While many meeting facilitators opt for something simple like asking everyone to introduce themselves or name their favorite movie, some opt for more elaborate games to help establish an atmosphere and get the meeting going in the direction that they want. Read on to learn some simple (and more elaborate) games that you can play with only a few minutes of prep time at your next virtual meeting.
Why You Should Add Games to Your Virtual Meetings
Adding games to a virtual meeting serves a lot of different purposes, mostly depending on what kind of game you are adding to the meeting. Some games can serve to set a positive mood for the meeting or get everyone’s attention at the start (which can be important if everyone is working from home). Some games serve as icebreakers that let people in the meeting become more comfortable with one another or work alongside each other more easily. Some games aim to help attendees get their creative juices flowing or get them to start thinking about problems in specific ways. However, no matter why you are adding games to your meetings, they can help improve the overall atmosphere and experience for everyone involved.
However, when you are considering adding a game to your meeting, you want to be strategic about it. Anyone who spends enough time in meetings has a story of an icebreaker activity that fell flat or a game that dragged on and didn’t seem to add much to the event. With this in mind, you’ll want to tailor the games you use to serve specific functions rather than just using them to pad out time and take up space during a meeting. So, for example, if your team is having a meeting and everyone has been working together for a year, there is no need for an icebreaker activity. However, if you are going to be brainstorming a new project, doing a lateral thinking activity or a puzzle-related game might be a great way to get people in the proper headspace for the meeting.
Two Truths and a Lie
Two Truths and a Lie is one of the simplest and most effective icebreaker games you can play and it only takes a few minutes and virtually no prep time. Simply break your meeting up into groups of 2-4 and send them off into break-off rooms. Then, once everyone is in a separate room each participant will invent two truths about themselves and a lie. They will share all three facts with the other participants in their small groups and it will be the job of the other participants to ask questions to determine which statement is a lie. This is a great way to learn new things about your team and the other participants at your meetings and it can be a fun exercise to get people talking about themselves and their colleagues. It can also be a great way to get attendees ready to start asking questions.
Scavenger Hunts
Scavenger Hunts are usually elaborate activities, but they can make for fairly simple icebreaker games if you know how to run them. One of the most common versions of the scavenger hunt is to ask everyone at your virtual meeting to find a specific item around their home, usually with a more open-ended description. Thus, you may ask your participants to “find something with a lot of sentimental value” or “find a book/movie that really impacted you.” This will help participants get to know each other as they see what their colleagues show to the camera and it will get them thinking on their feet as they decide what kind of object they should return with. This activity can be a nice, quick way to get your team members to introduce themselves over the virtual meeting and ensure that everyone is awake and ready to start the meeting.
Trivia Questions
While it can be harder with everyone on the internet, asking a few trivia questions at the start of a meeting can be a good way to get people thinking and communicating as they attempt to come up with an answer. These questions can be tailored to your team or they can be drawn from any number of online trivia question databases and it is usually very easy to find a few simple trivia questions to ask. This can be a good way to stimulate your attendees' brains, particularly if the meeting is taking place early in the morning or late at night. It can also just be fun to see who on the team has a given bit of esoteric knowledge.
Five Minute Mystery
Five-minute mysteries are quick brain-teasers that offer a quick and easy way to get small groups and teams working together and thinking laterally about problem-solving techniques. These are often things like tiny puzzles, word games, riddles or other abstract problems that require creative thinking to solve. These riddles and games are ideal for quickly getting your team invested in a problem that needs to be solved, which can be a good way to get brainstorming meetings or other planning sessions started. These games are also a good way to get team-building activities kicked off since they tend to encourage collaboration and group work over individual, cloistered thinking.
Pictionary
Pictionary is a fun and simple game in which teams trade-off between drawing an image and guessing what is being drawn, a kind of pictorial charade. This is very easy to do and organize over a digital platform since drawing and sharing those drawings becomes much easier in the digital space. Most computers allow for fairly easy painting and drawing practice and screen sharing lets users see the drawing being built in real-time. These games are a good way to get your team working as a cohesive unit and they can be a nice way to start the meeting with a creative activity that brings group members together. Plus, many creatives and artists enjoy the opportunity to showcase their skills or use the game as a chance to think about prompts in creative ways, making this a good brainstorming activity.
Would You Rather?
