Nguyen Dinh Bao (Mr. Brad), CEO/Founder of Dreamer Land.
Shelly Liu
Dreamer Land is one of the first and largest virtual reality game centres in Vietnam. With modern equipment, attractive game content, and a classy booth design. The company not only wants to bring VR technology to the Vietnamese people, but also gives new business opportunities to partners who are interested in this technology.

Q: How long has your company been established?
A: 2.5 years, we established the company in 2017.

Q: When did you start to work in the VR industry? Is this your first time to work with VR? What did you do before?
A: I used to work in Houston, Texas in America as a software engineer. When I came back to HCM City for a vacation, I got a chance to know more about VR and I became quite interested in it. That was when I decided to set up my first company Dreamer Land as a VR Arcade in Vietnam.

Q: How many staff are there in your company now?
A: At this point, we have three store locations, one in District 7, one in Gò Vấp and one in Tân Bình. We have about 30 staff and mainly part-timers. Besides the arcade stores, we have our main office here in District 10 also. Here at the office, we mainly have staff to do operation management. Besides, we are also using the main office as a studio. The main task of the studio that we open here is to use VR to create 3D content. We make 3D videos, 3D animations, VR experience and AR content for local businesses.

Q: Do you also create VR equipment?
A: We don’t create VR equipment. We use HTC VIVE headsets in the store for people to go to play VR games. Building equipment requires a lot of investment. Here what we do is mainly building AR/VR content for businesses. Basically, a lot of advertising agencies want interactive content for their brands. And we do the content, so they can work with us to create interactive AR/VR content for their clients.

Q: Do you have any cooperation with foreign companies?
A: Not really. I am shifting my focus on creating content right now, just like you can see here is what we are doing at the studio. I did visit Korea a few times, and then I bought some of their content. Nothing too big, we bought the license to their content and began creating 3D content from there, making the content more interactive. Most of the content is for kids, which is what we focus on at the moment. We now have a new project called JoiKid.

Q: Is all of your content achieved through VR equipment?
A: No. Even though VR has developed rapidly, it has not become very popular in Vietnam yet. So that’s why we have to do more than just VR. We have to create more types of content like helping develop kids' talents. Right now, we are focusing on creating content on mobile phones for kids. We are also experimenting a little bit with content for AR, which is projected on the big screen and kids can interact with those content.

Q: Does your company have any short-term or medium-term plan for enlarging its scale?
A: Our mid-term plan is to enlarge our studio for content production. As with the VR Arcade that you know about us, the company Dreamer Land, we don’t know if we want to invest more into this field. Because so far, our VR arcade business hasn't done very well.

To share more with you, the investment into the space, the rental cost, and the equipment is really high. But the return on investment is not enough to push the business further. The amount of equipment that we can serve people during a busy hour is not enough to make up for the time that they are not used. Take a movie theatre as an example, nobody goes to watch movies in the morning. So, it is empty for several hours and not making any money from those dead hours. But it can serve hundreds or even thousands of people during busy hours during weekends. That will make up for the lost revenue during dead hours on weekdays. On the other hand, the VR Arcade doesn’t have this kind of feature. We cannot serve so many people in a limited time space. You cannot arrange ten people in a small room. You can only serve 2 or 3 people otherwise they may hit each other. If we can find a good space like a big theme park and that’s OK. But if we want to open a VR arcade in a city, the rental cost is really expensive. That is why we decided not to invest too much in arcades but more into content development. The investment on content is smaller but it can be enlarged and we can also sell content to many people. So that’s honestly the direction we are focusing on until a lot of people know about VR and they can play at home or at a VR center.

One more thing, it’s still quite expensive for people to spend an hour and a half to play with their friends in a VR center. Honestly, most Asian kids get the money from their parents. So it is also difficult for Vietnamese kids to spend lots of money on playing VR games.

We visited Korea and found that some VR Arcades were also struggling to make a profit for the business. One interesting challenge that many arcades like us have in common is to find VR Headset parts to replace when our customers broke them. A lot of headset models were discontinued. So, we can not buy parts to fix broken equipment. We don't have any other option than buying a whole new headset to replace the old ones. And that costs us a lot of money.

We realize that those are the issues we are facing at the moment. If we can figure them out, we could invest more in arcades.

Q: How many types of content can your company create in one year?
A: Our studio is quite new. We’ve only been here for 3 or 4 months. However, we have only got a few good projects from Lexus, Toyota and Sketchers. And we are in the process of structuring of our studio. So, I can’t share with you the specific number right now.

Q: Usually, how big is the scale of your VR center?
A: The one you saw in Pico Plaza is half the size of what we have in District 7. The first one in District 7 was opened in 2017. The scale of it is about 300 square meters.

Q: How much is the cost of your one VR center?
A: The VR center you see in Pico Plaza can cost hundreds of thousands of USD to build. So far VR is quite tricky here in Vietnam. The main target is teenagers but they don’t have enough money to spend on VR content yet. In some of the hot spots of HCM City like D1 and D7, a lot of our customers are actually adults. So people from the offices and foreigners who work in Vietnam, have the money to spend. Because they still think that playing VR games here is quite cheap compared to what they pay to play in their own countries. But in some districts, which are kinda far from the center, people still find it’s pricey to play VR games. I hope there will be more people who can invest to boost the VR industry in Vietnam. I have been working in the VR industry for more than 2 years but I still feel like I am alone. We don’ t have a lot of competitors. That is why the VR games community is not very popular in Vietnam. I am pretty sure that there are a lot of arcades in China. I visited some VR arcades and they are quite good, some may have support from the government or from big corporations to help their businesses.

Q: Why do you choose Pico Plaza or SC VivoCity as your VR center location?
A: Because it is actually a very good location. By only opening the store in the wealthy area of a city, there are people who will spend the money to play. While at the remote place, though there is a lot of traffic to the store, but they spend less money. In Pico Plaza, we worked with Lotte, a big brand from Korea, they opened a lot of commercial buildings in Vietnam. They know about VR so they work with us.

Q: We know that you attended the TPV Show 2019, how did you know about this show?
A: One of their staff called us and asked for our information. And then they asked whether we want to have a booth or buy some equipment, we think that it might be a chance for us to find new business, so we attended it.

Q: Did you get any good deals through the show?
A: We get a few name lists but nobody contacted us and we haven’t got any real projects yet. To be honest, Dreamer Land as you know, we own VR arcades but we haven’t positioned ourselves as a consultant for other people to open VR Arcades yet. People know about us that we create VR arcades for people playing games.

Q: What’s your personal opinion of the Vietnamese VR market?
A: I think that VR content still has good potential in the Vietnam market, but I am not sure about VR arcades.

Q: Are you interested in the Chinese market?
A: I know very little about the Chinese market because I need somebody in China to lead me the way otherwise I would be lost. I don't have any plans to open business there yet.

Two VR centers of Dreamer Land

Dreamer Land VR Center in SC VivoCity District 7, opened in 2017, the fee is: $11/hour.

Dreamer Land VR Center in Lotte Mart Tân Bình, opened in 2018, the fee is: $11/hour.

※The article is published in the GTI Magazine Issue No.186 in May 2020