Cirque du Soleil has entertained crowds through live performances around the world for nearly 40 years. The celebrated circus company will soon be making its debut in a new type of venue: the metaverse.
On Wednesday, Cirque du Soleil and branded game development company Gamefam unveiled Cirque du Soleil Tycoon, a Roblox game that lets players build their own circuses influenced by “Cirque du Soleil ECHO,” a new show that opened in Montreal last month. Think Sim City, but with a carnival-esque twist.
“You should be thinking about Cirque du Soileil Tycoon as a digital twin of our show Echo,” says Nickole Tara, Cirque’s chief growth officer.
The game will blend costumes, performances, and behind-the-scenes elements adapted from Cirque du Soleil shows with interactive environments only possible in a video game world.
“Thankfully with the Cirque brand we’ve been able to push the limits on realism and going over the top,” says Jay Sobel, lead game producer at Gamefam.
Cirque du Soleil is perhaps best known for its performances in Las Vegas, and like many other live entertainment companies it saw its business radically disrupted by the coronavirus pandemic, at one point going from thousands of active employees to just a few dozen. After filing for bankruptcy in June 2020, the company emerged later that year under new leadership and soon made a push into the digital world.
Bolstered by a sizable following on TikTok and Instagram that it began promoting heavily in 2021 Cirque’s digital following is generally “more youthful” than its in-person audiences, Tara says, and the company hopes to continue to reach young audiences through Roblox, a platform traditionally popular with kids, teens, and young adults.
The build-your-own-circus game will also let players get a sense of what happens behind the scenes at Cirque du Soleil, providing a taste of the sprawling, 400,000-square-foot facility in Montreal where the circus trains its performers and creates sets and costumes. (“We have a whole room dedicated to sequins,” says Tara.)
Gamefam’s team received a backstage tour of a Cirque performance in Houston to help them understand how the show gets assembled, and players will get to have their own experiences putting the disparate elements of a circus together.
“You’re hiring the staff, you’re hiring the entertainers, you’re hiring the security, you’re hiring the people that are in the back of the house, the prop areas,” Sobel says.
The game, which is slated for a summer release, is free to play, though players can spend in-game currency to assemble their circuses faster, and additional monetization features may be added in the future.
In addition to crafting their circuses, player avatars will be able to acquire and wear virtual items like animal head masks inspired by costumes from ECHO. Cirque and Gamefam have worked to adapt the circus’s costumes and other elements to Roblox’s virtual world and aesthetic, Sobel says.
And once players build out their circus tents, they’ll also be able to attend in-game virtual interactive performances with other players. Like some other features of the game, which is currently in open beta, the interactive elements of the performances will likely continue to evolve based on what elements prove popular and player feedback collected through Discord.
What players enjoy in the game may even help shape future elements of Cirque du Soleil’s live performances, says Tara.
“We really value that part,” she says. “A testing ground for experiences that kids and families want more in real life.”
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