I am part of a team within our department that schedules outside activities for our department. With everyone working from home, we are trying to come up with virtual team activities to keep us connected.
Anyone have any suggestions? Would be good to be cross platform.
Thanks!
Never faced this before, so just spitballing…
What sort of events do people usually like? What has been popular in the past? If it’s, say, bowling, then that’s one thing… if it’s a “socially lubricated” (aka alcohol involved) event/party, that’s something different. If everyone supplied their own favourite libation, you could come up with some sort of a party game you could play on a webcam or online.
Also, depending on the group size(s) something as simple as Monopoly or Settlers of Catan could be played with a small group if someone in your group was willing to be a non-player (the banker) and operate the board while others called out actions to them. Just make sure you used rules to keep the game moving quickly (or ending quickly.)
With some pre-planning and pre-communication, you might be able to do some sort of murder mystery type game online.
The official Cards Against Humanity is probably too far away from work acceptable… but you might be able to come up with your own cards (and even involve the whole team in farming work appropriate content.) I think there are still free online games where you could play together while supplying your own cards (but I don’t know this for certain.)
If you can break people into smaller groups, you could break them off to solve a problem/puzzle as a timed challenge focused on team building. A really clever person (someone far more clever than me I’m sure) could come up with some sort of “virtual escape room” type challenge.
Whatever ideas you come up with, if you want competitive behaviour, and you have a budget, offer to have a special meal delivered to their home (aka uber eats or whatever) if they win.
Thanks for some ideas. Although I never played it, I was wondering if Minecraft would be good? People could visit our virtual world and create “stuff” (I’ve only seen my son play it occasionally).
I thought of Minecraft but didn’t mention it because I don’t know if the clients are still free now that Microsoft took possession. If you have a budget, then that certainly is a workable solution.
I tend to want to focus on creative problem solving, for some reason. There are a number of games that are appropriate in this context, but none of them are free. I am quite fond of “Human Resource Machine” and its follow-on game “7 Billion Humans.” I like these two because, while they are individual problems, and everyone gets the same problem for the same level, it provides metric on solution effectiveness and it is possible to share solutions as text files by cut and paste. They may not appeal to everyone thou, as they are quite similar to computer programming (but with a friendly UI front end.)
I just remembered that [VR] game about defusing a bomb “Keep Talking And Nobody Explodes”, and it is also a co-operation kind of game, but I don’t know that it has any online component and/or if they have eliminated the VR requirement.
Thanks so much for your thoughtful ideas and comments.