Lauren W.: 00:09 Hello and welcome back to Playability where we hold conversations at the crossroads of gameplay and accessibility. I'm your host Lauren Woolsey and I'm here today with Shannon Mcdowell to talk about escape rooms and how to make them more accessible. Welcome Shannon! Shannon M.: 00:23 Thanks for having me. Lauren W.: 00:25 So talk to me about how you got into your research on escape rooms and this aspect of them. Shannon M.: 00:32 Okay, well I am the Red Bull Research Associate at Wilfrid Laurier University in Brantford, Ontario and I was actually specifically hired to do research on cultural bias in escape rooms. And this came about because Red Bull hosts the escape room world championship. So the very first escape room world championship had a lot of issues with cultural accessibility. So there were puzzles that teams from certain countries just could not solve because they didn't have the context needed to solve it or something in that puzzle was completely different or had the exact opposite meaning of what it did in their country. So there were a lot of things that went on with that game. And so I was funded by Red Bull to come into the university because that is where the design team is located. Shannon M.: 01:29 So the second escape room world championship just occurred in April in London, England. And that was designed by Professor Scott Nicholson and a team of students at Wilfrid Laurier. And then I came in after they had designed most of the puzzles and reviewed them for cultural context and language and various aspects of cultural bias. So my research has kind of a continuation on that where I was brought into help improve the world championship. And uh, then my research is expanding on that experience. Lauren W.: 02:11 Do you have any specific examples you can give either from that very first championship before you were involved or when you came on, things that you found and helped change? Any specific examples for our listeners? Shannon M.: 02:24 Sure. So one particular example, which I know is also common in board games was colorblindness. There were two puzzles that involved the use of color. One where players had to recognize complementary colors and another where there was a laser maze with red and green lasers that did different things. [Lauren: oh no] Yeah. So the unfortunate part of that was there was one team where three out of four members were colorblind. [Lauren: Oh Wow.] Shannon M.: 02:53 So that is an unusual proportion, but it was completely detrimental to them, they had a horrible time with it and of course they did. So that was something where I really reviewed and made some changes in this year's world championships so that colorblindness would not be a detriment to the players. Another example was there was a very specific puzzle where players were, the idea was that they were deleting something off of a computer or a system and there was a symbol and I- I'm not quite sure what it was, but a specific symbol that they had to hit that was delete, I think it was like a red x or something like that. And one particular team got all the way through the puzzle, perfectly fine and then just stopped and no one could quite figure out why they had stopped and they ran out of time for the puzzle. And it turns out that their government forms and submissions used that signal to meet enter and they knew they were supposed to be deleting things so they didn't want to hit that to enter it. So, and that was the only thing that stopped them from finishing the puzzle. Lauren W.: 04:02 Yeah. And if you have no experience with those different perspectives then it doesn't even occur to you that that's going to be a problem. Shannon M.: 04:09 Exactly. Like the puzzles were all designed by North Americans and you don't know what you don't know. So it's very hard to look past your own cultural biases to say, okay, people are going to be playing this from 23 different countries. What are their cultural experiences and what biases are they bringing into the game? Lauren W.: 04:32 Absolutely. Now before we go too much further, I should ask the question that we ask all of our guests. What does accessibility and inclusion mean to you? Shannon M.: 04:41 All right, so for me, accessibility is being conscious of users of a product or service and designing to ensure equal access for everyone. And I refine that a bit for escape rooms and gaming and I include things in my definition like colorblind accessibility, language, technical knowledge and cultural context. Lauren W.: 05:03 Excellent. And you mentioned language and it's interesting to be designing for cultural bias 'cause one of the things that most people would turn to to take language out of their game or escape room would be symbology. But that example we just had shows that that's not a simple fix if you don't know how everyone uses those particular symbols. Shannon M.: 05:25 Exactly. Like this year's escape room world championship was completely language independent. All of the puzzles and hints did not include English at all or any other language, which I believe helped a lot. And then any symbols that were used were completely unique symbols. Things that no country would have any cultural background for. Lauren W.: 05:50 Oh, basically designed for that escape room. [Shannon: Exactly.] Oh very cool. So in the process of doing research, I'm