The Conjurative Voice of the Player in Escape Rooms: A Framework

The player’s voice can conjure and alter worlds in ludic spaces; it “has an impact on the virtual world and the figures acting within it” (Stingel-Voight, 2020, p.39), possessing a force normally ascribed to ritual, or magic (Ghosh, 2011). Voice is noted by Agrippa to hold “so great a power, that oftentimes they change not only the hearers, but also the other bodies, and things that have no life” (Tyson, 1993, p.211). This investigation presents escape rooms as ludic spaces in which players possess the power to conjure and manipulate worlds solely with their voice.

While scholars have discussed the role of the player’s voice in virtual ludic spaces (Cheng, 2013., Tatlow, 2020), there remains a gap in research addressing voice in the non-virtual; where the player’s voice affords them control over play. Our investigation identifies four parties shaping the soundscape of escape rooms: The Game, Game Masters, Actors, and Players, as shown on the included model of the communicative chain of an escape room.

The outcome of this ongoing research is a framework delineating the contributions of each party to the soundscape of escape rooms. Additionally, our framework identifies the player’s performative speech (Austin, 1955., Derrida, 1988) as the guiding force. These speech acts, defined by Austin and Derrida as ‘performatives’, are of a form distinct from other types of speech — they possess an ability to “accomplish something through speech itself”, and “produce or transform a situation” (Derrida, 1988, p.13). They allow participants to exert control over the space and manipulate the ludic experience, communicating upward to the game itself, which is demonstrated visually through the dotted arrows on the model. This research contributes to the understanding of escape rooms as playful, participatory environments and aims to offer insight into the power of performative speech and the voice
within ludic spaces.