#13 Digital exit games

They can now be found in almost every major German city: exit games or escape rooms. They are used as a team-building activity or birthday party highlight and work according to a very simple principle: a group of people find themselves in a room and only have a limited amount of time to escape. On the way there, clues have to be interpreted correctly and puzzles solved using logical thinking and combination skills. Even if these offers have not yet had a genuinely political educational claim, there is still untapped potential here for extracurricular political education and also (perhaps even especially) for extracurricular education under pandemic conditions, because the exit games can be wonderfully transferred to digital spaces and can therefore be used flexibly and regardless of location.

Depending on the concept, they can also be planned according to time requirements: a 30-minute game is just as conceivable as one that fills a project week. This flexibility also applies to the thematic focus: exit games can be tailored to the desired topic and can therefore be used in a wide variety of fields of political education. For example, it is possible to use the game dynamics to address democratic decision-making or group processes, but it is also conceivable to place a stronger focus on content (e.g. climate change, data protection, gender, etc.) or to negotiate abstract concepts such as power or freedom in the game. Exit games offer the opportunity to be both a low-threshold introduction to a topic and a lively deepening of what is already known. In any case, they are a welcome change in the event- and culture-poor everyday life of the pandemic.