(Re)reading the room: The literacies of escape rooms

Abstract

Building a more comprehensive understanding of gaming literacies, this article explores the kinds of literacy practices that emerge through participation and play within escape rooms. Based on a dataset of video recordings of participant interactions within an escape room, we perform side-by-side analyses of play based on two theoretical perspectives. In so doing, we propose alternative apparatuses for analyzing the gaming literacy practices and indeed the hidden and intended curriculum of escape rooms. This polyphonic rendering and reading are done not to argue that these are discrete phenomena within the flurry of the activity space of an escape room. Instead, it illustrates how these practices are interwoven with one another as well as with the tacit and collaborative knowledge of team-based cooperation, personal histories, and felt resources of play. Not simply noting how literacies mediate interaction in these gaming spaces, findings emphasize how learning, affect, interaction, and analog play are purposefully designed, entangled, felt, and understood.