Show HN: Gamejoy – hosted Zoom games for remote teams
gamejoyhq.com
gamejoyhq.com
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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/
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!
You could provide platform, services, payment gateway etc.
Just buy one jackbox games for like $30 (has multiple games). One person screen shares the game, and you have a ball.
I have been looking for something like this - as patio11 would say, you should always charge more than you think but I’ll be honest, my workplace could not really justify this price for an hour.
FWIW, I also just polled my manager about this (without revealing my thoughts above), and he said $100 absolute max. For reference, this is at a megacorp (technically they could of course afford more, but budgets for anything related to employee happiness are squeezed tight).
Or a data analyst etc?
Or, maybe we need make the inclusion of prizes clearer in how the price is positioned.
Make it toggle-able, and you're fucking champion.
Long-term, we're hoping this could be also be a way to employ artists impacted by the pandemic as well.
Generally, if a group can use any form of videoconferencing, they can use Jackbox. It's no different from one person sharing a presentation. I've only encountered one game that required realtime interaction, and we know to avoid it.
It's pretty easy to get around corporate machine lockdown by using a personal machine to host. Participants are just using the web browser.
A grainy picture taken in someone's bathroom with the caption "She's hilarious and unpredictable, so get ready for laughs!", and a couple one-liners from names that could be completely fake, does not tell me that this is going to be worth the money.
This isn't for individuals, it's for corporations with left over event budgets.
Although you could also just have everyone jump into an online game for free
How do you balance making a good first impression with getting feedback on an early-ish version of your product?
It reminds me of https://startplaying.games/ which matches DMs/GMs with people that want to play dungeons and dragons and other TTRPG games online. Pricing is per person per session. Some of the DMs might be able to hit that $350 price point but it'd be for a 3+ hour session and their value add is very very obvious with number of games/hours they've DMd and reviews from players at their tables.
There's also a bar trivia company in Denver that's been hosting bar trivia over zoom - I think pricing is per team with some fun prizes. They support many more people than what you are offering too though. I have participated in a bar pre-covid and on Zoom and both experiences were fun.
The way https://startplaying.games/ shows feedback is a great reference for how we could handle host reviews.
Might be worth hiring a designer to give a face lift to the sight, website feels a bit spartan at the moment. I agree that strong testimonials could go a long way, maybe include a clip of people having a good time in a game? How many repeat customers do you have, maybe offer a first time discount?
We're still in the early stages but are seeing decent repeat business with other teams at an organization wanting to run a similar game. We do try to encourage social sharing by providing winning pictures and prizes.
While everyone seemed to enjoy the game, I felt bored and that I was wasting my time. I didn’t want to break their fun by quitting the game so I had to play for a whole hour.
It was a bitter and ridiculous experience and not joyful at all.