“ Challenging yourself is how you produce growth in your own life.”

Countless late nights, occasional tears, and many great conversations later, we did it. We made it to 100 episodes of REPOD!

We’ve had so many incredible guests come on the show, fully willing to share the secret sauce to their success. These guests have been a treasure trove of creative inspiration. From discussing how to create immersive sets, to tricks for directing a player’s attention, from how to effectively market your business to creating puzzles, our guests didn’t gatekeep or pull their punches.

To celebrate, we’re taking a look back through the archives and picking some noteworthy clips. These were all things our guests said that really resonated with us – personally, professionally, or on a creative level.

Each of these clips fundamentally changed how we think about something. Maybe it gave us a new perspective on leadership, like Elan Lee’s clip about “other people’s work.” Or perhaps it was Christine Barger going against industry norms by allowing filming in her escape room. Others were more philosophical, like Alexander Gierholz’s musings on the dissonance of escapism. Many of these clips helped shape the way we think about immersive design, such as Linda Klein talking about “experiential mixers” or Tommy Honton’s “adrenaline map.”

It’s been an amazing 100 episodes of Reality Escape Pod. I hope our guests have also inspired you in your creative journey. And if they did, we’d love to hear about it. Let us know if there’s anything we missed that especially resonated with you. Thank you all for listening and for all your support!

Thank You to Our Sponsors

We are immensely grateful to our sponsors this season: Weldwood Marketing, Buzzshot, and COGS. We truly appreciate your support of our mission to promote and improve the immersive gaming community.

Topics Discussed in this Episode

• 00:13 Sponsor Break: Cogs By Clockwork Dog, Interactive Show Controls
• 04:55 Clip – Elan Lee – Other People’s Work
• 13:39 Clip – CU Adventures & Farm to Spaceship – Experience Design Elements
• 21:35 Sponsor Break: Weldwood Digital Marketing Agency
• 24:23 Clip – Lonnie Hanson – Minimalism vs Maximalism
• 28:16 Clip – Tommy Honton – Adrenaline Map
• 33:43 Sponsor Break: Buzzshot, Escape Room Marketing Software
• 35:48 Clip – Johanna Koljonen – Everything is a Designable Surface
• 40:46 Clip – Christine Barger – Marketing with Escape Room Photos
• 46:30 Clip – Alexander Gierholz – The Dissonance of Escapism
• 52:33 Clip – Jeroen van Hasselt – Creating Game Mechanics that Support the Theme
• 57:56 Clip – Ernests Klavins – People Hate Change and No Change
• 01:00:31 Clip – Elan Lee – Games as Tool Sets to Make the Players Entertaining
• 01:12:08 Bonus Story – Repeating Stories

Leave a Voicemail

Got a question or thought for the podcast? You can submit a voice recording by calling the Room Escape Artist not-so-hotline that always goes straight to voicemail (551-227-7273).

Resources Mentioned in this Episode

• PG’s Playhouse
• REPOD S1E1 Trailblazing Game Designer Elan Lee (ARG, Exploding Kittens)
• REPOD S1E4 Escape Room Storytelling Through Spectacle, CU Adventures Anne & Chris Lukeman
• REPOD S5E2 Nurturing the Experience Economy with Farm-to-Spaceship: Linda Klein and Brian Corrigan
• REPOD S6E10 The Magic of Maximalism with Lonnie Hanzon of Camp Christmas
• REPOD S3E7 Adrenaline Mapping and Escape Room Design with Tommy Honton, creator of Stash House
• REPOD S3E2 Pushing Boundaries Safely: Johanna Koljonen & Nordic Larp
• REPOD S6E3 Pics or It Didn’t Happen with Christine Barger, The Haunt Girl
• REPOD S4E4 Holistic Game Design: Alexander Gierholz, creator of Amsterdam Catacombs, Netherlands
• REPOD S8E5 Epic & Engrossing: Jeroen van Hasselt, Co-Creator of Demise of the Gricers
• REPOD S9E8 The Rise of the Golden Idol, Color Gray Games

About David Spira & Peih-Gee Law

Instagram: @roomescapeartist, @realityescapepod, @pgsph

Room Escape Artist readers already know David. He’s one half of the driving force behind REA. They likely know Peih-Gee as well. She started writing for REA as a Hivemind reviewer early in 2020, and she hosted the Q&A sessions for RECON 20 Global.

David and Peih-Gee met, appropriately enough, when they both appeared as guests on No Proscenium’s podcast to discuss immersive gaming and Survivor (which Peih-Gee considers the world’s greatest immersive game). Peih-Gee is a former two-time contestant on Survivor and also an enthusiastic ambassador for the immersive gaming community.

In the course of working together on REA and RECON, David and Peih-Gee enjoyed countless conversations about the escape room industry, trading war stories and opinions on everything escape room related. And then it clicked… these conversations were the foundation of the podcast David had been eyeing.

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