Planning team building activities can be intimidating—but it shouldn’t be!
Team building trips can be big, expensive commitments, and retreat team building activities like trust falls don’t work for everyone (and how much does falling into someone’s arms build trust anyway?). Team office games of basketball or volleyball appeal more to people with athletic ability (plus, you’d have to sweat around your coworkers). Even team engagement games like trivia or board games can be difficult to join in and enjoy for everyone (let’s face it–not everyone knows which musical was based on a collection of poems by T.S. Elliot).
We recognize that finding team building techniques that work for every person on your team can be difficult. That’s why TourGuide Games team experiences are personalized and unique to each team that plays them—and everyone can play however they like.
More than Just Fun Friday Games Online
TourGuide Games experiences are fun after work activities unlike any happy hour or trivia night you’ve had before, but they’re more than just fun. Our team game experiences help pinpoint areas of growth that will benefit your team to ultimately improve and maintain a healthy team culture. These aren’t just team building activities for employee engagement, they are custom experiences to help your team become even more successful.
Using principles of gamification, a professional TourGuide will cater the experience completely to the story your team’s actions tell. While the TourGuide will handle rolling dice and prompting story obstacles, it will be up to your team to imagine ways to overcome them. Teams will need to use creative and critical thinking face problems in the game. They’ll need to communicate, collaborate, and help each other to succeed.
Yes, the games will be fun! They’ll include a lot of laughs! But they’ll also have a few creative challenges to help your group grow.
Applying Workplace Gamification from Your Experience
Because TourGuide experiences are strategic activities to improve your culture, their affects go beyond being a team building activity for communication. Other social event ideas for work may be fun and help with bonding, but what practical application do they provide for your team?
Some elements of gamification you’ll see in your team experience include giving the players a reason to care, consistent feedback on the actions players take, and narrative rewards for creativity and teamwork. These are all elements that go beyond game design; applying them in your workplace as well are practical ways to continue working on your team’s health and culture. These applicable skills are an addition to the methods practiced during your game.
(We’ll explain more about gamification in the workplace in future articles as it informs how our TourGuides run team-focused games.)
Also–Have Fun Your Way!
Because these games are based in the imagination, there really isn’t a wrong way to play.
If you have an idea during the game, pitch it to your TourGuide! Many of our TourGuides have experience running games with roleplaying communities, and they’re prepared to improvise any wild solution your team brings up.
If you’ve played Dungeons & Dragons or another tabletop roleplaying game, you may be comfortable speaking in character—maybe even in an accent! However, if you’d prefer to just narrate the in-game actions you’d like to take, that’s fine too.
The only limit to the possibilities is your imagination!
(The only exception to “no wrong way to play” is unsafe content—or in-game actions that negatively affect your team in real life. We use safety tools with every game to help avoid unsafe game play. You can read more about the importance of safety tools here.)
You can learn more about how to play by scheduling a demo with TourGuide Games. Or, if you’re ready to hop in to a game, let’s book a team game experience!
