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.
Time to close out my series on Bookends and Bottlenecks with a gift.
In order to take control of your structure, it helps if you can see it. This is where a map comes in handy.
You can call this visualization a number of different things: map, diagram, experience flow, puzzle flow, flowchart. There are many different ways to make one and many different tools to get you there. But make one, and you’ll see your experience in a whole new light.
This post will walk you through how I create an experience flow from the player POV.
THE layout
As my physics teacher taught me, time is always along the x-axis, so that’s what I do here. This translates into a long landscape instead of a long portrait, but I think they are easier to read this way. I like to print these, so if I find myself running out of x-axis space, I snake the rest of the flow down below the first part or spill over onto a second page.
The y-axis represents paths through the experience (over time), with shapes along those paths for what are a variety of events.
The shapes represent…
Scenes: a passive beat with no “solve” action, so this can be narrative beats or out-of-world hosting by a Game Master.
Starting Point: this is a easily-discovered prop or set piece that delivers a clue. (If a starting point is a hard-to-find item, I’ll pair it with a solve action symbol).
Solve Action: represents the brain time (“aha!”) plus the physical action taken to unlock a new thing. I like to delineate these into “Plug-in Action” (perform this task or put this key into a keyhole somewhere) and “Decode Action” (anything that is harder than a simple task). Every action in an escape room is something a team can get hung up on, so it makes sense to map any action that may need a hint. Plug-in steps are green squares—”green for go!”—and decode steps are red squares for “this one’s gonna slow you down.”
Result: like a Starting Point, a Result is typically a prop, set piece, or other kind of information, but is gated behind an action. It can be the starting clue to a new action or a meta-level object that ends a path.
Here’s a look at the shape legend I use…
I also include room breaks (where applicable) and act breaks (which don’t require room transitions, but a room transition will most likely be an act break), noted via lines and labels. I break our shows down into: Act 1: inciting incident (usually scene-heavy); Act 2: escalation; Act 3: turning point; Act 4: climax; Act 5: fulfilling finale (usually scene-heavy).
I’m betraying my Shakespearean background here with a preference for five acts. Three is fine. But you really ensure your middle has movement by breaking it into three parts rather than lumping it together as one. Just saying.
I draw arrows, always going left to right, between shapes to represent the connective tissue of how a key (starting point) leads to unlocking a drawer (plug-in action), which leads to a paper clue (result/new starting point). Some arrows are short, where other arrows stretch all the way across to the end (say, if players can gain something early that they need at the end, but gaining the rest of the items take more complicated paths). To make it most legible, I keep my paths as in-line as possible.
Lastly, I include textlabels on or beneath each of these shapes to identify what precisely it represents. Putting a label inside the shape itself works best, which some programs allow you to do. Important to keep labels succinct, but the map loses a lot of its communicative power without them.
It can prove impossible to be fully comprehensive. You don’t need to be. I know I don’t include a shape for every required action (solve cryptex, figure out how to operate cryptex, fish out tiny note inside, read tiny note, etc.). Remember this is for you and your team to best communicate the guest experience.
simple experience flow
Here’s an example of what a (silly) two-puzzle escape room might diagram like:
Table Maze…? Okay, yes, I confess I’ve been watching a lot of Survivor. (Designed in Whimsical)
At a glance, you can see a lot about this experience…
While there are multiple path lines, it’s ultimately a linear experience, as everything found feeds a single path. (A more proper open-path would have multiple steps per path line before funneling down.)
However, people won’t necessarily be standing around waiting for the Table Maze crew. There are other rewards in the environment happening. But once the two cards, ball, and the poster have been found, then teams might grow more impatient.
There are two major solve moments: table maze (assuming a challenging one) and the 4-digit lock. Finding the objects, reading the poster, and unlocking a crate should be quick actions. Hence my classification of this as a two-puzzle game.
Players will need to have found a fair amount to get past the 4-digit lock: poster, two cards, and the final card from the solved maze path. If any one of these items is missing when they hit this point in the experience, players can’t progress. Ideally, players have everything by the time they finish the table maze, but not always! The diagram helps GMs keep things straight (say, if the poster hasn’t be read yet, they’ll want to be on stand-by with the poster hint ready).
It has weak gating. The flowchart does a nice job of showing “There are things you can find immediately, but they don’t become useful until later.” You can find the ball but until you discover the table maze, you’re absolutely baffled by a ball. As a design choice, weak gating isn’t inherently bad, especially if players don’t puzzle over it for too long. It can be fun in that there’s an “Aha! So that’s what this is for!” moment, much like foreshadowing in literature. But it can also be a time sink. Like all things, watch and see what works.
This puzzle flow also reveals to me that there’s a potential for players to spin the final digit on the four digit lock before the table maze has been solved. I’d want to swap out what the maze dispenses with either two cards (and remove one card from the beginning), or potentially have the maze reveal the ordinality. Jumping the flow is bad, mmmkay?
Complex Experience Flow
Here’s what a whole game might look like in my style, unlabeled. Don’t worry, this is based on nothing, I promise. (Besides…can you have an experience spoiled by staring at an unlabeled map anyway?)
Completely made-up experience flow, featuring the five-act structure (Designed in Google Drawings with direct arrows instead of elbow connector arrows, suit your fancy)
At a glance…Act 2 has two paths, Act 3 has three paths, Act 4 is all linear/bottleneck. The structure is relatively simple, so there won’t be a sense of chaos in this game. There’s one meta puzzle that requires four items/pieces of information and actually requires an item gained from Act 2 (so if that’s in the previous room, players may have to run back to get it). There are nine decode actions and three simple plug-in actions, which may be a little light for 60 minutes, but it depends on the puzzles, of course.
Here’s a more complex flow, that I made in 2015 after playing my first escape room that I ever loved. This game is now closed. No act breaks here, because it was all one messy, joyous experience. Imagine arrows in place of lines, please; apparently I started my mapping journey in Illustrator (?!?), which I’m an expert in and would recommend as a mapping program to no one.
At a glance…the game has two objectives with completely independent paths (so you could get the door open, but not yet have the MacGuffin, an unusual structure). Lots of gathering of similar items, like puzzle pieces or all the things you need to get a clue from a DVD. The main meta—the HBG combo lock—requires the completion of four different paths. Each path ends in a letter, which gives a sense of progress towards the end goal. Lots of “search” items (as befits a game from 2015), where the “starting point” symbol is paired with a “plug-in action,” since finding something cleverly hidden can’t be taken for granted.
With so many starting points and paths available, you can guess that this game would keep a large group occupied. 9 decode actions and 23 plug in actions. Wow. That’s a lot of quick hits!
