Escape Rooms for Misinformation Education: A Case Study of Co-design with Two Communities

This study examines whether co-design can efficiently adapt an existing misinformation escape room into community-specific narrative versions, offering an alternative to the cost of building new educational games from scratch. The authors begin from the observation that only 11 of 37 existing misinformation media literacy games are narrative-driven, and they argue that narrative "skins" applied to a shared game framework can make misinformation education more relevant to diverse audiences. Working from an existing game, The Euphorigen Investigation, the research team partnered with two communities, a BTS fan group (ARMY) and a group of BIPOC scholars, to co-create new narrative versions through a four-session framework covering priming, narrative development, puzzle revision, and playtesting.

Both groups completed narrative development in roughly 10 hours and produced playable prototypes, Galaxy for the ARMY community and Bo$$BabyKoin for the BIPOC scholars, which participants rated positively. Participants reported greater confidence and a stronger sense of inclusion when provided with a pre-structured Miro board and active facilitation. Facilitation dynamics shifted notably between the sessions: research team speaking time dominated the ARMY session, while the BIPOC session became more participant-led after an external co-facilitator was introduced. The findings are primarily qualitative, drawn from session transcripts and focus group quotes.

The framework worked more smoothly for the cohesive ARMY fandom than for the broader Black community group, and preliminary feedback suggested Galaxy engaged fandom members but felt unrelatable to non-fans. The authors acknowledge that the small, single-case design limits generalizability and that researcher positionality shapes the analysis. Impact on misinformation resilience and audience reception remains unmeasured, and the work is being extended to further sites across Europe, Ghana, and Turkey.