Hey REA, Will You Sign My NDA?

We’ve had many variants of this conversation over the years. I’m hoping that sharing this will reduce the frequency of this dialog: Hopeful Creator: “Hey Room Escape Artist! I have this super awesome game concept and I’d love to get your thoughts on it!” Us: “Sure, we love talking about nifty things.” Over-protective Creator: “Huzzah!…

David Spira

7 April 2019

1 minute

We’ve had many variants of this conversation over the years. I’m hoping that sharing this will reduce the frequency of this dialog:

Hopeful Creator: “Hey Room Escape Artist! I have this super awesome game concept and I’d love to get your thoughts on it!”

Us: “Sure, we love talking about nifty things.”

Stylized image of a person reviewing a contract.

Over-protective Creator: “Huzzah! So… before I tell you about my super awesome thing, I need you to sign an non-disclosure agreement.”

Us: “Yeah… that’s not going to happen.”

Confounded Creator: “Wait… what?”

Us: “It’s nothing personal… we just don’t sign them. NDA’s are almost always painfully broad and we don’t have any idea what idea you’re going to tell us, so we don’t know how it would affect us. We’re not gaining anything besides interesting conversation and you’re asking us for our thoughts. Take a look at our site. We don’t publish gossip… and whatever you’re going to tell us, I can guarantee we’ve kept far more sensitive secrets that other creators have shared with us.”

Hopeful Creator: “I see… so you won’t write about it or tell anyone?”

Us: “Yup. We don’t trade in gossip. We sat on this story even though it was to our own financial detriment to do so. We’d love to hear what you’re working on, but if you can’t tell us, we totally understand.”

Creator: “Ok. So here’s what I’m working on…”

We’re down to talk. We aren’t introducing legal entanglements to our conversations.

5 responses to “Hey REA, Will You Sign My NDA?”

Charles

April 7, 2019 at 11:16 am

This will be the one and only article the “creator” didn’t read. Funny how that happens.

Reply
1. David Spira
  
  April 7, 2019 at 11:30 am
  
  Hehe sometimes we write a post so that we can copy and paste a link into an email :p
  
  Reply
Chad Ellis

April 7, 2019 at 4:01 pm

Couldn’t agree more. I get contacted by entrepreneurs all the time, and a significant number of them ask me to sign an NDA in order to do them the favor of giving the feedback they’ve asked for. I always say no, and I’m surprised by how many of them are borderline-shocked that I won’t do it.

Reply
1. David Spira
  
  April 7, 2019 at 4:14 pm
  
  I think that a lot of folks don’t think through the fact that NDAs create complicated and unforseeable problems.
  
  As a society, I think that we rely entirely too much on contracts for random interactions and we don’t think about it until something goes wrong.
  
  Reply
Mark C

April 8, 2019 at 1:02 pm

The still-nascent ER industry is simply overflowing with excessive concern about secrecy. Has anyone truly created anything yet with trade secrets or IP so valuable that their businesses and lives would be destroyed without an NDA? There are other legitimate hurdles to tackle, such as people re-selling duplicate rooms (which not only ruins player experience but does suggest interesting questions around trademark and copyright), which NDAs would do little-to-nothing to prevent.

Let’ s just keep being creative, not only in the artistic/immersive space but in the operational/business space of the industry, and not spend so many cycles on trivial matters.

Reply

🖋️ Author

Written by

David Spira

Co-Founder of Room Escape Artist & Co-Host of Reality Escape Pod. David conceived of Room Escape Artist because he saw the potential of this new entertainment medium back in 2014. From the start, he applied his professional skills as a digital experience designer to the burgeoning industry of escape rooms. David is full of ideas: from in-depth research pieces to new content types… like cute animals solving puzzles. He is always pushing REA to try new things, take risks, and be something more.

Room Escape Artist