The Midnight Oil Club

In 2022, as the world reemerged from two years of COVID isolation, LionTree's annual retreat celebrated the return to social gatherings with creativity and a healthy dose of nostalgia. We'd been crafting bespoke productions for the event since 2019, and The Midnight Oil Club was one of our several contributions that year.

A retro-futuristic arcade paying homage to over a century of shared entertainment — more than 100 years of gaming history in a single room, unified by a cohesive Art Deco and Blade Runner-inspired aesthetic. Genuinely old machines sitting next to games nobody had seen before.

I led the design, fabrication, and programming of the arcade, from curating the vintage machines to building the custom pieces from scratch.

The vintage side included penny arcade machines dating back to 1905 and one of the first claw machines ever produced. Alongside them sat our own creations: a volumetric fortune teller using AI to generate personalized fortunes, a hologram-enhanced boxing game, a body-tracking ski ball machine with curved LED displays and holographic elements, and an NFT postcard machine. A bar served era-appropriate themed drinks, while lighting, decor, and soundscapes set a mood that was warm and futuristic at once.

The arcade wasn't just about the machines — it was an atmosphere. Guests lingered, played, and connected, which was the entire point of that year's theme.