Looking at this map makes me miss old-school games.
Which program?
I started making Strange Bird’s maps in 2015 in Google Drawings. Like any illustrating program, Google Drawings is frustrating. It wasn’t built for flowcharts, but I got it to work for me. Google Drawings is available as a document type through Google Drive, so you’ll need access to that. I cannot in good conscience recommend it to anyone, but after all the suffering, the result is a very clean map. Main pro: it’s free and stays free.
There’s a wide array of programs to choose from these days. A critical feature you’ll want is arrows to snap to shapes, so that when you move the shape, the arrow follows it. It’ll also help a lot if you can label the shape itself, so that your labels also follow as you move shapes. Test before you dive deep into a program.
For this post, I’ve tried out some other programs…
For shared accounts, you only get three free flowcharts before they flip you to the dreaded subscription model. But for a solo private account (and probably there’s only one person in charge of these charts anyway?), you have unlimited boards. You may encounter additional BS like low-res exports on the free tier. The ease of use is superior to Google Drawings.
Of all the programs I tried for this article, I liked Whimsical best for its sheer speed. I created its chart the fastest. It also doesn’t look hideous.
Flow from WhimsicalFlow from the somewhat slower Miro. I formally apologize for that choice of green.
Draw.io
Available online or even offline. Unlimited, open source, not going anywhere. I liked this much better than Google Drawings, although it still presented a couple moments of sheer rage. Not as fast as Whimsical but earns bonus points for not being subscription BS.
Flow from Draw.io
Offline Programs
I’ve heard from folks in the community that Visio from Microsoft is their preference. Apple has a program on Macs called Freeform, but the arrows didn’t snap to shapes, so I noped out of there fast. Illustrator is also a hard pass. There are many more options I don’t know about. This rabbit hole is deep.
The Why
When I played my first dozen escape rooms, I mapped them by hand afterwards, trying to make sense of the chaos: why did this game feel frustrating? Why did this game feel fun? Answers were often in the structure: poor gating that gave us stuff well before we could use it or brilliant meta-puzzles that gave the whole team a sense of progress. It helped jump-start my education.
Once you start mapping your experience (imagined, designed, or already produced), you’ll see many benefits…
Maps help you identify your bottlenecks. Bottlenecks are a neutral tool, and a flowchart ensures that you have bottlenecks where you need them and not where you don’t.
You can see clearly which moments are open-path and which are linear. When only one path remains, expect escalating player frustration the longer it takes, so it’s a good time to be hint-ready.
You can clearly see your meta-puzzles (puzzles that require multiple parts to proceed).
It allows you to count your puzzles and gauge your difficulty. Remember each shape is a step needed to win.
Gating issues and other issues of complexity show up, such as: they have to carry this prop into the next room.
Once out of the design phase and your project has been built, the map is far from dead. I use our experience flows when I onboard new employees. It reveals what is needed for each solve plus the order of the solves, making game mastering a touch easier. We don’t refer to the map regularly, as we internalize it fairly quickly, but it’s indispensable in those early days when they feel overwhelmed.
Mapping beyond escape rooms?
Yes, of course! Puzzle games benefit greatly from flowchart clarity, but diagrams can clarify a wide-range of genres. The maps above are event-based maps from the guest POV, but you could produce maps from character or GM POV. Whenever Strange Bird gets around to designing a sandbox like Sleep No More, I’ll map characters in places across time. I once made a map of Madame Daphne’s Le Coq levels of tension, which is fun. Come up with different categories! You can make just about anything a diagram.
Get creative with your visuals. They can communicate like words never can.
Bookends and Bottlenecks
This how-to post wraps up a longer series dedicated to structure. Be sure to check out the rest of the articles:
Today I’m exploring the trickiest part of the structure: bottlenecks.
Escape rooms and immersive entertainment are wild, over-stimulating experiences with so much happening all at once. That’s why we love them. Bottlenecks, however, offer moments where one and only one thing is happening, and that moment of focus offers the designer the best opportunity to deliver surprise (narrative, scenic, puzzle, or otherwise).
Defining Bottlenecks
Bottlenecks are moments in an open-style experience where nothing else can be done BUT this One Thing. The One Thing could be a puzzle, or it could be a scene.
At bottlenecks, you have the complete attention of all the players. Immersive entertainment struggles in not having control of the camera lens like a film director does, but for the length of the bottleneck, you have camera-like focus. What would you like to bring into focus?
Wait, Aren’t Bottlenecks bad?
You’ve probably heard escape room enthusiasts gripe about bottlenecks. They complain about having only one puzzle to solve, and disliked it either because: they were left out of the solve, or the solve took too long, or both. (I’m looking at you, Mayan Sudoku.) It’s a common mistake to encounter in the genre.
But a bottleneck is neither inherently good nor evil. It is a neutral tool, and its moral qualities depend entirely on how you employ it.
Unlike traffic, which is always evil (please, let’s all learn how to Zipper Merge)
If you have a bottleneck puzzle (or what designers call a linear moment in gameplay), try to involve as many people as possible. If you do, the time to solve your bottleneck puzzle can expand. A cutscene should also engage everyone present.
If you can’t involve everyone in your bottleneck puzzle, then keep the puzzle short and simple, so people don’t begin to notice that they’re standing around while someone else tackles the puzzle.
If it’s a bottleneck scene, it should be under two minutes. A rule I’ve derived from experience: we used to have a bottleneck scene that was three minutes. Attention held much better when we cut it down by thirty seconds. It’d be even better if it were two minutes. Think of scenes at bottlenecks as cutscenes. You can’t go on for long, or the player will press X to skip.
Designing both for team engagement and time spent will reduce its villainy. And a bottleneck can be used for so much good…
Plan Your Bottlenecks
Unlike beginnings and endings, bottlenecks do not happen naturally. They are not easy to slip-in after the fact. Plan your bottlenecks as early as you can in the design process.
When you begin structuring your experience, you probably have a few surprises, wow moments, and unexpected turns in the story line. Great! That makes things memorable. You’ll want to make sure each and every one of those turns is placed properly at a bottleneck.
In an open-world experience, if an amazing moment is not at a proper bottleneck, some guests will miss it. Maybe they were pages deep into a logic puzzle across the room or even in a totally different room. And hey, not everybody gets to see every cool thing in an experience—it’s okay if some players miss anything that is nice-to-know. But it’s not okay to miss anything need-to-know. Big reveals, and especially plot twists, are must-see moments. If you do not deliberately structure the experience to have a bottleneck at that moment, you risk leaving some of your players behind.
