Long ago, before people started saying “immersive” all the time, when mixed-reality shows and AI experiences were still uncommon, Michael Mascioni was looking at a simple question. What changes when the audience does not just watch, but joins in?
In Expanding the Immersive Landscape in Leisure Facilities, Mascioni presents a view that immersive entertainment has moved into a new phase. This phase feels less about shiny tech and more about how art ideas, company goals, physical places, and real human contact all meet.
Michael Mascioni has worked for years on problems that do not have clear edges yet. When he was young, he jumped between topics that some people might call unusual. Space exploration was one. UFOs were another. He was not drawn in only because of the headlines. He kept coming back to the questions that still have no firm answers. He liked topics where facts are incomplete and nebulous, where options are still open, and where you have to look past what seems obvious.
Now he writes, researches, and advises as an author, futurist, marketing consultant, and researcher. His focus has tracked interactive and immersive entertainment as it moved through different stages of tech change and market growth. He worked as a senior analyst in broadband entertainment at Strategy Analytics. He also managed the A&A Monthly Newsletter on Interactive Entertainment. Later, he did consulting and research for attractions developers and immersive design firms. He co-chaired Future of Immersive Leisure conferences. He also served as program director for Entertainment conferences.
His newest book, Expanding the Immersive Landscape in Leisure Facilities, puts these experiences in one place. The main point is straightforward. Immersive entertainment is not just a side activity in leisure anymore. It is starting to shape the way modern experiential entertainment gets built.
“I hope they learn that immersive location-based entertainment has transformed entertainment in a deep and revolutionary way,” Mascioni said. “Immersive entertainment is no longer just about games.”
Learning to Look at the Future Differently
Mascioni did not start out in technology. He first earned a bachelor’s degree in English from St. Lawrence University. Before that, he had studied government, and he kept government as his minor. He was drawn to literature because it helped him see patterns in people and how they think. Later on, those same interests fit into technology work more than he expected.
Technology rarely grows on its own. A person can invent a tool, an app, or a new kind of show. Still, the real outcome depends on how audiences react and adapt.
At one point, Mascioni focused on attitudes people hold about tech. For his graduate degree, he chose an M.S. in Management at the Polytechnic Institute of New York, which is now part of NYU. He did not choose a route that leaned exclusively toward the social sciences. In management, he found a practical angle he valued, especially forecasting.
While he was in graduate school, he started thinking of himself as a futurist. He learned forecasting methods and read outlets like The Futurist. He worked on separating careful, organized analysis from vague guesses about what comes next while taking a holistic approach to forecasting.
That divide still guides his approach.
Mascioni thinks society often judges new technology too quickly. Early trials may fail to move forward. Costs can be high. Devices can be hard to use. Content may not be ready yet. Even when the tech exists, public understanding can lag. Yet ideas that seem too soon can still take off later, once the pieces line up, such as tools, money, material, and audience timing.
Right now, he sees immersive entertainment in that same category.
When the Audience Became Part of the Experience
Mascioni was drawn to interactive entertainment because it changed how people related to what they watched and did. Video games were a clear example. Players could affect what happened next, adjust details to match their own tastes, and move through the experience instead of only watching from the sideline.
Still, interactivity was not only a computer thing.
Mascioni points to interactive theater. He cites shows like Tony n’ Tina’s Wedding to show that audiences wanted to take part even without advanced tools. Later on, technology offered a wider set of options. It let participation grow in more ways.
When Mascioni developed the A&A Monthly Newsletter on Interactive Entertainment and created the Intertainment conferences, he noticed something was missing in how the field was being described. Emerging media formats, such as multimedia, online entertainment, laser games, and others, were often presented as separate categories, as though they had no connection to one another.
Mascioni did not see it that way.
He focused on the overlapping and interrelationship between different forms of interactive entertainment. Tools and ideas that looked disconnected were starting to shape each other. He organized the newsletter and the conferences around a single idea. The coming years would be driven by convergence.
Today, that belief anchors Expanding the Immersive Landscape in Leisure Facilities.
An Industry Growing Beyond Novelty
Mascioni had earlier co-authored The Out-of-Home Immersive Entertainment Frontier. Looking back at that earlier time and then ahead to what he sees now, he says the field has shifted a lot.
Immersive entertainment is still growing, but he thinks it is not chasing new technology in the same way it used to. Over time, firms have learned to a significant degree what people actually enjoy. They have also gained a better understanding of which business approaches hold up. The tools themselves have gotten better. More mainstream entertainment groups are now involved. People share ideas more often, and creators mix styles that once stayed in separate boxes.
He felt the shift was big enough that another updated book on the topic was needed.
For Expanding the Immersive Landscape in Leisure Facilities, he did broad research. He read a wide range of material, went to trade shows, and talked with people around the sector. The hardest part, he said, was staying current. Fresh changes kept landing so fast that any attempt to map the industry could start going out of date before the work was finished.
Because of that, the book spans a wide set of topics. It includes immersive art, escape games, interactive theater, rides, dome theaters, virtual reality, mixed reality, drone experiences, underwater and aquatic settings, cruise ships, branded attractions, and newer kinds of immersive wellness.
He says the range is on purpose. His goal is to show that immersive entertainment cannot be boiled down to one thing, like putting on a headset.
The Rise of the Hybrid Experience
Mascioni says the biggest changes in the field are showing up right at the spots where categories overlap.
