Online Workplace Games
What separates a workplace game that lands from one that dies in the group chat, and how to run one with colleagues without anyone regretting it.
What a workplace game is actually made of
Office humour works because the source material is already shared. Nobody needs the premise explained. Everyone has sat in a meeting that could have been an email, waited on a printer insisting on a paper jam in a tray that does not exist, and read a restructure announcement that used the word “journey” four times. A workplace game does not have to build a world. It only has to name things accurately.
That is also the trap. Accuracy is the whole joke, so a workplace game that reaches for generic corporate zaniness stops being funny in about ninety seconds. The specific detail is what earns the laugh. Not “the boss is mean” but a memo at 16:58 on a Friday moving the deadline to Monday and thanking you in advance.
Three ways these games fail
- Too broad. The office is set dressing with no observation in it. The same game could be reskinned as a farm.
- Too bitter. Satire needs a light touch. If it reads as a grievance, people play once and never suggest it.
- Too personal. The moment a game invites players to rank each other, somebody goes home unhappy.
A game about work is not a game for work
These get filed together and they are different products. A game about work is entertainment: the subject is the workplace, and you play it for the same reason you would watch a sitcom set in an office. A game for work is a team exercise: the subject is the group, and the point is that people who do not normally speak to each other get twenty minutes of low-stakes contact.
Some games manage both, mostly by accident. If you are choosing something for a team session, decide which one you actually want. For bonding, pick short turns, visible scores and a reason to talk across the table. For entertainment, pick the funnier thing and stop worrying about outcomes.
Running one in a lunch break
The binding constraint at work is never enthusiasm. It is the calendar. A lunch break is realistically forty usable minutes once people have found the link and somebody has been pulled into a call.
- Budget half the slot. A fifteen to twenty minute game leaves room for the late arrival.
- Send the link, not the instructions. Anything needing a briefing loses the room.
- Pick something that survives a player vanishing, because one will.
- Do not schedule it to end on the hour. No finale improves with a meeting reminder on screen.
- Have a second, shorter thing ready for the people who finish first.
The colleague who takes it too seriously
Every group has one, and they are usually not the problem. Competitive players give a game its energy. The friction appears when a competitive player meets a game with long turns, hidden information and a scoreboard that matters intensely to them and to nobody else.
Two fixes work. Shorten the turns, so a slow deliberation is not possible. And make the swings large enough that the standings are visibly part luck, which removes the incentive to argue. A game lost to a die roll is much easier to laugh at than a game lost to a mistake.
Playing across time zones
A distributed team has a genuine problem here and there is no clever way round it: a live game needs everybody awake at the same time. The honest answer is to split the two things you want from it. Use a short synchronous game for the moments the whole team is already on a call, and use a daily puzzle with one shared answer for the rest of the week, because that works equally at 09:00 in Manchester and 09:00 in Auckland.
The daily format also solves the invitation problem. Nobody has to organise anything, and there is a result waiting in the channel when the next region wakes up. The four dailies here are the same for everyone in the world and reset at midnight UTC, and past days stay playable if somebody misses one.
Keeping nobody the butt of the joke
The rule that matters: aim at the system, not at the room. Process, management layers, quarterly targets and shareholders are fair game because they are structures rather than people, and everybody playing is on the same side of that joke. Individual colleagues, their accents, their salaries and their performance ratings are not.
In practice that means avoiding any mechanic where players judge each other, vote each other out or reveal personal information. This is not squeamishness. Those games are simply worse at work. A game where the enemy is the company is a game everyone plays together.
Is this appropriate for a work social?
Straight answer: yes, with the obvious caveat that you know your workplace and we do not.
Shareholder Party satirises management, process and shareholders. The running joke is that employees sacrifice their time and joy to raise a number that benefits somebody else. There is nothing crude in it, no swearing and no innuendo, and no mechanic that targets a player personally. The only thing players are ranked on is Shareholder Value, which the game treats as plainly absurd. There is more on the intent behind it on the about page.
One thing worth a moment of thought: it is a game about a bad employer. If your team is currently in a redundancy consultation, the timing is off. That is a judgement about the week, not about the game.
How it plays, briefly
It is a free browser board game for two to six players with no download and no account. You roll a die and move round a floorplan of an office, landing on tiles that pay you Shareholder Value, take it away, hand you something out of the stationery cupboard, or drop a MEMO on you. Fifteen SV signs off one objective with THE BOARD, and the first employee to deliver every objective on the roadmap wins. Push too hard and the burnout meter has you signed off with stress for a turn.
Every round ends with a minigame of twelve to thirty four seconds that everybody plays at once: PRINTER JAM, THE STAND-UP, INBOX ZERO, BUZZWORD BINGO and four others. A full game runs fifteen to twenty minutes. Empty chairs fill with TEMPS, so a team of three still plays a full table. How it works has the rules in order, and open rooms shows what is running right now.
Questions
What counts as a workplace game?
Any game whose subject is work: an office setting, jargon, meetings, expenses, the printer. It is distinct from a team-building exercise, which is a game whose subject is the group playing it. Some things are both, but it is worth knowing which one you have chosen.
How long does a game of Shareholder Party take?
Fifteen to twenty minutes for the standard preset of three objectives over twelve rounds. The quick preset is two objectives over eight rounds and lands closer to ten minutes, which fits a lunch break with room to spare.
Can we play with only two or three people?
Yes. Empty chairs can be filled with TEMPS, which take real turns, buy objectives and play the minigames, so two colleagues can play the four player game. You can also play entirely solo against them to learn the board first.
Does anyone need an account?
No. Guests pick a display name and play. An account only adds saved stats and daily streaks across devices, and you can add one later without losing anything.
Will it work on a managed work laptop?
It is a normal website over HTTPS with nothing to install and no plugin, so it behaves like any other page your browser can already open. Some corporate filters block anything categorised as a game, which no site can do anything about.
Is the humour safe for a mixed team?
The target is always the system: management, process, restructures, shareholders. Never a player or a colleague. There is no swearing, nothing crude and no mechanic that asks players to rate each other.
Can remote and in-office colleagues play together?
Yes. Everyone joins the same room from a link or a six letter code and plays on their own device, so being in the room confers no advantage. Standings are visible to everybody throughout.
Start something
Pick a preset, open a room and paste the code into the team channel: start a game. If you have five minutes rather than twenty, the four daily puzzles take one coffee each and give the channel something to argue about.
If the occasion is a party rather than a Tuesday, office party games has the run sheet and the prizes. If the hard part is getting five people into one room at all, online multiplayer games is about that.