The New York Times: Hours after sunset, our team had finally decrypted the poems and exposed the nine oracles. With the traitor in our midst unmasked and the guardian revealed, the portal to the library began to open.
Then my computer crashed, and I missed the climactic moments of the Secret Library, an online escape-room-style experience poised at the intersection of gaming and immersive theater.
13 comments:
I have always been a huge fan of escape rooms. Back in high school, almost one night every week, my friends and I would go out and attempt to tackle an escape room. Often we would go out, grab some dinner, and decide which room we were going to tackle that night. By the time we were graduating high school, we were running out of escape rooms to do. Back at home, there are several companies with several locations each that produce escape rooms. Slowly we started venturing to farther and farther locations in order to do new escape rooms...seeing that there was no point in doing an escape room twice, and that most places won't let you repeat an escape room. This new online escape room type experience seems like it could be really fun to participate in. I'm interested to see if more local places start producing these in the midst of the pandemic.
The idea of having an escape room online is quite interesting. Escape rooms are so tactile and interactive that it seems hard to translate to an online format. It seems as if essentially the ones talked about in the article are like video games except for living actors which is a very interesting concept. As someone discusses in the article escape rooms are all about collaboration and working together which is significantly harder to replicate over zoom or another streaming media. It is fascinating all the different directions game companies have gone in adapting their escape rooms to the pandemic. They have gone in so many innovative directions and I think that "normal" theater could learn from their many examples. It is also very exciting that since the production value can be lower there is so much room for innovation. I am very curious to see the directions escape rooms go in, even after reopening, and hope that traditional mainstream theater can learn from their example.
The opening description of this virtual escape room makes me think of DND and roleplaying games. I only ever dipped my foot into the world of LARP and table-top roleplaying games, but now that I think about it, these games make for a pretty solid base to build off of to create successful online, interactive, theatrical experience. My favorite parts of some of the escape rooms I did when I was in high school, however, were the physical aspects and more obstacle-course-like challenges with puzzles mixed in. The digital world of escape rooms makes them more accessible to physically disabled folx, so the continuation of these online events post-pandemic does have its positives. However, I do worry a little bit that because of the drastic price drop in what it takes to produce a digital escape room versus an physical in-person escape room, this could drive the escape room market to be entirely digital, and that would be kind of a bummer for folx like me that miss the physicality of some of those event spaces.
I love escape rooms, I love them, and I’ll say it again. It doesn’t matter what age you are, you can still have fun in them. They’re made for virtually everyone, unless it’s like a scary one or something and there are certain age restrictions, everyone can try one out and get the experience which I find exciting. But now hearing that escape rooms are going online, I am even more excited. I’m always really bored and love doing fun things like going to escape rooms, but obviously because of the pandemic we cannot go anywhere or do anything fun really, so the fact that they are trying to make escape rooms virtual as well is really cool but sounds complicated. Complicated in the way like it’s going to be difficult to portray everything the same as it is in person, which goes for everything moving online especially theatre, but escape rooms are all about the experience you have, so I hope it;s not compromised.
I feel like I am aging myself; the concept of virtual escape rooms has been a thing since I was in middle school. They were done in Flash animation and were always on sites with other flash games that my friends and I would play during computer lab instead of actual work (some things never change). They were very much old school style point and click to interact with stuff, but oh boy do I remember them and some of them were genuinely hard (and some were scary)! With flash dying out, I am glad to see that more sophisticated virtual escape rooms are coming to life. I would be so fascinated to see what the interactions could be like. Would they be multiplayer? Would it be a solo run? Are there people you can interact with? I actually have never done an ‘IRL’ escape room, so I very much am excited to try something like this.
I absolutely love escape rooms and think they are the perfect way to bring people together. In person escape rooms really make you feel as though you are trapped in a room with a bunch of people and force you to work together to get out. Something that makes me kinda nervous with these zoom escape rooms is that it is very hard to make connections with people over a webcam, and escape rooms require at least a little bit of chemistry and teamwork to be able to escape. I also wonder how they will be doing the more hands on parts of an escape room as that was always an integral part of the in person escape room experience. I am looking forward to this as I have been loving anything that is bringing people together right now, especially as it is getting closer to the end of the semester. Hopefully this can be something people can play online and meet new people, which is something in person escape rooms lack, and bring people some joy during this terrible virus.
