Hi, I’m John Sear, a Real World Game Designer & Software Developer
Over a decade ago, I moved from making video games for home and mobile to creating experiences for real-world spaces like cinemas, theaters, museums, libraries, castles, and theme parks.
I am a real-world game designer. This means I use to technology & design principles from my years in the games industry to build games that take place in the real world.
Almost 15 years ago I switched my focus from online, console and mobile games into the real places. Originally, I used to say I build things at the intersection of games, theatre & technology but now I use the shorthand of saying – it’s a bit like Escape Rooms.
Here are a few games that push Escape Game concepts in slightly different directions: [renga], A Moment of Madness & SCOOT.
Public spaces & historical content have led me into to the GLAM world – that’s Galleries, Libraries, Archives & Museums. While I’ve done a bunch of projects with the larger well-known museums, I’m also really interested in how I can help museums with less resources. My diymuseum.tech series of free tutorials is aimed at museums who want to create digital-things themselves.
Generally, people commission me to build them game-like things, tech-things or to run workshops – often based off the free versions that are already available. In the last year I’ve been helping people convert their real-world experiences (music, theatre, interactive) into something that works just as well online – keeping the magic of the live shared event.
It’s 2025 already! How did that happen??? I was showing my website to someone at a networking event recently and was already feeling a little apprehensive - knowing I hadn’t updated my website since 2023! However, imagine my horror when the first page that popped open greeted me with a large 2021 logo! Turns out that my last proper update on my work was not even 2023 - but in fact 2021.
I’ve generally stopped writing about other immersive / interactive experiences that I’ve participated in. It’s hard enough to find time to write about my own projects! However, I absolutely have to make an exception for ‘The Burnt City’! I’ve been 3 times. Once to a preview and twice once it was officially open.
We’re incredibly fortunate in the UK to have the world leaders in large-scale immersive performance, Punchdrunk and even more fortunate that they finally have a new show: The Burnt City. It’s been 8 years since The Drowned Man (although technically they did Kabeiroi and The Third Day more recently but they are different types of experience).
I know it’s not quite the end of 2021 - but realistically I’m not going to finish any more projects before the end of the year. And since I’m trying to take it a bit easier to catch up on business admin - this seemed the right time for this post!
Am I a Workaholic?
I’ve been very fortunate to mostly keep working during COVID. In fact, despite a small blip at the beginning of COVID - where a bunch of projects were cancelled - I’ve had too much work.
Back in 2019, we toured ‘A Moment of Madness’ to a number of UK festivals. AMoM is an immersive experience with live actors and Escape Game style puzzles where the players are on a stake-out in a multi-story car-park tracking politician Michael Makerson (just another politician with a closet full of scandals!).
We were hoping to bring it back in 2020/21 – but a worldwide pandemic got in the way of real-world experiences. So, instead it has been re-imagined for the post-COVID world.
This blogpost discusses a Zoom-based Escape Game Experience developed in collaboration with Newark Museum of Art.
We built a one-hour experience that allowed large groups of players (50+) to work in small teams to solve puzzles related to the Ballantine House and it’s history. The game has a single host (a member of the education team playing the character of maid or butler) that allows them to manage the entire experience.
The game premiered at Newark Museum’s ‘Game On’ public community day where we ran 3 games with ~25 players in each game. It attracted attendees from all over the world, not just Newark. Overall, I’m delighted with what we produced as a team in just a month and the feedback from players was very positive.
