A Job That Escapes Reality

It’s a very funny question to answer these days; “what is your job?”, because my answer isn’t as simple and self explanatory as, for example, “a waitress” or “a shop assistant”. My job title is, and has been for the last few months: a Games Master.

No, not Master Gamer, Games Master, at a local escape room.

“What exactly is an escape room?”

“Have you seen The Crystal Maze?”

“Yeah…?”

“So it’s a bit like that… You’re put into a room with clues and puzzles, and your aim is to solve your way out of the room within the hour. Each specifically themed room has a different level of difficulty and different style of puzzles which in turn requires different forms of thinking. Each room also has a unique backstory to immerse you into the world you are about to delve into.”

At least that’s the gist of the answer I give each time we are asked that question. In fact, escape rooms in general have only recently made an appearance, becoming one of the most enjoyed visitor attractions in the past few years, and only started to pop up around the world during the last decade.

As a games master my role is very simple in execution but convoluted in explanation. I am in charge of a game whilst it is in play; I take in the customers to their room, brief them on the health and safety along with specific rules that must be adhered to whilst playing, and then when inside the room I immerse them in the fictional world they are going to explore so that the game isn’t just a decorated room but rather an hour to escape reality. Whilst the game is being played I will be on hand to help with in-game guidance for the gamers or for general inquiries. I like to think of myself as one of those NPCs (Non Playing Characters) in an RPG (Role Playing Game) where when a gamer is stuck on a level they will call on the games master – who knows the ins and outs of the room – for guidance to the resolution rather than cheat codes to the answer.

Whilst being a games master isn’t exactly the long-term career path I was journeying towards, it is undeniably one that I thoroughly enjoy and love and it’s my first ever job where I never dread a ‘work-day’. For some of you I can understand why that may seem odd to read because whether a games master is an underrated or even an unknown job it’s not one that you would expect someone to come out of saying “yeah, I love it here, bring on the ten hour shift”.

Well, here is why I love my job as a games master:

The people. Simply, I love engaging with the customers. Sure, you will always get a group of people who are difficult or who don’t laugh at your jokes during the briefing, but isn’t that the case with practically every job on this planet? The few bad have never outweighed the many other groups who I have games mastered into a room who have uplifted me, made me laugh or even challenged me, but moreover it is the uniqueness of each group of people that I get to meet, the paths they have travelled and the places they have come from are never two of the same with any group. No group, no matter their level of expertise, has ceased to intrigue me with the stories they tell and above all the separate ways in which they interpret the puzzles in the rooms. Even though there is a right answer for each of the puzzles it’s so inimitably fascinating to see the ways in which the individual approaches these puzzles. When they find the right way to complete a puzzle I have more often than not heard “God I’m so thick!”, whereas I’m standing there having played each of the rooms myself (over and over) thinking how their approach would have taken a really different and insightful level of intelligence to get there, even if it’s not the ‘right’ way to get the set answer, it’s an approach I would never have thought of myself.

People who come to an escape room are there to have fun and you find that in turn you yourself will be having fun with them. There is a lot of joy to be had when you share that victorious moment with the customer when they exceed further than they expected; going into the room telling me they will never make it out, to end up proving themselves wrong. Even when they don’t manage to escape, you show them the puzzles that they missed at the end, and you can still make them feel good because you show them that only a mere five minutes more would have seen them out the room [“which is really good for your first game ever”].

Being a games master incorporates a lot of unseen abilities and tasks that you wouldn’t think comes from being a games master...

Acting being one. You can’t succeed in immersing customers if you can’t perform and bring to life this fictional world in an exciting and engaging way.

Writing. Whilst we are given the skeleton of the story for each of the rooms it is the games master’s responsibility to build their own interpretation of the story onto that skeleton to make it unique and full of excitement.

Art. The rooms are all decorated to embody the themes and stories, but every now and again corners need touched up and new ideas and creativity is always welcomed in order to enhance the rooms.

DIY/Cosplaying. Weird one I know, but for myself in cosplaying I create faux weapons from scratch, so having that skill along with general DIY knowledge means that I am able to build props and fix props whenever it’s needed.

It’s an unexpectedly creative space of work.

Lastly, this job is the most human job I have ever had. What I mean by that is that every other job I have had I have either been a robot - functioning to clear dishes, or a marketing tool - there only to sell and profit. When I am working as a games master I can chat with people, I can relax in my role, I can make mistakes and fumble and pick myself up laughing with the customers. I’m not a tool, the customers are not a means to an end – we are all simply human with human errors and the sooner I break the wall down between business and customer the quicker I will find myself able to be a comfortable beacon of help for the gamers and they’ll relax into honesty if an accident happens in the room. The people I work with, too, make me feel like it’s okay not to be perfect and encourage me as a person. It is the first time, in all six of my jobs, that someone has said “Thank you” for something I did which I considered to be simply part of my job.

I’d like to think that because I love my job that impacts on the way customers enjoy themselves when I games master their group. That they feel that I genuinely am interested in hearing their stories and that even for the short hour that they are in the room they are able to escape reality for a while and challenge themselves in ways that they normally wouldn’t.