Amsterdamers, you'll see the city in a way you've never seen before. Yeah, you kind of know them from a painting, but standing in it will raise new questions. So I looked for some of the facts that kind of hone in what can you understand about daily life that you would not be able to understand if you just look at a painting.

So the voice of God, we call her Nova. You can kind of touch her like it's a green ball floating in the air. if you feel like, oh my god, what am I looking at? You can touch her and then she will talk to you and explain it. I've seen it happen that people are very information driven and they touch all the green stuff. I think there are three or four main scenes where you can kind of interact with her. Like in the most dramatic scene with the fire and the personal story is high up with the three characters. We take them away. You know I want you to focus on the characters sometimes But I see people have a very specific wish specific taste for now I want information and now I just want to be swept away and kind of feel the music And I truly believe that's a really good design decision to let people decide on that pace themselves. So Nova will kind of talk to you really at the beginning and then she disappears and then she's optional and she reappears at the end. I like that balance because it needs to be a human space. And I think when you

We started bombarded with information about, oh, this is what it used to be like in history. Like, it's become very dry. Yeah. And I'd love to hear any reflections on sometimes the tradeoff between when you're interacting versus when a character is speaking. Because in the printing room, there's like a number of different mechanical things you're doing. And I found as I was doing that, it was harder for me to kind of listen to what she was saying. So it was almost like a choice between I'm doing this little thing versus like listening to what she's saying. And then in hindsight, I was like, well, I kind of wish I would have not done this thing and just listen to what she said. But she told us to do it because she needed help. So it was sort of like I was being obedient. But at the same time, there was only two machines and three people. So then, yeah. Anyway, I'm just curious to hear around any reflections on all these sort of like interactive components that you have in scenes and the desire to have people feel more engaged by interacting and moving their body through space and feeling like they're contributing something, like grabbing jars or gathering ingredients,

which I thought was a nice way to kind of tie into the narrative. And then sometimes I felt like if you're doing that interaction, then you may be missing other things that are happening at the same time. And so how do you sort of weigh that? Do you have something to say about it? We both have something to say about it. So I think we had a lot of discussions because I personally really feel that you should have the least possible dialogue in VR as possible. Maybe also because I have ADHD, so I cannot concentrate so long if I watch dialogue. But also because I believe that the medium VR is to experience, not to listen. So I was always thinking, I want more interactions, more interactions, more interactions. so in some scenes you'll notice that it's more about listening, in some scenes it's more about interacting, and this scene that you're describing is actually a mix of both well, and there you see exactly the discussions we had

and I think it's still it's always finding a balance, and the best way to find a balance is I guess to have like somebody telling a story based on what you're doing so that you really feel that you have the agency and afterwards, based upon that agency, you listen to what somebody has to say about it. So I think that would be the optimal goal. And I think we see that as well in the scenes that we really figured that out, that people really feel that they are there. Yeah, I think maybe this is an ongoing theme in my career, that the balance between offering interaction, context, and let's say spirit in a scene, it's a challenging balance yes we had multiple discussions about finding the right balance for this experience what we learned from the pilot is that people were craving more depth more connection but as soon as you start designing that in you also take away some breathing room to just be

and I think you cannot really get it in an equal position because then it just doesn't work and I think that's what you were describing I was listening to her, I was doing it, but then, oh my God, there was still something nice going on, but I was distracted. What I try to do in the script is that, for example, the first encounters have focus, and then a part of the scene opens up for getting distracted, walking around, looking, and most important information you could get from the characters at the beginning. and then they go on and have like for example Marie and Cornelius have a really nice one on one about a map he's looking for and she's criticizing him for taking a difficult journey but if you miss that information it's not too bad because you will catch up again when you've picked one of the characters you will understand kind of their protagonist transition they're making so I guess like me and Vincent it's like our character Like our creative decisions you can find in like alternating between narrative and interaction.

What I do think actually the pilot production was better at is the variety of interactions in tandem with your own autonomy. Was because also we totally focused on that. And I think we're still kind of looking for ways to kind of bring that in into Amsterdam 6052. So we have, like, your cats you can pet, and you have a printer you can use, and you have beer mugs you can pick up, and little pamphlets and newspapers. But I think within the scope of this ambitious production, because we did motion capture, we did animation, we did, like, if you look at the main square, the core scene that you're looking at, there's so many characters that were animated. Also, you know, with the beautiful work of Backlight and their patients, we really had to make some choices on where is the golden interaction, where is kind of like the optional interaction, and which one is kind of we can do. So, for example, one really important interaction is the seagull at the beginning. So we really tried to prioritize how and where the complexity of the interaction actually is offered.

