You Down? — Win Happy Hour
This is a part of a challenge I’m doing, 28 concepts in 28 days. If you want to read about it head over to the Introduction.
Fridays are meant for fun, nobody is getting any substantial work done anytime after 4:00 PM. I’ve always been an advocate to give that time to the team to socialize and get to know each other. It adds to morale, helps connect people across organizations. Back in my WineDirect days, we embraced this and would often host Friday tournaments with arcade games like Puzzle Bobble and Tetris. We’d huddle around the arcade cabinet, or set it up on a big TV and recruit some announcers to get everyone excited.
COVID has been hard, and hosting these types of events is even harder. I wanted to introduce today's concept “You Down?” a Slack app that automatically sets up online tournaments every Friday afternoon.
Games like 🚢 Battleship, ⭕️ Ultimate TicTacToe, 👑 Chess, 🃏Blackjack, and more, will all be in the rotation.
Friyay Alerts
Your team will be able to opt-in if they’d like to participate! It’s not mandatory.
Brackets
If a game fits with the bracket-style, it will be posted to the Slack channel as the tournament progresses. As you get to later stages Google Meet or Zoom calls will be set up, allowing the team to rally behind their favorites!
Game Themeing
Each game will have its own unique style. Keeping things fresh.
Prizes
If you like you can also create prizes for the winner, automatically send gift cards or other rewards to the winners. Down the road, it would be neat to experiment with the idea of points that could carry over from week to week.
Competitors
Get Lounge
Very similar concept, with a great library of games and the ability to schedule your games anytime. A big differentiator is “You Down?” having a tournament aspect to it.
Game Monk
Offers a few fun and quick 90-second games as opposed to the longer games that take up more time in the day. This is great to give folks a break mid-week.
Zoom
While not a direct competitor, there are plenty of games you can get going with co-workers on zoom.
