Real Escape Game in Japan was developed by 35-year-old Takao Kato, of the Kyoto publishing company, SCRAP Co., in 2007. It is based in Kyoto, Japan and produces a free magazine by the same name. Beyond Japan, escape games appeared in Singapore from 2011.Escape games in Singapore expanded quickly with over 50 games by 2015.Kazuya Iwata, a friend of Kato, brought Real Escape Game to San Francisco in 2012.Parapark, a Hungarian franchise that later operated in 20 locations in Europe and Australia, was founded in 2011 in Budapest.The founder, Attila Gyurkovics claims he had no information about the Japanese escape games and based the game on his job experience as personality trainer. Supposedly another escape room, "Origin", was created in Silicon Valley by a group of system programmers in 2013, but no concrete evidence for this game has been found.The mysteries and challenges in the game were inspired by the works of Agatha Christie and became a popular tourist attraction. In 2015, the first escape games opened in South America in Porto Alegre and Sao Paulo. At this time there were over 2,800 escape room venues worldwide.These are particularly lucrative for the operators, as the upfront investment can be as low as US $7,000, while a party of 4-8 customers pay around US$25-30 per person for one hour to solve a room puzzle, being able to generate annual revenue in the range of several hundred thousand dollars.By 2017, US cities such as Pittsburgh, have seen significant increase in demand for escape room games.