Theatre games

PLANO, Texas – (COMMERCIAL THREAD) –Cinemark Holdings, Inc., one of the world’s largest and most influential film companies, today announced that it is further innovating its entertainment experience by expanding its esports offering both indoors and online. This summer, Cinemark customers will have the option to participate in drop-in games at select theaters, and a new partnership with Mission Control will bring esports leagues online. For full details on how to participate, visit Cinemark.com/gamebig.

“At Cinemark, we strive to continually evolve as an entertainment destination, providing our customers with the opportunity to get an entertaining escape in more than just movies,” said Justin McDaniel, Cinemark SVP of Global Content Strategy . “Our immersive environment lends itself particularly well to the gaming community, placing players in the worlds in which they operate. We’re excited to bring great games to the big screen with our walk-in play and to work with Mission Control to bring Cinemark esports leagues online.

In select US theaters, Cinemark will offer a weekly program of public game events in the auditorium. Enthusiasts can use their Nintendo Switch console to compete against other players. With Cinemark’s larger-than-life screens with booming surround sound, walk-in play provides the ultimate environment for games like Rocket League, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate and Mario Kart 8. Guests can purchase drop-in games entry for $ 10 and receive a $ 5 discount coupon with entry.

“Our goal at Mission Control is to bring together and develop communities, especially through our passion for gaming,” said Austin Smith, CEO and co-founder of Mission Control. “By partnering with Cinemark, a brand already synonymous with community and entertainment, we have the opportunity to achieve our goal of providing Cinemark communities with another fun way to come together on our esports platform.”

Powered by Mission Control, one of the recreational league’s premier gaming platforms, Cinemark will now offer online gaming opportunities for those looking to compete with other Cinemark fans. With Cinemark Esports, players can join the league to show off their skills and participate in games such as FIFA21, NBA 2K21, Call of Duty Black Ops Cold War, Rocket League, Mortal Kombat 11 and more online with friends and family. other players by downloading the Mission Control App and joining the Cinemark organization. Players across the United States can have fun during the summer season for just $ 15 per league.

Cinemark walk-in play begins June 20 and esports league play begins June 21. For full details on how to play, including participating theaters, online leagues, schedules and games, visit Cinemark.com/gamebig.

This indoor and online gaming offering builds on Cinemark’s tradition of innovating its entertainment experience and serving as a true entertainment destination at a time when Hollywood is bringing more game worlds to movies than ever before. . In recent years, Cinemark has introduced private game nights, allowing customers to hire an entire auditorium to play video games in the most immersive gaming environment; presented the epic Game Awards to the public from the comfort of its auditoriums, broadcasting the event live; and partnered with The VOID to bring an unprecedented hyper-reality experience to its West Plano and XD theaters. Over the next year, Hollywood’s biggest studios will bring game worlds to the big screen through a variety of upcoming films ranging from Free, unexplored guy and Sonic the hedgehog 2 To Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City and Dungeons and Dragons.

The Cinemark standard

The health and safety of employees, guests and communities is a top priority. All Cinemark cinemas boast The Cinemark standard, dramatically improved cleanliness, disinfection and safety measures at every stage of the cinematic experience. Employees undergo extensive training on all new protocols and wear face masks when working, in addition to performing a wellness check before each shift. Each theater also has a Chief Cleaning and Safety Controller in service to ensure the highest standards of safety, physical distancing, cleanliness and disinfection.

The operator has consistently received an average to high 90 percentile customer satisfaction with Cinemark protecting their health and safety. Additionally, a large number of moviegoers surveyed said they would come back and recommend a friend to visit Cinemark as well.

About Cinemark Holdings, Inc .:

Based in Plano, Texas, Cinemark (NYSE: CNK) is one of the world’s largest and most influential film companies. The Cinemark circuit, comprised of various brands that also include Century, Tinseltown and Rave, operates 523 theaters (325 US, 198 South and Central America) with 5,872 screens (4,436 US, 1,436 South America) and Central) in 42 national states and 15 countries across South and Central America. Cinemark consistently delivers an extraordinary customer experience from the initial ticket purchase to the closing credits, including Movie Club, the first subscription program launched by US exhibitors; the highest penetration rate of Luxury Lounger reclining seats among major players; XD – the premium large format of the No. 1 exhibitor brand; and plenty of food and drink options to further enhance the movie experience. For more information, visit https://investors.cinemark.com/

About mission control:

Mission Control is a St. Louis, Missouri based company whose mission is to bring communities together and develop. Focusing on recreational esports, Mission Control uses the nature of play to create digitally curated social experiences that foster connection through shared passions and fun competitions. With their rec league esports platform, Mission Control gives organizers the tools to host rec leagues, like summer softball or intramural volleyball, but for fifa, fortnite and other game titles. popular video instead. For more information, visit www.missioncontrol.gg

I am standing in a Victorian gentleman’s office filled with maps, books, rugs, newspapers. . . Any of them could be a vital clue to a murder. I have seven minutes to review them. But which one to choose first? The bottle of whiskey? The letter? The little silver box on the leather armchair?

