Welcome to 2022. We’re planning travels and events… and we’re optimistic about the year ahead.
New Feature: Best of the Month
We’re introducing a new feature tomorrow, the last day of January, where we highlight our favorite REA posts from the month. This will include reviews (in person, online, and tabletop), design tips, news, commentary, podcast episodes… whatever we wrote about.
You can help us decide what to highlight by supporting us on Patreon and joining the conversation in our secret (and super fun!) Discord channel. We’ll be chatting there about what to include. (We’re currently also chatting about mystery-flavored candy. Now we all know why there are white “mystery” airheads.)
Escape Immerse Explore: New Mexico
Earlier this month we announced tickets for our 7th escape room tour, taking place in New Mexico in June.
Saturday, June 4 – Tuesday, June 7, 2022
We were really impressed by the companies in the region when we visited in December and we can’t wait to share these games with a group of traveling escape room players.
We’ve started to publish the reviews from the region. Check out Blackwell Manor, Rattlesnake Bend, Super Secret, and Jumanji. You can expect more reviews each week.
Tickets are on sale now! They are already more than half sold.
Reality Escape Pod Season 3
Our podcast returns February 15 for its third season.
David and Peih-Gee are excited to bring you 12 episodes (our longest season yet!) with guests from escape rooms, immersive theater, larp, board games, Survivor, and more.
We’ve already recorded a lot of the season, and we’re really excited by what we’ve captured so far.
In the meantime, catch up on seasons 1 & 2 if you haven’t already. And if you have, please consider leaving us a review on Apple Podcasts. It may sound silly, but it truly helps us.
RECON Boston
The Reality Escape Convention will be in person in Boston this August. Mark your calendar.
Sunday, August 21 – Monday, August 22, 2022
We’ll be releasing tickets, as well as our plans, soon, but I’ll give you a little teaser. Just something between you and me…
RECON Boston is an in-person convention focused on live interaction. In addition to some phenomenal speakers, there will be lots of opportunities to play escape rooms and other fantastic immersive games baked right into your tickets. It will not have a digital component. It will not be recorded. You’re either there or you’re not.
RECON Global will return in 2023 to continue its success of connecting people around the world and sharing their passion for immersive games.
This year the team is focusing on building the best RECON Boston that we can, and we hope to see you there.
Tickets will be limited. If you want to be informed when they go on sale, make sure you’re subscribed to the RECON newsletter. Click the link below and scroll down to the footer to subscribe.
Industry Report
We are putting together our annual industry report, scheduled for release in late February.
This next report will be an update to our most recent industry report and our 2021 study on the impact of the pandemic on the industry.
If you know of any escape room companies opening, closing, moving, or rebranding, please contact us. Your regional knowledge helps keep our directory up to date.
Thank you!
Thank you to our Patreon backers. You all help make all of these projects possible. We can’t wait to see many of you in New Mexico and Boston in 2022.
We especially want to thank the handful of folks who increased their pledge this month. It means a lot and it truly makes a difference.
Alexander Gierholz
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Andrew Reynolds
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Support Room Escape Artist’s Mission
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RECON 21’s recorded videos were a major facet of what made that conference so great. I was able to enjoy & benefit from talks I missed, due to the busy schedule. I am disappointed to see that RECON ’22’s talks will not be recorded. Not to mention that the pandemic still rages, and in-person events are still dangerous, even with vaccination + masks. I’ve read many REA posts that advocate for accessibility, yet this decision seems to go against that ethos. Why the refusal?
There are two pieces to this answer:
We’re not just putting together an escape room convention, we’re making an event where talks are just one component, along with workshops, discussions, and playing some of the best escape rooms and immersive gaming that Boston has to offer.
Room Escape Artist lives its commitment to creating accessible content, as it has for almost a decade. We will continue to create free daily content, a free podcast, and a virtual convention.
When creating an event, we see it like this: making a fantastic virtual escape game vs making fantastic real life escape game. They are inherently different products.
We’ve been to conferences that do both, and it is a mediocre experience. If you’re in person, you feel like you’re trapped in a zoom call, an event constricted by the limitations of the internet. If you’re online, you feel like you’re missing out on the party. When you optimize for everything, you optimize for nothing.
When we host in-person, we are building for in-person. When we host virtually, we optimize for virtual.
This why we are spinning off RECON Global as a different event held at a different time of year.
Thank you for the response and explanation. I certainly understand the difference between IRL & virtual content, it is sensible to not straddle both. I agree that hybridizing the workshops/discussions/games would be awkward. At the same time, is it overly difficult to record + upload the talks? I think of GDC and their library of talks.
Either way, I’m excited for both RECON 22 and RECON Global 23.
We’ve certainly considered it. The labor costs would greatly exceed what we expect virtual attendees would be willing to pay.
And the difference between recording and doing it well is significant while adding a lot more logistical overhead. Ultimately when our goal is to put on the best IRL event we can, we have to keep our eye on the prize.
And we’re excited to have you be a part of RECON this year and in the future 🙂