[HN Gopher] Show HN: Gamejoy - hosted Zoom games for remote teams
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Show HN: Gamejoy - hosted Zoom games for remote teams
Author : phprecovery
Score : 45 points
Date : 2021-01-18 13:14 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.gamejoyhq.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.gamejoyhq.com)
| sentinel wrote:
| This is a solid idea.
| hill613 wrote:
| $350 for one session?
|
| Just buy one jackbox games for like $30 (has multiple games). One
| person screen shares the game, and you have a ball.
| phprecovery wrote:
| That's fair feedback about the price and this is not for
| everyone. We're hoping people will experience value in prizes,
| a trained host, team-building aspects like ice breakers, and a
| high-quality game experience.
| ugh123 wrote:
| How do you scale this with a live host? They're literally
| booked for an entire hour (or more)? Can these games not be
| designed to stand on their own without additional humans
| pulling levers?
| phprecovery wrote:
| We're seeing a live host as a main part of our value
| proposition. The host not only helps ensure an optimal game
| experience but also supports the team to get to know each
| better with fun questions and ice-breakers.
|
| Long-term, we're hoping this could be also be a way to
| employ artists impacted by the pandemic as well.
| chandraonline wrote:
| Many of the companies you are targeting probably already
| have HR generalists who do such events online now because
| of the new reality . Perhaps you should consider a
| pricing package where you provide the games and training
| for the host and make it self service for the hosts to
| run these events for their companies. It would be more
| scalable and doesn't erode any value.
| phprecovery wrote:
| That's a really great point about the role of HR
| generalists and your suggestion about moving to a more
| self-service model. We'll definitely consider this.
| Thanks for the feedback!
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| Maybe sell shovels: by which I mean offer a course to
| train HR people to deliver a raft of games?
| RankingMember wrote:
| You might want to make it more obvious on the landing page
| that this price includes a live host. I thought this was a
| free, automated thing at first and was blown away when I saw
| the cost.
| phprecovery wrote:
| Thanks for the feedback. We made some changes that will
| hopefully make this more obvious.
| ircshotty wrote:
| To be honest I thought the same thing. Pricing was also a
| little hidden.
|
| I have been looking for something like this - as patio11
| would say, you should always charge more than you think but
| I'll be honest, my workplace could not really justify this
| price for an hour.
| phprecovery wrote:
| Curious, what do you think would be a more reasonable
| price that would "justify this price for an hour"?
| ircshotty wrote:
| The business I'm in may not be representative of the
| clients you're looking for (we're 15 strong), but we
| would be interested at around the PS100 mark.
| phprecovery wrote:
| ircshotty, thank you for the additional data point. Part
| of the reason for the higher price is that we provide
| prizes to the winning team. Perhaps we need to consider a
| lower price point without prizes. Would that help?
|
| Or, maybe we need make the inclusion of prizes clearer in
| how the price is positioned.
| acct776 wrote:
| That last bit sounds like the winner.
|
| Make it toggle-able, and you're fucking champion.
| phprecovery wrote:
| Thanks so much the feedback. We've made the prizes
| toggle-able so now the price point is a bit lower.
| GordonS wrote:
| I'm not the person you are replying to, but just wanted
| to add another data point, even if it's probably not what
| you want to hear - I think $50-$125 is more realistic.
|
| FWIW, I also just polled my manager about this (without
| revealing my thoughts above), and he said $100 absolute
| max. For reference, this is at a megacorp (technically
| they could of course afford more, but budgets for
| anything related to employee happiness are squeezed
| tight).
| phprecovery wrote:
| Thanks GordonS. Really appreciate the data point.
| Interesting, the few managers we talked to as part of our
| user research indicated a much higher acceptable price
| point for employee engagement initiatives and the cost
| savings during the pandemic. Looks like we need to do
| more pricing research here.
| acct776 wrote:
| For further data - are you a high profile-ish engineer?
|
| Or a data analyst etc?
