Working at Red Door Escape Room
Red Door Escape Room is an escape room entertainment company that got started in 2015. Every day they make it their mission to deepen relationships between people through creative entertainment. They do this by crafting one-of-a-kind escape rooms that people cannot find at any other company.
My Role
My current role at Red Door Escape Room is as a Game Master where I do my best to provide a one-of-a-kind experience to all guests that enter our building.
There is a lot more to being a game master than just watching people attempt complex puzzles and giving them the occasional clue. As a Game Master, I become the guest’s personal hype man whether that be in person or through the monitors in the escape room. I do this by giving my groups an enthusiastic brief to get them hyped up, using strategic gamemastering when giving clues to help keep that energy going, and positively debriefing them no matter if they escaped or not.
My job is not done once I say goodbye to my group though. It is now time for me to run back and get the room reset for the next group. Resets need to be done efficiently and accurately to make sure every group gets the same experience. Mistakes during a reset can dramatically change the flow of the game and can take guests out of the immersion so making sure that everything is locked and is in its right place is crucial. This is also the time when I sanitize all props and high-touch areas to help keep the game germ-free.
Unfortunately, there are days when we don’t get a lot of games but, this gives me time to complete tasks on the task board. Tasks usually include deep cleaning the games, doing prop touchups, and doing paint touchups. This is not my favorite thing to do but I do value keeping the games in top condition for our guests.
Skills I Learned
The main skills that I have seen improvement in are my public speaking and quick decision-making skills. When I was still in training, I got the most correction on my briefs and debriefs. Over the few months, I have been working there my public speaking skills have gone through the roof. I now sound a lot more confident, and I can keep high energy throughout my entire brief and debrief. I have also gotten a lot better at keeping eye contact with every guest in the group. One area I still need to work on with my public speaking is slowing down. There have been times when I have talked too fast, and guests were not able to understand me.
Another skill that I grew a lot in is quick decision-making. When game mastering, things in the room can change at the tip of the hat. A puzzle malfunctions, something wasn’t reset correctly, a guest in the game is getting angry, and all sorts of things can happen. As a game master, I must decide the best approach to continuing their game, so they get the best experience possible. Sometimes it is easy as just sending the group some words of encouragement from the control room and other times you must enter the game ultimately breaking the immersion which can be a challenging decision to make. In the end, I must make a decision that will best benefit the guests.
Insights I Learned
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Values are key
I have worked at quite a few places that didn’t have any value for their employees or the overall business and I had a less-than-stellar time working for them. At Red Door Escape Room though, there are six core values that drive the company. This brings a sense of unity and has everyone reaching towards a common goal that isn’t the paycheck. This is one of the best work experiences that I have had so far, and I truly think that it is due to the company having great values.
School and Work need to stay separate
I am also currently a student at UNT Frisco, and my schedule can get rather packed with schoolwork and other assignments. There were many times when I would try to do my assignments while I was game mastering. I slowly saw my performance decline and I wasn’t creating the best experience possible for my guest. It took me a while to recognize that I could not do schoolwork at work as it was stretching my attention too thin. I need to do my best school performance at school and my best work performance at work.