The Reality Escape Convention (RECON) believes that collaboration grows our industry and the community around it. To that end, RECON recently announced that the annual UK Escape Room Industry Conference (ERIC) would present two featured talks:
Charlie Bond and James Hamer-Morton of Deadlocked Escape Rooms in Reading, England, will talk about diversifying escape room business offerings.
David Middleton of Bewilder Box in Brighton, England, will interview Sera Dodd, one of the two most experienced escape room players in the western world. (She is tied with her lovely partner Sharan.)
Collaborating with ERIC
ERIC is the UK’s annual escape room conference. Last year, David flew to the UK to speak on the ERIC stage and host a panel.
While there, he fell in love with ERIC’s energetic, community-focused approach to escape room conference production.
The folks behind ERIC love and support this industry as much as we do.
Diversifying Your Puzzle Products
Charlie & James of Deadlocked are actors and escape room owners. Over the past few years they have created games in multiple media including:
- Real-life escape rooms
- Escape room puzzle books
- Digital games that blur the lines between escape room, alternate reality game, and light puzzle hunt.
They will be sharing the lessons that they learned designing for each medium, focusing heavily on how these differ from one another. The session is both funny and informative.
Charlie & James
Charlie and James are the masterminds behind boutique escape room chain Deadlocked – the pioneering powerhouse of the hit episodic online escape rooms The Insiders and The Cyphstress. They created these two experiences in a lab specifically for the world of immersive experiences. While cutting their teeth starring in art house films and moonlighting as games level designers, they soon turned their hand to the world of ‘alternative reality games’, devoting their lives to transporting their audiences into the center of their own artisan adventures.
A Conversation with the Western World’s Most Experienced Escape Room Player
The title says it all. Together David Middleton and Sera Dodd will explore the observations and evolution of a player through 1,500+ escape rooms.
Sera & David
Sera Dodd has played just over 1500 rooms. This makes her almost certainly the most experienced escape room player in the Western world alongside Sharan, with whom she’s played every single game. Together they have a 99.8% escape rate, have played in 17 different countries, and once played 615 games in a single year. Sera has been a member of Team UK during both Red Bull Escape Room World Championships, co-founded the UK Escape Room Industry Conference (ERIC), worked as a UX and Design Consultant within the escape room industry, and has generally been a pillar of the UK escape room community. Her real hobbies include bouldering and befriending wild animals. In her spare time, she’s a doctor.
David Middleton is co-founder of both ERIC and the Brighton-based escape room company Bewilder Box. Bewilder Box has produced an assortment of highly regarded games ranging from traditional escape rooms to online puzzle video games, and a beachside pop-up escape room in a box.
Join us at RECON
RECON ’20 is a free digital event with curated talks covering aspects of experience design in physical and digital media.
The RECON team is excited to collaborate with ERIC, and have them present these two talks on the RECON stage. This collaboration furthers our goals of community and building a sustainable industry together.
RECON is less than one month away. Pre-register today so that you receive all information about registering to get your virtual badge, the full schedule of talks, and how to meet other folks at RECON. All this information will be available to pre-registrants really soon!
