Silently, I reach for a goblet, throwing it to the opposite side of the chamber. As the guard steps toward the disturbance, I emerge, sneaking behind him. With a flick of my wrist, my hidden blade emerges. He'll never take another step again. Also, his halberd starts fritzing on the floor before fading out of existence, a reminder that this is all virtual reality--or rather, VR within VR, the metatextual framing of Ubisoft's latest Assassin's Creed game.

Next month, Disney's immersive Galactic Starcruiser "Star Wars hotel" in Florida will shut down, less than two years after opening. Best known for being horrendously expensive – $4,809 for a couple for two nights, or a mere $1,500 a person if you fit four to a cabin – most have dismissed the Starcruiser as yet another of Disney's recent spendthrift follies. When I heard the news of its closure earlier this year, I rushed to book one of the remaining cabins. My path into the games industry was by playing alternate reality games (ARGs) that mixed real-world actors and events with online gameplay; I'd go on to make ARGs such as Perplex City and, more recently, augmented reality games like Zombies, Run! Even though I hadn't been impressed by the Starcruiser's marketing, I was desperate to see what an estimated $350m budget had produced.