In the past couple of years, I’ve been honored to have a few creators invite me to join their creative process. Whether the relationship is ongoing or a single meeting, as a consultant, I always start with one request…
Show me your player journey.
WHAT’S THE PLAYER JOURNEY?
Think of it as a written outline of your experience. It walks through the show beat by beat, notably from the player’s perspective. Write down what happens, but strictly through the guest’s eyes.
This allows you to focus on what the players experience and when, and nothing more. It’ll show you what’s irrelevant, and what really matters. It will challenge you to consider onboarding and offboarding, when the crossover to the Magic Circle happens, what facts players learn, when they receive a goal, what twists happen when, how they achieve their goals, and how the whole comes to a fulfilling end.
The X factor of the immersive industry is the invitation for the audience to become players. To make the most of that X factor, we should consider first and foremost what the player is experiencing.
When Strange Bird Immersive is in the early stages of developing show ideas, each pitch takes the form of a two-page player journey. It sketches out the main story beats and sets, often defaulting to “insert plot-driven puzzling here”—the details do not matter as much as the whole. The competing outlines allow us to quickly identify what stories seem most exciting and what stories feel too boring or too complicated.
We’re looking for that sinker pitch, although sometimes a curveball shows up in the creative process.
When I’m invited into a project, the player journey quickly communicates to me your vision for the production. I get excited. I can see it happening! It will also reveal what decisions still need to be made and if there are any structural problems that need solutions. I have the context to see what’s working and what’s not.
WHAT’S NOT THE PLAYER JOURNEY?
When I’m consulting, creators sometimes want to share with me a lot of information. They’re excited about all they have developed. But details aren’t where you start. Details need context. And most details end up as “nice to know.” The first meetings should be dedicated to “need to know.”
Essentially, you can’t pitch a concept from the writer’s POV.
Skip the lore, at least for the first meeting. Instead, show me how you’ll get players to care enough to engage in the world in the first place. Only when they care, will the details mean anything at all.
HOW TO WRITE
Think of it like a short story. I prefer to use sentences instead of bullet points. It makes for a more exciting read.
Keep it short. Unless you’re outlining a multi-day experience, you shouldn’t need more than a few pages. Each sentence can be a beat.
If the project is in the early stages, don’t get bogged down by the details. A sketch will suffice. Feel free to write “…and then they work on some compelling plot-driven engagement/puzzles for a while.”
I write my own player journeys in a third person limited voice (I only describe what they see/hear/touch at that moment). Third person omniscient would not be useful here, so avoid that. If you’d like to give it more immediacy, you could write in second person “you.”
Remember that the player journey is for internal use only, so no need to make it a perfect piece of writing.
SAMPLE PLAYER JOURNEY
Once the players have booked the escape game Lucidity, they receive communication from Dr. Riley Newmark thanking them for volunteering for her experimental study in lucid dreaming.
Players arrive in an office lobby all in black and white that, when they look more closely, is by no means normal. Dr. Newmark enters in a lab coat to greet them, directing them to restrooms. She is spooked by a statue in the lobby, it’s apparently a new installation.
When everyone is ready, she leads the team to her lab: a small blue room outfitted with a desk, computers, cabinets, and a bank of seats with large halos hovering overhead. She invites them to sit. “Not to worry, the halos are not active yet…“
First look at Lucidity. We expect the halos to be active by the end of the year.
WHAT IF MY PROJECT IS ALREADY LAUNCHED?
As a writing tutor in college, I encouraged writers to do what I called “a reverse outline.” Look at the draft you just wrote and create from it an outline. If you find a paragraph that doesn’t say something new or doesn’t rhetorically follow from what came before, congratulations! You just identified a problem you can fix!
The same goes for a show that’s already running. Write down what players or guests experience beat by beat. Is the onboarding too long? Does the offboarding feel inadequate? Can you identify the moment players are given a reason to care?
An outline can show holes in your Magic Circle or places to optimize the flow. Getting that sweet sense of flow is what immersion is all about.
WAIT. YOU CONSULT?
For a blog reader? Absolutely! While I remain primarily dedicated to the Strange Bird brand, I relish the opportunity to explore other approaches in this medium I love best, and the chance to collaborate with a fellow creative is a both a privilege and a profound joy.
Let’s chat at Recon LA this weekend, or reach out to me via email. I would love to hear about your player journey.
Flashback to Boston 2022, Cameron and I gave a talk on “The Magic Circle: Delivering Game Changing Immersion” at the Reality Escape Convention. It was part tell, part show, and everyone in that room left with a pledge to deepen their immersive experiences. One creator told me they implemented a key change that very day, and I’ve heard the term “Magic Circle” in discussions ever since.
It had a real impact.
With permission from the RECON team, ever eager to propel the industry as I am, I am presenting the core content of that talk here to share with a wider audience.
The immersion technique you’ll read about today you can implement without great expense, perhaps even before the day is done.
If you enjoy this article, RECON 2024 is coming up in Los Angeles, August 18-19. You’ll hear from thought leaders in the industry, on topics from game iteration and storytelling to marketing and managing contractors.
Let’s begin with a tale of two escape rooms…
Code Name: Eagle
Your game master greets you in the lobby. You sign waivers, use the restroom, lock up your stuff, the game master teaches you how to use a directional lock.
Once escorted inside the room, your team is immersed in a replica fine arts museum. It’s beautifully lit. You can see the brushstrokes on the paintings, and a statue looms over you. There’s a lightning flash through a window, and a thunderclap follows. The GM grabs a remote and turns on the TV above the door. You watch a 2-minute rules video. Then you watch a 2-minute scenario video, telling you are heist team, Code Name: Eagle, here to steal a painting.
“My name is Susan, call for Susan if you need a hint!” She starts the clock and leaves. When you ask for a hint, you get a memo on the TV. When your team successfully nabs the painting, Susan opens the exit door and asks…
“DID YOU HAVE FUN???”
Now imagine a different game.
Code Name: FALCON
Your game master greets you in the lobby. You sign waivers, use the restroom, lock up your stuff, the game master teaches you how to use a directional lock. You GM leads you down a hallway where you watch a two-minute rules video.