sure everyone is kind of fantasizing having this job and, and just having to do escape rooms all the time. Shannon M.: 06:06 That's pretty amazing. [Both laugh.] Lauren W.: 06:09 So what are some of your favorites and least favorite aspects of things that show up in, in escape rooms fairly commonly. Shannon M.: 06:18 All right, well one thing we talk about in the escape room enthusiast world is "outside knowledge." So outside knowledge are pieces of knowledge that are included in puzzles or could be a puzzle all on their own where they assume a certain level of common knowledge that everyone who plays this room, will have this common knowledge in most places. If you're in an English speaking country, English is a pretty reasonable assumption for common knowledge as well as numbers and basic addition and subtraction, that kind of thing. I really dislike when I get into a room and they assume I know how to play chess, [Lauren: hmm, right.] Because I don't, and they're like, oh, you know this, you just need to do the knight's move. And that's, I'm like, how does a knight move? I don't even like, this is silly. [Both laugh.] I did one puzzle once and they had a chess board completely set up with one piece missing and I'm like, I don't know what's wrong with this chess board. And luckily, luckily someone on my team is like, oh, the queen is missing. And I'm like, oh well [Lauren: sure if you say so!] Okay. Lauren W.: 07:28 The very first escape room I ever did was in a fairly big city. I don't remember quite which one at this point, but one of the puzzles that we got stuck on which made us not be able to escape was there was a local chain of, like, a bar and grill or something that had a number in the name of the restaurant chain. And since none of us were from around there, we had no idea like what number we were supposed to use. And I, I definitely recall that being very frustrating. Shannon M.: 07:59 Yeah, exactly. And there's a lot of examples of that. Things I found through my research is there are certain countries in Europe where Roman numerals are assumed to be such common knowledge that they will not give you hints if you get stuck on a Roman numeral puzzle. [Lauren: Oh Wow.] So they assume, I guess because it's something that every child learns in school and everyone has knowledge on that, that they will not give you hints on it. So if you're stuck on a Roman numeral puzzle, well you're stuck and scent puzzles also tend to be very difficult for people because if you don't instantly know what that scent is and common scents vary a lot. [Lauren: right.] So that's very difficult for a lot of people. Like scent puzzles are really hard anyway. But then when you realize that maybe someone has never smelled this particular spice, it's not something they use, how are you going to solve that puzzle? Lauren W.: 09:01 How about some of your favorite things you found in escape rooms? Shannon M.: 09:04 Some of my favorite puzzles in escape rooms are ones where you're doing things. So it's not just everyone huddled around a piece of paper and trying to solve a puzzle. It's, you actually have to take actions and maybe pull this lever and run over here and touch this button and where you have an entire team working together and all doing different semi-physical things to solve the puzzle. Those are my favorite types. Lauren W.: 09:34 Excellent. Yeah. I, I did one somewhat recently where one or two people basically had to link hands to form a, a circuit and like touched two different metal things and it opened up a door and I'm like, oh my gosh, people are getting really innovative as time goes on. Shannon M.: 09:51 Yup. That's a really fun one. When you come across it for the first time. Lauren W.: 09:55 Yeah. When people are planning escape rooms, building new ones, is it common to basically see what's out there and just try to like build from those same mechanics, the kind of way that game designers do? Or have you seen that people are trying to just do brand new things and just hope that they work and that people can actually, uh, interact with them the way that they're imagining? Shannon M.: 10:21 It really depends on the escape room and it depends on the area of the world. Escape rooms differ depending on where you're building them. So there are some escape rooms out there where the owner or designer went to one or two escape rooms and said this is amazing. And decided to build their own. And there are escape and franchises out there. There's some very large ones too and there's some where people are professional puzzle designers and you can actually contract out your escape room puzzles and buy them from a professional puzzle designer. So I see a lot of innovation in escape rooms, but there are still a lot of common mechanics as well. Common Puzzles that once you've done a certain number of escape rooms, you've kind of seen it all so to speak. And you recognize a puzzle as soon as you see it so that when something comes up that is truly innovative, you get really excited about it. And everyone in the escape room enthusiasts community is talking about that particular game is really cool, you should do it. So... Lauren W.: 11:32 yeah, I've done, I think about a dozen at this point. My sister is very into escape rooms. Whenever her best friend visits, like, that's definitely a thing that we have on our list. And it's