Show HN: Gamejoy – hosted Zoom games for remote teams

Hi HN! Founder here. Just wanted to share my latest venture with the HN community.<p>Backstory: the teams at my company got really tired of the usual remote &quot;Happy Hour&quot; 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!<p>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!<p>Right now, we&#x27;re focusing on games that combine fun + universal appeal&#x2F;ease + the opportunity to get to know your teammates better (i.e. games with built-in icebreakers). We&#x27;re starting with a few games and hoping to launch more (i.e. Poker is a common request) shortly.<p>Would love any thoughts or feedback. Thanks!

$350 for one session?<p>Just buy one jackbox games for like $30 (has multiple games). One person screen shares the game, and you have a ball.

Sorry, but for $350.00, you need way stronger testimonials&#x2F;evidence of the host being worth it.<p>A grainy picture taken in someone&#x27;s bathroom with the caption &quot;She&#x27;s hilarious and unpredictable, so get ready for laughs!&quot;, 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.

This is pretty cool. I&#x27;ve worked at companies that would probably go for it. Though these companies also usually have someone in-house that is happy to MC or host Jackbox tv or another option so maybe more info and testimonials to talk up the value of your host.<p>It reminds me of <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;startplaying.games&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;startplaying.games&#x2F;</a> which matches DMs&#x2F;GMs with people that want to play dungeons and dragons and other TTRPG games online. Pricing is per person per session. Some of the DMs might be able to hit that $350 price point but it&#x27;d be for a 3+ hour session and their value add is very very obvious with number of games&#x2F;hours they&#x27;ve DMd and reviews from players at their tables.<p>There&#x27;s also a bar trivia company in Denver that&#x27;s been hosting bar trivia over zoom - I think pricing is per team with some fun prizes. They support many more people than what you are offering too though. I have participated in a bar pre-covid and on Zoom and both experiences were fun.

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&#x27;s alot of appetite for this sort of service. FWIW, the pricing and live host align exactly with what I was considering building.<p>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?

I have been invited to one of these “team” zoom games with my fellow devs and other teams.<p>While everyone seemed to enjoy the game, I felt bored and that I was wasting my time. I didn’t want to break their fun by quitting the game so I had to play for a whole hour.<p>It was a bitter and ridiculous experience and not joyful at all.

Reminds me of AirConsole. The price and game selection is waaay worse though.

Is there support for Google Meet? Some employers refuse to use Zoom.

This is a solid idea.