Unlocking the Business Secrets of Escape Rooms
wsj.com
wsj.com
ER enthusiasts typically seem to prefer losing to having a puzzle spoiled by a clue, and as a result, often hate our rooms. First timers, who make up >99.5% of our customers, absolutely love it. It's a weird position to not focus on repeat business, but in such a supply-limited market there doesn't seem to be any shortage of new customers. It's also a pleasant market to operate in because virtually all the other operators are our friends - everyone refers customers to other venues because they can't replay your rooms anyway. There's hardly any of the cut-throat business practices you might see in other fields.
AMA if you're interested!
> Our rooms track players' progress and introduce easier and easier hints over time, and eventually bypass puzzles (with justifiable story reasons) so everyone sees all the interesting parts.
How do you justify bypassing puzzles and introducing hints while not breaking immersion?
We try to do things like detect partial solutions that might indicate the players are close to a full solution, because the worst thing is to bypass a puzzle when the players are actively engaged with it and having fun. On the other hand, if we know there's more interesting gameplay to come, and the players are spending ages on a particular puzzle, we want them to progress. This is the part where some enthusiasts disagree with our approach - some of them would rather fail than be pushed through. Fortunately, the bulk of our players would rather be given increasingly easy hints until they "solve" things themselves.
I talked to the owner a bit, and he said that their room was also part of a franchise. They sent the floor plan of the room to the game provider and received the full instructions for setting up the room, as well as a shipment of all the electronics and other stuff needed for the puzzles.
Of course every "instance" of such a room is unique in some way. But all in all it seems to be a good concept - a company with some smart people comes up with interesting puzzles, and escape rooms all over the world implement those ideas in an actual building.
I have no idea if this is accurate or not, but it definitely was one of the best ER experiences I've had so far.
The article (can't quote because paywall) specifically mentioned the highly competitive nature of the space as making it difficult for new entrants. Higher startup costs were specifically mentioned but I imagine that extends to marketing/customer mind share.
You seem to be describing a more collegiate atmosphere than the article does around competition. Do you think this is because of your position as a more established player or do you think the article overemphasized that (or quoted someone who wanted that message to get out there)?
The groups in A are all friendly and collegiate. The groups in B are less so. We see group A continuing happily, but not really growing or turning significant profits - one of my friends in this group described it as "I bought myself a fun job".
We've seen a fair few groups in B fold. As the article suggests, you can't start with a mere $7000 now - customer expectations are higher, and there are enough review sites (e.g. TripAdvisor) that anyone with a low quality game will be called out pretty quickly.
Groups in C (include Nate Martin from the article) all seem to be doing well, but it's a hard slog to get sufficiently well known to become a primary supplier to others. My company is kind of in C, but we partnered early with a key chain in our geography and there's both good and bad to that choice. Not personally operating our rooms certainly has some drawbacks, but being able to build multiple copies of a room simultaneously has enormous cost savings too.
What would you say is the distribution of emphasis on 1) story, 2) the individual puzzles, 3) gimmicks/“wow” factor, 4) the room itself (i.e. decor)?
Are there any particular trends you’ve noticed in terms of themes or gimmicks?
For the operators I know, most focus on 2) and 4). Most believe the puzzles are the core hook and must be well designed. Then they believe the puzzles have to fit the room theme. If a story can be squeezed in too, then they try, but it's rarely the driver. And gimmicks and wow factor aren't usually high on the list, but some operators (arguably us) do find these make customers want to play when they hear about them, so they're certainly not ignored.
People say they are fads, maybe, but they are essentially just another "something to do" with a group of friends or co-workers that isn't "going to a bar". If you like it, you do another one, maybe with different friends, etc. The problem is in smaller cities there are only a few rooms and you finish them all and have nothing new to do, so then they either need to reinvest to redo their rooms or they bleed and die, meanwhile in big metros 100s are popping up and shutting down constantly, and the quality spectrum is incredibly wide.
If you like point and click adventure games or hidden object style games, this is for you, gets you out of the house. If you are a game designer, they seem super fun to want to try and design and you get to hack at cool tech to build fun surprises and then delight in seeing real people be amazed by it daily, or alternatively frustrated or ripping your room apart at the hinges. Either way, seems like it'd be fun and profitable to do if you were in the right location. Even if you sold out only on weekends that's like 4 rooms * 8 slots * 4 people * $25 = $3200 * 2 days = $6400 a weekend in revenue.
Some of the higher end rooms will pay a little extra for PLCs such as the ones from AutomationDirect.
Another somewhat common controller are the BooBox controllers which come from the haunt industry. A lot of haunters got into escape rooms as a way to supplement income the rest of the year.