Would you rather is a fairly simple game. Participants are presented with two choices of odd or abstract options such as “ Would you rather spend the next year exempt from all taxes or have a one-month paid vacation?” Then, everyone will decide upon an answer and justify why it is they made the choice that they made. This is a great activity for building team cohesion and for giving your team members a chance to get to know each other and understand their colleagues' thought processes. It can also be a fun icebreaker activity for groups to get to know each other since it can be oddly informative to know how another person responds to and justifies a strange hypothetical. Finally, the act of justifying an odd hypothetical can force people to approach problems differently and think in new ways.
Never Have I Ever
A similar game, Never Have I Ever is an icebreaker, team-building game wherein small groups learn more about each other by making statements about things that they have never done. A person will say something to the effect of “Never have I ever gone skydiving” and everyone who has done this will acknowledge it. This game can be scored or it can be a simple social activity that people play to start talking to one another and discussing themselves and their interests. If you are looking for an easy-to-understand icebreaker that can help get team members out of their shells and talking to one another.
Lego Puzzles
While these are slightly more complicated to do in a virtual environment, Lego puzzles and games are a good way to build team cohesion and specific problem-solving skills. Usually, a Lego puzzle involves breaking up into small pairs and designating one person to be a builder while another person is tasked with providing the builder with instructions. Then, using only verbal instruction and communication, the instructor guides the builder through the process of making a designated design. At the end of the activity, everyone comes back together to share their completed design and see how other pairs did. As an activity, this is both a great way to get your employees working together and it can be useful for building skills related to providing and following instructions since the game is about figuring out the best way to communicate complex concepts between one another.
Let CourseHorse Plan Your Next Game Night
While small games can be a good way to start a meeting and to get your team ready for the task at hand, being only five minutes can make them somewhat limited. If you are interested in helping bring your team members closer together during a more elaborate session or you want to build team morale and cohesion, CourseHorse offers a wide range of different team-building events, virtual office parties and fun game sessions designed to meet the needs of your team. These events are deeply customizable and CourseHorse is always available to work with you to alter or modify elements of the event to ensure that you receive the virtual team-building event that is perfect for you. Many of the events CourseHorse offers take the structure of these games and expand them into full events and any of CourseHorse’s team-building activities or events can be complemented with a few quick rounds of these games.
Virtual Ice Breakers
CourseHorse offers a dedicated Virtual Group Icebreaker event for teams and companies looking to get their employees involved with one another and engaged in conversation. These icebreaker events can be customized to fit the needs of your team, but they consist of a collection of simple and elaborate games that employees, supervisors and other team members will play to learn more about one another. These events can include things like Two Truths and a Lie, Never Have I Ever or a series of Would You Rather questions that aim to get your team members engaged with one another or it can include more tactile events like Pictionary or Lego building games. Regardless of the collection of events and activities you choose to run, an experienced facilitator will take care of the process of overseeing the event and handling the logistics of running the icebreakers. This is a very easy event to run and it is a great way to combine all of the advantages of team-building icebreaker activities into a single, fun evening for you and your team.
Virtual Trivia Night
Trivia events are fun ways to spend an evening with friends, and they make for a fairly compact and enjoyable icebreaker event. These trivia nights are run by experienced trivia hosts and they give your employees the chance to flex their knowledge and work alongside each other in a fun and competitive environment. For an hour, participants will be broken up into teams and they will be tasked with answering a collection of trivia questions pertaining to the theme of the event. CourseHorse offers a wide variety of different trivia nights to choose from, meaning that you will be able to customize the event as you see fit.
General knowledge trivia is the default option, but you can opt for things like movie trivia, music trivia, or sports trivia if you want to aim for a specific knowledge niche. There are also trivia categories testing knowledge on important social issues such as Pride Month trivia, Black History Month trivia or Women’s History Month trivia. Beyond this, there are also a variety of pop culture trivia options, including things as specific as Game of Thrones trivia, Seinfeld trivia, or True Crime trivia. If none of the options advertised are what you are looking for, there are even options available for customizing your own trivia night and working with CourseHorse’s team of trivia experts to build a personalized evening of trivia. With so many options to choose from, you are certain to find an event that meets your needs.