The GM hands you a backpack, opens the game room door, and quickly shuts it. Your team is immersed in a replica fine arts museum. It’s beautifully lit. You can see the brushstrokes on the paintings, and a statue looms over you. There’s a lightning flash through a window, and a thunderclap follows.
Suddenly you hear a sound from the backpack:
“Schrk. Team Falcon. Are you in the nest? I repeat. This is your hacker, Phoenix. Are you in the nest?”
You open the backpack, find the walkie-talkie, and say, “We’re in, Phoenix. What do we do next?”
“First, you need to find a way to disable the cameras. Communication is risky, but let me know if you need my assistance. Over.”
When you ask for a hint, Phoenix is there for you over the walkie talkie. When your team successfully nabs the painting, Phoenix yells, “GO! GO! GO! I’ve got the systems down for the next ten seconds! Make your escape NOW!”
You rush out into the hallway, painting in hand, and then your GM aka Phoenix congratulates you on a successful mission.
Which would you rather play?
Do I even need to ask? I didn’t think so.
But these games and their customer journeys are close cousins. They have the same hosting ritual, the same rules video, the same set, the same puzzles.
What’s different is the commitment to the Magic Circle. The creator of Code Name: Falcon respects the world of the heist, taking it as a truth. Players experience the immersive adventure of a heist, just as the owner promised they would get on the website.
Here are competing schematics of the two games.
In Eagle, the greeting and lock tutorial are outside the circle, with the game inside. But the Rules Video, Scenario Video, Hint System, and Congrats, keep breaking the Magic Circle, constantly reminding the team that this is just a game.
In Falcon, everything that addresses the experience as a game takes places outside the game room. The Rules video is in a hallway. There is no scenario video, in its place is an in-world introduction. The hint system is in-world, even the exit from the game stayed in-world, with the out-of-world congratulations happening outside.
And the cost difference between a Magic Circle and no Magic Circle? A walkie-talkie, a backpack, and training GMs to talk like the Hacker Phoenix. Oh, wait, actually it may be net cheaper, as Falcon doesn’t require a scenario video. A little bit of script took its place.
This is a magic less about money and more about commitment.
the Magic Circle Defined
The Magic Circle is the boundary between the ordinary and imagined world. The border is a transition point, a threshold. Within awaits a new world with new rules and the need for new behaviors. Weddings, conferences, sports, board games, rituals, these are all Magic Circles we encounter in our every day.
Hallowed.
I believe the term first appears in Homo Ludens (1938) by Johan Huizinga, a Dutch cultural historian. The book examines the importance of play in developing culture.
“Just as there is no formal difference between play and ritual, so the ‘consecrated spot’ cannot be formally distinguished from the playground. The arena, the card table, the magic circle, the temple, the stage, the court of justice, etc., are all in form and function playgrounds, i.e. forbidden spots, isolated, hedged round, hallowed, within which special rules obtain. All are temporary worlds within the ordinary world, dedicated to the performance of an act apart.” (Homo Ludens)
Take that in. Read it again.
If this sounds like I’m suggesting that the play of an escape room is in fact sacred, well, I am. We are talking about magic, after all. This is higher plane stuff, the stuff that makes life worth living.
Kids treat play seriously. Adults need play just as badly, but they need commitment from the designer to feel comfortable joining in. They need a leader.
We’ve all had that embarrassed game host, apologizing in body language or even in words for how silly all the make-believe they’re about to deliver is, only half committing to it. And then the experience itself keeps interrupting you with reminders it’s just a silly game. That higher plane couldn’t be further out of reach.
Be the lead kid. Dare to plant your feet and ask the question, “Will you play with me?” More than mechatronics or smoke machines, committing to the Magic Circle is the difference between a nicely decorated game and a cinematic adventure.
I still want to play pirates. I bet you do, too.
But that lead kid commitment must come from both the designer and the staff.
within the Circle
Once players are inside your world, you want to ensure consistency. Follow the simple rule of thumb, familiar to actors…
…except think of it on the scale of the whole world, rather than just the people in it.
You’ll want to start with a fully believable space. Finish your set, floor to ceiling. Leave no trace behind that you built this world from Home Depot.
Lighting fundamentally transforms your space into another world. Lighting is seriously powerful magic. If I could snap my fingers and improve one production value at every escape room facility, it would be the lighting.
Worklights. Only employees ever see this. No shadows = no soul.
Game play lights. Much better.
Séance lights. Shadows abound.
Consider appropriate sound for the world. Are there any practical sound effects, like a fireplace crackling? Would score help create a sense of a plane elevated from the normal world? Yes, yes it would. Think about diagetic and nondiagetic sound.
Puzzles also need to fit in the world (see my post on immersive puzzle design). Make sure every puzzle has an author, a reason to be in the world.
To preserve the circle, you’ll also want immersive hinting, which means a character in the world who wants to see the players succeed.
But Magic Circles are not just production design. They’re also people design. Consider if you want actors in your experience. Just one committed actor is a giant immersive bomb.
The greatest magic is in the eyes. (Chaney Moore as Madame Daphne)
Make sure you make a clear choice and communicate it to your staff: are you an actor, yes or no. I’m tired of being greeted by a GM who is half-acting-it. Half-acting is worse than no acting.
And actors aren’t for everybody. We get it. It’s a whole other art form to master. Should you opt not to have actors in the world, note that commitment to the Magic Circle makes a couple demands…
Your Magic Circle must begin at the game door (otherwise your hosts will need to act a bit, since the world spills past the door).
You cannot allow any out-of-character hosts in the game room.
Look at this. Take it in. It’s ridiculous. It’s blasphemy.
This person does not belong to this world.
If I called you out just now, you’re not alone. Everyone does it. It’s inconvenient to brief teams in the hallway, and yes, I know logistics matter. But do they matter more than your guest experience?
The most exciting part for the guest is walking into the room for the first time. Throwing on the brakes to talk to them about the rules while they steal glances of your cool world like naughty children is an unmitigated disaster. It shatters their immersion immediately. Let the team ride that high and start their adventure the moment they cross that threshold.
