How we work
by Vegas City, building immersive experiences since 2018
We start with a date and an idea, not a specification. You bring the date and what the experience has to do; we work out what can be built by then, what it will take, and what to leave out to hold it. A browser build lands in weeks, and the rest of this page is how those weeks run.
What happens after you get in touch
This is the whole sequence from an email to a build in progress. Each stage ends with something in writing, so you always know what has been agreed and what comes next.
A first conversation about the date, the idea and the audience — Not a pitch, and not a brief. We ask when the experience has to be live, what it has to do and who it is for. If you have a deck, bring it; a date and a paragraph are enough to have the conversation.
A scoping conversation, where we say what is possible in the time — We come back with the shape of the build: what the experience would contain, what it would connect to, and what we would leave out to hold the date. This is where you find out whether the idea and the date fit, and we would rather tell you that now than at the end.
A fixed proposal — One document: what we will build, what it costs, when each stage lands, and what sits outside it. It is the point at which the numbers stop moving.
Build — We start. From the first week there is a build to look at on a link, and the rhythm described below is what keeps it that way until launch.
If the date and the idea do not fit, that is a scoping answer rather than a build problem. Saying so early is part of the job.
What we need from you
The work moves at the speed of what arrives. These are the things we need from your side, and the first of them decides the rest.
A date
A launch date, and any date the campaign cannot move past. The date decides the scope, so it is the first thing we ask for and the last thing we change.
A named decision-maker
One person who can say yes, or say no and mean it. A build that needs several people to agree before anything is signed off does not hold a weekly rhythm.
Brand assets and guidelines
Logos, typefaces, colours and the rules for using them. If a brand team has to approve the experience, bring them into the second conversation rather than the last week.
Access to the systems the experience has to touch
A test environment and someone who knows how it works, for anything the build reads from: a feed, a catalogue, an account system, the system your team publishes content into. Access is the second thing that delays a build, after content.
Content and copy
Final words, images, video and product data, in the formats we ask for. This is the biggest cause of delay on any build and the one we can least make up for: we can build the room, but we cannot invent what your brand says in it.
None of that is unusual. All of it at the start is the difference between a build that holds its date and one that quietly does not.
How a build runs
There is no reveal at the end. From the first week there is a build on a link, and something new on it every week until launch.
Something to look at every week
The build itself on a staging link, not a status report or a slide. You see the work rather than a description of it, which means you can disagree with it while it is still cheap to change.
A staging link you can share internally
It opens in a browser, so anyone in your organisation can look at it on whatever they already have. Send it to brand, to legal, to the person whose signature you need: no account, no install, no device to provision. That removes the approval step a build usually loses a week to.
One review a week, with the decision-maker in it
Notes in one sitting, from the people who need to give them, with the person who can settle a disagreement in the room. Feedback that arrives daily from every direction is how a build loses a week.
The rhythm is the point. A build you have seen every week cannot surprise you at the end.
What we do not do
A short list, because knowing what we are not saves us both a meeting.
We are a build and platform studio, not a media agency. We do not plan or buy media, and we do not report on a spend we did not place.
We do not write the campaign strategy or the buy. The idea and the audience are yours, or your agency’s. We say what is possible in the time and build it.
We are not an agency of record. We are not the team across everything your brand makes; we are the team that builds this.
We work to a fixed date. Scope is set against the date rather than the date against the scope, and once the proposal is signed the date is what we hold.
When it goes wrong
Dates slip. Sometimes it is ours; sometimes it is a content delivery, an approval, or a decision that took longer than anyone planned. If the date comes under threat, you hear it as soon as we know, with the options rather than the apology: what can be cut, what more would cost, and what the date becomes if nothing changes. Cutting scope is usually the cheaper answer, and it is the one we will put first.
A change after the proposal is signed is a re-quote, not a negotiation. You get the new cost and the new date before anyone starts work on it, and if the answer is that it cannot be done in the time, you hear that then rather than at the end.
The one thing we will not do is protect the date by quietly dropping something you did not agree to lose.
Start with a date
Bring the date, the audience and a sentence about the idea. We will tell you what is possible in the time, and what it takes.