Return from the Secret Chamber: Closed eyes are all "ghosts"
Escape rooms and script killing industries are booming in the country. Violence, terror and other content to be regulated
Cheng Yilun
"Sorry, the theme you want to book today is full." This weekend, the reporter walked into many escape-themed stores in the city and found that many of them were full.
Offline room escape and script killing, as a new type of business, have become popular choices for many young people to organize party building, leisure and entertainment during holidays and weekends in recent years.
Immersive experience, role-playing, plot puzzle solving... the game will also incorporate different themed content elements such as suspense, thriller, love, fairy tales, fantasy, ancient style, etc., all of which have attracted many young people to "get into the pit".
The vigorous development of the secret room script killing industry not only drives consumption, but also gives birth to young people's strong content creativity.
However, at the same time, because there is no uniform standard or model for the industry, there is also a phenomenon of "fish-eyes" in the industry: many stores are not fire-fighting, the quality of the script content is poor or even "scratching the ball", and script plagiarism is serious. Wait.
The reporter interviewed how to conduct "bottom line management" and regulate the market without cracking down on emerging industries.
Text, picture/Guangzhou Daily full-media reporter Cheng Yilun
Young people's "new favorite": suspense and thrilling secret rooms are the most popular
In recent years, "Escape Room" and "Script Killing" have quietly surpassed traditional entertainment and consumption activities such as singing k and dancing, and have become the social "new favorite" of young people.
Although both focus on immersive case-handling reasoning, as two different game types, escape room and script kill also attract players who pursue different experiences.
To put it simply, script kills are often information and settings given through a large amount of text, allowing players to conceive simulation scenarios through a round of text search, and solve the case through free dialogue; while escape rooms often set one The real secret room scene is fixed, and players need to crack the secret room design through adventure and exploration.
Compared with the script killing which focuses on reasoning, emotion, and deduction, the escape room game focuses more on atmosphere, mechanical scenes, decryption, etc.
For young people who are more in pursuit of immersion and realism, escape rooms with real-life installations and live-action actors are undoubtedly more popular.
The Beijing Road business district is a popular place for many lovers of escape rooms and script kills in Guangzhou.
The reporter searched and found that in this business district, there are as many as 43 shops with secret rooms for leisure and entertainment, and there are 2 shops with script killing.
At present, the classification of secret rooms on the market mainly includes two types of horror secret rooms and plot secret rooms. In addition, there are also some "mechanical secret rooms" and "real people secret rooms".
And the horror secret room is undoubtedly the "sweet 饽饽" in the secret room industry. On the one hand, its setting or labor cost is lower than the mechanical secret room and the real secret room. On the other hand, it relies on its suspenseful and thrilling gimmick. .
The reporter experienced several times being "persuaded to retire" by a strong sense of immersion
Game horror level store customization
At noon on November 20, the reporter walked into a building in Beijing Road Commercial District.
According to the signs on the first floor, a total of 7 escape rooms and 2 script kill shops have been settled in the building.
The reporter randomly walked into one of the experience halls that featured the "Horror Secret Room" and found that the three main themes of the secret room in the store were all related to horror movies.
It was the weekend, and there were customers coming in successively in the store. According to the store, the store was already full.
At the same time, other secret rooms with the main horror theme in the building were also full of people. These secret room games usually prompt key information such as "moderate terrorism/micro-terrorism/non-terrorism", "with/without NPC" and other key information on the booking webpage. Reporter It is noted that although some businesses have prompted "not suitable for participation under the age of 12", there are still some businesses that do not indicate the age of consumers in the game.
As a consumer, the reporter arbitrarily selected a horror secret room game with the theme of a psychiatric hospital. Two high school students who were about to turn 18 years old were playing the game together with the reporter. According to reports, they were in a secret room. Escape fans came in groups.
On the purchase page of the horror secret room game, the merchant defined it as "micro-terrorism". However, after the reporter entered the horror secret room for the first time as a novice, he was repeatedly "persuaded" by his strong sense of immersion: sudden mental illness The patient, sitting in a wheelchair that was suddenly pushed up, combined with a rainstorm device, wild cat sound effects, and a strange and lifelike atmosphere, such as hospitals, morgues, and spiritual rooms, made the experiencer's adrenal hormones soar during the entire secret room game.