Finally, consider script design. The best Magic Circles host beginnings and endings to the story within the world proper. It was the bookends that really brought the Code Name: Eagle game down, with the drawn out in-room hosting and the dreaded “Did you have fun?” ending. Craft an inciting incident to spur players to action, and deliver a fulfilling finale where players see the impact of their actions on the world.
What matters more than the magic circle?
When the experience goes well, you shouldn’t be breaking the Magic Circle. But sometimes things go a little sideways, and you need to break character. I’ll spotlight in a later post the Disney Parks 4 Key Hierarchy, but suffice it to say for now, we recommend training your staff to break character for the higher values of safety (#1) and courtesy (#2). Especially for safety or to correct an issue with the show, calling “Hold!” is most effective.
“Hold, please! There’s been a mistake. X did not work like it should. In order to preserve your experience, I am doing Y to correct the issue. Thank you, please resume playing.”
Where to put the threshold?
Every Magic Circle has a transition point, a threshold that you cross where you go from the real world into the ritualized play. Consider carefully where you want your transition to be.
Disclaimer: Some circles are larger than others. That does not make them better. More time in the magic circle is not a priori superior. The following lists in order from smallest to largest, but as you’ll see, the choice affects more than time spent immersed.
At the game door
This is the most common option for an escape room. This is where the Code Name: Falcon game has its threshold. This frees your hosts to be out-of-world and able to address guest needs best. If you run a business that needs to answer the question “What’s an escape room?” then at the game door is the best place for your transition.
The famous adventure of The Dome begins with this really cool door. On the left: lockers.
At the game door works best for…
Business model: street retail with walk-ins, an entry-level market
Customers: new players and families
Acting: none (unless hint mechanism is a live performer)
At the hallway
At the hallway is the best of both worlds: freeing you to have an out-of-world lobby, but allows you to create a deeper story that unites all your games. You can have rooms in a hotel or time travel portals or a gallery of magic paintings. Your briefing room can even be in-world.
I don’t know of any companies that draw the circle at the hallway, but it has a lot of potential.
At the hallway works best for…
Business model: stand out in a crowded market
Customers: works for new players but also appeals to a seasoned player base
Acting: required only for hallway hosts, if any
At the front door
At the Front Door is challenging but rewarding.
Escape My Room in New Orleans, famous for their immersive lobby experience.
The challenges: you can’t explain what an escape room is (and players will feel pressured not to ask out-of-character questions). It requires commitment from all staff—can you get that kind of staff? And the rules of the game have to be in-world.
The reward: you deliver the maximum sense of adventure, since there’s no onsite transition from being a player of a game to being the protagonist in an adventure.
At the Front Door works best for…
Business model: by appointment only, obscure retail location, premium pricing
Customers: experienced players
Acting: all staff
A “cold start” escape room, which plunges you immediately into the adventure, skipping the lobby experience and all pre-game hosting, is a variant of “at the front door.” Recommended for educated player markets who don’t expect a bathroom when they arrive onsite (see: Spain).
After booking
The first email after booking, while not a physical threshold, is a threshold nonetheless. After booking makes otherwise bland communications special, heightens anticipation, and preps players for imaginary play.
This is where our Magic Circle begins.
At the website…?
We don’t recommend a fully immersive website. It leads to customer confusion. There is such a thing as being too immersive.
It’s funny, sure. It’s also false advertising. (Brittney Jones as Madame Daphne)
The Cross-Fade
Punchdrunk takes a more gradient approach to the Magic Circle threshold. Rather than a hard line, as I have depicted above, they think in cinematic terms of a dissolve from the real world to the fade in of the imaginary world. If you’ve been to Sleep No More, it’s not clear if the staff checking you in are in the world of the hotel or outside it. But they do have a certain attitude and a certain dress that guides you to think things are already special. Elevated.
Once you’ve traversed the dark maze and emerged in the Manderley Bar, the cross-fade is complete and you are inside the circle.
Oh yes, you most certainly have arrived (Manderley Bar at the McKittrick Hotel, Sleep No More NYC)
show, Don’t Tell
It was around this time in our original talk that the Raven Queen made an unexpected appearance, introducing the room to Exhibit A, an everyday citizen lost in the haze of his phone. Could the people in the room give him a reason to look up?
I could describe it, but like all good immersives, it was very much a you had to be there thing.
You really should have been there.
There was no physical threshold we could cross on the talk stage, but through changes in costume, lighting, sound, and character, we created a new world and spurred the audience to new behaviors. It really was magic.
Draw Your Circle
To quote the Raven Queen, to create is the power of the gods. Do not take that responsibility lightly. Respect what you create. We are all Exhibit A, and we need to play.
Hold true to the magic in your circle.
Just because it is fake does not mean it is not true.
A promise at the threshold.
Recon is the real deal
Credit for this post goes to myself (Haley E. R. Cooper) and J. Cameron Cooper with special thanks to the Reality Escape Convention 2022 team for helping produce the talk, from getting the lighting right to those envelopes we hid under all those chairs.
RECON gathers people most passionate about the escape room industry for a intense weekend of ideas and camaraderie. I never miss it. It’s full of surprises. Last tickets still available for August 18-19 in Los Angeles.
As the date for this year’s virtual Reality Escape Convention approaches, I am getting HYPE by remembering my biggest take-away from last year’s in-person convention in Boston. It’s been in my head ever since. If you bumped into me in the past year, I probably waxed on a little too long about the idea. I love this idea. Time to share it more formally.
In a workshop entitled, “Reflecting your Business in your Brand,” Stuart Bogaty of Trap’t challenged us with the question of why we were in business.
He said there are typically three root whys…
In it for the money
In it for you
In it for them
Stuart then asked us to rank these Three Whys by priority. Different businesses have different priorities, and ranking the three from most motivating to least motivating clarifies decisions that you’ve made—or will make.
Let’s dive in…
for the money
Money is the most obvious why. Most people labor for money. It’s a bonus if they enjoy the labor, but money is usually the primary goal. Small business owners are no different. Many start with the dream they might just strike it rich. The rest at least dream of replacing or surpassing the income of their more boring job.