This is not a lockdown induced panic dream, but a scene of Sherlock Holmes: An Online Adventure – The Hung Parliament Case des Enfants Terribles, a new interactive online theater show in which audiences make the crucial decisions that could bring a serial killer to justice. Holmes has inevitably been detained elsewhere and we, a motley group of new recruits assembled via Zoom, must take on a case involving three ministers and five devious-looking suspects.

The pandemic has seen an upsurge in such spectacles. In the last few weeks I have solved another murder (Sherlock in Homes: Murder at the Circus), rectified a miscarriage of justice (Investigation), provided vital communications to a spy on a mission (Agent Venture: The Heist) and saved the world from destruction at the hands of an evil society (Sheltered). The baking of the sourdough is therefore the last confinement.

A careful mix of game and theater, these programs aim to combat the passivity of online viewing. There is a plethora of great on-screen entertainment out there, but what it can’t quite replace is the interactive nature of the theater – the fact that, even in the most understated live performances, the audience plays a part. active role. That’s where this kind of playful mystery comes in, says James Seager, Creative Director of Les Enfants Terribles.

“Some people will see it as a game,” Seager explains. “Some like an escape room, others like a theater, others like an experience. For us, it’s a play. We approached this just like we approached any other immersive live show, starting with an idea, story, and script. And this is the basis of the drama.

Les Enfants Terribles specializes in immersive theater: shows that envelop the world of storytelling around the spectators. Early examples borrowed ideas from the game – such as player-led storytelling – and merged them with the immediacy of live theater: audiences roamed freely through performances (Punchdrunk) or improvised their way to through scenarios (you bum bum train). Seager suggests that with many theater companies now experimenting online, the influences have come full circle.

“The in-game and immersive worlds are very similar,” he says. “You step into a fantasy world, you get a tutorial, you are assigned a role, and you are given a reason. So I think acting influenced immersive theater and now we’re going back to it. How to immerse people in the theater live but through a screen? That’s really our starting point with it.

The answer, in Parliament hanging on, is a complex mesh of live action and pre-recorded video (Seager shows me the stunning flowcharts and spreadsheets that bring the show to life). The team worked with game company LIVR and used 3D technology to capture real-life locations and turn them into extremely realistic interactive crime scenes. It’s a lot of fun to play with – us amateur sleuths rummaging around rooms, examining objects by clicking on them – but we quickly realize that every choice has a consequence. Fall in love with a red herring, ask a suspect the wrong question and you risk ending up on the wrong track.

Collaboration is the key to success with all of these shows: the faster an audience learns to share tasks, the better. You quickly learn to rely on those with natural leadership skills. In Sherlock in Homes: Murder at the Circus (from the Wardrobe Theater and the Sharp Teeth Theater), this is a group of little girls from Wales with a formidable line of questioning. (The same companies also created Sherlock in Homes 2: Ice Murder.)

There is a real pleasure in improvising with others and seeing the dynamics of the group evolve with the events.

Another show inspired by Sherlock, Murder in the circus is a fun and family affair, not very technological, rich in public-actor interaction. Sherlock is (again) missing, this time leaving behind a case of rum involving a dead circus clown and a plate of potted meat. We impromptu detectives must interview a list of dubious suspects with names like Glenda Flex (acrobat) and Rory McPride (lion tamer), who are all adept at juggling the truth.

After several rounds of untargeted questioning from our team, the 10-year-old Welsh are taking action. “Where have you been location-wise when you kissed requires one, severely, of a particularly evasive character. It would take a hardened criminal not to crack.

It is this crackle of spontaneity that is part of the appeal. In an age where endless lockdown has flattened the experience, online theater games combine true unpredictability with the satisfaction of solving puzzles. Like in live theater, you are building an impromptu community. And there is a real pleasure in improvising with others and seeing the dynamics of the group change with the events.

In Investigation from Jury Games, one of the best shows out there, fast communication becomes essential. Gathered on Zoom as jurors, our task is to examine the case of a student who drowned in 2010. Was it an accidental death? Illegal murder? Natural causes? There’s a mountain of brilliantly detailed evidence – autopsy notes, phone records, Facebook posts, grid references – winding up at first, but ingeniously constructed to reveal and cover up. Text messages arrive with links to email accounts; the archivist who helps us may or may not tell us everything.

Our hero this time is a young woman with nimble fingers who sifts through the evidence with astonishing speed (she turns out to be a real-life family historian), while others crack passwords or watch. witness statements. It’s a show that skillfully uses modern communication tools and subtly encourages teamwork, until, with well-timed nudges from creators Joe Ball (playing Coroner) and Tom Black (l ‘archivist), we come to a verdict.

The skill of the actor-facilitators is the key to the immediacy of such events. They must react in real time to the group’s chemistry as they move the narrative forward and hit the plot twists on time.

