Designing A Corporate Game Room? 86
douglawson writes "We're designing a virtual PC team game room for the corporation I spend my days at. The idea here is to create an internal space for team gaming, both for recreational and executive team-building events. If you could dream, what would be in your ideal space? What games, what seating, what sound system, what else?"
What corporation? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:What corporation? (Score:2)
Re:What corporation? (Score:2)
A few better questions... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:A few better questions... (Score:1)
Weeeell... (Score:2)
Games for executive team-building events? (Score:1)
Big mirror & some razor blades (Score:1)
What Do You Mean? (Score:3, Insightful)
What's meant by "Team Gaming"? I'd focus on turn based strategy games, and maybe puzzle games, even if you can just find single player ones (get a couple people to play them at once). Think about also buying board games, war games, etc., just sitting around playing Quake and other FPS (team based or otherwise) doesn't seem like it would build camaraderie to me.
As an aside do places like your work really still exist? I thought that sort of thing had gone out of style with the dot-coms.
Re:What I Mean From My Experience (Score:3, Informative)
Also consider Enemy Territory. I really promotes teamwork, and, best of all, its free. Outside of an FPS, when are you going to be able to feed your boss a rocket then have a good laugh about it later? Just remember, d
Re:What I Mean From My Experience (Score:2)
To win a BF1942 match with the odds stacked against you (Axis to Allies ratio of 2:1 or better) takes teamwork and coordinated attacks. Like counterstrike, each a player can choose between different roles (engineer, scout, etc.). One of the best matches I ever pla
Re:What I Mean From My Experience (Score:1)
The only "roles" you can pick in counterstrike are "Terrorist" and "Counter-Terrorist." That's more like a team than a role...
Maybe you meant Team Fortress?
Re:What I Mean From My Experience (Score:2)
Depends on the FPS game (Score:2)
Tribes 2, for example, where one side can win when they're all playing lone cowboys, but a side playing as a team will completely crush them, even if the team is outnumbered. The obvious examples: some of the weapons aren't really effective unless you have a teammate with a targeting laser. Most of the vehicles require multiple people on board to be anything other than a way to get from A to B.
Er. Types of games? (Score:4, Informative)
But upon rereading it, I can't imagine why you'd bother, from a corporate perspective. Unless you're planning on pitting department against department or project team against project team.
(I totally get it from a recreational point of view; but I can't imagine a corporation shelling money or space for this unless they've just got too much to burn.)
If you're deadset on the competitive game play, I'd split it into two or more rooms, of course, so that teammates could talk to eachother without having the "enemy" overhear. And, you'd want, whatever game you picked, some method so that people could store their profile, so that no matter which computer they sat at, they'd have it set up to their liking. Windows on a domain can do this with roaming profiles, or if you have a small number of games, you can simply see how they store their config files and write a small app to fetch someone's specific files from a repository and overwrite them on a computer.
Re:Er. Types of games? (Score:2)
I imagine you have to be very careful with bad losers if you go team vs. team - people can be very touchy about this, especially when they lose publically. A better option could be teamplay vs. the computer. Totally depends on the people you are playing with.
This is surely a good way to get a raise...
EQ? (Score:4, Funny)
They could use that as an incentive to finish projects quicker... or...
PHB: This project is truly shoddy. Smithers, delete his character...
Employee: Noooooooo.... I'll do overtime! I promise! For free!
PHB: Agreed. This time. Next time it's the Newbie Hunting Ground for you!
Re:EQ? (Score:1)
An even better idea: Don't do it at all (Score:5, Insightful)
After a month, we realized that the game room was a rediculous failure and dismantled it.
The bottom line is this: We live in a capitalistic society, and the creation of wealth is the cornerstone that keeps this country on top of the world. Paying employees somebody else's money so they can sit around and play video games is not capitalism. In fact, it is very close to capitalism's opposite, whose name I dare not say (might trip the corporate Internet filter and invite some unwanted attention.) Keep the games for before 7:00 AM and after 5:00 PM. The work day should be spent (gasp!) working and being a productive member of our society.
Re:An even better idea: Don't do it at all (Score:3, Funny)
Re:An even better idea: Don't do it at all (Score:2)
Laziness? Unproductivity? Thats not commumism. Commumism (generally believed to be capitalism's opposite) is basically slavery, where you are forced (upon an unspecified threat, exile at best) to work for the benefit of society. Work harder, smarter, longer or faster, and you dont get any benefit.
