I talked to the owner a bit, and he said that their room was also part of a franchise. They sent the floor plan of the room to the game provider and received the full instructions for setting up the room, as well as a shipment of all the electronics and other stuff needed for the puzzles.

Of course every "instance" of such a room is unique in some way. But all in all it seems to be a good concept - a company with some smart people comes up with interesting puzzles, and escape rooms all over the world implement those ideas in an actual building.

I have no idea if this is accurate or not, but it definitely was one of the best ER experiences I've had so far.

What would you say is the distribution of emphasis on 1) story, 2) the individual puzzles, 3) gimmicks/“wow” factor, 4) the room itself (i.e. decor)?

Are there any particular trends you’ve noticed in terms of themes or gimmicks?

For the operators I know, most focus on 2) and 4). Most believe the puzzles are the core hook and must be well designed. Then they believe the puzzles have to fit the room theme. If a story can be squeezed in too, then they try, but it's rarely the driver. And gimmicks and wow factor aren't usually high on the list, but some operators (arguably us) do find these make customers want to play when they hear about them, so they're certainly not ignored.

> Our rooms track players' progress and introduce easier and easier hints over time, and eventually bypass puzzles (with justifiable story reasons) so everyone sees all the interesting parts.

How do you justify bypassing puzzles and introducing hints while not breaking immersion?

We try to do things like detect partial solutions that might indicate the players are close to a full solution, because the worst thing is to bypass a puzzle when the players are actively engaged with it and having fun. On the other hand, if we know there's more interesting gameplay to come, and the players are spending ages on a particular puzzle, we want them to progress. This is the part where some enthusiasts disagree with our approach - some of them would rather fail than be pushed through. Fortunately, the bulk of our players would rather be given increasingly easy hints until they "solve" things themselves.

The article (can't quote because paywall) specifically mentioned the highly competitive nature of the space as making it difficult for new entrants. Higher startup costs were specifically mentioned but I imagine that extends to marketing/customer mind share.

You seem to be describing a more collegiate atmosphere than the article does around competition. Do you think this is because of your position as a more established player or do you think the article overemphasized that (or quoted someone who wanted that message to get out there)?

The groups in A are all friendly and collegiate. The groups in B are less so. We see group A continuing happily, but not really growing or turning significant profits - one of my friends in this group described it as "I bought myself a fun job".

We've seen a fair few groups in B fold. As the article suggests, you can't start with a mere $7000 now - customer expectations are higher, and there are enough review sites (e.g. TripAdvisor) that anyone with a low quality game will be called out pretty quickly.

Groups in C (include Nate Martin from the article) all seem to be doing well, but it's a hard slog to get sufficiently well known to become a primary supplier to others. My company is kind of in C, but we partnered early with a key chain in our geography and there's both good and bad to that choice. Not personally operating our rooms certainly has some drawbacks, but being able to build multiple copies of a room simultaneously has enormous cost savings too.