Human Motivation & Escape Rooms

We made an appearance on the Room Escape Divas Podcast a few weeks ago. We had a great time talking about escape rooms and blogging with the Divas.

Room Escape Divas Logo, a cartoon representation of the four hosts.

Whether or not you listened to our episode of REDivas, I highly recommend that you give their fourth episode with Professor Scott Nicholson a thorough listening, as I think it’s their best.

Scott Nicholson

Scott is a Professor of Game Design and Development at Wilfrid Laurier University (and formerly of Lisa’s alma mater, Syracuse University). He created the Facebook Enthusiast Group, which is the only room escape Facebook group that team Room Escape Artist frequents.

He created the easy-to-learn and super fun auction table top game Going Going GONE.

Most importantly, Scott wrote the seminal room escape white paper Peeking Behind the Locked Door: A Survey of Escape Room Facilities (2015).

Another Blacklight

A quick digression…

The episode opens with Errol’s incredible parody of Disney’s Aladdin theme “Arabian Nights,” reworking it into “Another Blacklight.”

I think this should be expanded into a full song and turned into a music video.

Daniel Pink on Motivation

Scott and the gang cover a lot of interesting topics, one of which is Dan Pink’s research on the unexpected idiosyncrasies of human motivation. His work has interested me since 2010. I cannot agree more with Scott on the importance of understanding what actually motivates people when designing games (or designing anything, really).

I highly recommend picking up a copy of Daniel Pink’s book Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us. Whether you’re designing products, games, organization, or teaching, this book will reshape how you think about motivating others and yourself.

If a book is too much commitment, take 10 minutes and watch his RSA video:

Or really go nuts and spend 18 minutes listening to his TED Talk:

(Amazon – If you purchase via our Amazon links, you will help support Room Escape Artist as we will get a very small percentage of the sale).

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