No, somewhere where you dont do any productive work, and spend you days lounging arround, is called college.
Re:An even better idea: Don't do it at all (Score:2)
Re:An even better idea: Don't do it at all (Score:1)
Re:An even better idea: Don't do it at all (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:An even better idea: Don't do it at all (Score:2)
Re:An even better idea: Don't do it at all (Score:1)
Chance of offending someone with your odor after playing Quake...less than 10%.
Re:An even better idea: Don't do it at all (Score:2)
Chance that there is nobody at home who will notice: 40%
Women who find men who are sweaty, fit, and slightly 'stank' from exercise more attractive than globs of goo with a monitor tan: 95%
Re:An even better idea: Don't do it at all (Score:2)
Re:An even better idea: Don't do it at all (Score:2)
http://www.gallup.com/subscription/?m=f & c_id=13764
In no workplace I have been where there was a game room was there ever any noticible negative impact on productivity. The bottom line is this: happy workers are more productive. A game room is a small investment, and in some places it will pay off in increased productivity. If people hang out in the game room all day rather than doing working, you have much more
Re:An even better idea: Don't do it at all (Score:3, Informative)
Re:An even better idea: Don't do it at all (Score:2, Funny)
well, as a game tester at a respectable company, i would have to disagree with ya there.. maybe you should just find a job that lets you play games all day too!
Re:An even better idea: Don't do it at all (Score:2, Interesting)
* We learn through games
* We do build connections with others when we share common games
* Just like the Internet, gamerooms by themselves do not damage productivitity. Poor management does.
I cannot believe all of the resistance to this idea. I'm excited and inspired by it. One of the things that corporations do poorly is promote constant education among employees. Training is often an intermittent and uncertain activity.
A Gameroom wo
Re:An even better idea: Don't do it at all (Score:1)
But I'll try. here goes:
I don't know what you do at work all day, but I am a programmer. I write PERL code. Lots of PERL code.
I can sit at my machine, some days, for 5 or 6 hours straight just blasting out the code like a machine.
Other days, come the hour mark, I'm ready to gouge out my eyes. What do I do? I go kill a few minutes, sometimes even 10 or 15 of them. Then I try to go back to it. Frequently, I find that I am once again
Re:An even better idea: Don't do it at all (Score:1)
Blaim it on the people who chose who to hire.
Slashdot Editors just catching up! (Score:2)
The dot-bombs are all out of business!
My personal favorite, at the moment... (Score:2)
Requirements vastly overstated. (Score:2)
And it's just fine. I can't imagine you'd be able to buy a machine now that wouldn't be able to run ET passably (for non-hardcore players).
Disclaimer: make sure the machines are reasonably similar.
Re:Requirements vastly overstated. (Score:2)
Re:My personal favorite, at the moment... (Score:1)
Games are easy... (Score:1)
RTS games like SC or WC3 are good, although perhaps going with single player "adventure" games (with puzzles and such) and havng the team work as a group to solve the puzzles, with the winning team being the one to beat the game (or a set numbe
Hmmm, Ask Slashdot? (Score:2)
Oh, and also look for stories about the height of the dot.com.
My personal opinion, is that it should be as relaxed a room as
Re:Hmmm, Ask Slashdot? (Score:1)
Submission Queue Problems (Score:1)
A game room? The economy is tanking and corporations are considering a game room? That's management for you.
Re:Submission Queue Problems (Score:2)
Maybe this is one of those companies that dismantles and auctions off failed companies.
Or, they are lawyers that specialize in wrongful termination suits.
Or, maybe they publish Harry Potter books.
Maybe they invested wisely in the Beanie Baby market.
Believe it or not, a lot of people are still making money- the tech sector may blow (oh yeah..maybe they are Columbian dru
WTH Is everyone talking about? (Score:2)
Despite the distraction of playing video games ALL day (8-10 hours depending) I was still one of the highest rated tech support people there. It was really a very good idea to be able to frag others online while dealing with the user (four letter word) on the other end of that phone.
The only thing that would have made it better would have been a 2nd compu
A Virtual PC game room? (Score:1)
Maybe I'm incorrect. Are there simulated PCs in some of the games I haven't played? Now that I think about it, there's a computer in one room in 'Day of the Tentacle' that you can walk up to and play Maniac Mansion on.
Is that the sort of thing you're talking about?
