Why we need ERIC!
Sharing ideas is important when developing your market
“The organisers and crew ushered everyone into shot for the official Escape Room Industry Conference photograph. The ERIC organisers had brought together attendees who represented a wide cross-section of industries and interests. Together they were a community of passionate, like minded people, who need each other … maybe more than they realise.”
One way I’ve found to describe chronyko’s relationship with escape rooms industry is that we’re part of the extended family. We don’t have a “room”, to use the industry parlance, but we do create what others would describe as pop-up games and use many of the same approaches to storytelling, puzzling and technology in our learning content.
We also don’t need to understand the same things as Escape Room owners, we don’t need customer booking systems, we don’t care about TripAdvisor reviews and we don’t do business to consumer marketing. So there is a real danger for us that being at an escape room conference wouldn’t be valuable. But ERIC 2019 was everything we need in an industry event and lots more. What’s more, attending made us realise just how important this event is for the future of the industry and therefore for our business.
To give a little context, ERIC has been running for 3 years and is now a two day event with presentations, workshops, vendors, pop-up escape games and plenty of other games and entertainment. This year you could defuse a ticking time-bomb (thanks to X-it games), catch a talk about running a prison break for 300 people, attend a technical workshop on Lockkeeper (a cool package for using Node Red in Escape Rooms) and then enjoy The MMORPG show, all in one day.
It is this variety that is the real strength of ERIC and also why it is so important for the industry. There are two primary reasons why we believe this. The first is that the variety of content exposes all the attendees to a wide range of thought provoking subjects and through the workshops allows them to gain practical experience. But the second reason and in our opinion the real strength of the conference is the diverse array of attendees who are attracted to attend because of this varied programme of content.
This year we met actors, architects, prop builders, photographers, lecturers, creative agencies, coders, games designers and librarians as well as lots of Escape Room owners. We would argue that it is this somewhat eclectic mix of attendees that stimulates the building of new relationships, which in turn drives innovation throughout the industry. And this innovation is the key to an industry that must keep evolving or it will rapidly become last year’s fad and find itself relegated to the role of a commodity service provider.
But the danger of the industry stalling in this way is not immediately obvious when you look at the wider context within which it sits.
It’s hard not to have noticed that we are currently seeing the explosive growth of everything immersive. Immersive gaming, immersive dining, immersive theatre and of course our field of immersive learning. This is a hugely exciting time for everyone operating in these markets but it is also a dangerous one. But why is that?
The short answer is that there are many people who want a slice of the immersive market. The variety of attendees at ERIC highlights that adjacent industry sectors want in, keen to learn and keen to take a slice of the existing market that traditional Escape Rooms owners might think that they are best placed to service.
As an “emerging industry” we must all continue to develop new approaches and new services that offer more than they do today. If we don’t the current the market will stagnate and existing businesses will lose market share to new players entering the space. But how can that innovation occur and what role does ERIC play?
Innovation needs diversity of thought, diversity of participation and open collaboration.
But innovation with openness can come at a cost. On numerous occasions at ERIC I heard comments or conversations about “stealing ideas”. This is dangerous talk. But not for the reasons you might think. Protecting ideas and your key Intellectual Property is important in any competitive environment, but it should never be at the expense of furthering and developing your market.
The old adage is that a small slice of a big pie is better than a big piece of a small one. Develop your market and you increase the size of the pie. Work together to do this and you will all benefit from it.
It is hard to accurately gauge the size of the “immersive” market, let alone how that breaks down between the different sectors within in. However, it is a small but growing market. So investment in market growth is vitally important at this time. That means innovation, which we believe means collaboration and sharing within the immersive community.
But in this community of sharing, what about other people copying your ideas? It will happen. But it’s easy to get hung up on that and spend your time hiding your ideas away, keeping them secret from potential competitors, as well as potential customers. But somewhat counter-intuitively hiding your ideas is not what you should be doing. The argument why not goes like this …
Someone who is copying your ideas is investing their time and energy in just to maintaining parity with you. They are therefore not innovating and are also giving you time to take your own business to the next level while they play catch up. So never be fearful of your competitors and never let them stop you focusing on the collaboration and innovation that will enhance and develop your business.
So collaboration, which is a central theme of the conference, is one reason why we need ERIC.
But what about other aspects of openness and sharing? What about open source versus proprietary technology. Anyone who has attended a conference will know that vendors selling licences to use their proprietary technology in an escape room is important. Every business needs to buy commercial products from time to time and off-the-shelf tech for Escape Rooms is the right option for some.
But if this is the only approach available to us then it will eventually have a negative impact on the industry. Over time the cost of licences can raise the bar to entry into the market and can also contribute to the restriction of collaboration and sharing. So having open source initiatives and community projects is important and something the industry should celebrate. This is another area where ERIC provides an important platform to showcase what it is doing in these areas and to bring like-minded people together.
This article is part of a Medium publication on immersive learning, where we regularly share our experiences and those of our collaborators. ERIC has shown us why continuing to share is important and has encouraged us to continue supporting some of the other sharing and collaboration initiatives within the community. We’d also love to be able to share our own experiences in designing and developing immersive learning solutions at ERIC in the future. We know from speaking at other conferences about the value that the contacts and ideas this adds back into our business. Hopefully it will also encourage others to increase how much and how often they share their own work with the community.
So are you still unsure about why we need ERIC? Well if you are then maybe you should take a moment to imagine the industry without it. Less collaboration, less relationship building, less celebration of success and much less fun. This would certainly be a much poorer industry.
To thrive the industry needs ERIC to stir the rich melting pot of people, experiences and ideas that is the collective passion of our community and our industry.
Do you have something to offer this exciting and diverse world? Yes, great! We look forward to meeting you at ERIC 2020!
Martyn is a founder of chronyko who have over 10 years experience building and running escape games and many other types of immersive training and skills development events. We’ll be sharing lots more of our thoughts and insights on the subject of immersive learning and development in our upcoming articles.
