The four keywords under the title follow the logic of the thesis: why, how, how to build it, and what it becomes.

Traditional dark rides are designed with film-based production logic, emphasizing passive viewing rather than systemic interaction. Game IPs, however, are built on gameplay, collaboration and dynamic systems. This structural mismatch prevents attractions from fully translating core gameplay mechanics, limiting guest agency and long-term emotional engagement.

Problem statement, 45-Hour Review

Three differences sit underneath the gap. Industry: games update constantly, while attractions are slow to build and hard to change. Audience: games are played, not watched, yet most adaptations stop at visuals and add technology without adding play. Narrative: in games, story emerges from what players do together; film is linear and asks nothing of its audience.

The thesis rests on three shifts in what a dark ride can be.

1. 01 · Participation

   Watching→Playing together

   Most interactive rides stop at shallow participation: point, shoot, score. Here two guests cooperate, and what they do together unlocks different scenes, story branches and visual effects. Participation changes what the ride shows.

2. 02 · Emotion

   Physical thrill→Deep narrative

   The payoff is not drop or speed but story: discovering what the other side knew, and the bond of finishing something together.

3. 03 · Repeatability

   Fixed ride→Seasonal and replayable

   Two perspectives and many branches mean one ride holds more than one visit can show. Because the story lives in a swappable AR layer, it can change with holidays and themes, so each return is different.

This thesis explores how the structure of cooperative games can be carried into a dark ride through narrative. It proposes a dual-perspective story in which guests ride together but see, know and do different things, so that each one is necessary to the other. Augmented reality is what makes this structure work: each guest’s AR view lays their own side of the story over the same physical scene. What they achieve together unlocks different narrative outcomes and visual effects, and a swappable digital layer lets the same ride carry new stories by season, so the attraction rewards coming back.

Working thesis statement

Questions the thesis has to answer

Themed entertainment is physical, and physical attractions repeat. Once a guest has ridden, they have largely seen it.

Multiple perspectives change that. With AR, supported by projection and show control, the ride splits into a fixed physical base and a digital layer of story, image, light and sound that each guest sees in their own view. Changing a media file costs far less than rebuilding a set, so the narrative becomes a replaceable part of the attraction.

A dark ride then works less like a fixed show and more like a recurring event. Guests return because the ride is different: another season, another perspective, another ending they have not unlocked yet.

Before designing the ride, I studied why so many cooperative games feel thin. The common failures are well known: roles that are only reskins of each other, partners who are less important than the lead, or players split into separate screens and systems so they never really meet.

Asymmetry is not imbalance. What makes cooperation feel real is whether the level, or in a ride, the scene, forces both players to be there. A dual-perspective narrative is how a ride can do that: each guest holds information or abilities the other needs.

I looked at game-IP and interactive attractions for what they translate, what guests take away, and where they stop short.

On the theory side, Henry Jenkins’s idea of game design as narrative architecture and Jesper Juul’s Half-Real frame the key distinction: film tells a story through editing, games through systems and space. The question for this thesis is how a themed space tells one through two people at once.

The topic came from three questions I first treated separately, each tested in review.

A suggestion to combine the three became the thesis: translate a core gameplay structure, cooperation, into a dark ride, let it carry the emotional weight, and build the story as a layer that can change.

1. Before

   Queue and pre-show

   A narrative prologue that teaches each guest their side of the story. It can be entered or skipped, so it never depends on wait time.

2. During

   The dark ride

   Guests ride together but act from two perspectives. Each scene needs both sides to move forward.

3. After

   Leave area

   Guests see what they did together and take a trace of it home.

Design principles

So far, only the research stage is complete. The design itself is still ahead.

1. Fall 2026 · Complete

   Research and proposal

   Research direction, theoretical framework, precedent study and the thesis proposal.

2. Winter 2027 · Next

   Design development

   Design documentation and visual development begin: story beats for both perspectives, the bubble plan, scene layouts and first visuals.

3. Spring 2027

   Final thesis

   Final drawings, detailed perspectives and full documentation of the attraction.

Milestones

Next: a story-beat chart for the two perspectives, the bubble plan, and the first scene layouts.