Not properly structuring wow moments is such a common problem in the escape room industry, that on their escape room tours, Room Escape Artist made a player rule that if you suspect something really magical is about to happen once you input a solution, you call out to everyone in your team, “HEYYYY EVERYONE!!! I’M ABOUT TO ENTER THE CODE, AND I THINK SOMETHING COOOOOOL MIGHT HAPPEN!!!!” The fact that I have adopted this rule whenever I play tells you how structurally broken so many experiences are.
But I know we can get it right.
Built-In Bottlenecks
Good news is many escape rooms have built-in bottlenecks. The end of every game is a guaranteed bottleneck, so send a team off with a wow!
Games with multiple rooms also have built-in bottlenecks. Often when a team enters a new room, they have completed all the puzzles in the previous room (although not always). When they are working on the last puzzle in a room, they are at a bottleneck.
At the end of each room, I recommend…
Create a final puzzle in the room that the other puzzles funnel into or unlock (this is often called a meta-puzzle). Make this bottleneck puzzle a memorable puzzle, and involve as many players as you can. (But make sure it doesn’t overstay its welcome).
Reveal something magical when it’s solved.
Have a scene, whether via live actor, video or voice-over that progresses the narrative, preferably in a surprising way. (But make sure it doesn’t overstay its welcome).
Reveal the entrance to the next room, preferably in an epic way.
Okay, yes, this is more a wish list than a checklist, and plenty of fantastic games don’t do these things. Even Strange Bird doesn’t do all of these things. But it’d be really cool if we did.
The order of the wish list matters. Note that Event Number 3 “Cool Scene” does NOT come after Event Number 4 “New Room Revealed.” If you reverse that order…guess what you get?
A bunch of hyped-up players yelling over your epic villain escalating the stakes. I love narrative, but even I struggle to have the discipline to listen and “SHUSH!” everybody when we enter that new room. Nobody likes being shushed.
Don’t squander your moments of perfect focus by putting beats in the wrong order.
Whenever I hear escape room creators claim that players don’t care about their story, I always suspect the game is not structured so that players can follow the story.
It takes a lot of discipline to get right.
Bottlenecks within a room
You can design bottlenecks within a single room, although it’s trickier than working with room transitions.
Even if players are at a proper bottleneck, and nothing is left for them to solve, how do they know it? If a player doesn’t feel they are at a bottleneck, whether they are or not will not matter: they will keep playing.
A progress meter—whether literal or metaphoric—can be useful here. If players have been collecting things, and they know they need three of those things, and they just got the third, and they finally get to use all three things (OMG!!!)—you’ve got a great moment for a Bottleneck Wow-Surprise. When the progress meter hits 100%, players know that they have done the task, and they can safely focus on only what’s in front of them.
Linear Gameplay
Some escape rooms are structured where one puzzle leads to another, which unlocks another, etc. We call this a “linear game.” I haven’t played many purely linear games. Most games employ moments of linear gameplay and other moments of open-path gameplay, where multiple puzzles are available at once. A good mix provides a good balance.
Deploy a linear structure when you have puzzles you do not want players to miss—whether because they progress the narrative or are just ridiculously cool.
An early play test of our upcoming game Lucidity revealed that we needed to restructure a room. The room initially was fully open-path, but when play-testers argued we had both “Wow” and narratively crucial moments inside the puzzles, we restructured the room to a more linear format. Of course, that led to redesigning puzzles from 1-2 person solves to 4-person solves, since linear puzzles just aren’t fun if you’re left out.
Can you artificially create bottlenecks?
Let’s say you already have an experience but, try as you might, can’t rewrite it with proper bottlenecks (restructuring is hard, I know.)
A foundation is not easy to fix.
But if a bottleneck only works if players think they are at a bottleneck, can you fake a bottleneck? Yes. Yes, you can.
We ran into this problem in The Man From Beyond when we had a scene at a moment that was not a true bottleneck. Many players played over the scene.
Then we took the lights down. It didn’t work. Then we got a new dimmer pack to isolate in light the thing we wanted in focus and and then took the rest of the lights WAYYYY DOWN. It worked. Much to our surprise, lights can direct player focus. It’s not perfect, but it helps patch over a missing bottleneck. Take note that we found this only works if you are insanely aggressive with the look (if you’re pulsing an object, it needs to be seriously strong; if you’re picking out an object, literally black out everything else.) Go big with the look, and then go one step bigger.
Video is even better than lighting. If you black out a room and use a video, you can mostly claim player focus. Mostly. A handful of folks still won’t take the hint, though.
Unfortunately, we can’t report in our experiments that sound can hone player focus. It’s too easy to yell over.
Now an actor…an actor in a spotlight (thus: combined with aggressive lighting) may be able to hone attention during gameplay…but it’s still not going to be one hundred percent. It’s not an experiment I am eager to run.
And if you have a true bottleneck, video, live-actor, spotlights, and sound can also help enhance focus, so employ these tools generously.
Fake a bottleneck if you must—and we do—but at the end of the day, being interrupted while you’re exploring something else will never be as fun as all the threads coming together in a proper bottleneck.
Check your structure before you wreck your show.
Bottlenecks in immersive theatre
Immersive theatre has more wide-ranging structures than escape rooms. Some experiences are linear (like dark rides), so directing attention is easy, whereas others are fully open-world, which poses more challenges for mid-experience focus. While strong bookends are a common tool in immersive theatre, bottlenecks are rarer.
The industry’s go-to touchstone of Sleep No More has some clever near-bottlenecks. While they are not guaranteed to capture everyone like the finale does, the Banquet and the Rave typically capture every audience member at least once per show, via the magic of the sheer number of characters present at the scene. Rather than collecting interesting objects for a puzzle, they are collecting interesting people for a scene. It’s clever.
TL;DR
Games are chaotic. Bottlenecks are your besties. Bottlenecks are the best tool for creating player focus mid-experience. (Lights and video are okay, but consider them as band-aids). In an escape room, involve everyone in bottleneck puzzles, and keep bottleneck cutscenes under 2 minutes.
And remember this is not the moment for your villain to start a monologue.
Plan bottlenecks as soon as you can in your design process, and you will get perfect attendance at your Wow-Surprise.
So…what do you want to bring into focus? I can’t wait to see it.
In Bookends and Bottlenecks, I explored the structure Strange Bird Immersive uses to tell stories within the chaos of an escape room. I then specifically investigated the value of an inciting incident in an escape room. Giving players the motivation to act will make their achievement at the end of the game all the more valuable.
Let’s look now at that moment of achievement: the fulfilling finale.
Did you have fun?
