Google Built an Escape Room, Making People Use Its Apps To Get Out (adweek.com) 50
An anonymous reader writes: Google France has built an escape room created by We Are Social, called "Premiere Piece," that will open in the heart of Paris. Adweek writes: "The campaign builds on the escape room trend, in which you and a bunch of friends pay to get locked in a room for an hour or two, left to solve puzzles and work in collaboration to find a way out. In 40 minutes, you must solve puzzles with help from apps like Search, Maps, Translate, Photos, Art and Culture and Cardboard, all of which are integrated into the gameplay. In Premiere Piece, visitors must help save a crew of digital artists locked in a workshop, so they can present their painstaking work at an art center in Paris. By working together, participants must unlock an object that completes their masterpiece." Google France was in the news recently for being raided by investigators for unpaid taxes.
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
For I have no smartphone, n'mind an android phone and so, no apps.
"I just came into this thread to get directions on how to get away from it."
CESM (Score:2)
If that's what they do with their spare time, maybe it's time to increase the working week to above thirty hours.
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Yeah god forbid anyone have fun. Work is the reason we exist.
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There are plenty of European countries which have nice long work hours which still enjoy parts of life. God forbid someone actually goes out and does something with other people instead of watching that thing you Americans claim qualifies at television.
Escape room puzzles are actually a huge amount of fun.
Re: (Score:2)
We have to have our regular dose of stupid.
Plus look at our sports, the big pussies wearing all the padding and gear to play rugby but we call it football the average european rugby player would demolish any american "football" player.
Then we have baseball, where we have 6 hours of standing around grabbing crotches and sweeping a base, once in a while someone hits the ball and runs.
Re: (Score:2)
Guys? (Score:2)
Uh, guys? Is this really how user testing works?
Who cares... (Score:5, Funny)
After it becomes popular, they will just discontinue it...
What? (Score:2)
You don't like team building?
Sounds like someone needs to achieve some positive engagement benefits!
Maybe... (Score:2)
Maybe they're collecting information on escaping from their jail cells for unpaid taxes.
I wonder if France will accept payment of taxes in wine and cheese.
Sign me up. (Score:2)
Nouveau marketing (Score:4, Funny)
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As in Stockholm, Finland.
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Raids (Score:2)
Maybe *THIS* is why Google France got raided!? Someone got pissed off for being locked up in a room!
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Maybe it's a response to being raided. They're attempting to create an inescapable cell and then tell to investigators that what they're looking for is available in the room.
Sounds like my D&D group (Score:1)
Except for having to pay for the privilege it sounds a lot like my weekly gaming groups. We get together in a room, we solve puzzles together, we have fun, then we leave.
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You solve puzzles?
We just burn down most of the realm... Hell we currently have half of Ravenloft on fire and are considering joining Strahd's forces as they pay really well.
I've seen this movie... (Score:2)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt01... [imdb.com]
It's all the same machine, right? The Pentagon, Google, the police. If you do one little job, you make an free App for Android, and the next thing you know, it's two miles under the desert, the essential component of a death machine.
=Smidge=
Kidnapping? (Score:2)
Seems like GOOGL needs an exemption from kidnapping law to make this work. If I'm ever there, short the stock...
Documentary on this (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I preferred the movie [imdb.com].
Unrelated (Score:2)
The first people into the room were all French tax officials, invited by Google as a gesture of goodwill.
At press time, none yet had managed to find the way out of the room after several days.
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Escape room games are opening all over Europe. Stay in a hotel or backpacker's that attracts foreigners, and among the brochures of local attractions you're like to find a leaflet advertising "[City X]'s best escape game!". But I can't help but suspect this is a fad that's not going to remain popular more than another year or two. Converting a space to an elaborate escape room must require significant investment. Are these places even going to stay open long enough to pay it back?
Corporate team building games. They'll do fine.
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Escape rooms typically don't publish pictures, so I only have one data point from personal experience. The capital investment is negligible; most of the costs were likely for staffing and rent. The room was filled with stuff from thrift stores and walls were made of plasternoard. The only new stuff was the security camera, a tv screen, a keypad lock and an emergency button.
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If you've never been to one you may have the idea that this is like a "prison break" kind of deal and they're letting you use any means you can come up with to get out. That's not how it works.
Typically they'll tell you that your escape doesn't require any brute force, any climbing on things, or that sort of thing. Most of the artefacts are junk, maybe spray-painted, and most of the "mechanics" is human workers behind the scenes. So e.g. maybe there's a tube that leads to a "machine" and when you figure out
Well played Google (Score:2)
"New" (Non-Computer) Gaming Trend (Score:2)
"In a genre of play called "Real Escape Room," two or more people get locked in a decorated room and must solve puzzles to escape—before time runs out."
"Few are smart enough, and the success rate averages less than 20 percent, the business owners said."
"But the fun lies in the joint puzzle-solving, which spurs tourists and companies alike to pay just under $30 a person to play."
"The venues are relatively easy to set up: Create about six themed p
how much dynamite (Score:2)
I wonder how much dynamite you could use in a closed room without killing yourself trying to escape.
it would beat being forced to use these apps in collaboration with 40 strangers.
I guess the game just isn't for me
Of course they're experts ! (Score:2)
LOL! (Score:2)
Google wants us to believe that we can escape. That's adorable.
Apple (Score:2)
Kobayashi Maru (Score:2)
Just reprogram the Google apps and solve the problem without doing all that working-with-other-humans stuff.