It is not exactly a glamorous why. Who wants to be a fat cat capitalist when you could be a starving artist? *Commence wild eye rolling*
I hate you, RENT.
Let me push back against that idea. Money is an important why that (I swear) some people prioritize too low.
Yes, there can be a certain commercial sheen in a work created just for the money: it can feel shallow, passionless, rudderless, baffling the viewer into asking “Why does this exist?” Such experiences usually exit through the gift shop. But valuing profit does not guarantee that fate.
Profit and art can not just coincide, but should. Artists who neglect profit either stop being artists (we have to eat, too, you know), or depend upon a patron or outside source of income that, again, makes them and their work extraordinarily vulnerable. I abhor the notion that to make something that is profitable—that “the people like”—is to bastardize the purity of your artistic vision a priori. But I digress.
I really hate RENT.
The degree of devotion to money can vary, from “maximize profit at all costs” to “as long as we’re in the black every month.”
Of course, go too far into maximizing your profits, and you diminish your product. That’s the story of most escape room chains. They prioritize growth to the point of destroying their product and thereby risk the entire escape room industry with their broken games and lost-at-sea game masters not even empowered to take a freaking SHARPIE to a prop where the Sharpie marks have completely faded!!!
“You can do it—fix it now! I’ll just stand here and wait! What do you mean, no?”
Not that I’m speaking from an explicit experience or anything.
The Escape Game is a great example of a business that has money as its primary why, but hasn’t sacrificed the quality of its product in that pursuit. They understand that the best way to make money is to deliver a consistent product that delights a wide range of guests with best-in-class customer service. Rather than create new games for each of their locations, they perfect the ones they have—a cost-saving measure if there ever were one in this industry (I don’t know about you, but working on something new is so damn expensive). I recommend their games to locals and traveling enthusiasts alike.
You can tell that money is their goal because they went back to public bookings after the pandemic, which we all know makes for a weaker product but a better bottom line. But rumor has it if you contact them that you are an enthusiast who is (coughcough) likely to ruin other people’s games (cough), they may offer to make your booking private. Enthusiast money also speaks, apparently.
The Escape Game’s games will never top TERPECA, but they shouldn’t. That wouldn’t be in service of their top priority.
For you
Most small businesses owners could make more money working for somebody else. But that’s not what they want the most. They want something more—a challenge. They start a small business to serve themselves: to be their own boss, to do work they enjoy, to give themselves the space to showcase or grow their talents.
Maximizing profits rarely requires maximizing human potential, leaving so many of us bored and unexplored.
The world is crowded, and people are so creative. They have to claim their own space if they are to explore their creativity fully.
That is one of the things that made me fall so hard for the immersive arts. While the barrier to entry is not as low now as it once was, the immersive arts promises careers that previously were under lockdown, with only Hollywood and Broadway producers holding the keys. Start your own business, and look who’s holding the keys now?
Ever played a game where the creator wants to show you something in progress that they’re working on? Or give you a backstage tour? They always have such joy in their voice. I love it. That’s someone who is in it for themselves. Their self-exploration is what drives the business.
These types of businesses are called lifestyle businesses, as they exist to yield a desired lifestyle to the owner. Such owners may reach a point of contentment with their business, where it’s enough for them to maintain what they have. They don’t need to open new locations because adding more of the same work for more money isn’t a bargain that sounds attractive to these types.
Or they’ll go the opposite route, and it’s never enough. They will be always working on something new and something more ambitious than, quite frankly, it needs to be. But if you are ultimately serving yourself with your ambitious build, then maybe it is as ambitious as it needs to be.
If Felix Barrett’s recent press statement is to be believed, Punchdrunk has produced their last masked show with the closing of The Burnt City and will pursue new structures ahead. Which I think is wild—they have a model that works. But that’s what a business in it for the owners would choose to do. They’re bored. They crave what is new.
Look, Felix, but I’M NOT BORED. The Burnt City is exquisite.
For them
Finally, we come to those who are externally motivated by them, whoever they are: the audience, viewer, player, customer. These creators will spare no expense to deliver something that truly wows the receiver. The sky is not too high.
It’s as if they are in the business of gift-giving.
Are they in love? I wonder.
These owners will be especially keen to receive feedback and adapt the product accordingly. They will want to make sure it works for the gift-receiver. They will often act irresponsibly when it comes to money.
People who prioritize their audience are how we get such indulgences as Molly’s Game and The Dome. Rumor has it neither will make their money back, but rumor has it the creators just don’t care. That’s not what they set out to do. They set out to blow your mind. That’s what matters.
Patented Dome Smiles™
Probably most TERPECA owners are them-motivated people. The games that make that list are irresponsible and off-the-hook.
Enjoy the gift.
My ranking
It will come as little surprise to my avid readers. For my part in Strange Bird Immersive, I am motivated by…
Them.
Money.
Me.
I want to move people. I want to connect at the heart. I want to make my audience feel violently alive, aware of the full span of their lungs, flush with possibility. I want to do that so badly. And I will rewrite it if you don’t get that.
Perhaps the order of 2 and 3 was surprising to you? Where I ranked money surprised me, too. Fiscally, we’ve always structured our business to run a responsible profit, but I’d like to go further still in pursuing that value. Lucidity was designed at the outset to counter the fiscally questionable structure of The Man From Beyond—without sacrificing quality, of course.
It’s wonderful to create things, the sense of purpose I have every morning shoots me out of bed like a rocket, but at the end of the day, I am very open to replicating our experiences in other locations (that is, to make money), rather than always pushing the boundaries of what I can do. Opening other locations some day also serves my primary goal of reaching more people.
How to measure a successful business?
Once I had this lens at my disposal, I started to understand the wide variety of businesses out there. It has made me far less judgy of other people’s approaches. There are many ways to define a successful business beyond maximizing profits.
I’ve always resented immersive experiences that can afford to abandon all hope of making the investment back, as it makes those of us who don’t have that funding look weak in comparison. But nowadays, I feel less angry with the ones who can throw profit to the winds and more grateful that they choose to spend their money on me. So now I simply say, “Thank you.”