Escape rooms have myriad goals: you need to escape the room, or get the McGuffin, or change something in the space, like lifting a curse. But no matter the goal, the ending is almost always the same.
Your Game Master opens the exit door and says…
“DID YOU HAVE FUN???”
No matter how on-point our GM has been through the experience, I absolutely loathe them in this moment.
Why?
They just cut my adventure short. They broke the magic circle of the world, signaled the end of the fun—not two seconds after the most thrilling moment of the game!
Imagine you’re riding a roller coaster, but right after the highest drop, the train suddenly stops, and the park employee says “Get out, its over.”
Whiplash guaranteed.
Escape rooms are phenomenal vehicles for emotions. They thrill us. We need time to come down from the climax.
THE WORLD MADE RIGHT
Something is wrong with the world in the game. (If you deliver an inciting incident like you should, the players will even see how the world gets all wrong). You then ask the players to make things right.
To be explicit, making things right feels great!
They feel like heroes, just without all the spandex.
Players need time inside the world to enjoy their accomplishment.
If they helped a character out, show how things are now better for that character.
If they just saved the world, have the hint-mechanism character report back to the team the vast significance of what they did.
If they obtained the vaccine, maybe they disperse it into the air. Maybe they hear on a radio, walkie-talkie, or in-world TV about how many zombies are turning back to humans.
If players are escaping a serial killer, maybe you give them the opportunity to call the police at the end.
If players just got the key to escape the room (the simplest escape room story), let them open the door and rush into the hallway.
Find a way to remind the players of what was at stake and show the impact of their efforts. A conclusion will elevate your game from just another escape room into a froth-worthy adventure.
You know. Like that thing you sell on your website.
The blurb is the product you are selling. Deliver on the promise of your premise.
Take the time
The concluding bookend should be off the game clock. The players achieved their goal, and now they get to enjoy the fruits of their labor.
You can take as long as you want to end the story. It can take thirty seconds or much longer. I think the end of The Man From Beyond from climax to player exit is 15 minutes long.
I know this industry’s greatest pain point is throughput—we all have ceilings on how many games we can run on a Saturday. And I admit The Man From Beyond is too damn long for what we charge.
But concluding your narrative adventure should not be optional. I promise, you can do it without adding 15 minutes between your game times.
What about losing?
Readers of Immersology know by now that I have a very strong bias for designing escape rooms to be won by the vast majority, if not all teams.
But even The Man From Beyond has a losing scene. We hate running it, because the world is not made right again. But we do take the time inside the world to bring players out of the game, to come down from the high of “there’s one minute left on the clock!” In fact, one of our characters is made quite happy by the losing condition.
Write a losing ending. Don’t cheap out and have the Game Master come in. Maybe you can find a way to make losing fulfilling—often horror escape rooms are more interesting when you lose them than when you win! Yes, losing is no fun, you don’t get to feel like heroes, but a losing scene will bring the adventure to a close. Players will appreciate your commitment to the story.
A resolution by any other name would smell as sweet
In literary studies, endings go by many names.
Fans of the linear Aristotle’s Poetics call it the denouement (French for “unknotting”). The world was knotty, but the conclusion unties the knot, re-stabilizing the world. It brings a quiet moment of peace.
You probably learned this map in English class
Fans of the circular Hero’s Journey call it The Return: the moment the hero goes back home, but home is now different, after the hero’s transformation.
A less well-known dramatic structure map worth studying.
I like to call it the Fulfilling Finale. This phrase makes it clear what you need to do. I like the image of feeling full after a meal, not rushing up from the dinner table the moment you cleaned your plate. I also like alliteration a lot, and it pairs well with the pithy “inciting incident.”
At the risk of hubris, here is my map…
Note that the entirety of this map happens inside the imaginary world (aka the Magic Circle).
Whatever you call it, make sure your resolution accomplishes two goals:
One factual: How the world has changed.
One emotional: Come down from the climax.
A strong ending turns a game into a memory your players will carry with them. Stick the landing.
Make it memorable.
For more on escape room finales, check out Richard Burns’s article on Room Escape Artist, “Untie Your Escape Room Stories.” Let the reader note, Richard and I are actively searching for something we disagree about.
The bookends of the experience are off-the-clock and where you can invest the majority of your story-telling, since there is no game to compete for player attention. I’d argue the beginning bookend is more crucial than the end, and could be the difference maker between just another escape room and an immersive adventure. Let’s focus on that beginning.
Most escape rooms take the easy way out for beginnings: they tell you the opening part of the adventure, whether through a game master reading a script or through a polished video. “You were wrongly imprisoned for a crime.” “You got lost in a cave.” “You awoke the tomb’s curse.” “The cat stole your keys and ran into the neighbor’s backyard!”
Wow, that sounds exciting. But note that word tell. No one likes being told.
The right is a far more exciting thing to experience than the left.
What if we follow the mantra of all writing—and show rather than tell?
Most escape adventures start in Act 2 and skip Act 1. That’s like skipping the foundation of a house. It takes more work, but imagine how magical experiencing an inciting incident could be!
The game master takes you down a dark hallway where your team stands trial. An actor—or large projected video—of a judge sentences your team to life for murder. You have no idea what she’s talking about! You didn’t do it! Nooooooo!
Too late. You already had your right to a fair trial!
The game master, now a warden, ushers you into your game: a jail cell escape room.
How much more motivated are you now to break out and find the evidence that ensures your innocence?
What if you’re touring a cave with your GM-turned-tour-guide, your lanterns flicker off, there’s sound effects of a cave-in, and when your lantern is restored, they’re gone? The GM yells through the “cave-in” (entrance door) and implores you to find another way out!
What if you’re poking innocently around a tomb door, and awaken the curse? You had no idea this place was cursed! (There’s so much magic in that moment when the supernatural first reveals itself.)
What if a cat-puppet appears from a tree hole, seduces you into petting it, and then steals your keys? Now you need to break into your neighbor’s backyard!
Mischievous Mr. Mistoffelees strikes again!
Are you having fun yet? I am, just imagining these games.
The inciting incident is the moment where something changes in the world that spurs our heroes (the players) to action. Without that moment, they could go about their lives, but with it, they must do something to right the world that will transform them into heroes.
All of these moments are moments of surprise. Escape rooms are all about surprise. And so are stories!
Showing the inciting incident makes escaping, obtaining the McGuffin—whatever the game goal is—meaningful. Telling the inciting incident results in a conclusion that has no weight. I can’t tell you how many games I’ve played that ended in “Yay…we got the…thing…that somehow helps a problem I’ve forgotten about…?” Things that happen to us have a lasting power that things told to us do not.