Why? (Score:1)
Re:Why? (Score:1)
Of course, it depends on what kinds of executives you've got, but if they're like ours, they want nothing to do with gaming and would rather make out-of-shape desk jockeys go rock climbing for "team-building".
muhahahahah! (Score:2)
Let's see.... I think a big solid wood table, surrounded by plush leather executive seats.... and a set of buttons by my chair so I can drop random people into the firey pit!
Oh, and a big tank filled with killer sea bass with frikkin lasers on their heads.
And I'd need a really massive plasma screen... no, make that a holo-projector built into the table... so I can hook into the corporation's satellite network, and spy on random people... just because I can.
Yeah. That would be a good entertainment room.
arcade (Score:2)
if it weren't a company i'd recommend building a mame cabinet and loading it up with all the games, but it could end up quite bitchy, right?
generally you wouldn't have people standing in front of them for all day long but the games would still be fun onc
Re:arcade (Score:1)
Sore losers. (Score:1)
Corporate Game Room Really MEANS (Score:4, Interesting)
This is pretty much just a heads-up to anyone who owns or runs a development company.
I went to interview at a company in New Orleans several years ago. They were very proud to show me their beautiful gameroom with ping-pong, pool, several card games and a couple of arcade games. Right when I walked into the room I knew for a fact that I would be turning that job down.
A company that feels the need to boost moral by installing a game room or something similar is a company that expects you to be there night and day, day and night. They realize that your being there all of the time with nothing to take agression, etc out with will be bad for moral and make you constantly consider quitting.
Take these two situations. Two companies expect you to work 60 - 80 hours a week. One has a game room, one does not. The one with the gameroom typically also has a looser environment and lighter dress code. Their employees are much happier than those at the company with no game options... but, they are still OVERWORKED!
No thanks... I took company number three that expects you to put in 40 hours (+- 5) per week. They're out there... they're all over the place as a matter of fact. And... none of them have game rooms. Their employees are happier because they have time outside of work to fulfill themselves... not because they can play the latest shoot 'em up on their 5th break of the day at 9 at night.
Buildout (Score:3, Informative)
If you are going with PCs, don't even buy speakers for them. Buy decent quality headphones instead, but ones where you can still hear the rest of the room. Nothing's worse than a half dozen PCs playing sound through speakers for the same game -- since the sound is invariably oriented toward the individual player on the PC.
Consider how you're going to divide the room up -- if you have competitive games, then you'll need to provide some dividers to ensure you can't "cheat" by looking at a competitor's screen, or by overhearing shouted instructions/information. Doing minimal soundproofing that's configurable will be a hell of a challenge if you want to do this right.
Chairs? Buy what ever is the office standard. For God's sake don't buy better chairs for the gaming room than the rest of the office. That'll just piss people off and you'll either end up with the gaming room chairs disappearing (and regular chairs appearing if you're lucky) or people spending more time than you expect in the gaming area just because the chairs are more comfy.
Games? Consider co-op vs computer oriented games heavily. That's pretty key for team building. For after hours playing, employees are more likely to want competitive games though. I'd actually suggest UT2003 here for both -- the Invasion mode (in one of the free expansions) is a decent co-op mode, while every other mode is obviously competitive. There are damn few co-op modes out there now, at least if you want decent computer oponents (UT2k3 doesn't have decent computer opponents... it merely relies upon tons of enemies which get tougher and tougher).
If you go with PCs, you'll probably want some way of displaying the action from any one PC on a large screen for observers. Just get PCs with svideo output, a switchbox (either with remote control or accessible by observers), and an aforementioned large screen TV. Consider that you'll want one screen per "area", with the ability to easily block off viewing a competitor's screen.
I'd honestly consider ditching running competitive games, since that's where most of the difficulty comes in if you want to do it "right". That or do it and tell people not to cheat by the obvious methods, or to deal with it occurring.
If you have any local LAN parties or gaming cafes, go to them and see how they do things. They're in this for the competition/money and certainly know more about this than I do.
Re:Buildout (Score:2)
Xboxes can be linked, you can have up to 16 people playing together.
NBA Street, with 4 'real' players would be awesome, and is much more team oriented than an FPS.
Since you would have dough (Xboxes being less than PC's) you could use the linking more than split-screen, it would just cost more for the TV's.
Also, you can use Xbox live- which might de-complicate things.
