oh yeah, there was fun in designing puzzles and subjecting other people to them, but you can't really play test a puzzle you designed. like, you know the answer. you don't really get to enjoy a puzzle you designed the way you could other types of games. and puzzle games don't really have a lot of replayability either. I haven't heard of that board game, but I don't think I would survive a 20 minute intro with an 8 hour round. I just don't have the attention span for that.

oh yeah, I am sure there is probably a ton of overlap between designing an escape game and designing video games. it's really interesting, because I never tried to get into game design, I just found myself in the industry. but yeah, it definitely feels true that people want to feel like did something without doing something. that is where I felt I'd bump heads with players a lot. they'd get stumped on a puzzle, I'd give them a hint, and they would resist the hint, because it was a hint and not the answer. and I do think there is a place for easy games too, and I don't think there's any shame in wanting an easy game. but it's not that people even want easy games. they want to be good at a hard game, but like you said, they don't want to earn it. and at some point you have to decide, are you making games for a smaller crowd who will appreciate and enjoy your vision, or are you making games for the lowest common denominator? and the escape rooms I was working with, they decided to go for whatever would bring in the most people at the expense of making a good room. I'm not surprised to hear this is a problem video games face too. no idea what board games are up to. I went to a board game expo a couple years back, and board games seem like they're having a great time actually.

off. so yeah, that competitiveness. I saw that a lot, and more increasingly as time went on, and those groups never fared well. I think early on in escape rooms, it attracted a very niche crowd. people who enjoyed puzzles or just games in general, and from that experience understood that different games require different strategies. but as escape rooms got more into the mainstream, the crowds they drew had limited exposure to games and puzzles, and they seemed like they could only understand games as a form of competition against each other. I didn't just help design the rooms, I was also the game master, which is the person behind the screen who gives out hints when players asked, and I definitely had started noticing that competitiveness be directed towards me as well. players struggled with this idea of a shared goal, or that I as the game master could be on their side and want to see them succeed. and with this new crowd, there were a lot of people who also did not like to loose. so the scene I saw moved from niche puzzle nerds who loved a good game, to competitive for the sake of competition people who were sore losers and had vastly inflated egos. like, the number of people who thought they would ace their first time playing an escape room, because they were "smart" in their opinion, and when they began to failter, they took it personally. this, in turn, began to effect how the escape rooms I worked for began designing their rooms. there didn't feel like there was any pride in the work anymore. we weren't trying to make hard but fun rooms. we were making easy rooms that we were marketing as more difficult than they were. as far as puzzle design, it was hard when I first was brought on to help with puzzle design, but there are ways to dress up existing puzzles in ways that make the feel new and innovative, so just being knowledgeable of common puzzle tropes and knowing how to play around with them did help with that aspect of the design. I also viewed puzzle and prop design as very integrated, so with a magic room I helped to design, for example. I didn't want to room to look bare, so I would think about what objects would fill a magicians home, and look to those objects for inspiration. with a Christmas room I helped design, I looked at toys and ornaments, and thought about how those could be puzzles. you don't want a room to look bare, but you don't want it to have too many red herrings either. this also added a layer of difficulty to the rooms that I thought were very rewarding. the puzzle was right in front of players but not always obvious. ANYWAY, I hope this ramble wasn't too long, lol

hi, thank you! and yes, escape rooms. oh wow, my opinions. I worked in the escape room industry for about five years, and worked in or with multiple rooms during that time, so I am trying to think how to express the opinions I formed concisely. I mean, from the aesthetics side, set and prop design is just fun. I could do that forever. the game design aspect, and where I was seeing (at least locally) escape rooms headed it gets more complicated. do you have any experience with escape rooms?