March 27, 2017

Meet Brian Corbitt of Countdown Live Escape Games in Historic Downtown LA

Local Stories

Today we’d like to introduce you to Brian Corbitt.

Thanks for sharing your story with us Brian. So, let’s start at the beginning and we can move on from there.
I joined the military right out of high school in 2001. It wasn’t a very well thought out plan. In fact, my date to ship out to basic training was September 12, 2001. That got delayed for obvious reasons. When I left the military in 2005, I felt lost. I tried college and made decent grades, but really had no direction. I jumped around from job to job, trying to find something that I didn’t dread doing day in and day out.

On a whim, I auditioned for Knotts Scary Farm as one of their scare actors. There, I found a love for a job I never realized existed. I spent 4 seasons there. I was hooked and realized this was what I wanted to do with my life. Since then, I have worked for many different Halloween attractions in both LA and Las Vegas, big and small. The Circus Circus’s Fright Dome in Las Vegas was a place that really helped me grow this passion beyond acting. I ended up being a set designer and supervisor for the build crew where I learned many different skill sets.

I actually had no idea what an escape room was back in 2015. I happened to be driving in Las Vegas when a plain looking building, with the intimidating title of Live Room Escape Games, caught my eye. It was during the summer so no other haunts would typically be open. After a Google investigation, I found a new, year round, industry: escape rooms.

I immediately applied to work at one near the strip, my sister company, Countdown Las Vegas. It wasn’t in a great part of town and no tourist would ever accidentally drive by, but that didn’t matter. It had a new form of entertainment that the populace had never seen before. While there, I became good friends with the owners and helped them redesign their finale of one of their Atelophobia room.

Unfortunately, I was called back to California for other job opportunities, again in the haunt industry. Little did I know, my new owner friend, Ethan, would be expanding to Los Angeles. He purchased an existing escape room that had beautiful sets, but poor games. His goal was to amp up the games to make sure these rooms were competitors in Los Angeles. I was brought in as a general manager and set designer to help him create the Tiki Palace escape room. We had just finished the new room when we were approached by Universal Pictures to help them create the Krampus escape room for promotions of the 2015 Krampus film. We originally intended to keep the room for a few months, but it became a fan favorite. In January 2016 Ethan broke the news to me that he had plans to sell the location so that he could focus on opening a restaurant where he lived in San Francisco. I had taken a lot of pride in my work at Countdown LA and didn’t want to see it sold off to the highest bidder, so I purchased the business from him instead. From there, I have tried to do my best to help the industry grow. I’ve worked to bring the SoCal escape room owners together, so that we might not look at each other as competition, but rather as friends. We have since organized mixers and industry nights so we might discuss everything from marketing, game play and set designs.

As for Countdown Escape LA, we have had our extremely successful April fool’s day pop up room, Mrs. Jezebel’s Tea Party. We recently hosted the trailer release for Sony Picture’s Don’t Breathe and created a special room based on the trailer for Fede Alverez, Finally, our newest room revamp, The Pandorus Mission, has been completed.

Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
The main obstacles we have faced is that we are in Los Angeles. New rooms open up every day in our city and most of the populace still has no idea we exist. So not only do we have to educate people on what we are, but we also have to do it while standing out from a crowd of existing rooms.

We are an unregulated industry as well. This means the quality of rooms varies from location to location. Some rooms are terrible and they might leave a bad taste in the mouth of potential future customers. That’s why I’ve tried to create a better community for escape rooms to recommend each other. The other biggest problem with our games is replay-ability. Not many games cater to the more that issue as you don’t really play the same game twice. This also helped other owners look past the “competitor” branding of other rooms and see them as potential marketing partners.

Alright – so let’s talk business. Tell us about Countdown Live Escape Games – what should we know?
Countdown Live Escape Games Los Angeles is my business. By that I mean, you can see the owner in their rooms. Some rooms will have amazing tech because their owners are engineers, some will have story, and others, and well you can tell its just business for them. I come from set design and the haunt industry so my rooms look beautiful. They are frequently rented out by indie film groups for smaller film projects. I was also able to use my scare acting knowledge of what gets people nervous. The Krampus is, by far, one of the most terrifying rooms in LA.

Is there a characteristic or quality that you feel is essential to success?
To succeed is to adapt. I’ve had to learn many skills that I had no prior experience in. Marketing, accounting, and creating connections for networking.

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