So some, I think, are beautiful. Some are a little bit distracting. But my philosophy would be everybody is a different person. For sure, if you're an eight-year-old coming in with your grandma, maybe as an eight-year-old you're more about space and grandma really likes to enjoy and listen to Marie. And, you know, I think those differences are okay. If you can go out and you've seen Amsterdam with new eyes, I think we have a success. sort of giving lots of different options for people to embody different qualities of presence, whether or not they want the information to engage or to listen to the story, have their emotions moved, or have some sort of embodied interaction. So, yeah, I can definitely see that that's kind of embedded into the structure that you have. And, yeah, I think it is good to have that diversity. I also think that sometimes they can be in conflict in terms of, at least what's interesting is I did do the pilot, and I felt like there was so many possibilities, space of interactions that I kind of wanted to, like, look at all the interactions. And when the characters started going into dialogue, I felt like I had less patience because I was like,

I had FOMO that I'm going to be missing some other type of interaction. But yet I ultimately want to have those deep narrative moments. And so I think, yeah, when you're biased towards that open world feel, then it can almost feel like a disruption to have someone stop and start talking to you. But I think having your mobility limited and having it a little bit more, oh this is clear from the design that we're kind of intended to listen to what's being said then i have more capacity of switching my mind into whether or not i should be exploring my will and curiosity and interactivity versus like receiving the story that's coming in so yeah i think that scene in particular was one where i felt like there was like i made a choice and i regretted the choice a little bit because i missed something and i was like all right well i had to figure out a puzzle of how to operate the printer it's not like i've done that before and so i had to like find the correct order of sequence to do, and that involved enough cognitive load that I wasn't able to also listen to what was being said at that moment. But I think it's really nice to hear those feedbacks.

And in our museum, we always ask people what they like, what they like most, what they didn't like, what they would have done better. Because in all the VRs that are here, for a wider audience with a larger public, there's not a lot of VRs that contain as many interactions, because it's also a bit of a risk if you have a lot of old people. Will they like the interactions? Do they understand the interactions? So I think this is still like a feature within VR for the bigger public to understand what is possible for an older generation, for the younger generation. And I think this is still an evolving feature. There's something that I realized now being here in Venice. I think in our partnership also with Beclay we were very much inspired by Bal de Paris and how you pick up a costume at the beginning so we took that same idea so before you come into Amsterdam 1652 you choose your own 17th century outfit where you can be playful with like you can be yourself you can experiment

with your identity and it's a way to kind of see each other in the space but there's some room scale experiences here where you stay kind of an abstract figure but I realize now for especially for people not experienced in VR, it might be their first, second or third experience, having that moment of interaction with your body and something like a costume actually kind of is the first moment where you can feel at ease, like, oh, this is how it goes in VR, and oh, this looks really nice, oh, and I can switch, I can tap it with my hands. Like, I think that's what ENTER, the museum, is very particular about, is that the onboarding calibration will make people really ready for what they're encountering and it's just a small suggestion like it's a small thing to do before you start but I think it's actually quite a crucial thing that makes it so smooth for all these different ages but that's my theory I'm curious if you could maybe elaborate a little bit on the

second part where you're basically choosing which character you resonate with the most because they're going to be giving you a bit of a guided tour or at least you're going to go up to a high location where they're going to be talking about different aspects of the city. And so it's another opportunity where the different people in your group have an opportunity to choose whatever person they resonate the most with. But yeah, it's another opportunity to go even deeper with one of the characters. So I'd love to hear some elaboration on that. Yes, because originally I pitched it as a full experience where you choose one character, although you go through the same spaces. But with the feedback from Vincent saying, like, oh, but the characters are so nice. Let's just make sure everybody meets them. So we shifted the concept, like you meet them all and then you choose. I think because we also wanted to work with a nice length, 30, 33 minutes, which is still comfortable for anyone. I realized, like, if I wanted to give depth to the characterization, it's not enough time to do a full arc for every protagonist.

so that moment of choice in the middle helped me give the depth for every character but I leave the choice up to you what really worked what you're fighting with and I very intentionally chose two women and one man because we're trying to rebalance our narration about history a bit but I think what's really lovely about the three characters is because Cornelius is connecting to the trade at sea the whaling which whaling was like the big business in the Netherlands, in Amsterdam particularly. I think we even overfished the whales. We already created like a little, how do you say, environmental crisis there. So that's an interesting context. And then with Marie, the printer, and Esperanza, the craftswomen, they are able to kind of reel in even more characters that have lived in the city. So that moment of choice in the middle will also be part of a conversation you can have with your fellow spectators at the end,

you have the option to go all for the same character, and you can also choose to do all different ones. And I think my ideal mission here is I can kind of, we plant the seeds of people being aware of parts of history that really resonate with themselves,