Not Technology. Not Space.

“Immersive experience” has become an everyday phrase over the past few years. Yet most of the conversation ends at technology and space. Projection mapping. Scent design. Haptic devices. The toolbox for deepening immersion keeps growing.

But the question I keep returning to is a different one.

When, what kind of role, and how do you hand it to the audience?

That, I believe, is the essence of immersion. Technology is a tool. Space is a stage. Only a role turns the audience from people who watch into people who are there.

Putting It Into Practice: BABEL no TOH

With Mrs. GREEN APPLE's BABEL no TOH (2025), we gave this design a concrete form.

Before entering, every guest is told they are a pilgrim. They enter not with a ticket but with proof of pilgrimage. That single premise transforms the entire experience.

The experience was designed as a role shift in three stages. First, the pilgrim — a traveler with a purpose, headed for a place they cannot name. Second, the witness — the story begins to unfold, and the audience stands as its proof. Third, the accomplice — the state of feeling personally implicated in how the story ends.

These three stages were never explained to the team beforehand. They were embedded in the design itself. Guests move through the roles without noticing they are doing it. A role shift no one notices is what real immersion looks like.

The phrase that appeared most in the surveys: “I didn't realize I was crying until I was.” The staging didn't make them cry. People who had accepted a role cried on their own.

The Unfinished Frontier

The model Punchdrunk established lets the audience choose its own role. In Sleep No More, you chase whichever character you please. The freedom is enormous — and the depth of the experience depends on how proactive each guest is.

NYX is pursuing a different model: design the role, then hand it over. The audience doesn't have to choose. The designer delivers the right role at the right moment — immersion that doesn't depend on anyone's initiative.

No one has completed this design yet.

BABEL no TOH was one experiment toward it. It wasn't perfect. But we saw, unmistakably, the moment a handed role landed inside an audience. Proof enough to move on to the next experiment.

The moment the audience accepts its role,
the experience becomes a ritual.

Every experience NYX designs begins with this question: “When does the audience receive its role?” A design that can't answer it isn't finished.

— Shoichiro Tsuno · CCO, NYX