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Unlocking the Business Secrets of Escape Rooms
- xyz-x 8y agoBroken article
- dang 8y agoPlease don't do this here. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10178989 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10178989 https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html
- dvfjsdhgfv 8y agoI'd like to read the article - unfortunately the link shows only two paragraphs.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- kaalaaaa 8y agoPretend http://facebook.com/l.php?u= http://facebook.com/l.php?u= to the WSJ URL and it should work. There's an extension (Bypass Paywalls) for firefox and chrome that does the same thing for a number of sites.
- dang 8y agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10178989 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10178989 https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html Users often post workarounds in the threads.
- dvfjsdhgfv 8y agoThis cat-and-mouse game is absurd.
- dang 8y agoYes, but the absurdity is in the state of the publications market, as the current top story talks about: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17007036 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17007036. 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.
- panarky 8y agohttps://outline.com/NCXu93 https://outline.com/NCXu93
- neonate 8y agoAlso http://archive.is/W7Af4 http://archive.is/W7Af4.
- merinowool 8y agoI find escape rooms extremely boring. I had experienced two in my life and I just couldn't get it. First of all, the escape room is not real - you can always just walk out and then you also know that the riddles were created to entertain average person, so there is nothing special about solving them. About two hours of pretending I enjoy it, so I wouldn't upset work mates that thought it will be great team bonding exercise.
- empath75 8y agoWhat were you expecting exactly? It’s just an excuse to solve puzzles as a group for an hour.
- mrrsm 8y agoIf you don't enjoy puzzles/riddles and you don't want to hang out with your work mates you will probably have a bad time doing an escape room. I'm not sure anyone is going into an escape room thinking they are actually stuck in there. Instead you go in thinking of it as a game where you want to get out as fast as possible.
- empath75 8y agoYeah it’s like, I was told there would be zombies at this haunted house and it turns out that it was just normal people in costumes and we were in no danger of having our brains feasted on by the undead at all. I would like a refund.
- merinowool 8y agoMy mom took me to such place when I was a child and my experience was exactly like you describe. We didn't get a refund. Maybe this is just personality thing.
- justinpombrio 8y agoI... I'm not sure if you're trolling us. If you're being serious, then yes, it is a personality thing.
- wallflower 8y agoAlternatively, when you go to an escape room, try to figure out how the puzzles were implemented. I am guessing lots of custom Arduino. For example, one puzzle required entering a specific price into a cash register to get the cash register drawer to open. How would that be done?
- faitswulff 8y agoHah! I did one that involved that puzzle just a few hours ago. Was it in Chicago?
- lastofus 8y agoYou are correct that a lot of rooms are using off the shelf Arduinos, often with buttons/reed switches/RFID tags for inputs, hooked up to a relay + maglock for the output. 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.
- Noos 8y agoThere are these weird fad-based franchises that pop up often and slowly die over time. Edible Arrangements (fruit arranged like flowers), Froyo frozen yogurt shops, Curves for women fitness centers, and more. You can go to a medium to large size strip mall and see them. 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.
- lsc 8y ago>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. 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
- michaelbuckbee 8y agoSure, but _comparably_ less cost to the business of the building plus full time staff (like you would need in retail or dining). 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.
- madengr 8y agoEdible Arrangements; ugh! I call them Botulism Bouquet. Let’s see how much surface area we can create with melons.
- yial 8y ago
- andygcook 8y agoI live in the Boston metro. There’s a place called Boda Borg that is sort of like Escape the Room, but much more fun in my opinion. There’s about 30 puzzles, and each one has three rooms. You can buy two hours or unlimited time. Once you solve each room, you are able to go to the next. If you get it wrong or run out of time after about 4 minutes, you just get a buzzer, leave, wait in line and do it all over again. We just went for a team out for our startup (https://tettra.co https://tettra.co) and it was a great activity. Highly recommend it if you have one near you.
- asdsa5325 8y agoDid you really have to plug your startup when telling the story?
- simonebrunozzi 8y agoHe did, and both you and I thought that it was unnecessary. Not all publicity is good publicity.
- neves 8y agoMy son birthday was in a escape room. The children loved it. The monitors know exactly how to nudge the children according their age. They escaped in the last second and laughed a lot.
- badcede 8y agoSounds a bit like how we might all still enjoy solving puzzles even after the AIs take over. (I don't think the AIs will take over, but I also don't think we'll stop solving puzzles if they do.)
- ggm 8y agoI think I watched too many 1960s horror movies. I can't stop thinking about the twenty-tonne block of concrete, or the ruby laser aimed between my legs on the band-saw table as the villain goes to feed his kitty..
- CosmicShadow 8y agoMy wife and I think they are fun and we know folks who've done 50+ and drive to different cities to do them. I spent a lot of time looking into the feasibility of starting my own, but the real estate cost here is too high and you need to be ready to run a brick and mortar business for a few years which is a huge leap from just freelancing. 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.
- level3 8y agoIs there anyone here who is greatly familiar with the overall scene/industry in the U.S.? I’m heavily into the scene in Tokyo and I’d love to compare notes. Based on articles like this one, I sense there are a lot of differences, but I’d also like to hear more anecdotes/perspectives from the consumer side.
- lovemenot 8y agoI live in Tokyo but hadn't heard about this. Could you please recomment a couple.
- level3 8y agoHow good is your Japanese? There are a ton of games in Tokyo, but if you can't read/speak Japanese your choices will be limited. In any case, ideally you should go with people you know, since communication will be important. 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)
- Schwolop 8y agoI've been in this business for a bit over four years now, operating as a B2B provider with one key partner (a chain of bowling alleys). Our main point of difference to the typical business in this space is that we don't operate our own rooms. We instead build turn-key games that can be replicated and shipped to site, and we've done a lot of R&D to entirely automate the game-master job. 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. 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!
- CM30 8y agoOut of curiosity, how exactly does this aspect work? > 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?
- gambiting 8y agoJust a quick guess for a possible explanation - a computer in the room is trying to crack the password(in a visible way, matrix-style flying text on screen), but it will take 20 minutes to do so. You are encouraged to find it yourself somewhere in the room and progress quicker - but if you fail, the computer "succeeds" at decoding and prints the password.
- Schwolop 8y agoYes, that's a good example. Basically in all our games there's some form of unseen protagonist/antagonist (e.g. a ghost, outside help via radio/TV/emails, an AI system, etc) and it helps the players over time. 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.