For some, like Agent Venture: The Heist, this task is further complicated by the fact that there are several paths to the result. In this witty and very enjoyable spy drama, the mission is to guide an (invisible) agent through building a corrupt society and seize the offending files in the boss’s safe. You play in small teams of friends or family and choose your roles – browser, hacker, researcher – beforehand, each given a specific manual (maps, codes, websites or beautifully detailed personal files) that they are the only ones to have. be able to consult.

Each step requires a decision and each choice is fraught with pitfalls. Bluff your way into the building and you might raise suspicions. Sneak into the service elevators and you might run into the guards. Tension builds as your hacker fumbles with the codes and the other team members pile up with “useful tips.” The story revolves around the choices you make with the quick-witted host improvising in response no matter how odd the suggestion is – a great joy to The breakage is that you could replay it and do it completely differently. Morpheus spy drama Sheltered, meanwhile, stimulates your imagination by making you play blindfold.

In the end, theater games are a chance to escape the world, get lost in a story and share a live experience. There are downsides: large teams can be heavy; intrigues can be obscured by distracted players. And you would be hard pressed to defend any of them as serious drama. But for James Seager, a year after the start of the pandemic, that is not the question. “It’s about forgetting who you are for an hour and a half,” he says. “People need it more than ever. ”

The holiday season is full of family, friends and fun. However, this year our gatherings could eventually take place on Zoom. If your family is like mine, we usually celebrate our time together by playing heaps of card games, but face-to-face games won’t be possible for us this year. Even if you get together virtually, there is still a lot of fun playing virtual theater games. I have compiled five different games that work great on Zoom.

1. Among Us: A Story-Based Game

This game is sometimes made up of more violent titles, but since the release of Among Us, I have called it that. “Among Us” is the most fun when performed with a large group. First of all, a narrator must be chosen. Once the narrator has been chosen, everyone must turn off their cameras and microphones. The narrator will then secretly select an impostor by sending a direct message to a participant. The impostor will message the narrator with the name of the individual he would like to “end”. Once this has happened, the narrator will tell everyone to turn on their cameras. The narrator should tell the group that was “done” and lead a group discussion. Participants must accuse each other of being the impostor, and the accused must make up excuses as to why they are not the impostor. Eventually, the narrator should call for a vote on who the impostor is. Whoever gets the most votes is voted off the ship. The game continues until the impostor is rejected or the impostor “ends” all but two participants.

2. Mind Meld: a team building game

The goal of this game is for the whole group to work together to match two random words to the same thing. Mind Meld can be played with as few as two people, but there is no limit on the number of participants. First, the leader will select two participants for the first round. When the leader says “Go”, both participants type the word that comes to their mind into the chat. Then two new participants will be selected. This time, after the leader says “Go”, both participants will type a word in the chat that connects the two previous words. For example, if “taco” and “pizza” were selected words, the word “food” could tie them together. The game continues until two participants type the same word into the chat. When a “Mind Meld” happens, everyone can celebrate.

3. Press conference: a guessing game

The object of this game is to help the “guesser” find out who he is, who he is with and why he is holding a press conference. In order to help the guesser, everyone will ask questions to guide the guesser to the answer. First, the guesser should be placed in the waiting room while the group decides who the guesser is, who they’re with, and why they’re holding a press conference. An example of a prompt would be Mickey mouse (guesser identity) and Barbie (who the guesser is with) broke the world record for most donuts eaten in one minute (why guesser is holding a press conference). Once the decision is made, the guesser is returned to the Zoom room and asked group-led questions to guess each game, starting with the guesser’s identity. Sample questions for Mickey mouse as an identity could be: “Do your big ears help you hear?” “” Is it difficult to take care of Disney World? “How is Pluto?” The trick with the questions is to help the guesser without giving the full answer.

4. That’s it Bob: an improvisation game

This game begins when everyone types in their name in the chat to establish a speaking order for the game. Then the first person listed will start a false report by saying “Hello, Bob …” and saying just one. phrasing. The more absurd the statement, the more fun the game. The next person in sequence will start with “That’s right, Bob …”, repeat the previous statement and add their own sentence to the story. Participants will only repeat the statement before theirs, then add theirs. The story can go on until someone says, “That’s it for now, Bob.”

5. Zip Zap Zop: a game of concentration

“Zip Zap Zop” is one of the most popular theater games and can become very competitive among theater kids. The game requires concentration. Participants circulate the energy by first declaring “Zip”, “Zap” or “Zop” in that order, then another player’s name. For example, Benjamin starts with “Zip, Allie”, Allie says, “Zap, Josefina”, and Josefina says “Zop Spencer”. If someone hesitates, stumbles, or says the wrong word, then they are eliminated. The game continues until there is only one player left.

Hope these virtual theater games can bring joy to your Zoom holiday gatherings. Happy Holidays!