Virtual Escape Rooms
If you feel like your team enjoys the kind of lateral thinking involved in solving puzzles during a five minute mystery, you can expand that experience out with a virtual escape room. Escape rooms are very popular social activities and are becoming more common as in-person team-building activities. CourseHorse will bring the escape room directly to your team member’s homes in these live online events. During a virtual escape room, attendees will be broken up into small groups and they will work directly with one another and with experienced facilitators to solve puzzles, gather clues and work towards a resolution of the game’s central mystery. These events are a really fun way to get members of your team working together, and they are a good way to encourage and develop critical thinking and problem-solving skills.
CourseHorse has a number of different virtual escape room options available for you to choose from. If you are interested in a traditional murder virtual murder mystery, CourseHorse runs a Virtual Escape Room: Murder Mystery event that sees participants piecing together clues to solve a crime before the murderer strikes again. If you feel like your team would enjoy a bit of nostalgia with their puzzles, CourseHorse offers an Escape the 90s and an Escape the 2000s event where participants will be rewarded for their knowledge of those two decades. There is a Sci-Fi themed The Final Frontier escape event, a horror-themed Monsters and Ghouls event and even themed events like a Marvel Avengers or Jumanji escape rooms. CourseHorse can even help customize the events to fit your team's needs and desires, making this an ideal way to bring teams together for an evening of fun, competitive puzzle-solving.
Virtual Scavenger Hunts
A Virtual Scavenger Hunt takes the premise of a quick, pre-meeting scavenger hunt and expands the event to include larger, more elaborate tasks, prompts and goals. The aim of this event is to get team members working in mini-groups to complete and gather a list of required items as quickly as possible. To do so, they will have to solve riddles and complete small challenges that will help them decode the exact list of items they are looking for, making this a complex collection of games rather than a singular process of looking around homes for various objects. Some of the prompts will also compel participants to express themselves creatively or to think outside of the box to find an item or group of items that fit the description, making this a fun way for teams to work together in different ways. The structure of the virtual scavenger hunt will have your team moving about, working alongside each other and trying to think through problems in creative and challenging ways, making this an ideal team-building activity that can accomplish a number of different goals at the same time.
Virtual Game Nights
If you are looking for something more laidback, CourseHorse also runs regular game nights that can combine elements of any number of the events that they host as full team-building activities. These virtual game nights give teams the chance to unwind and compete with one another in a variety of different activities that can be customized to fit the needs of your team. You can opt for a brief trivia game that focuses on a subject relevant to your team. You can run a miniature scavenger hunt with only a few riddles and items. You could even opt for a few icebreaker activities to be played before something more elaborate, like a trivia night or a virtual escape room. These events aim to help organizers build a personalized evening of fun and socialization for their team members, so the only real limit is your imagination when it comes to the kinds of games and activities you can run for your team.
If you are looking for this to be the centerpiece of an evening, all of these games can be combined into a Virtual Team Olympics event that will see your employees or team members competing with one another for bragging rights and prizes. These events are infinitely customizable and you can be in contact with CourseHorse to shape the exact kind of virtual game night you want your team to experience. No matter what kind of games you are hoping to have your team participate in, CourseHorse can help you incorporate the elements you want into your event, including adding specific kinds of trivia, scavenger hunt events or icebreaker minigames.
Virtual Brick Challenges
The Virtual Brick Building Challenge offered by CourseHorse takes the structure of LEGO based block building games and expands it out into an hour-long competitive session aimed at giving teams a fun and laid-back experience that will also serve to help build communication skills. In these events, participants will be broken up into mini-teams and they will complete a series of different brick building challenges using supplies that CourseHorse sends them (to ensure that everyone has all of the necessary materials). These games include scene building challenges, design clone challenges, tower building games and self-portrait challenges. All of these games aim to be fun ways to hone tactile spatial reasoning and communication skills. Like all of CourseHorse’s events, once you book the event, all of the logistics, shipping and hosting duties will be taken care of, meaning that you are free to dedicate your attention to other issues as your team prepares for their evening of block building fun.
Book Your Event Today
In addition to these games being fun ways to get your team working together, they are also incredibly easy on the organizers. CourseHorse takes care of almost everything, including shipping supplies directly to participants in relevant sessions. All of the events are run by experienced facilitators who are there to help participants get in the right mindset for the event. Most events can support up to 250 participants and CourseHorse is flexible in helping set up events for groups of all sizes.