Escape the Room: Chinese Gen Z’s Great Escape From Groovelike Life

Source: Radisson Blu Magazine

Katrina Chou, 24, still remembers the first time she played in an Escape the Room hub. It was with her high school friends six years ago in Hangzhou -- as the only child in the family, she always hangs out with her school friends. It was after they finished their college entrance examination. In order to reunite in a relatively not that intensive circumstance with friends and classmates, Katrina and her gaming teammates enjoyed unprecedented relaxation and a sense of teamwork by pursuing the story background beyond the well-set room that they were physically trapped in. They were able to solve knotty puzzles together like what they had been through at campus and bond with each other like what they did after school. In the mysterious and besieged room, they no longer needed to think about stress from school lives; all they needed to do was to get out.

Although the enclosed environment was dark and a bit scary, Katrina and her teammates spent the most enjoyable four hours of problem-solving and imagination led by scattered clues inside the rooms. They successfully got out of the locked room in the end. “It was a true pressure-release moment after you are submitted to work on piles of exams and reviews for months, and the real-life experience with friends is something that cell phones and any other computer games cannot offer,” she said. Even after Katrina left her hometown for college and was involved in her metropolitan life as a fresh graduate, Escape the Room is always the first choice whenever she reunites with old friends or organizes ice-breaking activities for new friends.

“Escape the Room,” also known as Escape Room or Exit Room, is a mobile point-and-click adventure game as it was initially introduced to gamers. It requires gamers to escape from one or several imprisoned scenarios by solving a series of puzzles. The imprisoned scenes, generally known as the “room,” consists of locked doors, hidden clues, pop-up threats, and non-player characters to help establish a specific plotline. Gamers are supposed to utilize these clues and objects to figure out a way to escape the room.

As Escape the Room has been sweeping the globe, game designers have developed alternative methods to cultivate engagement with gamers. In East Asia and North America, its exceptional popularity has initiated the boom of real-life gaming hubs as a rising format of in-person party entertainment. The earliest model was launched in the US in 2003. Nowadays, Escape the Room sites can be found in 97 countries. In the 2010s, the real-life version of Escape the Room becomes extremely popular among younger generations in China.

Interactive Timeline: From A Mobile Game to A Market Disrupter: The Development Timeline of "Escape the Room”

“Escape the Room”: More Than A Successful Mobile Game

While moving to the actual world, this recreational format maintains most of its mobile-game version’s characteristics. However, in order to create a more competitive and cooperative circumstance with much more gaming engagement, participants are suggested to play as a team and involve themselves in certain characters in the designed storylines or scenarios. In addition, the game ends in a limited amount of time. Hence, participants usually are not allowed to bring their cell phones or tablets into the game site; instead, they are equipped with a particular telephone to get external help and contact the site’s organizers in case of any emergencies.

Market Size and Forecast of China’s Escape the Room Industry, from 2018 to 2022. Source: iiMedia Research Inc.

According to Tianyancha (one of China’s largest business inquiry platforms), up to December of 2019, over 10,000 real-life Escape the Room gaming brands own over 15,000 gaming sites across China. It is worth mentioning that Gen Z is the major consumer group of the real-life Escape the Room. Meituan Research Institute’s report in 2019 showed that younger generations, especially those aged between 20 to 35, are the main customers of Escape the Room games, taking 84 percent of overall and following about 17 percent of yearly net growth. Even the pandemic fails to put them off Escape the Room. According to iiMedia’s statistical report in 2021, although Covid-19 slowed down the growth of Escape the Room gaming sites in 2020, it is expected to go back with a sustainable increasing trend in the next two years.

The dynamic entertainment industry in China provides a much friendlier environment to permit the flourishing of real-life Escape the Room hubs. First of all, Escape the Room variety shows featured by well-known TV stars bring the second peak of its boom. Once being launched online, these shows are popular among Gen Z boosted by social media. For example, ‘Great Escape,’ produced by Mango TV since 2019, has already released three seasons with over 20 million views per episode. According to Caitong Security’s official investment analysis report about Mango TV’s audience portrait, over 73 percent audience is younger than 25 years old. From some gaming sites owners’ perspectives, these TV shows saliently bring another wave of their Gen Z customers.

Ling Du, owner and game designer of Ling Du Escape the Room hub in Changsha, believes that the popularity of related variety shows like “Great Escape” injected extra power into local Escape the Room hubs. Changsha is the capital of China’s entertainment and innovative culture industry. It has lots of leading production houses such as Mango TV. Taking “Great Escape” as an example, fans of the shows or certain TV stars, driven by fandom enthusiasm, will come to Changsha and seek gaming hubs like their idols have played in the shows. Ling points out that “these young people are our target customers.” “They push us to design and develop a whole chain of innovative entertainment sites in favor of their potential interests. My Escape the Room hubs were born as the exact response of their needs,” Ling said.

Ling’s confidence is never groundless. In Changsha, the estimated amount of Escape the Room hubs is over 2,000 at the end of 2020. Each gaming site is enabled to serve 60 to about 100 gamers every day. “On weekdays, the amount of customers is not that saturated, but on weekends and short public holidays, we can even see gamers come to book mid-night sessions. And of course, 90% of my customers are Gen Z or even younger,” Ling mentioned.

In addition to this, these Escape the Room hubs have become a new investment tuyere from a business perspective. “My investors are optimistic about my Escape the Room startups, and they have helped me to open two new subbranches in the past 15 months,” said Xiao Lan, who owns a chain of Escape the Room hubs in Chongqing. “Although the industry, in general, is highly competitive, my investors and I believe that if we keep our game themes up with Gen Z’s trends, we can still have the upper hand,” he added.

