Story tech for Meow Wolf Denver.
While working as the Digital Storytelling Manager for Meow Wolf, we simultaneously built the RFID (“boop”) storytelling systems for the Denver and Las Vegas exhibitions (Convergence Station and Omega Mart, respectively). My role was to work with the EVP of Technology to lead a team of game designers, creative technologists and developers to add an additional layer of storytelling to exhibition spaces. This resulted in a choose-your-own-adventure style experience enabled by an RFID card and checkpoints placed across the exhibition spaces.
Meow Wolf is a company of over 200 creatives, and at the time, we were distributed across multiple buildings in Santa Fe, New Mexico. One of the major challenges of the Digital Storytelling team was to share information and make decisions with multiple distributed departments and stakeholders. While DS was its own team, there were dependencies across the organization. For example, we were dependent on the Narrative team to create the story that visitors experience through individual RFID checkpoints throughout the exhibits. We were dependent on the Tech team to ensure that the environmental state changes (sound, lights, etc.) could be triggered when visitors accomplished specific in-world goals. This process has given me unique insight into organizational communications, decision-making and advocacy.
One of the most memorable accomplishments at Meow Wolf was how the DS team transformed the CAT fabrication facility (Meow Wolf’s main building in Santa Fe, where much of the Vegas and Denver artworks were created) into a vertical slice testing site. We installed multiple (elaborately dressed) RFID readers across the building, which were connected to interactive artworks that would later be installed in the Denver exhibition space. Our testers wore RFID bracelets and received mobile phone prompts rooted in Convergence Station’s story-world. Players wandered through CAT, booping in on the RFID readers, which were located across the building’s textile, physical computing, CNC and architecture labs. When we amidst a funding round, I took many teams of investors (sometimes accompanied by George RR Martin) through the vertical slice experience. This process was crucial for shaping the experience you see in Denver and Vegas today.
Got questions about cross-functional collaboration, immersive storytelling through technology, or R&D? Let’s chat, I love helping creative teams bring ambitious projects to life.
