Room Escape Artist

Play More Games is a project to help North American escape room staff experience inspirational and influential escape games. The goal of this project is to improve our industry by developing a more well-played creative community. More experienced staff provide better customer service and are better equipped to contribute ideas to improve current and future game builds.

This is a non-profit program that I created, designed, and organized as a way to give back to the industry. The first cohort of the Play More Game Project visited Los Angeles in October of 2024 in order to experience the renowned actor-driven, emotionally impactful games of the region. 

Escape Artist Greenville owner Will Rutherford sent his staff because he was inspired by the games he’d played during his trip to RECON Los Angeles, and he wanted his staff to understand his inspirations and vision.

Will Rutherford: “We sent 6 of our guides and managers on the Play More Games trip in LA. They came back energized and inspired with pages of ideas for improvements. What’s a great idea worth to your business? What if you could build a team of excited and energized idea generators?”

What Is It?

Play More Games is a scholarship program for qualified individuals working in the escape room industry. It is a project I created, and that I organize and fund.

Selected attendees visit a collection of high-end escape games that are selected to showcase different design techniques and operational decisions. By Playing More Games (and in particular, the selected games), the attendee gains more experience as a player, and as a developing professional.

Where Is It?

Play More Games can take place in different North American metropolitan areas. The initial cohort visited Los Angeles.

We choose the destination and the games based on discussions with the attendees and their employers.

Who Can Attend?

Applicants are selected based on their professional qualifications and aspirations, and current access to high-end escape rooms. I also assess the feasibility of booking a selection of games that will cater to their professional needs.

What Does It Cost?

Attendees cover all their own transportation to the metropolitan area where their Play More Games is hosted. The Play More Games scholarship covers the costs of the escape games on the schedule and travel between these games. Play More Games also assists with covering lodging costs during the event.* (*Some conditions apply)

How This Program Came To Be

The project came about after the owners of Escape Artist Greenville and The Exit Games Florida expressed a desire for some of their long term staff to play the actor-heavy and emotional games that they had visited around RECON Los Angeles 24.

These owners felt their staff would benefit from gaining this experience and that their companies would reap the rewards in the end. It required communication, planning, and organization to make it happen, but together we designed an event that ran in October 2024.

All seven attendees in this first cohort were in-game performers at their respective companies. Their employers requested they play the actor driven games Hope End at The Ministry of Peculiarities and The Last Supper at Quest Tavern. The Nest from Hatch Escape was chosen as sort of an eye-opener, to demonstrate something different and emotional with a bit of a performance element of its own. We also included Lab Rat at Hatch Escapes to help fill some of the lobby down-time as the group split into teams of 2 or 3 to visit The Nest.

The result of the first run of the project was that both companies had staff return home more well-played and more experienced. These staff are now more easily able to understand their employers when they discuss examples of game design, customer interaction, and countless other details of escape room operation.

More Than Just Playing Games

The program fosters reflection on the experiences of the games. It sparks conversations around game design and the customer journey. Learning is inherent to the design of the project, and will always be a piece of it.

It also provides professional networking and community building opportunities, both within the attendee cohort and with the places we visit. In Los Angeles, I was able to communicate in advance with all three of our host companies and arrange some extra special treatment for our group. This included meeting all the owners, behind the scenes tours, extra long game debriefs, and Q&As complete with genuine peer-to-peer conversations with our game hosts and actors.

Each evening capped off with discussions that ran late into the night, as the attendees buzzed with new ideas to start implementing as soon as they got home.

Goal Achieved

The first event went as well as I could have possibly hoped. It achieved its intended goal of educating and inspiring people who will be helping to design experiences and performing for customers on the other side of the country. Attendee feedback was exactly what we were looking for.

Eden Henegar: “I feel like this trip reignited my passion for the job. Not only did seeing other highly rated rooms give me new ideas for how to improve our games, it also helped me appreciate how unique and interesting our games already are!”

Audrey Pelicano: “Seeing other excellent immersive experiences has made me dream bigger. This is an exciting era for the escape room industry!”

Mathew Blanton: “As game guides we tend to forget the experience that we are providing for people. This trip reminded me what it’s like to be a player again and it provided me with new ideas and motivations.”

While the appreciation from the attendees was deep and profound, the thing that surprised me the most was the joy that exuded from the owners and staff at the companies that hosted us. They were all truly happy to be a part of this, but also to perform themselves for this group of actors that I brought with me. Building community as a secondary goal was very fulfilling.

Want Your Staff To Play More Games?

Will Rutherford: “Our staff handle more than 95% of the customer interactions. They receive direct feedback from watching players for hundreds of hours each month. They are the experts on what is really happening in these games. Educating our staff helps them spot and implement game improvements, many of which require no effort from the owners.”

Play More Games will run periodically. As currently designed, it takes North American escape room staff to other North American escape room companies.

If you’d like your staff to visit these actor-driven escape rooms in Los Angeles, or other games elsewhere on the continent that showcase some other expertise, let us know.

If you are an escape room employee who would like to learn more about how to join, or how to discuss this opportunity with your employers, please reach out to us.

Contact us at playmoregamesproject@gmail.com

As we continue to run cohorts and grow this community, I really hope the project will help to provide development and improvement for individuals, companies and even the industry itself.

Editor’s Note: Play More Games is not a Room Escape Artist project, but Room Escape Artist is excited to advise it and see it grow.