Party games are great in fostering strong ties and cohesion within corporate workgroups and beyond
Video games have often found themselves receiving negative perceptions. The common narrative depicts concerned parents anxiously monitoring their offspring, who, in the dim glow of basement screens, seem to waste away.
It's time to dispel the worn-out myth of video games as a mindless waste of time and embrace the evidence suggesting that they not only impart valuable skills but can also contribute to improved teamwork and collaboration for companies and work groups.
Let's explore how games can nurture robust, efficient teams and discover one of our all-time favourites to orchestrate a virtual game night!
Party video games: a funny tool for team building and bonding
Just like old board games, party (video)games are specifically designed to encourage social meetings and relationships, to facilitate interaction and provide entertainment and leisure. Typically, party video games are crafted as a compilation of minigames designed to be user-friendly, allowing various degrees of competition and/or cooperation between many players.
Participants may feel varying degrees of engagement, depending on their previous online gaming experience. However, the opportunity to interact in a secure and controlled environment, working towards a common cooperative or competitive goal, holds immense benefits for players.
In both the gaming and the working worlds, skills such as engagement, adrenaline management, strategic thinking, and creativity are essential. These soft skills are indispensable in the professional sphere and are increasingly sought after by forward-thinking companies.
Play a party game, learn to try!
Party games offer incredible benefits. Collaborative learning, sharing, and even "trying" are integral aspects. When faced with a challenging task, everyone is encouraged to voice their opinions in a collective brainstorming session.
Learning to try is perhaps one of the most challenging things in life, especially in a culture where making mistakes equates to failure.
However, making mistakes means learning, growing, and putting oneself on the line. Gaming provides a perfect arena for changing mindsets and improving oneself both personally and professionally.
To overcome challenges, various skills are required: strategic thinking, coordination, mental clarity, the ability to reason under pressure, leadership, and teamwork. Participants must not only excel in managing available resources like time and mental energy but also learn to listen and trust others.
Party games teach the importance of reliance and delegation because, on more than one occasion, doing everything alone is simply impossible.
Image via ymcacf.org
To maximize benefits, mix your audiences!
Party games are suitable for both young and senior corporate groups, preferably mixed. It’s true strength lies in creating incredibly favorable situations for unity. Getting to know each other becomes child's play during an online match.
Paradoxically, playing removes filters, making people more natural and inclined to communicate and share.
This makes party games particularly suitable for newly formed workgroups or those who have never collaborated on a project. It can serve as an extraordinary onboarding tool to integrate newcomers with the old guard or simply as a stress-relieving pastime to regain team harmony.
Participating in gaming activities with colleagues, friends, and teammates significantly enhances work performance. Getting to know your colleagues becomes much easier through gaming, as few online activities provide a better platform for genuine interaction.
Our latest team-building endeavor? Playing Overcooked! 2
Image via Gamespot.com
At PIGIAMA KASAMA we’re always on the lookout for creative ways to spice up our team spirit, and lately we've been adding some extra flavor to it by playing sessions of “Overcooked!2”, a brilliantly chaotic game whose objective is preventing digital kitchens from going up in flames.
Overcooked!2 is a virtual playground that replicates high-stress scenarios, demanding real-time coordination, communication, and task allocation: pretty much what every team tackle daily!
Developed by Ghost Town Games and published by Team 17, Overcooked!2 is a cooperative video game for 1 to 4 players where players stepped into the shoes of real chefs whose goal is to collaborate to prepare as many dishes as possible.
The task is to prepare sandwiches, sushi, pizzas, salads, and pasta dishes with a specific order and in the shortest time possible, avoiding imminent dangers such as burning food and pans. Not to forget a crucial aspect: cleaning and maintaining the kitchen. But things can also go very bad in the game as the entire kitchen literally catches fire if you forget food on the stovetops within the time limit.
Mastering the game and achieving the highest score is challenging, requiring significant coordination among players.
Planning is crucial to obtain the maximum score in levels: it is essential for each player to carry out their role and stick to it throughout the whole culinary session.
Image via ghosttowngames.com
Why we “Overcooked!” our chestnut 🌰
Overcooked!2 taught us that no task is impossible but rather a result of correct collaboration, where everyone must follow assigned tasks towards a common goal without overpowering their teammate and without the slightest competition between roles. The only competition is against time, pressure and the unexpected!
Still, every player can behave in different ways and shine in its own light. Some people may want to stick faithfully to their assigned roles, while others may choose to multitask, perhaps assisting a struggling player if needed.
This not only reveal some of the dynamics within the teamwork environment and the personalities involved, along with their skills and preferred roles, but it also testifies that a well-structured game naturally predispose people to relate to others in an authentic way and to instinctively offer the best of their abilities.
Once again, the gaming medium proves to be a valuable ally for developing or enhancing cooperation among individuals, especially in working contexts where gaming activities prove effective and practical.
For us, every new dish prepared on our gaming session of Overcooked!2 was like a new deadline met for one of our projects: the result of collective commitment and team organization, the ability to manage resources and pressure.
Find the right game that resonate within your group: the one you prefer to play!
Different people like different types of games. Not everyone is going to want to dig into a super challenging system, while others will welcome that challenge. So, it is important to choose the kind of experience that appeals most to every group of players.
Thanks to the development of new technologies, today it is possible to create tailored gaming experiences that accurately simulate the tasks to be carried out in the workplace, making them fun and playable through our creative work.
At PAGIAMA KASAMA we create gaming experiences tailored to every need, bringing our creativity and experience in crafting stories and immersive digital experiences at your service to create the best possible platform to rediscover the meaning of collaboration and team building!
Reach out to us if you want to hear more!
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