ABOUT US
Two Engineers, One Bad Idea
THE ORIGIN
2008. The economy was collapsing and everyone was staring at a new gadget called an iPhone, alone, together. Brent Bushnell (engineer) and Eric Gradman (roboticist) met at the monthly art-and-tech meetup, Mindshare, in Downtown LA and started building interactive games nights and weekends, just for fun. A room full of bored adults dropped their phones to play with interactive, social art. The art turned into games and we knew we'd found something bigger than a hobby. So we quit our day jobs.
From Napkin Sketch to Circus Tent
THE CARNIVAL
Teachers started emailing to say their students were using our videos in physics class. That was the nudge we needed to build STEAM Carnival, a Kickstarter-funded, touring reinvention of the county fair with robots, fire, and lasers instead of ring toss. It pulled 5,000+ people a day in LA and San Francisco and proved the thesis: STEM gets people in the door, but it's the "A" — the art, the spectacle, the play — that gets them to stay.
We Got Tired of Tearing It Down
THE HOME WE BUILT
A touring carnival strikes in three days no matter how many months you spent building it. We wanted repeat play, not a one-off spectacle — something a local could come back to four times a year, not something a tourist sees once. So in 2018 we opened a permanent micro-amusement park in the LA Arts District: high tech carnival games, VR arena, job simulator escape rooms, re-imagined arcade, game show theater, and a robot bartender, built and run by our own team of engineers, welders, and roboticists.
From Venue to Idea Factory
THE EVOLUTION
Running our own park taught us how to build attractions that survive thousands of strangers a day — a skill set most entertainment brands don't have in-house. So we turned it outward: custom fabrication and branded activations for other companies, our Button Box Battle game show touring conferences and corporate events, and a habit of spinning client work into products live on, like our open-source arcade cabinet, OpenCade. Along the way we chartered the Two Bit Foundation, a nonprofit using play to get kids excited about STEAM with hands on projects and upcycled materials. To date the foundation has installed maker spaces in one third of LA's school district, LAUSD.
Still Building With Our Bare Hands
TODAY
Two Bit Circus continues as an entertainment incubator and exhibitor — the same bet we made in 2008, with a bigger toolbox. We build branded experiences and events for clients, run Button Box Battle wherever people want to compete in person, popup massive immersive experiences anywhere with DreamPark, our downloadable mixed-reality theme park spinoff. We love exploring the future of fun and believe it happens shoulder-to-shoulder, not screen-to-face.
Trusted By
- INTEL
- DATABRICKS
- INSOMNIAC
- NFL
- HBO
- SAMSUNG
- TWO BIT CIRCUS FOUNDATION
- INDIECADE
Awards & Recognition
WORK WITH US
Have a crazy idea? We can build it.