interesting because you're right, when we've seen a puzzle type before, it's like, okay, we know how to do this. And we just like blaze right through it. And I dunno, it seems like it's different psychologically for the escape room side of things compared to a board game because that same thing happens with board games. Right? I know how tile-laying games work. So this brand new tile-laying game, I understand, you know, that half of the rules already. And it seems like we give more leeway, almost, to board games than we do for escape rooms. Shannon M.: 12:14 Well, escape rooms are still a very new industry. They haven't even been around in North America for a decade yet. So it's very, very new and escape rooms, live action, escape rooms are building off the old computer games, right? Puzzle based escape rooms are text based, computer games, escape rooms. So they started off using a lot of those same mechanics, but it's still so young. I think we have a lot of room yet for innovation in escape rooms and I think we'll just continue to see more and more new things as designers and owners get more comfortable stepping outside their comfort zone. Lauren W.: 12:55 Yeah, it's a good point that you make about them being so new. It seems like in the past, just couple of years, so many places have opened up, especially in bigger cities that it seems almost saturated. Do you think that that's going to kind of correct itself and some will stick around for the long term or do you think that's going to be kind of a bubble that bursts at some point? Shannon M.: 13:17 We'll definitely see a balancing of that. I think I live near Toronto, which is a huge escape room Mecca. There are hundreds of rooms and games to play in Toronto, and you're already seeing some of that where local rooms will open up, there'll be open for a year or two, and then they just close. Whatever their reasons for that, there's different reasons, but there are a lot of rooms now and a lot of games that people can play, and so in bigger cities and bigger centers, you have your choice of that. And also there's still the vast majority of the general public has never heard of an escape room, has never played an escape room. So, even though they're becoming more common, they're still a new shiny thing. And who knows, they may go the same way as like laser tag. Um, and paint ball. Lauren W.: 14:11 That's a good analogy. [Shannon: Yeah] I've never thought about it like that. Shannon M.: 14:16 Yeah, yeah. I think the, the companies that do good games and run their business professionally, I think that they will end up sticking around. But I'm not sure how much room there is for kind of the mom-and-pop shop escape room to stick around anymore. I'm not sure where we are in the business cycle for that. Lauren W.: 14:38 And then with this, how do you see the role of these at home escape rooms like Exit or Unlock or Deckscape? Shannon M.: 14:48 (Laughs) I think they're great and I don't only say that because I have a prototype, but no, I think there are fantastic because if you look at these ad home games, they cost $20 to $30 and you can have four to six people play those at your kitchen table. If you go to an actual escape room, you're going to be paying $20 to $30 per person. And it's, it's a different experience. You know at home, escape rooms don't have the physicality that in person ones do, but if you can't get to an escape room or if the price is out of your reach, $30 for an hour experience is fairly expensive for a lot of people, then at home escape rooms are the perfect medium also for people who have played every escape room in their area, which I have met many of those people. So... Lauren W.: 15:39 There you go. Do you have a favorite, not, not the brand, 'cause that would be too much, but do you have a favorite one of those that you've come across that you just really like everything about it? Shannon M.: 15:48 Again, I'm biased because I have my own because there was always something in every game I played that I didn't quite like something I wanted to change and so I finally went and made my own game that I thought encompassed all of those changes that I wanted to make. So yeah, I don't know that I have an answer for that. The problem with being a puzzle and game designer myself and having played enough escape rooms and really critically analyzing them is that I'm very critical so I can always find something I don't like. You know, I still try to have fun, but I'm never completely happy. Lauren W.: 16:31 Sure, all right, well then when are we all going to get to play your game? Shannon M.: 16:34 I don't know. We'll see. [Both laugh] Lauren W.: 16:38 Excellent. Well, I look forward to seeing it at some point and to hearing more about the research as it continues. Shannon M.: 16:44 Well, great. Well thanks for having a chat with me. It was good to share. Lauren W.: 16:49 Yeah. Thank you so much for coming on today. For more information about the topics that we discussed in this episode and the links that we just mentioned, we'll have those in the about this episode section on our website@playabilitypod.com and if our listeners have any questions or comments that you'd like to share with us, please email us at playabilitypod at gmail.com and find us on major social media platforms is at playabilitypod. Thanks again for listening. Play with a new perspective.