I know that I have far more social interaction when playing on my Xbox, than my PC- even when I am playing an FPS with my o
a good turn-based strategy game... Worms II (Score:1)
On the other hand, I think game-playing in the office is going to have a lot of pitfalls. Wh
In the business of Winding Back Time (Score:2)
Better idea... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Better idea... (Score:2)
I've got a pinball machine in my office (Triple Action by Williams [pipex.com]). It's fun, but it's loud. Just make sure nobody's gonna get annoyed by the sounds.
Re:Better idea... (Score:1)
Re:Better idea... (Score:2, Interesting)
I wouldn't recommend a pinball machine for most workplaces though. It would be too much of a distraction in a cubicle farm/concrete hive.
It works for us because we're really more like a think tank. We're inventors. A quick pinball game is a good
Instead of the "late$t and greate$t"... (Score:1, Insightful)
There are some great team-building games AND competitive games from that time. Some games were cross-overs (could be either).
Think about games that have become classics. They were meant to run on the older machines. Titles such as Star Craft, or even better Command and Conquer: Red Alert provide either head to head, team vs. team, or tea
First, you need a time machine... (Score:3, Funny)
BTW, nice to take those HR enforced 'team building excercises' and turn it into a round of 'frag the phb'. That's thinking outside the box.
consoles yes, PCs no (Score:3, Insightful)
I would recommend going with consoles over PCs. They are more personable. The games are easier, and more suited to short gaming breaks. They're also more personable, everyone can see what you're playing. As a bonus, it is unlikely anyone will surf for porn on your 36" TVs.
Make sure you have at least one big-ass TV. After that you can put in somewhat smaller TVs.
For chairs - go with couches and lounge chairs. Think comfee. At the same time make it clear this is not a junk room.
For game management, buy a few CD binders, have a physical sign out list. This will stop the games from walking.
Set an initial game purchasing budget of how many dollars, then have a monthly budget for continual purchasing of new games. Allow interested employees to submit requests to whomever is in charge of game purchasing.
Online play is certainly possible but I don't see any need for it, this is for your employees playing together and having fun. I'm pretty sure you can netowork X-boxes and have massive Halo tournements without going online.
In terms of what platform, I would recommend you choose either PS2 or X-Box. There isn't really a need for multiple platforms. This isn't supposed to be the room where people get to play specific titles for specific platforms, this is the games room. The X-Box for example has lots of great games, it should be fine if you go with all X-boxes. Because of Halo, I think this may be the best choice.
Re:consoles yes, PCs no (Score:1)
PS2 has easily the largest selection of games. I am not aware of very many that are easy to sit down and play multiplayer quickly(other than sports titles of course), though I am sure they must have them.
PS2 and Xbox both have the DVD features,
Re:consoles yes, PCs no (Score:2)
For a corporate environment, I think gamecube is really not a good idea, it is after all a wimpy kids console. Are the games kick ass and fun? Hot damn yes. But, that's how it's perceived.
I do think the PS2 has overall better games than the X-Box but I think the X-box has enough good games to keep a corporate game room well stocked. I think that Halo is in itself a good enough reason to make it the official console of your corporate game room. X-b
Man, that is so 90s (Score:5, Funny)
Board Games (Score:1)
Don't overlook board games. There are many good board games that provide a greater level of human interaction than computer games, which is useful for the stated object of team building.
Check out boardgamegeek.com [boardgamegeek.com] for a comprehensive database of board and card games.
Ones that I would recommend include:
Tastes differ, however, so a decent selection would be a good idea (a
Add this to the list (Score:2)
A great game of intrigues and backstabbing in the south american republic of Los Bananas.
Enormously entertaining and fun for all. The trick is that no player can win it on their own steam, you have to intrique and play the others against eachother to profit, but don't be to obvious about it, or they'll gang up and overthrow you.
Beware of whoever wins constantly at this game. That person is likely a sneaky, manipulative bastard you should better
Games. (Score:2)
Plus a single Apple with Number Munchers and Oregon Trail.
That should satisfy your needs.
Unless you develop games, forget it (Score:2)
Personally, I think the money is better spent giving it back to the employees in forms of bonuses, gifts or what have you. Try giving your employees a PS2 or XBox instead.
pinball machine (Score:1)
Games.... (Score:1)
Just use the workstations (Score:2)
But if/when you are ready to move to a dedicated game-room, I have the following suggestions:
1) for recreation: if you want people to spend short gamebreaks pl
Re:Just use the workstations (Score:2)