San Francisco startup Reason has opened its Future Technology Escape Room that lets you experience drones, holograms, Virtual Reality , robotics, and 3D printing first-hand.
Seeing brightly-colored screenshots of a Virtual or Mixed Reality experience may not seem all that impressive because it is something that must be experienced directly.
Now, San Francisco startup Reason has opened its doors to invite teams to try out its state-of-the-art Future Technology Escape Room.
The company gives people access to experimental gear they would do not normally experience, providing inspiration and broadening horizons.
Reason works like a game, one which sees players enjoy all the offerings of its Future Technology Escape Room. Aimed at everyone from HR leaders conducting team building days to the simply curious. Throughout the experience, Reason puts various gadgets in the hands of players, which they have to utilize to become successful in their sci-fi mission.
For now, the platform is billed as a great team-building exercise, but it has the potential to be a model for the transformation of today’s video arcade halls. Only this time, instead of whacking around plastic pucks on an air table or smashing big square buttons in front of a clunky monitor, arcade-goers will be able to escape from futuristic reactor facility where the reactor has been sabotaged.
“We’re the Buffalo Bill of emerging tech,” says co-founder and CEO Mike Chen. “Reason’s mission is to humanize our relationship with technology and each other. We are accelerating the diffusion of emerging technology by creating exciting and entertaining ‘first contact’ experiences.”
In an interview with Forbes, Chen explained the purpose behind Reason’s integration of high-tech tools. “Many people, even in San Francisco, have no access; 90% have never tried virtual reality, 80% have never flown a drone and 70% have never used a 3D printer. We want to democratize access to consumers.”
If, like me, you grew up in the 1990s, then you would remember our “first contact” with a phenomenon called Laser Tag when it took the world by storm. Laser Tag opened up in malls, roller rinks, and other commercial centers, and it was the first time I was able to experience a new type of technology on a physical level.
It was like playing Doom, Wolfenstein, or Duke Nukem, but you actually got to wear a sensor suit and shoot “real people” with laser beams that made your suit vibrate.
Reason’s escape room is like the 21st century’s answer to all of that.
New tech products are often unproven, hard to discover, and filled with hype/duds. Reason reduces the barrier to access and also eliminates the time and cost of experimentation for consumers. The result is a streamlined, gamified discovery experience that anyone can enjoy.
While available for audiences from all backgrounds, Reason is well suited to business team-building exercises and corporate offsites. Reason fills a gap in the corporate innovation and training market – which is worth more than $70 billion – by providing team building activities that focus on collaboration based problem solving and shared development of new skills. Players walk away with a sense of appreciation for new technology and inspirations about how they might be relevant to everyday life to work scenarios.