What about in media res?
In media res is a storytelling technique that plunges the reader/viewer into the middle of a story that has a long chain of events preceding it. It challenges the viewer to piece together what has happened before and gives the opening a strong sense of urgency. (Note that usually in media res still has an inciting incident for the plot. Think Luke finding the droids on Tatooine in Star Wars—the story doesn’t begin with the Empire takeover.)
In media res works if you are using the players as viewers. Think of Sleep No More: there’s no inciting incident for you, the viewer. You are not called to be heroic, nor is there anything you can do to help. The characters do experience an inciting incident…
The witches’s prophecy in the Hotel Lobby (Sleep No More)
But inciting incidents are necessary for the characters, not you, the guests. Immersive theatre can use in media res when the audience is purely passive, but escape rooms cannot, as the players are far more than viewers.
That’s what’s so cool about escape room stories. They are second-person narratives, first and foremost—you are at the center of the story, and what happens to the world depends on you.
You can encounter characters that are in media res in escape rooms, and that can make things exciting. But if you cast the players as previously-motivated characters rather than giving them the spur on the spot, they’re going to have trouble feeling properly motivated.
Where to begin the story?
In The Man From Beyond, Strange Bird invites you to a Houdini séance hosted by Madame Daphne. Then something goes wrong in the séance that has never happened before. You see it happen, and it is surprising. And because you are the ones who happen to be there, you have to do something.
The Man From Beyond starts at the beginning of your story; before arriving at Madame Daphne’s, your life was normal. We like to craft stories that hew close to reality. But what if you want a more complicated casting of the players and a less reality-based world?
In Hatch Escapes’s Lab Rat, you are cast as rat-sized humans in a human-sized rat world. How did the world come to be this way? They don’t show that—they don’t even tell that. But an event does happen that starts you on the adventure to save yourselves. That works great!
You can start at the moment that a usual world becomes unusual or from within an unusual world. Just because there’s been an apocalypse does not mean you have to show the apocalypse (although that would be very cool!). But at the very least, show the threat of the present world and then the moment of discovering that if we do X, the world will be better. That will really make me want to do X!
Whatever the role of the players, give the players the motivation to play—a narrative motivation that goes beyond “win/lose.”
How long to spend on the inciting incident?
The Man From Beyond spends 30 minutes on set-up and inciting incident (Act 1 in our five-act structure). That’s insanely long and a large part of what makes us a premium escape room. We specialize in immersive theatre, and our professional actors are exquisite.
I would not spend that much time on the inciting incident without live actors. Live actors (or live puppets—puppets are AMAZING—see cat puppet above) can hold attention better than any other story-telling vehicle. If you’re not using actors, keep your openings short.
It could be three minutes, or even thirty seconds. Just long enough to 1) set-up a normal world, and then 2) deliver the surprising thing that incites them to act. It doesn’t require a special room nor hiring more staff. You can incite on the cheap. But it does require special thought and must include a moment of surprise.
Surprise them early and often.
Design your inciting incident to your strengths and resources. And trust me. It’s worth it. Without experiencing an inciting incident, your players get only the shadow of an adventure. With it, and they will remember what they did that day.
Time to publish Strange Bird Immersive‘s secret sauce. Because I don’t want it to be a secret.
The Man From Beyond: Houdini Séance Escape Room has a reputation as perhaps the most story-driven escape room out there—an escape room with a narrative so powerful that it can move you to tears. That was our goal as designers: to craft a game so grounded in a narrative reality, that it felt more like you were inside a movie than playing a game.
If you run into J. Cameron Cooper or myself—or more likely both of us—behind a conference podium, we’re probably advocating for integrating story into game play.
Our “Make It Immersive” talk from last year’s Reality Escape Convention was a stealth story talk. Although maybe it wasn’t that stealth.
Story is what elevates a fun evening into a life-long memory. It’s the game-changer, if you will.
Yet story is controversial in the escape room industry. Some escape room designers report frustration—”I’ve added story, but the players never pay attention to it!” Others are convinced their players just don’t want it.
But the problem isn’t a player hatred of story-telling—who hates stories? Seriously! The problem is in the stakes of escape rooms.
THE ACTOR VS THE PADLOCK: AND THE PADLOCK WINS
People go a little mad in escape rooms. We call it “escape room brain.”
In the typical escape room, the adventure is…
On a deadline (usually 60 minutes)
It’s hard to do (you need to complete 100% of the tasks)
It’s important (everyone wants to win)
These stakes are why we love escape rooms. They guarantee drama. I am addicted to the adrenaline shot of those 60 minutes, the dopamine hit when we unlock something new, and the feeling of mastery that comes with a win.
Players come to play. They’re simply not in a shut-up-and-listen frame of mind like at the movies, so story-tellers need to take a different approach.
If a designer makes something relevant and irrelevant available to the player, the player will rightly choose what they know is relevant. So when heeding story is in conflict with solving a puzzle, solving a puzzle will always win. If there’s suddenly something happening that interrupts their solving, they will not stop. This principle stands true just as much if you’re delivering backstory in a journal as if there’s an actor in the room delivering a monologue.
Believe it or not, if put in conflict, this lady would lose to a padlock 10/10 times. (Amanda Marie Parker as Madame Daphne).
The secret sauce
The Strange Bird secret sauce is this: don’t put story and puzzles in conflict! Separate the two in the structure of your game, and then you can deliver both elements to the team’s complete satisfaction.
We call the concept “Bookends & Bottlenecks.” These are the moments in your experience when you can deliver your essential story beats: set-ups, turns, dark nights of the soul, finales. You should tell your story throughout the experience with nice-to-know beats, but Bookends & Bottlenecks are where you place every need-to-know narrative beat. The concept calls for very deliberate design. You will need to know not just the structure of your experience, but potentially make changes to the flow, so you have the appropriate space.
Let’s define our terms.
Bookends. Moments that sandwich the gameplay and happen off the clock. Bookends are your beginnings and endings. Make sure your bookends are fully inside the immersive world you’ve built (and please show, don’t tell)—or they don’t count!
Bookends support the whole experience.
Bottlenecks. When there’s only one puzzle that can be solved at that time. Every game ends in a bottleneck, and often a room (before another room opens up) also ends in a bottleneck. Bottlenecks are moments of undivided player attention: use these moments for your best puzzles, your not-to-be-missed magic, and for story-telling beats. (Bottlenecks are a useful technique outside of storytelling. I advocate using bottlenecks for your coolest effects so everyone will see them, or again, people will play over them!)
