YvoCaro Plays

YvoCaro Plays: Let the Games Begin…or Not

A couple of months ago I talked to you about how my department (at a large bank in the Netherlands) was going to implement playing video games as a way to interact with colleagues while we have been working from home for 14 months now. Time to tell you how this plan worked out!

Let the Games Begin!

We all have been working from home for so long now that we’ve only seen our colleagues from behind the computer screen in the multitude of Teams meetings that we have daily. Most people in my own team, a newly formed team on April 1 2020, I have never seen in real life. Feels so strange, as I guess there will be some surprises by the time we go back to the office. Surprises like someones posture or voice when it’s not heard through a microphone.

My company is good at keeping tabs on the employees wellbeing, especially now. People who have children at home they have to homeschool too, people who really hate being all alone in their home office and not be able to socialize. So initiatives to try and help people are encouraged. 

For my department of some 60 people I am one of the ‘Culture Coaches’. We try to gauge if people are doing alright, if there are issues they don’t want to share with the managers and we try to work on engagement: keeping our colleagues connected in our team even at this distance. For this, I came up with a plan: engage them by gaming. Right up my ally right?

The plan was to feature 4 mobile games that they can dive into and play together with their colleagues. Each game had one person who knows how the game works and can help others, as most of them don’t ever play games at all. In this way, interaction would be stimulated and this time, it doesn’t have to be about work.

2 Months Later, How Did It Turn Out?

Short answer: it didn’t. I presented my promotion video for Animal Crossing Pocket Camp with gusto. Below is a part of the clip, in Dutch of course.

The other culture coaches made a clip for their own games. There was one for My Tamagotchi Forever, WordFeud and Mario Kart Tour. It’s not like I had expected to get an avalanche of new friends in Pocket Camp, but I didn’t expect either for it to be such a disappointment. None…neither for My Tamagotchi Forever or for Mario Kart Tour. 

Only WordFeud had some enthusiastic people jumping in. WordFeud is a scrabble game ( in America Words with Friends was more well known), and my colleague Simone is being kept busy having to come up with new words to make with new in-game friends. 

So This Is Defeat?

I guess I’m going to have to admit defeat here: non-gamers are very hard to convince to try to take up playing video games. Even harder then I already thought they would be. When I asked people why they didn’t give it a try, I got response like: “nah, such a waste of time”. Or, “it seems so hard to keep up with all of that”.

Apparently they don’t know playing video games can be a great way to de-stress too. It doesn’t have to be a time waster, it doesn’t necessarily corrupt your brain, and it doesn’t need to disrupt family life. If played in moderation of course. Instead it can even be a fun activity to do together with your child, making for quality time.

But, I guess you all don’t need convincing. After all, we’ve long since found how much fun gaming can be. And how we meet like minded friends on the internet because of our games!

 

 

2 comments

  1. Awww… that seemed like such a great idea! Too bad it didn’t pan out as well as you hoped. It’s nice to see workplaces take initiatives to care for the well being of its employees though.

    I used to keep my gaming habits on the down-low. Its only been the past couple of years that I’ve shared my gaming interests with staff. The biggest reason for my bravery was because of meeting like minded communities such as this one and other young at heart women gamers on YouTube, such as Food4Dogs. In the end, I thought I would get shamed by colleagues but they’ve actually been very supportive. One of them even picked up a Switch with Ring Fit Adventure.

    1. You know, I was the same. For years I only shared my gaming passion with some close friends and family, but never at work. But for some time now I felt I may as well be a proud gamer. And keeping the site running isn’t something to sneeze at either! So I started sharing far and wide. like you said, they didn’t shame me, were mostly very surprised. Nice reactions, though there’s hardly anyone I can actually convert lol.

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