We’ve been producing REA for longer than we spent in high school and college combined 🤯

8 years is a long time to study and write about any subject.

More than 2,565 posts… and that’s not getting into RECON, REPOD, conference talks, college lectures, and the Escape, Immerse, Explore Tours. It’s a lot.

And it all started with a single goal:

Help grow awareness of escape rooms so that they would make more money… and the creators would make more games that we could play.

That was, as we put it, “the evil plan.”

The Doubts

8 years ago I was sitting in my parents’ home building the first version of this website… and everyone in the room kept asking me different versions of the same question:

“How are you possibly going to have enough to say about escape rooms?”

When I looked at those early escape rooms, I saw so much potential… so many different directions that they could grow. I wasn’t worried about finding things to write about.

And looking back, I only perceived the tip of the iceberg… and a little bit of what was under the surface.

We never ran out of things to think about or veins to explore. If anything has become clear… we have never been able to write or explore fast enough.

How Far We’ve Come

Looking back at our early posts and the things that impressed us in 2015… it’s amusing. 8 years is a long time.

If you had told me back then that I’d be co-hosting a podcast where we have deep, complex conversations with amazing experience creators… and that the chaotic co-host to counterbalance my professorial demeanor would be Peih-Gee Law… I simply would not have believed you.

And speaking of how far we’ve come, Lisa and I had only been together 6 months when we started Room Escape Artist. Back then, we used the joint byline of “Lisa & David” no last name. We kept it blurry on purpose. But looking back, we barely knew each other. This website has always been almost as old as our relationship. It’s crazy to think about it. 8 years is a long time… and 8 years went by so fast. Best 8 years of my life.

Can I Ask you A Favor?

I’m bad at this… but I am trying to be better.

I’m only doing this because I am certain you’re invested in our nonsense. You’ve read this far while I’m waxing nostalgic.

It’s really hard to break through the noise on the internet and get people to share good stuff. There is so much misery on regular display that it’s easy to just shut down on social media. But I am old enough to remember a time when these tools were used primarily to share great things. Things that inspired. Silly things that made people laugh. Stuff that brought joy.

We try really hard to inspire, stir laughter, and bring joy with the content that we create. It has been central to our work from day 1:

“Well-researched, rational, & reasonably humorous.”

If you like our work, whether it’s written, audio, or the video work that is inevitably coming… can you occasionally share it with someone? Maybe you post it on your social media site of choice. Or perhaps you just email it to someone that you think will enjoy it. If you’re reading or listening to something we made and think, “I loved this,” share that love. We certainly love making it.

We’re working hard to bring new experiences and ideas to you every single day. Boosting the signal – even if it’s just a little – bit goes a long way.

And our evil plan never really changed. We’re still trying to:

Help grow awareness of escape rooms so that they would make more money… and the creators would make more games that we could play.

If you can help us out with that from time to time, it really would mean the world to us. And not just to Lisa and me… but to everyone involved in producing the content on this site. There are a lot of us now.

Thank you!

And as always, thank you to our Patreon backers. We wouldn’t be here 8 years later without the community you’ve helped us create and your financial support. Truly.

If your name isn’t on this list and you can afford a few dollars per month, it means more than we can articulate.

To those of you reading who have the means, we hope you’ll consider joining this wonderful group of supporters.

Support Room Escape Artist’s Mission

There are lots of ways to support Room Escape Artist, like buying from Amazon, Etsy, or Art of Play after clicking into the links included in this post or backing us on Patreon.

The money that we make from these helps us to grow the site and continue to add more value to the community that we love so much.