I've been wondering if remote-first companies could use a video game that employees play together as a way to facilitate the kind of relationship building and culture development that can be tough to create when everyone's not in an office together. A lot of businesses had to transition to remote work this past year and while post-Covid most people will likely return to in-person work, we are clearly moving towards more remote-first and hybrid workforces. 

Could a workgame help a remote-first company recreate some of the social elements and serendipitous moments that are lost when you don't have everyone together in the same place? Is this even possible? I don't know the answer, but I have some thoughts on what a workgame might look like.

For starters, I've been thinking a lot about how video games can help us create and maintain friendships since that thread I posted a couple months back on social games and am curious whether a workgame could be designed to solve these gaps for remote-first and hybrid teams. 

What I'm not talking about:

• Turning work into a game or adding gamified elements like achievements or streaks to work

• 2D or 3D virtual workspaces. Apps like Teooh and Gather are definitely useful for virtual events and meetings, but they are intentionally not games.

• Video conference calls with party games or icebreakers, though these can definitely be fun and helpful.

No, what I mean is an multiplayer online game that employees play that functions as a space where people can spend time together, with the structure and fun of a game facilitating and underpinning those interactions.

There has been a small trend this past year of people playing video games together socially as part of their work, whether it's for networking, sales, team standups, etc. The New York Times wrote about this last year and I've been doing my fair share of this myself over Fortnite. It turns out that playing social games for work isn't all that different from stuff we did IRL pre-pandemic, like going out to lunch, playing golf, or going out for drinks after work. It's just that Covid forced a lot of us to look for online alternatives to what we did before -- and in the process we discovered that games could work surprisingly well for fostering relationships!

While there has been plenty of activity like this, what I haven't seen yet is anyone (at least that isn't still just a tiny startup) using gaming to try to accomplish this sort of relationship building across an entire company. 

So what could a workgame look like? To be honest, I don't exactly know, but here are some features I think it might have:

• First, the game needs to be fun to play and as immersive and engaging as GTA, Fortnite, or Minecraft. This is no small feat, but if the game feels like it's just another part of the job it will defeat the purpose of having it in the first place. (Sure, work meetings can -- and probably should! -- take place within the game, but it's primarily meant to be a space for creating social connections within the workplace, not a job in and of itself.) 

• Second, following from that, to encourage interactions the game needs to have a collaborative element or something about it that brings players together or gives them reasons to engage with each other (like a virtual economy or quest/tasks that need to be completed together). 

• Third, while the game needs to be fun, it can't overwhelm the work itself. That means no grinding or anything else that encourages people to spend time trying to level up in isolation rather than interact with other players. 

• Fourth, the game needs to be easy to pick up; starting needs to be simple enough for new employees to dive in. And if you want to drive more interaction you can design the game so that new players advance by learning elements of how the game really works from older players.

• Fifth, it needs to be a persistent gaming space or universe, one where team members can log in and expect to find others there already.

• Sixth, the game will have to appeal to pretty much everyone, since the point is to be inclusive and bring people together. This is probably the hardest part to pull off, since there are plenty of people who aren't interested in playing any game of any kind. (Something like Animal Crossing or Minecraft might have broad enough appeal, though personally I'd love to see someone create an MMORPG for companies.) 

• Seventh, each company needs to be able to have its own game world and the game likely needs to be customizable in different ways to suit their needs. Plus bigger companies will likely want different features than smaller ones. 

• Eighth, there needs to be single sign-on and other enterprise-level security and account management tools right from the start. Companies expect this stuff from day one now.

All of this is a tall order, and I'm sure there are other critical features I'm not thinking of, but as challenging as it would be to create something like this, the potential benefits are enormous. While the percentage of people remotely is going to decrease after the pandemic ends, a lot of companies are going to stay remote-first or hybrid going forward and the need for tools that can foster the right kind of company culture and team interactions is going to be huge 

Anyway, I would love to hear what others think about this, if anyone is experimenting with games at their company, or if you're building a workgame. You can hit me up here.

(And yes, I know that Slack started out as a game!)