Beyond the gaming hubs of Escape the Room is booming around China, business innovators have also started to invest their creativity in developing peripheral products such as online applications and platforms for pairing partner gamers and groups for Escape the Room. Steve Zhang, an enthusiastic Gen Z gamer, met his current girlfriend from an Escape the Room pairing application. “We start to know each other in the dark, locked rooms, and the process to deblock those enigmas makes us realize the amazing chemistry between us. It was nice.” Zhang added. Escape the Room then is expected to be a positive agitator in the overall entertainment industry in China.

The Ever-changing Gen-Z Lifestyle: Escape the Room or Escape the Digitalized Life?

Gen Z is never tired of chasing much more up-to-date lifestyles. In 2020, about four-fifths of the consumers visiting Escape the Room hubs in China were Gen Z. Aging from approximately 15 to 28, Gen Z in China express their unique psychological profiles and consumption habits. Like their contemporaries in the US, Gen Z in China was born in a drastically developing digital era. The living circumstances and social sources are relatively better and more affluent than before because of China’s economic reform and opening-up policy since 1978. Unlike their peers in other countries, most of them are the only child in their families due to the restricted single-child policy in China. And they are likely the last single-child generation -- in 2015, the Chinese government abandoned the single-child policy to stimulate fertility desire. All these elements shape Gen Z in China as a special demographical group to look into. And to further probe into Gen Z in China as a unique customer group, McKinsey’s Gen Z demographic analysis concludes that these young people generate a distinctive generation with “unique desires upon products and services.”

Mobile games and social media networks seem to be no longer enough to satisfy the psychological needs of China’s Gen Z. And growing up with the entire family’s support and love, they tend to be more individualistic, care more about themselves, and seek purchase solutions to realize their personal interests. Moreover, growing up without siblings drives Gen Z in China to look for external companions from their contemporaries; they weigh friends and schoolmates as essential sections in their social networks. Hence, Gen Z in China urges more unique opportunities, especially entertainment choices, to enrich their weekend parties or meet up with new friends. Innovative in-person entertainment solutions such as Escape the Room are exactly what they want.

Ginger Wang, 18, an Escape the Room enthusiast and undergrad student from Shanghai, says that she has a specific group of friends who love playing Escape the Room like her. “We always go for it if our schedules can meet, normally (it is) after final exams and on holidays. It is like a convention. Additionally, I go to Escape Room as a group ice-break activity, with people in the same group of competitions, of a student union department, etc.” Wang said. To China’s Gen Z people like Wang, Escape the Room plays a significant role in their lives. It helps them establish stable social networks and satisfy their social demand brought by their single-child childhood.

Moreover, the uniqueness upon acquiring desired products and services that McKinsey’s research also emphasizes projects to Escape the Room’s great storyline settings, non-player characters implanting, and puzzle designing. After Wang played a six-room-long Escape the Room for the first time in 2015, she soon fell in love with the in-person recreational activity, which constantly challenges her intelligence and puzzle-solving skills through well-structured layouts, clues, and riddles in the rooms. Wang suggested that the most important element to support her ever-lasting love of Escape the Room is that she loves puzzles, “I enjoy figuring out an enigma or unlocking boxes by collecting clues. I enjoy the fulfillment that comes with success -- it is like doing math but in a more fun and engaging method.” In order to experience the harder-level rooms as many as possible, Wang used to unlock new Escape the Room hubs regularly every two months.

Besides, the nationwide flourishing of Escape the Room hubs, to some extent, reflect Chinese Gen Z’s rebellion against their more digitalized lives. Katrina, a five-year-long Escape the Room gamer, describes every time she plays it as “an alternative way to escape the over-digitalized life.” “I sometimes think I spend too much time in front of those screens, smartphones, laptops, tablets, for studying and working, and I only keep a somehow virtual relationship with many friends.” Katrina raises her concerns about the social media-dominant life, “I love the game. Sometimes, I just ask some of my friends to be a team and go. From the teamwork and puzzle-solving games, we enjoy much valuable time more than we’ve spent online.”

Another critical element in Chinese Gen Z’s life is the accumulation of pressure: family pressure, peer pressure, and social pressure, especially for those fighting for their lives in metropolitan areas. According to ReMark’s consumer research report in 2020, Gen Z and Millennials are expected to confront pressure four times more than their parental counterparts. The four times more psychological stress thus requires a much more dynamic recreational environment urgently.

The fundamental rule of Escape the Room is that eventually, gamers will get out of the rooms. Therefore, the mindset of the gamers is that even if they are trapped in these locked rooms, with probably jump scares in some particular story backgrounds, they will eventually get out of the besieged space. Talking about consumers’ more profound pursuits and goals, Lan has a lot to say from his constant conversation with his loyal consumers. From the consumers’ perspective, managing to get out of a besieged space “is something that my consumers are seeking for in their daily life but fail again and again.” But in the Escape the Room game, they can archive something that they fail to get in real life. “I think it is an alternative form of inward peace to release their accumulative life pressure,” Lan added.

Gen Z in China is generally looking for more effective solutions to balance study, work, and play during their spare time to escape from their over-digitalized and pressured lives. Standing in front of a billion-level investment tuyere, Escape the Room merely utilizes less than ten years to make the breakthrough reformation from mobile games to in-person gaming hubs and prosperous by-products industries. In the developing process, they are changing Gen Z’s social life components by adapting to the ever-changing Gen Z’s preferences and lifestyles. In that way, they coexist in a unique symbiosis relationship, which is deeply marked by national regulations such as single-child, economic reform, and opening-up policy.

“We are a policy-made generation,” Katrina summed, “all these newly-risen recreational activities like Escape the Room really give us outlets to balance what these policies and the society took away from us and what they offered to us.”