Unlike in traffic, bottlenecks are a neutral tool in game design, to be used for good or evil.
What it looks like
I’ll cover in detail how Strange Bird likes to make experience flow maps in another post, but here’s a simplified visual of bookends and bottlenecks in a 2-room, 6-puzzle experience.
Bookends Can be longer
Every escape room has bookends. Usually the Game Master greets you, teaches you the rules, and plays a video or reads the set-up for your adventure. This is Act 1 and covers the inciting incident—what spurred you into the adventure in the first place. Then when you win, the Game Master opens the door and congratulates you, asks you about your adventure, takes a team photo (Act 5). These moments happen off the game clock, so everyone pays attention easily enough.
Note that a fair amount of your visit at the escape room is spent in these preambles and conclusions, probably 10 minutes or more on both ends.
Now imagine if you will, what happens when Act 1 and Act 5 are within your immersive world. When there are no puzzles to solve, you have full player attention. You’re already spending time on bookends. Use it in the adventure!
But once she turns over that hourglass, I’m really not interested in her backstory anymore.
The bookends will carry most of your dedicated story minutes. Deliver an inciting incident—something surprising that spurs the players to take action. Then deliver an in-world conclusion that rewards them for their efforts. Let them see how the world is better now. You can still have your GM host them in and out, but it’ll be a richer experience when you begin and end inside the world.
Because these moments are explicitly off-the-clock, you can take your time. In The Man From Beyond, greeting at the door to start of game clock runs about 25 minutes. The conclusion runs about 15 minutes. But hey, we’re theatre people—you don’t have to indulge in time like that! You can do bookends that set-up and end the story that only last two minutes each. Or even thirty seconds. Point is: the time allotted to your bookends can vary widely and be successful at any length. Just have them!
Bottlenecks must be shorter
Designing story beats at bottlenecks is trickier. You’ll need to first identify where your bottlenecks are in your puzzle flow. Also ask the question, do the players know they are at a bottleneck? You’ll be most successful at gaining attention if the players also have a clear sense that they can’t yet advance.
Look for the moments when there’s only one puzzle available to solve, and then insert your storytelling beat, only after which, give the team the ability to advance.
Don’t give them a key at the start of your speech.
The most likely bottleneck is right before the players enter a new room. Make the last puzzle unlock a story beat, then give them access to the new room.
Do not deliver a story beat at the entrance to a brand new room! I see this all the time, and even I play over it. There’s so much new stuff to explore!
You can also design bottlenecks within a room, although it’s trickier to signal to players there’s nothing more available at that moment. But it can be done (we do it).
Story beats at bottlenecks are on the game clock, so even without any puzzles available, they still make players anxious. Limit these beats to 2 minutes or less. Do not go over 2 minutes, or you will lose player attention.
Can you stop the clock at a bottleneck, so players relax? Yes, you could—our Act 4 is all scenes and gameplay outside of clock time—but remember, it’s hard to communicate anything in the middle of a game. I still wouldn’t go over 2 minutes.
Think of bottlenecks as “cut scenes.” No video gamer enjoys long cut scenes, but they also don’t want to get rid of them, either. They crave the surprise, the turn, the new stakes to the adventure.
We got it wrong, we learned
We learned the “Bookends & Bottleneck” principle the hard way. While designing The Man From Beyond, the theory was in its infancy, and we did not rigorously apply the theory to every story beat. We have one moment that is not at a proper bottleneck in the game play, and naturally, some players play over it.
When we saw that behavior, we dimmed the lighting dramatically to try to drive player attention, which I am happy to report, has helped! But it’s not 100% attention like at our more rigorous bottlenecks. But lighting is one way you can patch your structure. Just don’t be surprised if someone keeps solving in the dark.
Photo of the player who keeps playing.
Our next game Lucidity is even more rigorously structured with Bookends & Bottlenecks. In development, when we realized we had a huge WOW puzzle on our hands that wasn’t at a bottleneck? We restructured.
Beyond Escape Rooms
This technique serves more than escape rooms. It works for any experience design where groups take different tracks or otherwise divide their attention from the story to other matters. Think about how Sleep No More funnels everyone through the same beginning and ending and also cleverly bottlenecks people at the banquet and the rave (the most essential scenes).
More
You can watch our analysis of Bookends & Bottlenecks in more detail at our conference talk at the Immersive Design Summit in 2019, “When Game and Theatre Collide.” (Bookends & Bottlenecks start at 19:30).
I think this is the greatest physical distance between Cameron and me registered in 2019.
Note that the talk is full of structure spoilers. David Spira of Room Escape Artist told us to never spoil like that again, so…you’ve been warned.
I’ll revisit the B&B concept in future posts on mapping puzzle flows and in story-telling techniques (what do you do at those bookends and bottlenecks, anyway?), and probably a few other places. It’s foundational.
An immersive theatre sandwich…?
Critics have called our game “an immersive theatre sandwich,” where there’s a game in the middle, and the theatrical bookends are the bread that hold it all together. But when you consider bottlenecks, perhaps it is more like a layer cake…? Yeah, like crust is the inciting incident, the mousse layers are the beats and turns, the icing on top the conclusion, and the moist cake in-between are all the puzzles that escalate the action.
That’s a pretty sweet game you got there.
Any way you slice it, it’s a more filling experience when there’s a story. You just have to build the cake right.
Words matter. Not to dive too deep into linguistic relativity, but words shape our ideas. They give ideas boundaries. They act as short-hand for things they would require more words to express. Add new words, and you add new ideas.
In the escape room industry, and immersive entertainment in general, we need new words. And we need to be precise about them. The genre’s complexity demands that we agree on new terms, like “sandbox,” “pipeline,” even “immersive.”
The community at Room Escape Artist agrees. Check out their fun and useful ERban Dictionary. Having the word “runbook,” for example, or one that I coined, “ghost puzzle,” makes it easier to grasp that these are poor design choices.
Words, words, words.
I’ve been playing escape rooms again—YAS!!!—and something has been driving me nuts. I’m hearing sloppy language, and I sense it’s leading to sloppy design.
I’m making an ask of the escape room community: please stop using the words “hints” and “clues” interchangeably. “Hints” are not “clues.”
If we get rigorous about using these two very different terms, I believe we can get closer to better game design.
DEFINITIONS
Clue. A guide to a puzzle or interaction that appears in the room organically: a scrap of paper, an object, a key, writing on a wall. A clue is something 100% of winning teams find. A series of clues that lead to a solution is called a clue trail—they act like a map. Clues feel amazing when you find them! Players love finding clues.
Players hunt for lobby clues in Madame Daphne’s Tarot Reading Room.
