Monthly Archives: April 2015
Real-Life Escape Rooms
Not all of my game design experience has been confined to video games. Last year I was contracted to design some scenarios and puzzles for a real-life Escape Room. What’s an Escape Room, you ask? An Escape Room is kind of a physical adventure game in which people are locked in a room with other participants and have to use elements of the room to solve a series of puzzles, find clues, and escape the room within a set time limit.
I”ve participated in a couple of Escape Rooms when doing research for my client. One Escape Room was a very story-oriented one in Los Angeles in which the scenario was that we were a team investigating what happened to members of a scientific lab. We had to figure out how to turn on the power to the room, so that we could activate the computers and lab equipment, which provided further clues about what to do next to solve the mystery.
I’ve also participated in two Escape Room scenarios in San Francisco. One of these had a bit of a story, and the other one was strictly about the puzzles.
In each of these, people made reservations with the company running the escape room to play at a particular time. I was one of 4 participants in the LA game, and one of 10-12 participants in the SF game.
In each game, we were lead into a room containing furniture and props. Some of the puzzles were implicit — we had to figure out how to turn on a power supply or open a door by figuring out the combination. Others were explicitly — we found a set of instructions telling us what to do. Some of the puzzles involved solving riddles, putting items in the correct order, finding a set of objects hidden in the room, solving math or logic puzzles. Each room had one or more “main” puzzles (such as a crossword or order puzzle) that required information from the individual puzzles.
Eventually, all of the puzzles, if you are successful, leads to the finding of a key for opening the door, or solving a mystery that will cause the host to open the door for you. You must solve the final puzzle in a series of puzzles within a time limit (one hour) in order to win the game. In the San Francisco rooms, we were given the statistics that only about 1% of players actually “escape” form the rooms.
Players receive very few instructions for playing the Escape rooms. People run around looking for puzzles to solve and then solve them, often in groups of 2 or 3. Often a leader will emerge in the group who will coordinate things. There was always a silent host or video camera keeping an eye on us to make sure we didn’t break anything.
Everyone reported they had a good time in each of my experiences. It’s great for people who like puzzles, and a novel social activity.
As for the Escape Room I worked on, I never found out what happened with it once I completed my work. Probably, like other start-ups, it was never able to escape past the first few puzzles of the conceptualization stage.
Why Aren’t More Games Developed For The Macintosh?
Every student attending The Los Angeles Film School, where I teach game production, receives a laptop loaded with all the software they need to do their classwork. Most of our students, not surprisingly, are enrolled in our film program, and they receive Macintosh laptops. However, the students in our Game Production program receive PCs, since most games are developed on PCs and made to run on the PC. In fact, very few games are made to run on the Mac.
That begs the question of why. Why is it that very few games are made for the Macintosh?
The Macintosh never gained traction as a gaming machine. When it was first released in 1984, it had a black-and-white screen as well as a closed architecture, preventing other hardware manufactures from making sound cards, graphic cards and peripherals that would make the computer more appealing to gamers.
These problems were corrected with the Macintosh II, which came out in 1987 at a price of $5,498. However, the high price tag of Macintosh computers cemented its public perception as a boutique item, a creative tool mostly used by those working in artistic fields. Meanwhile, the competition between PC clone manufactures, helped keep their prices low, and the PC became ubiquitous in both the office and the home.
It has always been a hassle for game manufactures to support multiple platforms, because a game is continuously being refined throughout its development, and yet the ideal is to release all versions of the game released on (or near) the same date. That means keeping multiple development teams in synch, which is extremely difficult to do.
During the 1980’s, game developers had to be worried about supporting the Apple II, Commodore 64, Atari 400/800, Commodore Amiga, and Atari ST, in addition to all the PC clones, and that doesn’t even count all the multiple console systems that have existed at any one time. It just was never worth the expense and effort for game developers support the Macintosh as well.
And that’s really too bad. A company I worked for a few years ago mostly developed browser-based games. All of our development work was done on Macs, and when I left the company, I took my MacBook Air with me. It’s a terrific laptop, and I’m using it to write this blog. It’s a shame I can play so few games on it.
David Mullich 