I also understand businesses that stop making new things, are not in the most optimal location, or are not doing particularly marquee-worthy things but are perfectly happy as they are. The owners are pursuing a life that makes them happy. Is that a bad business? No!
So next time you play a game or attend an immersive show, speculate on what their why might be.
And I encourage you to make your own list. Maybe it will surprise you, like it did me. It will help to step back and understand yourself—and may help you make your best business decisions yet.
Recon 2023
One of the best decisions you can make for any escape room business is to attend Recon this year, August 19-20, 2023. It’s virtual, so it’s easy to attend. I’m not paid to promote it or anything; it’s just a phenomenal professional opportunity I look forward to every year. The talks will be gold, but the connections more so. I would love to meet you at one of the extended “happy hours” in the wee hours of the morning and hear more about what motivates you.
Following the winter power crisis that swept through Texas and forced my family to flee my powerless, waterless home for four nights, I have been thinking a lot about tail risks.
I would say any good immersive designer needs to think about tail risks, but really any good business owner needs to consider them. You offer a thing to other people, you invite tail risks.
A tail risk is a term I’m co-opting from finance. Event probability follows a bell curve, some events being extremely probable to happen for your guests, but along the “long tail” of the curve lie events that are unlikely to happen. But still possible. The tails pose a risk.
Alas, this is not a post about the rare awesome things, but boy are they our everything.
Since the first meetings of Strange Bird Immersive, our creative team has been obsessed with tail risks. We’ve protected against it in the design phase, and when issues arise in the execution of the design, as they inevitably do, we prep to mitigate the negative risks so they have minimal impact.
Our creative partner Nathan Walton, lesser known to the public than Cameron and I but no less essential, taught me a great deal about tail risks. He’s cautious. “Sure, it’s unlikely to go wrong, but when it does go wrong, just how bad is it? Visualize how bad it is,” he says. If it’s bad…we need a re-design or a fail-safe Plan B. Nathan’s a risk exposure expert. I love him for this (and many other reasons).
When you hit the fourth stage, you redesign. The third stage, well, you may try to risk it.
We learned this lesson the hard way back in August. Thanks to spotty internet, we took the risk to have Professor Hazard in The Strange Secret of Mr. Adrian Rook host via LTE hotspot rather than deploy the recorded video/understudy solution (our Plan B). We tested the connection ahead of time, and it seemed good enough. If we discovered it failed with the first group that night, we could then deploy Plan B. Trouble was, the first group he hosted was a bunch of critics from four different media outlets, and…his connection failed.
High impact, indeed! I didn’t properly visualize. We’re internet paranoid now, but we can never fix that group’s experience, and that’s not cool.
Professor Hazard (played by Bradley Winkler), founder of the School of Accidental Photography, is not-to-be-missed in The Strange Secret of Mr. Adrian Rook.
There are two types of tail risks to consider: experiential and existential. Let’s dive in.
experiential tail risk
An experiential tail risk is where something really unlikely happens, and it impacts the guest experience. Their level of fun goes down.
Every business has some tail risk—like, how bad is it when a customer doesn’t like the service? When an employee doesn’t show up? When we run out of sweet potato fries? These are common.
But the more you invite your guests to act, the more risk you take on. Immersive entertainment, especially escape rooms, are all about inviting you to act. Humans are wild, original creatures. There’s going to be a wider range of behavior on display, say, then you’ll see running a movie theatre, so the list of tail risks is simply much longer.
And if you run a thing over 500 hundred times, you’re likely to see that 1% chance occurrence show up 5 times. The best designers will plan for it.
What happens when the warded lock fails? We’ve got spares.
What happens when the actor forgets this prop? Here’s the best improv! (Oh, have I seen some lovely improvs. Our company is smart).
What happens when that object isn’t precisely where it needs to be to trigger the thing? Do we run a hint saying “Please nudge the MacGuffin two centimeters to your right?” NO! We have software that allows us to mark it as present without the players ever being bothered.
What happens when the image recognition software fails? The game master can hit the trigger. What if the server fails? Well, there’s a secret physical pull knob that never fails.
What happens when a psychic-guest randomly guesses the word lock? We let them play! Puzzle flow jumps—where players unlock something out of the intended order—can happen, whether from a bad reset or a guest’s supernatural ability. We have a strict list of only two instances where we interrupt a team because of a puzzle flow jump, and that’s when the impact of interrupting them is less than the impact of breaking the game too wide open. In every other case, we know our puzzle flow well enough to know it’s okay to let them jump and play it out.
Or how about when the magic fails? In Strange Secret of Mr. Adrian Rook, Madame Daphne has a Plan B and a Plan C for her magic. And yep, 150 teams in, I’ve deployed them both.
Not that you’d ever notice: Madame Daphne is cool AF, unlike me.
Point is: we do what we can to impact the experience as little as possible and move forward.
Really, I think the heart of escape room design is about designing for tail risks. You want to keep every team within the boundary of the experience while inviting them to explore for themselves. Physical parts + creatively engaged humans = a tricky thing.
Hints mitigate tail risks
Hints (not to be confused with clues) are the assistance we variably give teams when stuck on a puzzle and unable to advance. Some teams need zero hints. Some teams need eight. (We average about one—design for the fewest hints possible. Trust me. Hints feel like a defeat, no matter how immersive the delivery.)
Hints allow us to handle the unexpected “tail risk” behaviors. Hints keep every team, from the 70 year-old ladies to the enthusiasts who can’t search to save their lives, on the right track. We have a stock set of hints, but it’s essential to have a hint mechanism that allows you to tailor your message to a team. There’ll always be, “One time the team did this…” and you’ll be glad you were able to redirect them with a custom message.
THE TAIL RISK TOOLKIT
Here’s a look at the tail-risk toolkit.
Design. This is the first stage and the best way to mitigate tail risks. Imagine guests of all ages and sizes and behaviors. You don’t put a knife in your kitchen-themed game, do you? Physical puzzles especially demand good design: what do you do with that team of two where neither can physically crawl through your crawl tunnel? Or a team where everyone is too short for the input (there’s a hard reason we can’t host a team of 10 year olds, y’all).