Hints. Manual intervention from the game master when a team is stuck on a puzzle or overlooking something and has been unable to advance for some time. Different teams get stuck on different things in different places, so hints are custom delivered by the game master who oversees the game. Hints feel like a defeat for the players.
Notice how in these definitions, I’ve included the emotional response of the team. That’s part of what makes these two words so different.
Navi from Zelda: Ocarina of Time is a hint mechanism and inspires a lot of feelings. None of them positive.
No matter how immersive your hint system is, players can tell when you’re giving them a hint. Clues tend to be objects, but hints tend to be audio or text on a screen, gifted, not discovered. They know it’s the all-knowing game master intervening, and while a team does appreciate the help, there’s an air of disappointment in the room that’s not easily dispelled, this feeling of “Well, we’re supposed to be the heroes, but we screwed this one up!”
WHY BE RIGOROUS?
What happens if a game designer doesn’t think of hints and clues as starkly different things? Well, they start using hints as clues.
If you’ve played a few escape rooms, you’ve seen it, what I call “band-aid” design: there’s a puzzle in the room that’s missing a proper clue trail. Rather than add in clues, the designer asks the game master to fix the problem by sending in hints for that puzzle for every single team. It’s a lazy fix, a “band-aid” on a wound in the game.
Stop sending in the First Aid Kit for every team!
What’s the harm in using a hint 100% of the time as part of a clue trail? Well…the harm is the players get pissed. They feel like they missed something, when in truth, they were never given the tools to succeed in the first place. It’s especially bad if the team has to ask formally for a hint that functions as a clue. They’ve wasted time hunting for a clue that’s not even there. Next, you make them beg for a hint. You’re shaming every single team that wants to win.
I’ve played games before that say, “Hey—you get three hints! You have to use them to win!” OMG NO. Hints are not clues. They are outside the game, not a part of it.
Or how about this one: “Nobody ever gets through that puzzle without a hint!” That’s band-aid design. And it’s bad design.
AIM FOR ZERO HINTS
Escape room designers should aim for zero-hint games. Players love clues! Players hate hints! Why wouldn’t you want to aim for all teams to skip the feeling of defeat?
For the first six months, Strange Bird kept close statistics on our hints. For any hint that ran for 25% of teams or more, we increased the clue trail in the room. Years later, we still watch for a too-frequent hint. I improved the cluing on something just the other day. Now our game masters are watching the change closely to see if it helps.
We also train our game masters to aim for zero hints. We want to give the team time to have their “Aha!” moment. When a team falls behind our schedule (we have time markers for where a team should be), or when there is an air of frustration in the room, or when they ask for help, we offer a hint. Hints keep the fun going.
We built an antique projector to deliver silent-movie-style hints. When a team needs help, we light up the projector button, so they can opt into the hint, but we can also force a hint or even run a static card. It makes sense in the world, but it’s still clearly a hint mechanism.
And when the hint comes, it’s the lightest possible nudge, not a walk-through, so that the team still gets an “Aha!” with that puzzle, and the feeling of mastery is restored.
And don’t get me wrong—hints are essential to a functioning game. I’ve learned that every step in the game, even “open this drawer” or “where that key goes” will be a hint for some team at some point. People are different. Hints make sure that every team, no matter their dynamic or escape-room-experience, can have fun.
At the bare minimum, you need to have had a real-life team win your game with zero hints, or your game is broken. I’d say that should happen weekly, monthly at the very least.
And keep in mind that zero hints on the regular doesn’t mean a game is “easy” or that teams regularly escape in 20 minutes. What it does mean is teams don’t waste 10 minutes (1/6th of their time!) stuck on something under-clued. Wasting my time is not a good money value.
Moving past “THe CHALLENGE”
Wait, if I want zero-hint games, that kind of sounds like I’m designing for teams to win. Whatever happened to “the challenge”?
Creating hard puzzles is easy—you skimp on the clue trail! Creating hard-but-fair puzzles is extraordinarily difficult. And I don’t think an escape room is a good vehicle for that type of puzzle anyway. Go enjoy a puzzle hunt instead!
The industry is shifting away from thinking of escape rooms as a challenge towards thinking of them as an experience. It’s a shift from the intellectual to the emotional. It’s better business when teams win. They feel good, they play more.
Fun was had at Cross Roads’s Fun House.
Escape rooms are fun because they take you to a brand new place where you can do brand new things—not because they can prove to your date that you could have gone to MIT.
The shift from “challenge” to “experience” will inspire designers to create stronger clue trails and fewer “gotcha” puzzles that require a hint to bypass. And we’ll get there faster if we start using “hints” and “clues” distinctly.
WE CAN DO IT!
If you’re a player, start asking game masters for “hints,” even if the house-style calls them “clues.” Keep it up when you talk with other players about how many “hints” you took in a game and if you think the “clue trail” in the game was any good.
If you’re an owner, make sure your game masters use the word “hint” when instructing teams on how to ask for help in the game—don’t say “three free clues.” All of your clues should be free! (So should your hints, but that’s an argument for another day).
If you’re a designer, watch your game. Get stats on your game. When you see teams struggling consistently, increase the clues in the room, rather than fall back on hints. Design with player emotion in mind.
RECON
Interested in what makes good hints? Be sure to catch Summer Herrick (Locurio) and Rita Orlov (PostCurious) talk about “Fun Insurance: What Makes a Good Hint System” at the all-virtual Reality Escape Convention this August. They know their stuff. It’ll be stellar. Hope to see you in the Discord!
In the face of an ongoing pandemic, Strange Bird Immersive has elected to keep our doors closed. To help us make rent, we’ve pivoted to creating virtual experiences.
I am eager to report that Zoom can indeed deliver the thrill of immersive theatre.
Offscreen Madame Daphne swoons with joy after connecting with her first stranger in months.
We started with Zoom Tarot Readings with Madame Daphne, a new fifteen minute one-on-one experience with a character we know, with a skill we could spotlight.
This Saturday night, we’re opening The Strange Secret of Mr. Adrian Rook. It’s an all-new experience that explores the Strange Bird Immersive story: 90 minutes, 6 actors, and a strong dose of magic.
Shows are selling out fast, so reserve your seat stat.
Along the way, we’ve learned a thing or two about how to make the most of virtual experiences. So here’s a list of do’s and don’ts to jump start your own creation.
DON’T UNDERSELL IT
You’ve created something. You’ve invested time and money. Even if you’re not paying rent on 3,400 sqft, you still have expenses. Just because your experience is virtual does not mean it has no value. Charge for it. Trust me: no one will remember in a six months when they’re looking for an escape room that, “Wasn’t that free game we played one night from Trapopolis fun?”