First off, there are four general types of escape games in Japan: 1) Room-type (single team trapped in a room/series of rooms) 2) Hall-type (multiple teams at separate tables in a conference room/hall) 3) Stadium-type (large areas like convention centers/stadiums, sometimes with no limit to team size) 4) Field-type (no team size limit and no time limit; play area ranges from in-store to city-wide)
In general, room-types are the best experience for beginners, since they are more immersive, you don't have the distraction of other teams, you're free to talk/make noise without fear of spoiling other teams, and you have the staff's full attention. I get the impression that the majority of games outside Japan are room-type, while hall-type and field-type are much more common in Japan.
If you just want to get the feel for what kind of puzzles you'll have to solve, field-types are low-investment, and are less stressful since you can solve them at your own pace.
Most of the games I would usually recommend for beginners aren't running, but out of the ones that are (that I've already played), I would suggest these if your Japanese is fine:
- 時空研究所からの脱出 (room-type)
- 下北沢謎解き街歩き (field-type)
- ある牢獄からの脱出1&2 (room-type; highly recommend going with a full group you know)
- マグノリア銀行からの脱出 (hall-type)
- のび太の宝島からの脱出 (hall-type; better if you like Doraemon)
These are also okay for beginners but may be better if it's not your first time:
- 2099年からの脱出 (room-type; this is a sequel of sorts to 時空研究所からの脱出)
- 不思議な晩餐会へようこそ (hall-type; the tables use projection mapping to advance the story)
- Escape from the Red Room (room-type; also can be played in English)
- The Mummy Escape Game (room-type)
- ある都市伝説からの脱出 (room-type; it's an escape game + haunted house, so only if you like horror)
- アイドルは100万回死ぬ2 (room-type; this one's a "time-loop game" where instead of solving puzzles you're trying to figure out how to successfully break the time loop, but very fun even for those who aren't good at puzzle-solving)
- Any of the Detective Conan games (hall-type)
- ドラキュラ城からの脱出 (hall-type)
- 監獄アルバトロスからの脱出 (room-type)
All of the suggestions above are SCRAP-produced games, since I feel they're entertaining even for beginners, especially if you're not sure whether you'll like escape games in the first place.
If you can't read/speak Japanese:
- Escape from the Red Room (mentioned above)
- Mystery Mail Box Global Edition (field-type)
- Tokyo Metro: The Underground Mysteries (field-type; the play area is city-wide, taking you to various Metro stations; not currently running but they've run one every year, generally starting in October)
- Any of the Escape Hunt Tokyo (recently rebranded as Nazobako)-produced games (room-type)
My guess is that it's mostly advertising in franchise lifestyle places (like magazines) combined with the fact that it's selling a relatively low-cost service and works more by appointment than an open storefront. Sort of a cheap version of a business retreat or clown showing up at your birthday party.
Interestingly, a company as big as Square Enix has one, their "Trials of Bahamut" escape room in various cities.
Oh, and they aren't really new per se, it's just dinner mystery theatre without the dinner. Places have been doing that for decades.
well, you've gotta rent the building, so if you don't have it full all the time, that's a pretty hefty cost, at least around here. The days of $1/sqft industrial space are long gone
The other more recent innovation is "roomless" escape rooms. Basically, they'll show up at your office or house with a trunk full of stuff, set it up let you work your way through it, collect a check and leave.
Froyo places are far from dead, it's just that after the initial uptrend with a place on every corner, it has solidified as a market of a few chain stores. I'm expecting the same to happen with escape rooms.
Also, not sure if low-cost is right either, escape rooms are usually around 30e per hour per person at least here where I am from.
and finally, your last sentence feels like a weird sort of "oh its just x but with y" handwaving that you could use on any sort of new activity.
As for low cost, I meant to start one. Service-based, low amount of employees, not much need for location if you focus on appointments, etc.
They’re much smaller than Square Enix, but they’re the most popular escape game producer in Japan. And escape games are currently booming here, so they’ve managed to work with a lot of big franchises.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html
Users often post workarounds in the threads.
Since HN would be much worse off without articles from NYT, WSJ, New Yorker, Economist, and others, I don't know what a better policy would be.
Well, yes. It's a game you play with other people. Have you never encountered a game before? Did you know that when you play chess, you are not actually commanding real knights and bishops to fight each other?
You reminded me of a game called "Battle Chess", in which bishops hold glaives, the rook is a stone golem, pawns carry short swords. And yes, they do battle to the death in accordance to the rules in chess.
I played it years ago, and found that the death scene was different for each thing attacked. It was quite entertaining :)
I remember the first time I saw a king kill a bishop. I was expecting something fancy, and instead the king just pulled out a handgun and opened fire.
I did an escape room last week, while it was quite fun... the things you had to do to get out weren't exactly inventive. It was more luck than anything else, as you couldn't work out what to do. There wasn't really any logic to it, no connections between challenges just a load of unrelated tasks that lead to the door opening.
That said I'd still recommend it though, at least give it a try!