[phprecovery]

Hi HN! Founder here. Just wanted to share my latest venture with the HN community.

Backstory: the teams at my company got really tired of the usual remote "Happy Hour" activities and thought it would be fun to do something a little different — a little more fun! I decided to run a session of “Family Feud” for my team and everyone had a great time. Before I knew it, multiple teams throughout the company were reaching out to me to run a session!

After thinking about this experience and talking with numerous managers, I found it was getting harder to keep things fresh as many teams continue to work remotely and thought there was an opportunity to do something more scalable and high quality. Hence, Gamejoy was born!

Right now, we're focusing on games that combine fun + universal appeal/ease + the opportunity to get to know your teammates better (i.e. games with built-in icebreakers). We're starting with a few games and hoping to launch more (i.e. Poker is a common request) shortly.

Would love any thoughts or feedback. Thanks!

[sentinel]

I think you have zero-ed in on the right problem.

In our remote team we have tried a number of these team-building games / airbnb experiences, but tbh:

1. I did not feel like I knew my teammates better after the experience, and 2. it wasn't that fun

The most fun I had was actually playing Among Us with the team. But even that game has a couple of issues that makes it no 100% suited for team building.

My guess is you'll probably have to continue experimenting with games. I'm not sure if all in-person games will translate well to zoom, but some will do better than others. You def want people to be engaged, work together and change teams often.

It's also always great to hear that your games are helping someone – e.g. actors that are out of work.

Good luck! I'll be keeping an eye on your website and I'm already thinking of recommending it as an option for the next time we do a team building activity.

[phprecovery]

Thanks for kind words sentinel. Totally agreed about the two pain points you described with existing remote activities:

1. Not getting to know your teammates better 2. Not being fun

This is what really led us to want to do something different with Gamejoy. To this end, we try to train our hosts and pick games that not only encourage participants to have fun but also get to know each other better—through interactive and maybe slightly embarrassing questions. :-)

And, agree about needing to continue to experiment with games. We have a couple of ideas in the pipeline but we want to make sure they bring that combination of fun + team building that we want.

[shepherdjerred]

How did Among Us go? My co-worker and I are considering hosting a few games for our team.

[sentinel]

I really enjoyed it, but imo it wasn't a total success. The problem with Among Us is that one of its mechanics is lying or deceiving. When playing with friends this may not really be a problem – it's all fun and games.

But, in a work environment, I think some people would be careful about "showing they are good at lying". Therefore, when it's their turn to be the imposter, they will self-sabotage so they don't even try to manipulate or lie. I suppose all this depends on how political or close-knit the team you are in is, so YMMV. I can see this working great in a startup, but maybe not so much in a larger company, where a certain amount of politics permeates interactions.

I think this takes a toll on how fun the game can be in the end. Which is why, I don't think I'll recommend Among Us again, because I think some people just don't want to show a "dirtier" side of themselves especially in front of others.

Side note – I do love Among Us and I am playing it with friends whenever I can. I do think it has some great team-building ideas in it, probably unintentionally, as I don't think it was created as a workplace team building game. If there could be a similar game, that would keep the team building, but with less of the deceiving, that could be a real winner for the team-building activity in the age of remote work.

[WorldMaker]

You have to be careful about the other side too, if people did take the game seriously that can cause fractures in the group that would have repercussions elsewhere. "How can I trust you to get the work done that you said would get done when I know you are so good at lying?" I've seen good friendships end over traitor mechanic games, and I don't want to imagine what it would look like to see a work team destroyed by one.

[sentinel]

Exactly – I think this is what my concern is as well.

I think the best analogy for this is when AOC played Among Us and was the impostor. Was she going to turn her political mind to 100% and win the game, and in front of the world show "how it's done by a pro"? I don't think so. Similarly, I think a manager or someone jockeying for a position would be reluctant to play to win, especially as impostor.

[diN0bot]

try avalon. it's much more social and way easier to learn, plus everyone gets to play until the end. avalon is both logical-deduction-gamey and mafia-style-social. among us just feels like a video game.

[andredz]

Are you referring to this one: https://avalon.fun/ ?

[WorldMaker]

There are also tricks to use any of the board games in a video chat as well (well Avalon is more of a card game, but you get the gist). The publisher of Avalon also has a sci-fi setting with a bunch of similar traitor mechanic games in Resistance, Coup, One Night Ultimate Resistance, etc.

A thing to point out as mentioned way above, the issue with any traitor mechanic game is that while they can be great fun, involve a lot of exploration of social dynamics, they are also not really good at team building because they require at least some of you to lie/cheat/back-stab.

As a designated owner/bringer of several traitor mechanic board games, in the before times, I/we had a general rule that traitor mechanic were "first thing in the game night" games, and should if possible generally be followed by a true coop game (things like Hanabi or Pandemic) or a silly judge game (such as Apples-to-Apples or Action Cats), in order to avoid certain types of after-game drama, cleanse the palates a bit, and do a bit of a cooldown/after-care.

Unfortunately, traitor mechanic games are generally very easy to do remotely in a video chat while a lot of the pure coop games are "us versus the board" that are tougher to do remotely. Some of them have great videogame adaptations, but in videogame form lose some of the intimacy you'd want from a good video chat, and also often give all the information to every player at all times which only encourages the types of coop players that like to run the entire game and play everyone's turn as min-maxed as possible.

[masonhipp]

This looks really neat and I'd love to connect and talk about partnering somehow.

I'm working on a related project[1] aimed at the same problem but with a slightly different take. We don't do game hosting and our software is more of a "build your own zoom games" platform with a slideshow/presentation UI. But I think a lot of companies probably want a dedicated host and would be happy to pay for it (I'd be interested to know what that breakdown looks like).

In terms of what games you're working on, I think you're on the right track with games that help create real connections and deeper relationships. It looks like remote work will be permanently elevated (not to current numbers, but estimates look like >300% above pre-pandemic levels[2]). Bottom line is I think the team bonding and remote closeness problem is here to stay.

[1] Slides With Friends — https://slideswith.com

[2] Predictions 2021 — https://go.forrester.com/blogs/employee-experience-in-2021/

[phprecovery]

Founder here again!

Just wanted to thank everyone again for all the candid feedback. It’s been super helpful. We’ve already made a few changes including adding a lower price point with a “no prizes” option and other copy updates. We’re also hard at work to add more compelling social proof.

Thank you HN community!

[abhinuvpitale]

Interesting idea, though I am wondering how you are going to scale since games involve live hosts? Rather you could use this as a platform to connect "live hosts" (who make up and publish their games) with companies wanting to connect.

You could provide platform, services, payment gateway etc.

[phprecovery]

abhinuvpitale, love your suggestion about scaling to a platform to connect "live hosts". One of our hosts is actually an out-of-work actress affected by the pandemic and a big goal of mission is to help more artists affected like this. So, your suggestion really takes this to the next level!

[sentinel]

This is not a bad idea, but of course you don't necessarily want to become an alternative to AirBnB experiences either. There are a number of team building activities there as well, but I don't think they have the game element to them that you have here – this could be your differentiation.

[cryptozeus]

Video or Demo showing how it works would be great !

[paxys]

Man, you would have made an absolute killing 9 months ago. I hope there's still space in the market and people aren't too burned out/tired of virtual meets. Best of luck!