2023-09-03 16:00:00
The Verbaert brothers (Jean-Louis and Frédéric) firmly believed in the potential of their new jewel, installed in Mouscron and opened in March 2019.
Four and a half years later, the disappointment is up to the ambitions of the time and the means deployed to achieve it. “The feeling that predominates today is above all an immense frustration“, confides Jean-Louis Verbaert.
Today, Frédéric has left the ship and resumed a more conventional job. “He is disgusted with the treatment reserved for the independents since the start of the health crisis“, continues Jean-Louis. “I stayed because I can’t see myself giving up now. I must be a bit crazy, but it took three and a half years to develop a game. I don’t know if we will be able to export and exploit this concept elsewhere. But it will probably no longer be in Belgium. And certainly not in Picardy Wallonia“, specifies the eldest of the Verbaert brothers.
From Virtual Cabs…
Jean-Louis is fighting to recover the intellectual property of everything Virtual Park has created for the past six years. An end in almost general indifference.
The adventure had started modestly in the city center of Tournai through Virtual Cabs in 2017. “They were cabins and the surface was quite modest“, recalls our interlocutor.
The concept quickly seduced and confirmed the Verbaert brothers in their ambition to expand. All that remained was to find a welcoming land. It is in Mouscron that they settle and open Virtual Park, in March 2019. “We could have improved further if we had had investors. But we couldn’t afford to wait any longer.“
The first year is more than satisfactory. Virtual Park welcomes nearly 30,000 visitors between March 2019 and March 2020. Then crash! The coronavirus, confinement and everything has to be redone. “The first year, we groped. Logic for a sector as demanding as virtual reality. We were really counting on the second year to confirm the good start and reach 60,000 admissions.“
… at Virtual Park
There was never a confirmation. Sanitary measures and the energy crisis weigh down the attendance figures for Virtual Park. “We have never found more than 15,000 visitors per year. As much to saye that was untenable. “
Jean-Louis Verbaert does not neglect the impact of the health crisis on his nascent tool. But what he most criticizes the authorities for is not the management of the crisis. “It’s post-covid. We were promised an ambitious recovery plan. The leisure sector is still waiting for the Walloon Government to implement this plan. It’s too late for us, but it was mostly empty promises.“
In the rue des Bengalis, it is not only the leisure park that is closing, it is also the research and development center. “My job is not the owner of a virtual reality park. He’s an engineer. Virtual Park was also an incubator for the development of virtual reality. Today, all countries have grasped the importance of the sector. VR takes off in Germany, the Netherlands or France. Not in Belgium, that’s a fact. EVA, the virtual Esport arena that is a hit everywhere thanks to After-H (the multiplayer game takes place in a post-apocalyptic world) was developed here. All these elements leave us with a bitter taste. The impression of never having been able to exploit Virtual Park to its fullest“, concludes Jean-Louis Verbaert.
The building will be put up for auction. As for the only brother Verbaert still on the manoeuvres, he admits to not having “nothing to throw away from experience “and won’t give up.
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