Sparesand repairs. Things break, especially after hundreds of over-eager hands have handled them. We have a policy of “don’t just replace, improve!” whenever something fails, and that approach has shortened our list of things that are vulnerable to fixing. Nonetheless, light bulbs still go out, paper gets torn. When X fails, how do you carry on for the next team arriving in an hour? Be ready. Often with glue or a ladder or a duplicate from the spares shelf.
Responsive repair technician. When the fix goes beyond the game master’s capabilities, you need a repair guru that understands the thing on stand-by. Otherwise, you risk delivering a broken game (and nothing gives Strange Bird panic attacks like nixing a puzzle for the next team).
Electronic Plan B. An automatic electronic trigger may not work. We build software that allows us to trigger events via game master if the automatic trigger fails.
Manual Plan C. Should all electronics lose their mind, we deploy a physical solution that can never fail.
Hint and warnings. Useful for redirecting mental attention (hints) or stopping unwanted behavior (warnings). Have the ability to customize these.
Game-master interruption. We deploy this only when something has gone so wrong that it needs to be brought to the entire team’s attention. Either an object has broken or team behavior has not responded to our text-based “warnings.”
Customer Service. So many ills can be smoothed over by confident and attentive service.
Prep your toolkit because—trust me—one day you will need it.
Train Employees for Tail Risks
None of these preparations are any good if you don’t train your employees to use them. A good game master should not only be trained explicitly in hint style, but also know what can break, when to interrupt the game, and how to fix it. Perhaps above all else, you should let them know that you can’t prepare them for every issue that will arise. Tell them you trust their judgment. They are authorized to do whatever they deem necessary to preserve the team’s experience.
I wonder if I spend more time training our company in tail risks than in rehearsing scene work. Scene work is easy in comparison! You really should see our training manual…
My favorite interview question for Strange Bird is, “Tell me about a time something went wrong on stage, and how you responded.” If their face doesn’t light up, they’re not going to enjoy working here.
INVESTING IN TAIL RISKS
It’s worth noting that what I’m recommending is expensive. Preparing for tail risks is an investment of time and treasure. It rarely comes up, so from a business perspective, it isn’t always profitable. You have to care about each and every customer’s experience to go on this mad rampage like we do.
Maybe we’re obsessed with tail risks because we’re artists. Maybe we’re a little consistency-cuckoo. But I do know that Strange Bird’s commitment to mitigating tail risks contributes to our high reputation. Games differ team to team, but everyone who’s played The Man From Beyond talks about the same magical experience. Because we don’t let anything derail it.
That’s got to help our bottom line.
THE EXISTENTIAL TAIL RISK
This second category of tail risk is the most important. It’s risk that is about safety. It goes beyond a threat to the guest experience, to a threat to the guest’s life.
There are lots of existential tail risks in escape rooms: what if the power goes out? What if that pneumatic special effect activates with someone standing there? (an example of the kind to design against). What if someone trips over a threshold? Or injuries themselves with their own exuberance?
Here’s a classic existential tail risk for escape rooms: do you lock guests in? Escape rooms have pivoted away from locking guests inside the game, even eschewing the safest option of push-to-exit maglocks. Room Escape Artist freaking grades escape rooms on emergency exits now, and I’m glad they do. It helps incentivize safety.
I’ll confess: in our first installation in 2016, we had a maglock on the parlor door.
And one of the fanciest push-to-exit buttons in the industry.
Why did we do that? Honestly…? Because everyone else was doing it. It was one of the tropes of the genre.
When it came time to rebuild the parlor in our new location in 2018, we nixed it. We gained absolutely nothing while taking on a serious tail risk. We knew by then that people stay where the action is, and we don’t care if someone leaves to go to the bathroom! If that’s what they need, that’s a good thing!! But most importantly: should something go wrong in the room, would the team think to push the pretty little button beside the door?
It is extremely unlikely that there will ever be a fire at Strange Bird Immersive. And yet, we have spent tens of thousands of dollars should such an event take place. We have EXIT signs and emergency lights and bonus doors we didn’t want in our architecture so the path to exit the building never exceeded 75 ft. We spent at least $10,000 on a fire spray for our ceilings.
While I’d like to think we would have opted for these safeguards, we were saved from any moral wrestling. We are legally required to have these safeguards in order to receive our official Certificate of Occupancy from the city. While 10% of the hoops we jumped through were bureaucratic bullshit, 90% of those hoops were about not taking on the tail risk of killing people. To be frank, not everyone is willing to invest in that on their own, so they force you to.
That’s what regulations are all about.
THE ASSHATERY OF ERCOT
A failure to invest in a tail risk is why so many of my fellow Texans experienced a tragic week. For those of you out of this particular news loop, for five days last week, power was out for days in millions of homes across Texas, where indoor temperatures plunged to the 30s. The blackouts impacted the whole state, thanks to power plants freezing and 30,000 megawatts going offline. People died.
Texas has an independent power grid, run by the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT). It’s notoriously deregulated. Following previous winter blackouts in 2011, recommendations were made to winterize the power plants. The recommendations were not followed.
Yes, it is unlikely that the entire humongous State of Texas would undergo a deep freeze at the same time. But if that did happen, how bad would it be? Visualize!
But wait, I forget, you’re not properly incentivized here, are you, ERCOT?
Preparing for a tail risk requires investment, and if the goal is profitability, it may not be worth it—especially when you have a monopoly over your customers. You can freeze them, displace them, even kill them, but it’s not like you’re going to lose their business. So…why should you…?
Regulations are written in blood.
Ask me how I feel running an escape room company more responsibly than Texas runs its energy grid.
Go on. Ask me.
Don’t be ERCOT. Invest in your tail risks. Care about each and every person, even if it’s not profitable.
Strange Bird Immersive has been lucky in our press. We recently had the immense pleasure of hosting Room Escape Artist, and we’ve even lured Houston’s local theatre critics to come out and PLAY a play, you know, instead of just sitting there.
Read the reviews…
Room Escape Artist: “an experience that realized what I’ve hoped to see from the escape room medium.”
Partly Wicked: “the single most memorable escape room I have ever seen.”
