Breakout Escape Rooms Pivot their Business in Response to Lockdown Measures
08/07/2021, Kuala Lumpur – Superdough, the company behind Breakout Escape Rooms and Hauntu Horror House, launched a live online Escape Game in June 2020, where fans could play an escape room game remotely with the aid of live cameras. With company revenue having dropped 90% due to being out of operation throughout the MCO period, the company launched an online Escape Room to pivot away from their conventional brick and mortar operations.
Director of Superdough, Johnny Ong, noted “We were the first in Asia to launch a live escape room that can be accessed online. Our vision was to bring the immersive quality of the escape room experience into the homes of our customers and to operate an escape room remotely. As most family entertainment businesses were not allowed to open, we decided to innovate and the result was an escape room game for people who wanted to be entertained at home and connect with friends from all over the world.”
Superdough’s online escape rooms sought to bring immersive scenarios to their customers at home, with unique storylines that players could choose from. Known for their creatively themed escape rooms, Breakout was confident they had delivered a well-crafted gaming experience for their loyal fanbase. However, things did not go quite as planned post launch as the demand for online escape games among the general population did not meet expectations. Left in a lurch with significant time and investment put into developing their virtual escape game, the company took steps to figure out what gaps existed in the market and how best to adapt to them.
“We continued to study and research market demands, and found that there was a surge in demand for virtual team building experiences for the work from home group.” says Ka Wai, Marketing director for Superdough. “As such, we redesigned the online experience to adapt it to a bigger scale, and made our virtual game available to corporate clients beginning early November 2020. The response has been very positive.”
To date, Breakout has conducted virtual team building with over 100 companies involving a total of 5000 employees. Until things return to normal, Superdough expects to continue improving and fine tuning their virtual experiences in order to deliver online escape games that bear the company’s trademark quality and immersiveness, and without sacrificing the element of live gaming that escape rooms are known for. The company is confident that their latest offering will be a mainstay as one of the company’s live entertainment options, which will assist in generating revenue for Superdough as the economy gradually improves in a long, slow recovery back to normal.
