[The essay below from No Proscenium points out that as more people and companies design and market experiences (vs. traditional products and services), and in particular immersive (presence-evoking) experiences that give people agency and either inadvertently or deliberately lead to “transformation change,” we need to take that term, and the responsibilities of designing experiences that  inadvertently or deliberately “show the participant another way of being in the world” seriously. See the original version of the essay for three more images. –Matthew]

[Image: The “climate simulator” at ‘Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser.’ Credit: Noah Nelson for No Proscenium]

“Transformational Experiences” Are The New Buzzword, But Are You Making Change Or Just Selling It?

Any experience can change you. That’s not always a good thing.

By Noah J Nelson, Founder and Publisher of No Proscenium
July 6, 2023

Part of my job as the publisher of No Proscenium means taking regular scrolls through LinkedIn to see what the buzz is in the broad category known as “the experience economy,” which covers everything from experiential marketing to immersive dining to retail with a few stops along the way for the kind of cultural production that is our bread & butter: immersive theatre, live action role playing, escape games, XR, themed entertainment, and their kin.

When you do this kind of surveying, you often find a lot of people throwing around the term “transformational experiences,” and no, they’re not talking about Autobots. Sometimes I’m not even sure if they know what they’re talking about, other than the fact that it sounds like a promise that you’ll be changed if you go through a particular show or experience.

To be clear: immersive experiences do have an inherent bias towards creating the potential for transformation, a lot of which is bound up in the participatory nature of the field. Even at the most basic levels of interactivity, immersive experiences grant the audience a degree of agency, and when one has the ability to change the environment around them, one has the potential to be changed.

Over the years I’ve been through more than one production that I would label a “transformational experience.” Right off the bat I’ll tell you: that isn’t always a good thing. (I’m also not talking about inadvertent change.)

Any experience can change you. That this can happen is neither bad nor good, it just is. When it comes to designed experiences there’s an alchemy that happens when the right (or wrong) person encounters the right (or wrong) experience and it leaves them changed forever. Sometimes we celebrate it, sometimes we have to mourn it. At all times, though, we are wise to respect its power. As students and practitioners of the form we know the potential is always there, and we hope that is understood by the audience as well.

Where the stakes get higher, and the scrutiny gets more intense, is with those experiences whose creators deliberately set out to change their audience. Because to seek to create a transformational experience is an act of hubris. Let me explain.

Life needs a little hubris from time to time. Biting off more than one can chew is every human’s inherent birthright. Taking on a project you have no idea how to finish. Putting yourself out there on the dating apps even though you hate small talk. Trying to make a popular TikTok even though you are over the age of 22. Challenging the ineffable forces of the universe to a staring contest is all well and good for yourself, but promising “transformational experiences” to others can be a bit like selling wax wings on a sunny day. Trouble for everybody.

So when I do find someone hawking the power of “transformational experiences” on the endless expo floor that is LinkedIn the first thing that comes to mind is: “Who the hell is this guy to be making that promise?” Quite literally: why should anyone trust someone selling change?

All too often I get zero sense that those tossing the phrase around understand the awesome responsibility that comes with trying to change someone. It’s not something that should be taken lightly. Negative transformation is trauma. A big swing that misses can go negative for everyone involved real quick. Transformation as a “service” (here I am getting in before the guru set can call it “TAAS”) for all comers smacks of being neither wise nor sustainable. The latter because constant transformation is really just chaos, the former because of the power inherent in such a process can be easily abused.

That’s a long way of saying: I’m not convinced that everyone who throws this buzzword around respects the concept of transformation at its core: the idea that experiences can be designed which show the participant another way of being in the world, and leave them coming out the other side ready to take their first steps, having been initiated into a new perspective.

To be clear: I am not saying that creators shouldn’t set out to make work that is transformational, or can create the conditions for change, just that taking up that mantle is serious business. To change someone is to become part of their story, and to take some responsibility for how that person has changed. We expect that same accountability of teachers, priests, and parents. Those who wish to take up the mantle of “transformational experience creator” need to be ready to be held equally accountable.

These are table stakes for those who would tinker with such potent forces.

If you seek a good, longform exploration of transformation a good stepping off point is Ida Benedetto’s Patterns of Transformation: Designing Sex, Death, and Survival in the 21st Century. Benedetto is far, far more studied on the subject that I’ll ever be. She’s also interviewed by Kathryn Yu on episode 130 of our podcast, way back in 2017.