Don’t forget about perceived value. If you sell your production for free or $5 or $10, that suggests I shouldn’t expect much. You’ve set my expectations low. Charge $20, $30, $40, and that sounds much more to me like a real experience, something to look forward to, something to book now.
DO DELIVER PRODUCTION VALUES
Everyone is tired of looking at people’s living rooms. Deliver the same aesthetic WOW! that you would if they were in-person. Give them something beautiful to look at in the first five seconds. Consider costume, makeup, set and light. Production values establishes your show as not-your-everyday-Zoom.
Visuals are arguably the most powerful tool we have in the immersive entertainment arsenal. People remember visuals. They don’t remember what they heard half so well. Movies get this. And guess what we’re making now? Give them visual memories.
Sets are easier than ever before over Zoom, so make a few. Position the camera just right, and you don’t even have to dress the whole wall!
Nice brick wall, am I right? (Amanda Marie Parker in Strange Secret of Mr. Adrian Rook)
DO TEST EQUIPMENT
Gather your devices in one place, and test out cameras and computer processing side-by-side. See what camera looks awful, what computer runs a delay. The iPad has the best camera…? Okay, go for it!
Device party! Invite the whole neighborhood!
Test mics. Test the sound in the space. Test the internet, and test it again. What’s that weird buzzing? Find out. Figure out the camera angle—you can have a lot of fun with the camera angle! And test the lighting. Prioritize the face.
I am so, so sorry, but you’re a videographer now. Learn those skills. Those skills mostly involve mastery of equipment.
DO INVEST IN EQUIPMENT
You don’t need to spend a lot to boost your set-up to a more professional level. Most likely you’ll want to buy lighting. You want photography light for Zoom—architectural light won’t do. We bought a few photography light kits.
DO CREATE FOR THE MEDIUM
Strange Bird briefly considered offering The Man From Beyondas an avatar-led Zoom escape room. There were many problems with adapting it, but the number one problem was that our puzzles are all tactile. They’re about discovering the physical item. We have only one puzzle that requires a notepad. Wouldn’t tactile puzzles become frustrating in the avatar medium?
The joy of the maze box over Zoom becomes the tedium of the maze box. And that’s just the beginning of things. Yeah, no.
So we decided to save our award-winning experience for what it was designed for: in-person play.
When we wrote both Tarot Readings and The Strange Secret of Mr. Adrian Rook, we created with Zoom in mind. For all its faults, Zoom is the platform of the moment and requires the least on-boarding of guests. We leaned into the medium and built experiences that worked with that tool rather than against it. Our engagements flow easily, and our puzzle was built for the Zoom style of solving.
We also have a really cool moment in Tarot Readings where we engage with the platform’s features. It’s a WOW moment—from within Zoom. Weird and wonderful. I’ve also heard of other immersive experiences using Zoom’s breakout rooms to great effect. Explore what the medium can do.
The most satisfying virtual experiences are at home on the platform—they would not easily translate to an in-person experience.
DON’T PRETEND RECORDED VIDEO IS LIVE
It’s disappointing to try to engage with an actor only to discover they’re a video. In-person escape rooms do this all the time. It sucks over virtual, too, perhaps even more. We’re so hungry to connect.
DO JUSTIFY LIVE ENGAGEMENT
If you’ve got an actor or an avatar in the experience, use them to your most entertaining advantage. Actors are your best special effect. I’ve long considered them the fast-pass to immersion, as players have to engage with the imaginary world to engage with the actor at all. Actors make the experience dynamic. If you’ve got them, give them more than a puzzle to deliver or a two-minute scene.
Immersive theatre has the edge on traditional theatre right now. Presenting live theatre over Zoom makes no sense to me if there’s no engagement. Why not film the best version of the production, edit it, and put that out? It’d be better for the audience. Not so with immersive theatre: ours is a genre where you just have to be there. So engage, engage, engage. Keep alive the fire of live performance.
DON’T MUTE EVERYBODY, DO USE SPOTLIGHT
Tarot Readings feels like a real conversation—because it is. We make it as natural as possible.
The screen sits exactly where you would sit in-person at Madame Daphne’s.
For Strange Secret, we thought 8 unmuted guests plus one leading actor would overwhelm the scene. So we tried “mute all.” You should see the beta tapes. All six actors fumbling through the clunky process of unmuting and muting guests just to ask them a simple question or two. It slaughtered the fun.
Then we discovered a special Zoom feature: SPOTLIGHT. Once the host admits guests to a meeting, the host can spotlight their video, so that the video doesn’t randomly prioritize a laughing guest or someone’s barking dog. We could lock the video on the actor.
So we went with unmute. Just like with a real immersive, guests gain an instinct for when to speak and when not, and it makes the “being there” much more authentic and the engagements more natural. Plus, there were no technical problems. At least with 9 people. More than that…maybe you’d be pushing it.
DON’T UNDERSCORE YOUR VIDEO
We tried working with underscore, but the only way it doesn’t clip in and out over Zoom is if everyone else is on mute. So there goes our in-house style of scoring everything.
DO LOOK INTO THE CAMERA
This is the best trick on this list. No matter where the camera is positioned, if you look straight into it, you’ll make eye contact with your guests. Can’t see it easily? Outline it with tape. Look at the camera as much as possible. It combats Zoom fatigue for your guests like nothing else.
Wesley Whitson delivers that delicious eye contact in Strange Secret of Mr. Adrian Rook.
DO HIGHER ENERGY
Siobhan O’Laughlin, immersive theatre superstar and veteran Zoom performer, put it to us thus: “If your energy is 10, that translates to a 6 over Zoom.” Performances need way-higher-energy in this medium.
DOn’T USE PAUSES
Dramatic pauses in-person build tension; over Zoom, they kill the scene. Pause as little as you can. Keeping them in your world requires more effort than before.
DON’T FORGET TO BETA TEST
Just like an in-person interactive experience, you’ll want to beta test. How people engage will surprise you. Does it work? Tweak it until it does. Record the experience, and review it closely. Invite feedback afterwards, and listen. I can’t tell you how much beta feedback fundamentally changed Strange Secret for the better.
DO GET CREATIVE
I love constraints. They fuel my creativity. We’re under a ton of constraints right now, and no, I don’t expect virtual experiences to replace the income we’re losing from closing our primary business. And yet…this is a wonderful moment to branch out, to experiment, to test and fail and test again. I hear audiences are more forgiving then ever. They get it. They want to be somewhere else, do something else, see something NEW.
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