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Designing A Corporate Game Room?
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?"
I'm going to short your stock.
What corporation is this? Are they hiring?
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.
My first thought upon reading this was team based games, mostly FPS or RTS -- Tribes2 and Starcraft popped into my head immediately.
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.
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!
The company I used to work for got it into its head that it should provide this kind of "game room" for its employees, and I can tell you what happened as a result: Productivity dropped faster than Howard Dean's approval ratings. Folks, I realize that this might be a shocker, but (get ready for it) you are at work to perform work, not play games. If you believe that employees will limit themselves to "15 minute" game breaks, you're being totally naive. It was not unusual for people to spend an entire afternoon in the game room (charging it all to the company, of course.)
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.
Actually, just the opposite. We played Quake3 together a bunch where I work. (Only past tense because we have moved on to other games). Those were some of the best times because of the extremely simple gameplay, very large possible player limit and short amount of time required to play.
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, don't get too heated because you are still at work and can't be sexually harrassing people when you make them your bitch.
That you WILL work late and unreasonable hours (and weekends).
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.
Certainly every man at his best state is but vapor
Ok, if you're serious about doing this kind of thing (and others have more than adequately covered the reasons why or why not to), then have you considered buying a Xbox or PS2 instead of PCs? They'll need less maintainance and are styled more toward same room playing than PCs. You'll need one or more consoles, and some large TVs. This'll be a lot cheaper than PCs too -- even with a large (50") TV, you can skimp on the TV -- you don't need high def, and large SDTV sets are dirt cheap now - under $1k. Heck, one TV and console per seat would probably still be cheaper than a high end gaming PC.
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.
A pinball table. Pinball lends itself to short gaming sessions and friendly competition. It'll also appeal to a wider cross-section of staff.
Let's not stir that bag of worms...
First, you need a time machine. Set it for... 1998 or so. Shouldn't you people be working?
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.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
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.
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Auggh! 90s flashback! It's a good thing "That 80s Show" was a flop, or somebody would be already creating a hilarious situation comedy about a code shop in San Fransico, with "internal space for team gaming."