| withinrafael wrote:
| This doesn't work well in practice, in my experience, due to
| all the low-latency audio and video streaming requirements
| (most Jackbox games utilize a timer), locked down corporate
| machine deployments, and streaming platform delays. Huge mess.
| clintonb wrote:
| I've played Jackbox games monthly with my family via Zoom. I
| have a gigabit fiber connection, and they have slower cable
| connections. The Jackbox timer can be configured to a longer
| amount, but we've never had an issue with this. Most timer
| issues have been due to someone being distracted by something
| else, not the game itself.
|
| Generally, if a group can use any form of videoconferencing,
| they can use Jackbox. It's no different from one person
| sharing a presentation. I've only encountered one game that
| required realtime interaction, and we know to avoid it.
|
| It's pretty easy to get around corporate machine lockdown by
| using a personal machine to host. Participants are just using
| the web browser.
| dyeje wrote:
| Had a similar idea myself and registered the domain
| remoteteams.fun, but never got around to building. Congrats, this
| looks great and I think there's alot of appetite for this sort of
| service. FWIW, the pricing and live host align exactly with what
| I was considering building.
|
| Might be worth hiring a designer to give a face lift to the
| sight, website feels a bit spartan at the moment. I agree that
| strong testimonials could go a long way, maybe include a clip of
| people having a good time in a game? How many repeat customers do
| you have, maybe offer a first time discount?
| phprecovery wrote:
| Thanks for the feedback! And, FWIW, remoteteams.fun is a pretty
| great domain name. Appreciate your point about hiring a
| designer and adding more social proof. A video of people having
| a good time would be great but we haven't been able to get a
| one yet for confidentiality reasons. I think it's definitely
| something we should prioritize.
|
| We're still in the early stages but are seeing decent repeat
| business with other teams at an organization wanting to run a
| similar game. We do try to encourage social sharing by
| providing winning pictures and prizes.
| fasdf1122 wrote:
| lol @ $350. no chance.
| phprecovery wrote:
| Hi HN! Founder here. Just wanted to share my latest venture with
| the HN community.
|
| Backstory: the teams at my company got really tired of the usual
| remote "Happy Hour" activities and thought it would be fun to do
| something a little different -- a little more fun! I decided to
| run a session of "Family Feud" for my team and everyone had a
| great time. Before I knew it, multiple teams throughout the
| company were reaching out to me to run a session!
|
| After thinking about this experience and talking with numerous
| managers, I found it was getting harder to keep things fresh as
| many teams continue to work remotely and thought there was an
| opportunity to do something more scalable and high quality.
| Hence, Gamejoy was born!
|
| Right now, we're focusing on games that combine fun + universal
| appeal/ease + the opportunity to get to know your teammates
| better (i.e. games with built-in icebreakers). We're starting
| with a few games and hoping to launch more (i.e. Poker is a
| common request) shortly.
|
| Would love any thoughts or feedback. Thanks!
| masonhipp wrote:
| This looks really neat and I'd love to connect and talk about
| partnering somehow.
|
| I'm working on a related project[1] aimed at the same problem
| but with a slightly different take. We don't do game hosting
| and our software is more of a "build your own zoom games"
| platform with a slideshow/presentation UI. But I think a lot of
| companies probably want a dedicated host and would be happy to
| pay for it (I'd be interested to know what that breakdown looks
| like).
|
| In terms of what games you're working on, I think you're on the
| right track with games that help create real connections and
| deeper relationships. It looks like remote work will be
| permanently elevated (not to current numbers, but estimates
| look like >300% above pre-pandemic levels[2]). Bottom line is I
| think the team bonding and remote closeness problem is here to
| stay.
|
| [1] Slides With Friends -- https://slideswith.com
|
| [2] Predictions 2021 --
| https://go.forrester.com/blogs/employee-experience-in-2021/
| cryptozeus wrote:
| Video or Demo showing how it works would be great !