Hosting critics in an immersive is radically unlike hosting critics in traditional theatre. Here are some tips I’ve learned along the way on how to make the most of it.
Schedule wisely. If you’re in an ongoing production, give your show at least 2 months for testing and iteration, so it can settle into its best form before the critic comes. This is true for immersives, but it’s especially true for escape rooms. The show we ran in January is not the show we have now: the puzzles are smoother, the tech is debugged, the actors can handle every interaction. Be patient, and it’ll pay off. If you’re running a short-lived show, try to dissuade critics from opening night/weekend, at least.
Clean. Your critic will be inside the world and potentially free to explore. You do not want to be called out for dust bunnies.
No last-minute changes. As we’ve learned the hard way, a very small change can create new bugs, new audience behaviors you didn’t anticipate. We always try to run a mock-show in real-time whenever we make any technical changes, but physical changes can only be tested with fresh, new minds—a lot of them. What may look like an innocent dogtag to you may be somebody else’s slotted screwdriver.
”Guys, look! I found a hammer!”
You may want to perfect things for a critic, but don’t do it the day before, or even a week before. You want to deliver a vetted show.
Conquer self-consciousness. Actors get pretty revved up (usually for the worse) when they know a critic is in the house, but they never have to face that stone-cold gaze. Here? Neither of you gets to stay anonymous. That’s scary. A theatre critic is likely to freak, too, because they’re used to the armor that anonymity gives them.
If I had to guess, they probably didn’t become critics out of an intense love of actor eye-contact.
Immersive work is intimate, it’s close-up, it’s scary. There’s no place for them to hide what they’re thinking: the actor will see it on their very faces. Be ready for both parties to feel even more self-conscious than usual. Hopefully your immersive is already designed to limit feelings of self-consciousness, but be ready to conquer this demon more than usual. Don’t give the critic any more attention than anyone else present. Your Meisner gut may even tell you to back-off from them.
No “red carpet” treatment. You want to be on your A-game, but you don’t want to be on your “suck-up” game. They will notice. The critic is here to experience the same show the public would experience. Otherwise, what use is their review? If you have any special moments or one-on-ones, don’t default to selecting the critic unless you’ve received the usual positive signals from them that you always look for when singling out audience members. Bad one-on-one selections lead to bad one-on-ones, period.
Be professional. Take criticism graciously. Take praise graciously. To be reviewed at all is a privilege not every artist gets. Because of the intimacy, you may feel like you have a relationship now. You don’t. If the critic wants to be friendly afterwards, follow their lead—don’t be the initiator in the relationship. A lot of critics prefer to duck out and never see you again, even if they loved it.
Everyone’s a critic. The only publicity in this business that’s worthwhile is word of mouth. Every guest who crosses your threshold could potentially rave (or rant) to their friends—or on Facebook, Twitter, Yelp, or TripAdvisor. Every guest is someone worth winning, so make the most of every show and make the red carpet standard.
Which really means you’ll be doing a lot of cleaning.
Two weeks ago, the Everything Immersive community was up in arms over a very serious safety infraction that resulted in injury to audience members and could have resulted in death. We were all understandably shaken by it.
A harrowing first-hand account of what happened is here.
No Proscenium also talks about safety with leaders in the immersive haunt genre in their recent podcast (starting about 22:20) here. Too long, didn’t listen: if you’re not an expert in the field of carpentry or aerial hi-jinks or waterboarding or what-have-you, consult with someone who is an expert to make sure your intended use in the show is as safe as possible. Also, TAKE THE TIME TO BUILD YOUR IMMERSIVE RIGHT. These things do not go up in a couple of months. Only sloppy and unsafe shows go up that quickly.
Since Immersology serves as a platform for the practice of immersive theatre—the big picture, if you will—I feel a need to weigh-in officially on the issue of safety, something we cannot take for granted in this genre.
Immersive designers: your audience is active. They may behave unpredictably. Your behavior to them is also unpredictable. You’re probably planning to do unusual and surprising things to them—that’s why this is fun. For fuck’s sake, make it safe. Really, really safe. That includes, but is not limited to…
No lifting, overturning, or throwing of furniture or other heavy objects
Creating clear safe spaces for the audience during vigorous action sequences
No audience-navigation in complete darkness
Poorly-lit stairs or other uneven surfaces feature glow-tape
No, this does not break your immersion.
First aid kits and fire extinguishers on-site (and every company member knows where they are)
No one locked in or locked up (handcuffs) without a user-operated safety release
All lighting instruments safety-cabled
Emergency lighting in case of power outage
Limited use of glass, and if there’s glass in the space, that space is monitored
No unfinished wood
I really don’t need to be immersed in splinters. Sand it, stain it, seal it FFS.
Clear rules of engagement for the audience
Proper advance warning for potentially awful stuff inside the show—whether that’s a strawberry cocktail (I’m allergic), forced enclosure in tight spaces, crawling, spanking, simulated drowning, etc.
These are the basics—and they apply to escape rooms, too, who in my experience are the more egregious violators of the above.
But there’s still a lot left off that list that we can do. Design “X” with an eye on that 0.01% chance that “X” fails catastrophically. If you plan to run a lot, you just might see that 0.01% come due. See what you can do to prevent that from ever happening.
But even with the smartest designers in the world, stuff can still go wrong. That’s where your well-trained actors can step in.
Calling Hold
Your actors are the enforcers of the rules and the guardians of the show. But they’re also committed to not breaking character, and they may want to carry on when something goes wrong. Break them of that instinct. Train them to call HOLD whenever they want to.
As creators, we think of HOLD as the worst thing possible, the nuclear option, the apocalyptic experience that breaks the magic. But I’ve been on the audience side of a very long hold once, and we didn’t care. We loved the show enough to wait in silence. I’ve also been on the actor side of a few holds, as escape rooms are rather notorious for something small but essential bringing the entire game to a halt. Really: your audience does not care. They’ll jump back in the moment you release them. In fact, they’ll recognize that you’re giving them the best service possible by addressing the problem, instead of letting the problem fester.
Get the whole cast comfortable with HOLD. Have a procedure for HOLD. Especially if a safety concern occurs, call HOLD.
