In this uncertain time of social isolation – there has become a need to socialise while keeping your distance. It seems weird. It seems strange. It’s certainly unprecidented – but as far as we’re concerned – the show must go on… and for us at least – the parties still can!
We’ve actually been helping people host remote parties for some time. COVID-19 has meant more people than ever are having to socialise apart – but before all this started, we still had customers who were playing remotely with students and friends who lived in different countries, or who were trying to run team building across different continents.
So… while this may seem new for most of us – in reality we’re just a little behind the times.
How do you do it?
Teenagers have been chatting via the x-box for years. And in business teleconference has been going on even longer.
Which means the resources for on-line parties are already out there to make this possible and many of them are low cost or even free!.
You can play very simple games by each taking a turn to talk on Facebook and answering questions posed in group chats. You can also have groups on Google Hangouts. Don’t quiz us on it as we’re also still very new to the on-line group meeting thing too! But if you ask a teenager – they know it all!
Zoom is one we’ve heard a lot about recently – and it’s one we use ourselves at the office as we can all see each other and chat while working remotely. House Party is another ap we’ve been told is really simple to use, and for small groups you can also easily do a join call using facebook messenger and that is really simple too!
There are also a variety of other teleconference options and aps available – any one of those will probably work for you in the same way.
Small groups of 6-20 people
As all of our dinner party games are downloadable it makes them really easy to share with isolated friends which means you can play with people all over the country – not just people near by.
You also don’t need access to a printer – you can play our games by emailing the character booklet file to the guests and telling them which page their character starts on (usually it’s every 9 pages and follows the same order as the invitation list).
Send them the single sided print option as that’s easier for screen use. Guests can then simply scroll through their booklet as you play together on zoom. You can pause for meal breaks or just run straight through.
With regards to the “inspector MP3s.” You have a choice here. You can either play them through your microphone from your end, or with a flying off-screen change into something “inspectory” like a hat – you can deliver those speeches in person back on camera as we always include the script too.
Large group gaming.
For really large groups – we’d suggest using our “Multi-room games“. Instead of a large unweildy gathering on-line, you can allocate the cast members, get them to record their monologues to video and post those to a page.
You can then create groups from the participants playing to interrogate the suspects. If you have a large group playing – create multiple meetings.
We’d also suggest a few photos on a group page for the evidence that you would ordinarily have handled at a live event. If you can’t mock up photos of the evidence up you need for the event – then just describe it in a statement.
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7-9 Alexandra Road
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