After the game, the reporter asked the merchant "How exactly did the level of terrorism be drawn?" The store told the reporter that there is currently no objective standard for the level of terror in the secret room, and it depends on the subjective judgment of the secret room operator. "However, we usually make appropriate adjustments based on the player's situation. "The merchant told reporters that sometimes players will leave the game during the game. "Although we don't recommend it because it will affect the game experience of others, we will also cooperate in consideration of player safety." "
The reporter learned during the interview that due to the high unit price of the secret room game and the compact process, most timid players still choose to "bite the bullet".
The reporter closed his eyes that night before going to bed, and the horror scene of being pushed into the dark secret road by the "ghost" in a wheelchair once again appeared in his mind during the game.
The age threshold is temporarily unclear
In addition to the unclear classification of the horror level, many secret room games also have a situation where the age threshold is not strictly divided.
Especially in some secret room games, there are plot interpretations involving themes such as murder, sexual assault, pyramid schemes, and superstition. There are even some scripts directly based on real crimes.
Take the game "Old Corpse in Mountain Village" as an example. Regarding the IP-related film, the State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television clearly stated that children under the age of 12 should not watch it. However, when the reporter asked the store "whether the game is suitable for teenagers", the store was ambiguous: "Just It’s okay to be accompanied by a parent, 12 years old or 18 years old."
Not only that, some businesses also actively recruit primary school students.
Recently, citizen Ms. Ding discovered that at the gate of her child’s elementary school, someone was sending out a leaflet for the game "Nagato Ghost School" with words such as "Horror Ghost School waiting for you to fight". She angrily expressed this. Cite "not appropriate".
In addition, the reporter also learned that young people who go to experience escape rooms rarely participate in games accompanied by their parents.
“Children’s minds are not fully developed and they are not suitable for playing these games. This also affects the experience of other users to a certain extent.” An adult player told reporters that he was playing the game "Nagato Ghost School" with three A 13-year-old student teamed up: "You can only be pushed by children throughout the process."
For some games that clearly "can participate in 18 years old and above", businesses seldom take actions such as inquiring or dismissing minors.
During the experience, the reporter discovered that there was a non-terrorist story room escape game where the player played the role of elementary school student "hooligans", which involved some plot content that was not suitable for children; but the reporter learned that there is no real-name registration and other measures in the store. , So for teenagers who come to experience the game, the store cannot be screened.
Operators: Costly investment, internal chaos in the industry must be rectified and managed
Although there are chaos in the secret room script killing industry, such as uneven content and frequent security risks, at the same time, the industry has also stimulated a lot of consumption and creativity.
According to reports, script killing originated in the 19th-century British reasoning game "Murder Mystery", and it was really introduced to the country in 2013; it was not until the reality show "The Detective Star" in 2016 that this game entered the mainstream. The public’s vision has continued to blow out in recent years.
Now script killing has formed a complete industrial chain. The emergence and participation of script creators, distributors, actor NPC, costume design, game prop production, store merchants, vertical platforms, etc., continue to promote the development of this industry, and Has given birth to a strong creativity.
It is understood that currently the scripts circulating in the offline script killing industry are mainly divided into exclusive licenses (only one script shop in a city can buy), city-limited (2~3 script shops in a city) and boxed scripts (with regular business) Qualified script stores can be purchased) Three categories, the average creative cycle is about 1 to 6 months.
Because the script kills players usually only play the game once, the replay rate is low, so stores usually keep buying new themes to attract customers, which also encourages creators to continue to introduce new themes.
"Escape room is even more a high-cost industry, including rent, decoration, scripts, actor salaries, etc." Mr. Wang, the owner of an escape room shop, revealed that only a certain script scene in their shop cost nearly a lot of investment in setting scenes. 1 million yuan.
"But it is undeniable that in order to save costs, some shops will work hard on the rent, so there are many hidden dangers in fire protection. Other shops buy some shoddy scripts, or even directly plagiarize or adapt the content, adding some pornography. To attract customers with eye-catching themes such as violence and violence."
