This talk first aired at RECON Remote 23 on Sunday, August 20, 2023.
David and Lisa challenge us to support each other because rising tides float all boats.
Players & Owners Improving Together
This video is now available on the Room Escape Artist YouTube channel!
Speakers: Lisa and David Spira
Company: Room Escape Artist
Nine years into Room Escape Artist, the escape room community – players and owners – are what drives us to produce content and events. And nine years into Room Escape Artist, we continue to see a lot of the same misunderstandings persist between players and owners. We’re going to attempt to thread the needle and help drive understanding in our community. Buckle up, we’re going to make things interesting.
Why this topic?
Room Escape Artist has many audiences. We’re used to looking at experiences from player (newbie and enthusiast) or designer and owner perspectives. Sometimes those perspectives seem to clash.
We hear owners saying that enthusiasts are entitled and that it does not make economic sense to build for enthusiasts.
Players complain a lot about ‘bad’ rooms (e.g. too many locks, low budget set) and customer service (e.g. cancellation policies or public bookings).
David and Lisa took on the challenge of showing the different sides of the conversation and cultivating more understanding.
Highlights from the live Discord chat
This was the last talk of RECON Remote 23 and the chat was particularly silly. The chat was entertained by the notion that Lisa and David were not in the video concurrently and that David was simultaneously participating in the chat! This led to many esoteric jokes around perception and reality, and mayonnaise.
The chat did eventually move on to discussing what escape rooms are (is 5 wits and escape room?), and other forms of immersive entertainment such as axe throwing and mini-golf, before derailing into trying to sculpt David.
There was an outpouring of emotion as the closing messages resonated.
Behind the Scenes
The RECON game this year was based on Greek mythology including the story of Sisyphus, whose punishment is to eternally repeatedly push a boulder uphill only for it to roll down again. David also has had to rewrite different portions of this talk because of overlap as the other speakers completed their talks. We used the Sisyphus emoji every time this happened! Next year we will have to get drafts of the other talks in early, and leave the Spira’s talk to last.
A mini-earthquake occurred in LA around the time of this talk.
We learned that some community members feel uncomfortable with the term “muggles” because of its association with J.K. Rowling and her trans comments. Sometimes “muggles” is used to describe non-enthusiast escape room players. We decided to discourage this use, and call them ‘normies’ instead.
RECON Los Angeles 24
Join us in person for RECON’s next curated lineup of talks. We’ll be in Los Angeles, California, August 18th & 19th, 2024.
Tickets are on sale now! Purchase your ticket today to get the Early Bird discount.
