Comment by gkoberger | Hacker News Reader

Comment by gkoberger | Hacker News Reader

I was really fascinated by the industry, so I got into it and eventually built my own as a side project (http://StartupEscape.com)

It can be a good business if you have a few rooms. There's two types of people who get into it: passionate people, and people who buy designs online for a decent revenue. The latter makes more money, but there's some amazing escape rooms that are Disney-parks-level.

Unfortunately, escape rooms work way better in non-cities. Rent is too expensive in big cities, so the rooms suffer. Many of the best rooms are in really random places, since financially it works out better. It's a really interesting space, and I'm starting to see a few big companies form around it. I am curious to see if big companies (with decent but generic games) overtake the smaller passion project ones.

(Money aside, designing and building an escape room is one of the most fun things I've ever done. There was a solid mix of cool tech, puzzle design, prop design, showmanship and more. If you're interested, I can help get started! My email is in my profile)

We went to one escape room is a super sketchy part of town. It looked like an old abandoned business. I imagine rent was super cheap. The escape room was awesome. One of the best I've been to.

Mine is in SF, in the Tenderloin. There's a few reasons! First is that rent is cheaper. But more importantly, the landlords are more flexible. In a nicer area, landlords would prefer a restaurant or shop, with 5-10 year lease. Nobody wants to sign a 5-10 year lease for escape rooms, since there's not a lot of replay-ability. Also, escape rooms require weird build outs and permits, so landlords of nicer areas prefer not to deal with it. Lastly, since most escape rooms traditionally are one-off, there's no existing credit scores or bank accounts. Why go with a random person with a scary sounding "escape room" when you can get a chain store or restaurant?

What are your favorite or most exotic gimicks? Like additional rooms hidden behind mirrors, or blacklight revealed writings on the walls?

I’m always curious to find out what new things people are creating, but due to the nature of the game it’s quite hard to find “reviews” of escape rooms and I mostly just talk superficially with others about where they’ve gone and how they liked them.

I think the best are ones that fir the story well. Multiple rooms is always important, because if not you get bored of the main room after an hour and it feels like you're ending on a lull. It's best to have a small room at the end that's all new, so people get a rush.

Some things I've seen that are memorable are the ones that use senses you're not expecting. Ordering jars by smell, for example. Or shooting something with a dart... anything physical like that. I've seen some cool things with projectors, with actors, and more.

I live in Munich (the city with the highest rents in Germany) and there are like 4 or 5 rooms within walking distance (Maxvorstadt/Schwabing West area). I wonder how they make a profit if there is so much competition close by.

Went to Startup Escape last week with my team! It was a lot of fun :)

I saw you signed up and meant to email you! I don't run it day to day, but I check every so often to see if companies I like play :) glad you had fun!

I was thinking on the idea as a possible business, but it seemed like the best way to make money would be to own the land and commercially zoned real-estate is very expensive

It's a decent business but not a great investment. You can only get X people through a room per month, so your profit has a cap. Rooms are expensive to build ($20k to buy one, $30-200k to build one), and they have a two year shelf life before you see a huge drop in traffic. Whereas a restaurant can be timeless, escape rooms need lots of updating. Unless you have multiple rooms (aka get people to come back a few times) or multiple cities (move escape rooms every few years to another city), it's a decent business but won't make you rich.

Just as a side note, I wonder if this could be a better alternative to job interviews. An opportunity to have fun and interact with possible candidates.

I've actually discussed this with a local escape room owner, for our 50ish people company it's wasn't worth the effort, but if you are hiring 20-30 people in a short time it could be worth the effort.

Please don’t. I get that every time a programmer solves a puzzle they then want to turn that into an interview question, but those usually have no correlation to work performance, and having to solve problems in a physical space sure isn’t fair to folks who have disabilities that make that difficult but could still work fine behind a desk.

At first I thought it was a good idea. Not to verify problem solving skills but to maybe get a more dynamic interview of the person working in teams. But yeah, you’re right. This would quickly turn into a dick measuring contest and soon there’s be “cracking the escape room” books dedicated to optimal escape room strategies.

Hey at least escape rooms would be better than coding white boards. Probably more of an actual test of a programmers abilities ;)

It's also just nice to do an activity and not worry about work.

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