The reporter also noticed that in the "Regulations on the Recordation Management of the Contents of Secret Room Script Killing in Shanghai (Draft for Comment)" recently released by Shanghai, it was the first time that the contents should be included in the record management.
In response to the current industry’s lack of original boutiques, frequent occurrence of bad content, serious infringement and piracy, and potential safety hazards, it is clearly stated that the story script and the setting of the plot must not violate the "ten rules", including not instigating crimes or disrupting social order , Do not violate social morals or excellent national cultural traditions, etc.; at the same time, it is also proposed that practitioners must not use terror, cruel, violent, vulgar performances and games to destroy the physical and mental health of staff or consumers, and must not use human defects or display human bodies. Variation and other methods to attract consumers and so on.
Expert: It is recommended that the script author of the secret room script classification system can sign an agreement with the store to deal with piracy
Xiong Shuo, a lecturer and master's tutor at Huazhong University of Science and Technology, who is dedicated to game research, is also a senior fan of script killing and escape room. He believes that content supervision is very necessary.
Xiong Shuo said that based on Battelle’s theory of player classification, players can be classified into four types of game motivations: one is because they like to complete tasks through decryption and escape in the game, to achieve self-worth and get pleasure; the other is to like to explore the plot and discover The easter eggs in the game and the story behind it; one is the pursuit of proving their strength by destroying, conquering, and defeating opponents; a large part of them like to meet new friends and use the game as a social tool.
However, Xiong Shuo emphasized that although room escape and script killing belong to the category of games, they are different from online games and mobile games. They have the characteristics of high threshold and high knowledge group.
"In our user group survey, we found that only 10.6% have a college degree or below, of which only 2.5% are under the age of 18. This means that script kill is a 97.5% game for adults."
Xiong Shuo said that as a game that directly tests people’s reading comprehension and logical reasoning ability, script killing has considerable requirements for knowledge. “Therefore, script killing is actually a game for the high-knowledge community, and it is not suitable for minors. ."
In response to this situation, Xiong Shuo suggested that merchants should clearly limit the age of players participating in the game to truly achieve "grading": on the one hand, minors should be directly prohibited from participating in adult screenplay games in the form of stores, on the other hand, it can also be specially developed by some merchants. Script content suitable for minors.
At the same time, in response to the theme of the horror secret room, Xiong Shuo also proposed that a clear responsibility system should be implemented.
"For this type of experience project that is biased towards thrills, I suggest that you can refer to the roller coaster, jumping machine and other projects in the amusement park: on the one hand, the level of horror of the game should be clearly indicated, and the user should be clear whether there is chase, fright, etc., on the other hand. It is clear which users cannot play, such as those who are 18 years of age or older, or those who have heart disease or high blood pressure cannot play. The store needs to ensure that the users have informed consent and the two parties sign an exemption agreement."
In addition, for the current industry's uneven quality of scripts and copyright plagiarism, Xiong Shuo suggests that a technical service agreement can be signed between the script creator and the store, and a third-party supervision and filing should be made to ensure that the legitimate rights and interests of both parties can be continuously protected.
How to deal with industry chaos?
Relevant management is being refined
The reporter noticed that in order to control the chaos in the industry, the management measures for the secret room script killing have been continuously refined this year:
1. In March this year, the "China Culture and Entertainment Industry Association Immersive Script Entertainment Professional Committee" was established in China;
2. In October this year, the Fire Rescue Bureau of the Ministry of Emergency Management issued the "Guidelines for Fire Risk in Escaped Places (Trial)" and "Guidelines for Fire Risk Inspection in Escaped Places (Trial)";
3. Recently, the Shanghai Municipal Administration of Culture and Tourism announced the "Regulations on the Recordation Management of Secret Room Script Killing Content in Shanghai" (draft for comments), which included the content for the first time in record management, and proposed to address the lack of original boutiques, frequent occurrence of bad content, and serious infringement and piracy. , Potential safety hazards in places, etc., will further regulate the market.
At the same time, Guangzhou also convened an emergency coordination meeting on safety production supervision responsibilities in the field of room escape venues on November 18 The different opinions of the Municipal Bureau of Commerce formed the "Division of Responsibilities for Safety Supervision in the Industry of Escaped Rooms in Guangzhou" (the second draft for solicitation of comments) as soon as possible.