Industry giants have not yet grown, the border is still spreading
Editor’s note: This article is from the micro-channel public number “of those Internet things” (ID: hlw0823), Author: peach king.
Modern young people really like to escape. They want to escape from Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and from 996… Now they frequently escape in secret rooms.
Young people’s biggest dream is to turn off their phones without being found. Sun Pengfei, a senior player in the Chamber of Secrets, said: “I can’t be myself for 3 hours in the Chamber of Secrets.”
In the 10 years from 2010 to present, escape rooms have experienced explosive growth. Contemporary young people enjoy loneliness and indulge in their own emotions. The closed, dark and self-contained rooms contain plot, acting, machinery, and logical reasoning. , Young people are here to release themselves.
How many escape rooms are there in China? Tens of thousands! And here, most of them are the horror theme of “Adrenal Gland Soaring”.
1 Crazyly expanding room escape, can’t escape
How much do young people in the Z era love to play escape rooms?
Not long ago, Jin Chen, Li Yifeng, William Chan, and Zhu Yilong played secret rooms together on a hot search. CP Fan Online Kou Tang wanted to check in the same secret room.
Weibo screenshot
Rainin Yang played 11 games in three months and was diagnosed with a severe addiction to escape. Deng Lun stayed in MC for the two seasons of “Escape the Chamber” and opened his own secret room to have fun with the crowd.
Moreover, a member of a boy group used two consecutive appointments with different female Internet celebrities to play the “secret room” and used the collapse of the room to expose the room escape.
People who have played escape said: There are only two kinds of people, one is those who have never experienced “escape”, and the other is people who are addicted to playing “escape”.
Actually, “escape” is not new.
In 2004, Japanese director Toshimitsu Takagi invented a small Flash game called “Crimson Room” under the accidental collision. The style is simple, the plot is rich and the clues are set up, and 50 million people tried it in a short time. Play, but less than 4000 people finally escaped from the secret room, opening the “escape” era.
In 2006, a group of American game designers who love to play created an offline game of “origin” based on Agatha’s mystery, and the first real-life room escape game was born.
But it was still a niche game for a long time. With the introduction of the concept of “immersion”, the secret room industry has only begun to enter a turning point of transformation.
In 2015, director Man Yi, who resigned from CCTV, founded the TFS super secret room “Wind Sound Theater”.
Nowadays, escape room has become one of the most popular forms of entertainment in China.
From Meituan
According to data from iiMedia Consulting, the scale of my country’s escape market in 2019 has exceeded 10 billion yuan, with 2.8 million consumer visits, more than 15,000 stores nationwide, with 1 million themes, and an average customer price of 250 yuan. .
Tianyan Check data shows that the “Game Alliance”, which focuses on the immersive escape experience, has completed a round of financing of 40 million yuan, with a valuation of several hundred million yuan after financing, and its user growth rate exceeded 30% last year. The revenue reached 200 million yuan.
Data from iiMedia
Why do people like to play in secret rooms?
Chinese people are born with the gene for escape from rooms, and we love solving problems too much. It used to be an exam, now it’s an escape room. What you get within a few hours is a continuous sense of accomplishment, one by one, the sudden realization is like you are winning a lottery ticket.
On the other hand, the effects of variety show stars and game IP accelerate the development of escape rooms. According to data from Tianyancha, after the broadcast of “Escape the Room Season One” in 2019, the number of newly registered escape-related companies increased by 130% year-on-year to 598.
Escape the room, get out of the circle completely!
From the web
2 There is no “fear” of not entering, the embarrassment of escape from the room
Stay the deepest night and meet the hottest ghost. The hit broadcast of “Escape Room” makes the horrible room out of the “circle”.
According to the public comment data, among the top 5 secret rooms in first-tier cities, the top 5 are all horror themes. Taking Beijing as an example, a search for “secret rooms” yields 10,382 results, most of which are horror themes.
Located in Beijing’s Chaoyang District, the “Ebola Type III” with the virus mutation as the background, 368 yuan per person to play for 2 hours, often full.
Lost control and unknown are the root of fear, but they are also constantly teasing the heartstrings of players. Extreme happiness and extreme fear can stimulate the secretion of both, and then you will feel happy.
The room escape can quickly get out of the circle, and it has become one of the favorite leisure methods of the post-95 generation. Thanks to its super immersive and exciting experience, the core of the experience is not only the scene and the script, but the real NPC (not Player role, usually responsible for the atmosphere of the horror secret room).
The atmosphere ghost played by the NPC gives the player a heavy blow, and the money in the secret room feels that there is no white flower, and the excitement will be unforgettable for a lifetime.
Why is escape room always linked to terror?
For merchants, “high cost performance”.
Escape rooms generally require a larger space and a lot of agencies. Scene decoration, agency design, and plot arrangement are indispensable., The cost is huge.