Establishing safe space
Violent or dance-based immersives need to consider how they will train their audience to get out of the way—and stay out of the way. Third Rail Projects sits you in chairs, or they crawl up on set pieces you’re clearly not meant to access. The space of the McKittrick also has quality safe spaces: think of the step along the wall in the speakeasy during Banquo’s murder or the platform for spectators during the door dance. When it matters most, the actors and black masks make it quite clear that you are not to leave this space. Only an idiot would leave these spaces—although I’m sure someone has.
Black Masks
The cast of Sleep No More do an excellent job of crowd control and establishing spaces for their work, but it’s the Black Masks who really get the safety job done. They’re always there when it gets dicey: Lady Macduff’s murder, the prophecy rave, the banquet table you can’t join, the box you can’t crawl into.
If you’re building a sandbox show, consider if you need a few black masks to ensure safety both for audience and for actors. (They’re also essential to show-function: I definitely saw a black mask deliver Macbeth his missing pants once. Someone really wanted his pants that night).
Disney Keys
Ricky Brigante ofInside the Magic taught me on FB about the Disney Parks tiered-value system, known as the four keys. I think it expresses succinctly how actors should behave in immersives, and Strange Bird Immersive has since adopted the policy.
Not exactly the poster I’m hanging backstage, but you get the idea.
Here’s what I put in our actor code of conduct…
#1 –Safety. Safety must be the priority in every decision we make and must never be sacrificed for another key. Address directly any audience member’s safety concern, and if a safety issues arises, call HOLD until the issue is resolved.
#2 –Courtesy. Never forget that the audience is a paying customer, and you are performing a guest-service role. Stay respectful. When in conflict, courtesy should trump your character’s response (i.e. Do NOT get in a yelling match with an audience member, even if that’s “what your character would do”).
#3 –Show. Serve the story and play your character as much as you can—this is what they paid to be a part of. Do your absolute best not to break the world.
#4 – Efficiency. Try to keep on schedule. Use your time and resources wisely to maximize every guest’s experience.
Audience responsibility
But audience safety is not only up to the designers and actors. It is ultimately up to YOU, the audience member.
Yes, YOU are responsible for your safety, too.
I know you want to tail that actor, I know you want a hero moment, I know you’ll do anything to maximize your experience, but please, BE AWARE OF YOUR BODY.
That includes, but is not limited to…
Not launching your body in the path of an actor
Not launching your body in the path of an audience member
Not getting in the actor’s face (we’re human, after all, and don’t know you)
Generally being respectful of the actors. If you’re unsure how they want you to interact with them, default to passive-mode until they signal otherwise
Watching from a safe position or space
No lifting, overturning, or throwing of furniture or any other objects (FYI no escape room tapes a key to the back of a very heavy desk)
Taking care on stairs
Accepting your physical limits and not pushing yourself to a breaking point
Being ready to say NO anytime you don’t want to do something
You are the person who is in ultimate control of your safety. Please don’t “give yourself up” to these experiences so much that you never ask, “Am I safe doing this?”
Especially in the wild west of this new genre, you may enter an immersive space where the designers have NOT done any of the above. Be aware. Take care. And remember that you can always NOPE the fuck out of there.
Waiver 101
DISCLAIMER: the following is non-professional legal advice. This is the result of my personal research. Nothing can replace consulting a real contract lawyer. And FFS, stop copying the waivers of your peers.
Waivers: you’re probably doing it wrong. If you really want it to hold up in court, you need to give the plaintiff absolutely ZERO excuses for why they retained the right to sue you despite having signed your waiver.
Here’s how to do a proper waiver…
Keep it as short as possible, so people will read it. If I have to scroll on the iPad, it’s too long. Bullet point the assumed risks in the experience and state that I waive your liability. That’s all you need.
Keep it as clear as possible, so people understand it. That means no legalese.
Provide one waiver per person. If there’s any sort of “line” at the waiver stations, then there’s social pressure to sign it without reading it. (That pretty much means if you’re doing iPad waivers, you need an iPad for every single person who arrives at a given time. Not very feasible). No “one waiver per team” on a clipboard that gets passed around, either.
In the state of Texas, no waiver for anyone under the age of 18, whether signed by a guardian or not, will hold up in court. Just FYI. That’s a good reason to have that age limit.
But ultimately, waivers are not about that day in court. They are about preventing that day in court. I think they are an important step in the immersive process: they create a transitional moment for the audience to pause, realize that they’re about to start behaving very differently, and acknowledge that they will face certain risks. It’s that reminder that YOU are ultimately responsible for YOUR safety.
I’m sure we could all use that reminder before Sleep No More. WHERE THE HELL IS THEIR WAIVER???
What about actor safety?
I’ve only talked about audience safety so far, but actor safety is an even harder issue.
It’s important to keep some perspective here. After some 140+ shows, I have not one story fit for this article of an audience member who crossed the line. But we are talking about that 0.01% chance, and it never hurts to be prepared.
Good news is the experience does filter out the craziest of the public via paid tickets. People don’t usually drop $40-200 just to molest actors. But sometimes it was the friend’s idea to go, and you end up with an audience member who wants to break the world and so poses a risk to your actors.
Plan for that risk. That includes, but is not limited to…
Designing experiences that don’t prompt seriously inappropriate behaviors (care in particular should be taken with 1-on-1s)
Hiring actors who know how to handle themselves and have the instinct to stand their ground or fly, rather than fight back
Training actors in HOLD and other audience-control tactics
Having doors for 1-on-1s that can lock out audiences outside but never lock in those inside
Establishing escape routes when an interaction goes south
Establishing a safe-word to use if an actor needs assistance of a company member
Again, Black Masks can provide crucial assistance, as they can protect actors and audience alike. (The trouble is, of course, paying for your glorified security team.)
None of these are perfect remedies, however. We won’t have a perfectly safe immersive until all the world agrees that we be respectful of each other when we interact, whether inside an imaginary world or not.
THe Stakes
Please, please don’t forget about safety. All we need is one negligent audience member inside one negligent show to bring the entire genre crashing down.
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