How to experience the life of another in five hours: Murder Mystery, a trending game in China

She bends over and props her elbows on the table, with her forehead resting on her hands so nobody can see her face. Her eyes well up with tears, and her voice trembles with despair as she says, "I should be the one to die."

This was one of the most memorable moments for Zhao Qianwen last year, who was playing a role-playing puzzle game with her friends. In addition to being a 30-year-old architectural designer from Qingdao, China, Ms Zhao is also a zealot of the game Murder Mystery.

Murder Mystery is just one of many online and real-life immersive puzzle games sweeping across China that have customers acting out roles in a murder mystery script as young people look for new ways to socialize and business owners look to capitalize on the trend.

The game requires players to follow the script of a story, which is usually a murder case, to play one of the roles in it. A minimum of five and a maximum of 12 players can form a game. Characters have their own stories and functions, and one of them is the murderer.

“For some immersive live scene game rooms, they offer costumes for players to dress up so that it can be more engaging,” Ms Zhao said. “Some of them even have NPC (non-player characters) to drive the story.”

One story script usually takes around four to six hours to play. If the case is too complex or includes too many characters, then it may take seven to eight hours.

“Murder Mystery is becoming increasingly popular in China, especially for young adults between 20-35,” said Wang Pei, 29, a murder mystery game room owner from Wuhan. This year, she and her husband started two new game rooms in Shenzhen after the two in Wuhan had been a success.

“It’s also a new way to socialize,” Ms Zhao said. “Even if you are playing it with someone you don’t know, you don't have to feel awkward, you can just follow the script then talk for hours.”

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The number of murder mystery-focused game rooms in mainland China soared to around 12,000, compared with 2,400 in 2018, according to Meituan, a shopping platform for the lifestyle entertainment industry.

Ms Zhao said she loves Murder Mystery because the game is not only a game. Each story is a unique experience.

“It’s really amazing that the player can experience the life of another within five hours,” she said. “A good story will make you get inspired by the role you played.”

Ms Zhao has played over 200 story scripts. Among them, the most memorable role was an old woman who had been through many separations during the 1940s Sino-Japanese war.

“My great-grandma had a similar experience. She had a childhood friend who went to the Korean War and never came back,” said Ms Zhao. “That's not the kind of regret we could easily feel nowadays, but playing this character has helped me to understand her.”

Meanwhile, the increasing popularity of Murder Mystery is creating many new job opportunities.

Before establishing their own game rooms, Ms Wang was a designer, and her husband worked in the sales industry. They liked the game so much that they decided to become full-time murder mystery workers.

“We started our business at the end of 2018 when the game was not that popular,” said Ms Wang, adding that their first game room in Wuhan took less than two weeks to complete all the preparations, including decorations and story script purchase.

According to Ms Wang, the game rooms are usually opened in residential and office buildings. The monthly rent for a three-room apartment in Wuhan costs around 3,000-3,500 yuan, and each story script costs around 400-500 yuan.

“It's about 70-80 yuan per person to play one script,” Ms Wang said. “Usually at least five to six people can start a game, which means a script can make money from at least five or six people at once, almost earning back the cost of the script, not to mention it can be reused by other groups of players.”

Shen Lan, a 21-year-old university student, has been working as a part-time Murder Mystery scriptwriter for six months. Her best-selling script In the Name of the Father made her nearly 50,000 yuan.

“It takes at least two months for a Murder Mystery script to go from an idea to publication,” Ms Shen said. Before each script meets the players, Ms Shen has to work with her publication studio to test the script again and again to make sure it doesn’t have any logic errors.

“It's very difficult to design a ‘perfect murder’,” said Ms Shen. “It takes a large amount of information searching, testing and tweaking, but I really enjoy the process because it drives me to learn more.”

Jiang Xiang, 27, known as Bangzhu on social media, previously worked as a salesman and became a full-time Murder Mystery script rater at the beginning of this year. His team runs accounts named I Love Murder Mystery on Sina Weibo, the Twitter-like social media platform in China, TikTok and Wechat to publish articles that analyze the most popular scripts in the market.

Their analysis looks at the scripts from six aspects: story-telling, deducting, acting, interacting, entertaining and level of difficulty. Bangzhu said that their platform was completely self-funded and they won’t get returns for rating a script.

“We have to maintain fairness,” said Bangzhu. “Although we are not making any money yet, I enjoy what I’m doing now.”

Ms Zhao is also running an account on Little Red Book, an online shopping and socializing platform in China, to publish Murder Mystery script ratings.

“While the industry is doing well so far, it’s lacking systematic management. I think someone has to be the guide to tell people what a really good script should be like,” Ms Zhao said. “There have to be scripts that are insightful so that players will stay.”