Tag Archives: reality tv

Race to Escape

Race to Escape logoThis site has previously mentioned Race to Escape, a forthcoming game show set to be broadcast on the Science Channel within the US. More details have emerged and are good to share. The biggest headline is the date: the first episode is set for 10pm Eastern time on Saturday 25th July. The media organisations of the world have more or less accepted that they have lost the battle to restrict their programming to the country of their choice; expect the episode to be up on streaming sites within another 24-48 hours of broadcast. (If the world is lucky, the upload will be official, easy-to-find and officially available to the world. If the world is unlucky, it will be necessary to delve into the murky waters of BitTorrent.)

You can find the trailer at an article in Entertainment Weekly on the show with some more details of the format: two teams of three strangers race against each other in identical rooms. Each room has five codes to find and solve. The first team out shares the jackpot, which starts at US$25,000 but decreases over time. “There will be a variety of rooms with all sorts of unique decorations, including an old-timey barbershop, a Chinese restaurant, and a 19th century study (which is the location of the premiere episode).” The graphics suggest that at least the first code will be numeric; fingers crossed for the degree of variety, and focus upon tasks, that the world already knows from the best real-life exit games.

For a deeper view behind the scenes, see the article at the Pacific Standard‘s magazine; this features an interview with show creator Riaz Patel. The article reveals that the episodes are an hour long and – in the best news of the lot – every episode will have a completely different room. (An excellent reason to come back from one show to the next; always something new to see!) The piece also contains more background information about exit games at large, discussing them with an operator from California.

This site hopes that the show is a huge success. The Escape Room Directory points to 58 countries that feature exit games; let’s hope that the show’s creators, and initial broadcaster, are well rewarded for taking a chance on the format and that local versions of the show are made in countries around the world.

Exit game media in early May

Jimmy Pardo, host of Science Channel's "Race to Escape"

(image via The Onion’s A.V. Club, with thanks)

Is this the media face of exit games? (Apart from being, very nearly, the face of an IT director this site knows…) This is the face of podcaster and comedian Jimmy Pardo, who is set to host Race to Escape on the Science channel in the US from July. The press release from channel owner Discovery Communications suggests that “Two teams of three strangers compete in the ultimate test of grace under pressure. Trapped in a locked barber shop, a bar, or a 19th century drawing room, the teams race the clock to solve clues hidden in their room to open the door to freedom and wealth. As the time ticks down, so does the money they stand to win. The first team to escape takes the prize and ultimate bragging rights.

This show could be really to this site’s taste if it has excellent, play-along-at-home puzzles and focuses on them. Alternatively, if it focuses on the interactions between the team members and the host being sour about the same, it could conceivably be, er, much less to this site’s taste. The world can but wait and hope. It’s certainly a lot closer to exit games in the mass media than the UK has got, other than the long-sought holy grail, two contestants competing at identical one-person exit games on episode 3 of Britain’s Brightest, which aired on BBC 1 on 19th January 2013 if you can make miracles happen.

The UK might get closer very soon, though: on May 12th, the latest series of Big Brother will start in the UK. This site has discussed the possibility of turning the show into an exit game; there’s half a thought that this show might turn itself into an exit game – at least for a while – because of its trailer and accompanying article from the Independent suggesting that this series will have a “timebomb” theme. You’d have thought that a time limit plus a confined space would be ideal territory in which to site an exit game, but the Independent speculates that the motif may be taken as an excuse to play with time in other ways.

Another contender for the title, which you’ve very likely already seen, is the exit game clip from Season 8, Episode 16 (“The Intimacy Acceleration“) of The Big Bang Theory, though you might not have seen the excellent Intervirals post about it, which includes Tweets with behind-the-scenes photos. The game bears considerable coincidences to Room Escape AdventuresTrapped in a Room with a Zombie. It’s arguable whether the clip paints exit games in the light of poor value for money, but suggesting that the team escaped in six minutes is a clear hint of the smarts of the team, not a complaint about the game.

Themed Thursday: The House is Watching You

An assortment of green eyes laid over each otherWell, there’s the creepiest image that this site has yet used; it’s as if Argus Panoptes suddenly was badly afflicted with jealousy – and now it becomes clear how Brighton, Newport and Bradford’s local newspapers got their names.

Themed Thursday is a series of posts originated by Toronto Room Escapes, but extended by other blogs, in which underused concepts for exit game rooms are kicked around to see whether they might bear fruit. This instalment was inspired by the thought that there hasn’t really been a reality TV-inspired exit game in the UK (or elsewhere…?) and yet the genre is sufficiently familiar, and with sufficiently many tropes, that people would be able to latch onto the references immediately. It’s also hopefully clear which reality TV show the references concern – the one that probably has got most traction in the UK – while still skirting around trademarks.

The storyline: the team represent a single contestant on an unnamed (but nevertheless very familiar) TV show that is referred to as being In The House. In the pre-story, it is warned that the team are very unpopular with the other housemates and that if even a single housemate nominates them for eviction, then they will be evicted. The team then have (e.g.) one hour to “win the other housemates around”; it turns out that each housemate can be won around in a different way, which effectively involves completing a different series of challenges/puzzles for each housemate.

The setup: around the walls are painted a number of generic housemate images. These bear resemblance to some of the most (in?)famous reality TV contestants of the show in question, or at least the recurring stereotypes. Interacting with them also triggers pre-recorded voice clips, which again bear accent resemblance to, or evoke phrases famously used by, those contestants. Completing the chain of puzzles relating to each housemate will trigger a clip from the housemate suggesting that they won’t nominate you. (It’s also possible that there might be lighting cues to make it clear which housemates have been won over and which are yet to be won over.)

The setting: tropes that could be expected to be referenced might include a diary room, in which a player might interact with an unseen voice (either a recording, or the gamemaster watching from outside), a “hidden room”, probably behind a mirror, because more series have hidden rooms than not these days, a very small bedroom with insufficiently many beds, very, very many cameras, a puzzle that can only be solved by going to the area where there aren’t cameras (thematically, a fictive toilet) and strong Geordie accents.

The denouement: at the end of the hour, or as soon as the last housemate has been won over, there is a set-piece in which lighting effectings highlight each housemate in turn and a voice clip “asks them” who they nominate for eviction. After the question, a voice clip is played of the housemate either nominating another housemate (if they have been won over) or nominating “You” (if they have not been won over). If all the housemates have been won over, then they will each nominate one of the others, which will leave “you” to be the only housemate not nominated for eviction, so you are declared the winner of the game, which is the happy ending. Alternatively, if a housemate nominates “you” for eviction, then the game concludes with the losing decision ending in which you are evicted from the House.

It’s also the case that the referenced show has changed in nature over the years, from what started off as a relatively upmarket, played-straight social experiment (and took several series to go from merely good viewing figures to great ones) and what has become something more of a “watch bad things happen to good people” / “it’s funny because it isn’t you” freak show. It could be possible to reference the unpleasant nature of the challenges, or to theme more strongly on other reality TV shows which award food only for successful completion of aggressive tasks, but that would surely lead to people remembering the game for the wrong reasons…