| paxys wrote:
| Man, you would have made an absolute killing 9 months ago. I
| hope there's still space in the market and people aren't too
| burned out/tired of virtual meets. Best of luck!
| sentinel wrote:
| I think you have zero-ed in on the right problem.
|
| In our remote team we have tried a number of these team-
| building games / airbnb experiences, but tbh:
|
| 1. I did not feel like I knew my teammates better after the
| experience, and 2. it wasn't that fun
|
| The most fun I had was actually playing Among Us with the team.
| But even that game has a couple of issues that makes it no 100%
| suited for team building.
|
| My guess is you'll probably have to continue experimenting with
| games. I'm not sure if all in-person games will translate well
| to zoom, but some will do better than others. You def want
| people to be engaged, work together and change teams often.
|
| It's also always great to hear that your games are helping
| someone - e.g. actors that are out of work.
|
| Good luck! I'll be keeping an eye on your website and I'm
| already thinking of recommending it as an option for the next
| time we do a team building activity.
| phprecovery wrote:
| Thanks for kind words sentinel. Totally agreed about the two
| pain points you described with existing remote activities:
|
| 1. Not getting to know your teammates better 2. Not being fun
|
| This is what really led us to want to do something different
| with Gamejoy. To this end, we try to train our hosts and pick
| games that not only encourage participants to have fun but
| also get to know each other better--through interactive and
| maybe slightly embarrassing questions. :-)
|
| And, agree about needing to continue to experiment with
| games. We have a couple of ideas in the pipeline but we want
| to make sure they bring that combination of fun + team
| building that we want.
| abhinuvpitale wrote:
| Interesting idea, though I am wondering how you are going to
| scale since games involve live hosts? Rather you could use this
| as a platform to connect "live hosts" (who make up and publish
| their games) with companies wanting to connect.
|
| You could provide platform, services, payment gateway etc.
| phprecovery wrote:
| abhinuvpitale, love your suggestion about scaling to a
| platform to connect "live hosts". One of our hosts is
| actually an out-of-work actress affected by the pandemic and
| a big goal of mission is to help more artists affected like
| this. So, your suggestion really takes this to the next
| level!
| sentinel wrote:
| This is not a bad idea, but of course you don't necessarily
| want to become an alternative to AirBnB experiences either.
| There are a number of team building activities there as
| well, but I don't think they have the game element to them
| that you have here - this could be your differentiation.
| avree wrote:
| Sorry, but for $350.00, you need way stronger
| testimonials/evidence of the host being worth it.
|
| A grainy picture taken in someone's bathroom with the caption
| "She's hilarious and unpredictable, so get ready for laughs!",
| and a couple one-liners from names that could be completely fake,
| does not tell me that this is going to be worth the money.
| offtop5 wrote:
| I'll disagree.
|
| This isn't for individuals, it's for corporations with left
| over event budgets.
|
| Although you could also just have everyone jump into an online
| game for free
| phprecovery wrote:
| Great feedback. We could definitely work on improving the
| testimonials and social proof on the website. Honestly, we
| weren't expecting such a strong response on HN so didn't much
| as much thought/effort into this as we should. We'll work on
| improving this ASAP.
| rolha-capoeira wrote:
| I mean this only constructively, but why share if you're not
| ready for or expecting a strong response? You only get one
| chance to make a first impression. If this is simply a
| concept or beta product, you should indicate that. If you're
| looking for customers, put your best foot forward. Best of
| luck.
| phprecovery wrote:
| That's fair. Would definitely not consider this a concept
| as we have many paid, satisfied customers but we're always
| iterating on our website/product based on feedback and this
| is definitely an area of improvement. But point taken about
| "making a first impression".
|
| How do you balance making a good first impression with
| getting feedback on an early-ish version of your product?
| acct776 wrote:
| Your communications via your landing page & website tell
| your consumers if you're looking to scrape a buck, or
| passionately work hard to solve a problem or desire.
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