He points to formats that mash together different kinds of play. One setup can bring in live performers and also use an escape game. Another can run projection mapping on top of real, built spaces. Virtual reality can still work alongside laser tag. Mixed reality can link digital elements to real locations. Even an entertainment venue might keep both, pairing immersive tech with old-school arcade titles instead of picking just one.
In his view, these blended models can make the end result more engaging. They may also reach more types of visitors.
He also highlights large venues like Meow Wolf and AREA15. They show a clear trend. People do not only want to sit through one passive storyline anymore. They want to roam around and dig into the space. The building itself can act like part of the plot.
That kind of testing is not staying inside typical entertainment sites. His work covers underwater and aquatic immersive projects. It also includes cruise ship concepts and wellness-focused spaces. Immersive wellness, he says, caught him off guard with how much interest it drew. As people look for fresh ways to rest and feel better, he thinks tools like virtual and augmented reality can help create experiences that feel more complete.
All of this lines up with a bigger change in what people expect after they leave their homes.
Mascioni argues that visitors are leaning toward activities that do not translate well in a living room. He also notes a renewed pull for shared events after the isolation tied to the COVID years. Here, immersion is not only about surrounding someone with tech. It is about giving people a real reason to be in the same physical place and to experience it together.
Technology Is Only Part of the Story
The twist with today’s more advanced immersive entertainment is this. As tech gets better, the human part can matter more, not less.
Mascioni has kept returning to how society looks at technology. A feature that is impressive on paper does not always feel good for visitors. Teams still need content, layout, funding, day-to-day operations, and a clear read on what people want to do.
His consulting work pushed the same idea. With attraction builders and immersive design groups, he saw that big plans need trials, teamwork, enough money, and solid routines. His talks made the same point too. New sectors grow faster when people share ideas across fields. Staying stuck in one niche slows things down.
This also clarifies why he is drawn to “convergence” now.
Immersive entertainment is turning into a shared space for older art forms and new tools. Theater, video games, film, visual art, architecture, live acts, and attraction design all show up in the same room.
Even well-known entertainment names are shifting into places people can walk into. Mascioni points to the Squid Game experience. It extends the IP through hands-on play, not by just restaging a TV plot in a new wrapper.
Artificial intelligence is another step in that shift. In his book, he gives AI close attention. He also looks at other emerging tools like drones and haptics. The picture is of experiences that may respond better, adjust on the fly, and feel more physical.
Still, in Mascioni’s view, the tech should stay in service to the experience. It should not take over as the main event.
From Experiment to Infrastructure
One key point Mascioni makes is that industries do not settle just because new tech appears. They settle when a whole support system forms around that tech.
Money gets easier to find. Teams pick up skills over time. Apps and tools do more with less effort. Devices become easier to use in real settings. Companies adjust after past mistakes. Viewers begin to recognize ideas that used to feel strange. Trade groups show up. Collaborations start to happen.
Mascioni argues that immersive entertainment has more of these building blocks now.
At first, doubt made sense. Many firms had already tried costly projects that did not pan out. It was hard to spell out what immersive work meant to people who had never seen it. Some tools promised more than they could actually deliver.
Now the situation looks different.
“There is much greater learning experience regarding what works and what doesn’t,” Mascioni said.
This does not mean every immersive attraction will land well. It also does not mean the industry is fully done maturing. Mascioni instead points to a move into a stronger stage, where testing is backed by real know-how and sturdier systems.
That change matters. Newness fades quickly. If an industry keeps relying on surprise alone, it will not last.
A Futurist Watching the Future Arrive
Mascioni has not only written about entertainment. He has looked into government innovation, political entrepreneurship, and exponential innovation. He also wrote chapters on immersive media and ambient interactivity for wider books on what is coming next. One curiosity shows up again and again in his work, the one he had long ago when he was young. He keeps asking what happens when ideas from the edge start shaping what everyone takes as normal.
His newest book focuses on one of those moments.
Immersive entertainment has shifted. It used to feel like a set of isolated experiments. Now it appears as entertainment districts, branded attractions, interactive art spaces, and hybrid experiences. Many of these mix physical presence with digital participation. Because of that, the lines between theater, gaming, technology, art, and leisure do not stay neat.
For Mascioni, the blurred lines are not a setback.
They are the point.
The future he has studied for decades is not a story where new tools just wipe out older ways of being entertained. Instead, the forms trade with each other. They borrow, combine, and change. Even if mixed reality grows, the arcade does not automatically vanish. Live performance does not stop mattering just because virtual worlds exist. In some cases, the physical setting can become more important when people already spend so much of the day watching screens.
That is why the word “landscape” matters in the title. Mascioni is not trying to cover simply one device or predict one winning format. He is outlining a growing area.
After years of watching that area develop, he thinks the biggest change might be this. Immersion is starting to feel less unusual.
It is turning into something audiences assume will be there.
Explore Michael Mascioni and Expanding the Immersive Landscape in Leisure Facilities
Featured Book: Expanding the Immersive Landscape in Leisure Facilities
https://a.co/d/03Pn3Dlh
Author Interview & Media:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uh9041hw33E
https://open.spotify.com/episode/5J3UwGA0WO9gwfDGanvJgq
Additional Coverage & Book Information:
https://www.webwire.com/ViewPressRel.asp?aId=346457
https://www.goodreads.com/author/list/8378703.Michael_Mascioni