The bigger questions I have revolve around the ethics of change — creating change to what end, and what to do about the inherent bias in immersive work towards creating the potential for transformation. The former deserves a deep dive all its own, one guided by the principle of informed consent, while for the latter I’ll turn to a recent experience of my own.

This past month I was graced with a surprise gift by members of the immersive community: a trip to Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser. This was something that I had completely given up hope on, now that the event is being wound down by Disney at the end of September. There will be more on this here at NoPro in the weeks to come, but a big takeaway from a structural standpoint was the very subtle transformational aspect of the experience.

To understand it, we have to step into the language of themed entertainment design. In that discipline, the audience is often thought of as waders, swimmers, and divers. The first being those who just want to dip their toes into an experience, the second being those who eagerly go along for the ride, and the last being those who excitedly seek out every detail and push at the edges of the experience.

Late into the final night in our shared berth on the Starcruiser, the four veteran immersive creators and myself who had just spent 36 hours playing together in a galaxy far, far away found ourselves using this lens. We began to add on a new fabled “fourth form” of guest to understand what we had seen amongst our own party as well as seen in the other guests aboard the Halcyon.

For the “fourth form,” we began using the term “mermaids.” This we had inherited from Sara Beil — of After Hours Theatre Company — who herself had picked it up working at the design firm ThinkWell. Other places use different variants to label a fourth type of participant, if they recognize one at all. Yet the term is less interesting than what we needed it for: to describe a guest who co-creates their experience (and in part the experience of others) alongside the staff. This kind of co-creation is very familiar to live action role-play enthusiasts, but in a LARP nearly all the participants are “mermaids” rather than a mix.

What makes something like Starcruiser, or any ambitious immersive experience, unique is how the audience is afforded varying degrees of agency based on their comfort zone. Waders living alongside mermaids. With everyone having a blast.

Yet at any given moment a wader can choose to become a swimmer, a swimmer can become a diver, a diver can become a mermaid, and — indeed — a mermaid can choose to step back and become a wader.

The types are roles, not rules, and roles can be put on and off as easily as one can slip in and out of costume. I had observed the Starcruiser affording this, and facilitating it well. There was a seemingly conscious effort on the part of the designers to give guests multiple invitations to play and to deepen their play and their own agency in a comfortable way over the course of the weekend. With plenty of time to step away temporarily as well, if not always a chance to fully disengage (aside from heading back to your cabin, which is heavily themed but seemingly built out of poured concrete and soundproof as hell).

The Starcruiser is a machine dedicated to this kind of transformation, which does have an impact beyond the confines of its own game. This kind of structure allows guests to rehearse the social act of stepping off the sidelines of life and becoming active participants in the society around them. It is an affirmational exercise in agency, “practice at praxis” if you will. Wrapped in the bonbon-like form of a cruise sold by one of the largest consumer facing companies in the world, there’s something almost subversive about the conceit.

There are two great things about this structure, the “initiation into agency” form that’s baked into the heart of the Starcruiser experience. The first is that its transformational aspects are centered on the personal agency of the participant and not anchored in attracting the guest to a particular ideology or brand. (Although one could find oneself getting more attached to Star Wars as a brand, but that wouldn’t be very Jedi-like.) One can argue that any attempt to change a guest is manipulation of the first order (no, not that First Order) but in a relatively benign form of manipulating said guest into believing that they have a voice. Which unless you’re a total fascist is a good thing.

The second great thing is that this structure is latent in any immersive experience that allows for variable agency per participant over time. From my own personal point of view that potential is the entire point of immersive experiences existing in the first place: to let people know that the social reality we exist in is made up of stories we collectively tell ourselves, and that by definition means that each of us is a storyteller. Each of us is a player in the great infinite game.

Moreover, the act of moving guests up the chain from wader to swimmer to diver and even to mermaid status creates a larger market for immersive work as a whole, as guests will seek out more and more experiences which let them express themselves, as opposed to merely being passively entertained.

Creators who lean into this transformational aspect of immersive and — this part is important — who are willing to acknowledge their responsibility to others will find themselves on firmer ethical ground. Yet it’s up to each of us who want to see the power of immersive used wisely and well to make sure that those who are selling change are not just parroting the popular buzzwords of the market or abusing their influence, but to make sure they know what they are talking about.

Or, Maker help us, that they learn very quickly what they have signed up for.