I love how the pandemic has fostered so much innovation. I definitely see a big collaboration opportunity for theater/video game/escape room people. The real allure is how interactive it is. I’ve been in an escape room once and it honestly wasn’t that memorable. I don’t remember even one thing that I did. I did have an idea though. I used to work at this “space camp” as an actor/flight director. It was a team building thing that was kind of Star Trek themed. Everyone had a role and a job to do . We would control the storyline and what happened on their screens and then the captain and crew would make decisions and their mission would develope from there . We could send astroides, make alien messages and ships appear, break items on the ship and board the ship as intruders that they had to shoot. My favorite thing was using the voice changer to come on the intercom as different characters (the computer, the engineer, an alien, etc ) anyway I’m envisioning something like that only virtual. It’s like part video game on their screens but they can also see their crew and actors could come in the screen anddevelop the story.
I found it interesting that one of the escape rooms deemed their show impossible to “happen in person.” I appreciate the innovation and the risk that this show took, as I feel like most industries and shows have only strived to do as much as they can to go back to what life was like before, when that is impossible as of now. Instead, we should be innovating like these escape rooms have been forced to, in order to make new strides and new developments in the concept of live entertainment. Online escape rooms are something that never occurred to me, but I think they could be a great way for people to spend some time together during the pandemic. In my experience, I have already spent tons of time with friends over Netflix party or playing video games together, so an alternative experience is new and exciting. I praise this article for being written and bringing awareness to this niche business.
I’ve never done a live escape room, but I think I would be the kind of person who would enjoy one. I definitely enjoyed those flash games as a kid (I feel like some of them were literally called Escape the Room?) set up as simple point and click adventures where you had to move objects around and solve logic puzzles, and it’s interesting to see live escape rooms regressing back to that, in a way? There’s definitely a market for this kind of thing - as I was reading the article, I started wondering if Among Us could be considered a virtual escape room in some ways, and if/how PVP could be incorporated into a live escape room in the same way. There’s definitely an appeal right now, especially with people not being able to be physically around their friends but still wanting to have fun experiences together. Currently I have a group of high school friends where we have a zoom movie night every once in a while, and the experience is frustratingly lacking to the in-person real thing. This could be a fun way to enjoy something interactive with each other that’s designed for this format!
It is so interesting how we are all learning how to shift to online platforms and trying to find what works best. I found the different iterations they went through fascinating because it really was trial and error, such as when they tried strapping a camera on an employee. This is completely new territory and they want the experience to be just as great as the customers want it to be. After reading this, I realized it received the same feedback as online theatre performances. It can’t recreate the feeling you have in person. It’s just different. Personally, I really want to try it out, especially with my friends who are in other states. I think we are finding great ways to connect with people when we can’t physically be in the same space and this might be something we can continue when things eventually get back to normal.
This was an article that piqued my interest because I have always wanted to do an escape room, so I thought it was really great that they were still happening, in some format, during the pandemic. I don’t quite understand how it would work over Zoom, I would need to do one myself to understand it, but it seems like it would be a really fun way to spend the afternoon with a group of friends, no matter where they are located in the world. They mention that typically such rooms take a year to create, but that theatres were able to reuse some sets to create it in a week- I think these types of engagements provide a wonderful work opportunity for set designers, set dressers and scene shop employees. It’s a great way to continue to bring funds in while maintaining safe social distancing systems- and encourages creativity and critical thinking during these lackluster times.
I have been fascinated by escape rooms my entire life. The immersive element of being in a room and having to solve your way out is so intriguing and exciting. I have had the opportunity to take part in 2 escape rooms in nyc, one of them was designed by the same scenic designer that designed the immersive Sleep No More in Chelsea where I worked my Sophomore year. I find the Scenic Design for immersive escape rooms a very fun challenge because the audience is so close to the set. The set is an essential element for the plot and the set is what interacts with the audience to create the experience. It is very interesting to read how the escape room experience is being altered to fit the needs of the global pandemic. I am more interested in creating a way to have people do escape rooms with people that they know, and then disinfected the rooms.
If I had the time and the money I would be all over these digital escape rooms. I’ve only ever been to a few in person, but each time I went I had a great experience. It's so interesting to see a theater adjacent business react to the pandemic. Escape rooms and other live, hands on experiences are arguably the only ones hit harder by the pandemic than the theater. It honestly sounds like these companies have created something like an elevated Among Us. this isnt a bad thing, just a testament to how effective and engaging this platform can be. I'm really excited to see how these will continue to evolve as we spend more and more time in our homes.
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