Compared with the previous secret rooms such as puzzle solving and machinery, the production cost and design threshold of the horror secret room are relatively low, but the profit is much higher, and the business is profiting.
The lights are dim, so the details are not clear, and the decoration requirements are reduced to save money; under the stimulus of horror emotions, the logic and judgment ability are reduced, and the cost of the agency is also reduced. Continue to save money; the horror atmosphere is easy to create, as long as one NPC can be used Easily make players scream again and again, and the experience is full.
For players, “the experience is full”.
Most people play secret rooms not like solving puzzles and brain-burning, but seeking stimulation and decompression. Meituan data shows that 58% of escape users are between 26 and 35 years old. During the day, they work in the company and enjoy 996; at night, they go to the secret room to release the pressure.
The wishful thinking of merchants and players, the horror chamber became popular.
Most horror secret rooms have no plot to speak of. They use conventional scary methods to allow players to reach the end in running and screaming, or to give up halfway, which can be called wealth codes.
Some practitioners expressed their understanding of the horror theme in this way: “Anyway, as long as it is dark, the players themselves will be afraid, and we don’t need any decoration.” This brings great security risks.
On December 2, 2017, when Ms. Hu from Beijing escaped from a room, she suffered a comminuted fracture of her left wrist due to a malfunction of the ladder used as a game device.
In June 2020, Xiao Zeng from Wuhan suffered a stampede accident while participating in an escape game, causing 4 fractures of his left leg.
More than 54% of players said that they will leave a psychological shadow after playing the horror room.
When more and more players’ perception of the horror secret room becomes: “This secret room is not fun! Because ta is not terrible enough!” “The secret rooms that are not terrible these days have no soul.” At this time, the industry is also Not far from the end.
3 industry giants have not yet grown, the boundaries are still spreading
Players are madly sought after, and the industry continues to be popular, but is the secret room business really profitable?
According to statistics from Tianyancha, in addition to the entertainment alliance, only Mystery House and Dreaming Culture have received tens of millions of financing in the escape room industry. Although Di Fusen Culture and Pulupulu themed game halls have also received financing, they have not Disclosure of the specific amount.
Every year, about 200 new secret rooms open in Beijing and 200 old secret rooms close down.
Generally, the investment for small secret rooms is 1 million yuan, the medium-sized secret rooms are about 3 million yuan, and the large-scale secret rooms are invested between 5 million yuan and 10 million yuan. A small and medium-sized secret room has an average monthly passenger flow of 3,000 people and an average consumption of 140 yuan per capita. It takes about 18 to 24 months to recover the cost.
The average price per capita in first-tier cities is more than 200 yuan, and the monthly passenger flow is generally more than 10,000. It is common for a single store to have a revenue of more than one million, and the time to recover the investment cost is relatively short.
Single store revenue is over one million, and the cost is recovered in 18 months. On the surface, the secret room business is not difficult to do, but is it really the case?
From AiMedia
The successfully funded entertainment alliance has the most expensive private room for a single theme in Beijing, and has built 12 themes. Most of the revenue of the entire entertainment alliance relies on these 12 themed secret rooms. Although it has entered a profitable period, it is far from paying back.
The large investment volume and long payback period are not a problem for a few companies alone.
Tickets are the main revenue of the secret room, but because the number of players in the real secret room is limited, the floor effect ceiling is very obvious.
The secret room floor efficiency ratio is the best parameter to measure the economic benefit of a secret room. The greater the secret room floor efficiency ratio, the higher the relative economic benefit. In order to break through the floor-efficiency ceiling, secret room brands often use means such as joint field, rolling field, VR, and existing space to carry out secret room business activities.
Jobs are to join individual visitors to make the storage capacity of the secret room reach the upper limit. Rolling field is the use of time difference, there are more than two games at the same time. The chain secret room brand Mr. X has tried the rolling field model in 2019, and the effect is remarkable.
End:
Like KTV, Internet cafes, game halls and other entertainment consumption that emerged earlier, the secret room industry will also experience the market panning. The history of secret room escape is actually not long.
Nowadays, the hot market, in the capital intervention and the public relationsNote that it is inevitable that the Chamber of Secrets will develop towards scale.
However, how to ensure that the escape from the room will not become a flash in the pan, and it will not become a business to make quick money. Although the horror is good, after all, the product is single, the crowd is relatively narrow, and it will eventually be a dead day.
Reference material:
1 “The Past and Present of Escape Room” The firewheel
2″The Online and Offline Business of “Escape the Room”” Mirror Entertainment
3 “Zhou Hanyuan: Live-action Escape Room and Become Rich” Chen Jue
4″Break fracture while playing “Escape Room”, woman claims more than 220,000 yuan” Beijing News
5 Recreation: People who live in secret rooms