If you were the CEO of a small game development company would company field trips be a good thing?
If you were the CEO of a small game development company would company field trips be a good thing?
I’ve heard people say, (paraphrased) “work is work: if your going to give me free time then let me go home.”.
On the other side, an impromptu surprise that you get to be relieved of your responsibilities for the day and go do something fun seems like it would be beneficial for people’s mental health and creativity.
Yet, one can imagine if someone had a sick child at home, or some other concern that infinitely more important than work that it might be a bit torturous to go out and try to have fun with your coworkers when you would rather, and rightly so, want to be home attending to the more important thing.
Although I would want to be the type of leader that I person would feel comfortable just telling that they needed to go home if such a matter of importance were to arise.
If you gave a person a choice at the beginning of their job between a day off or an office field trip, most would probably just choose an extra day off.
Yet, much like buying a gift card for someone you know would never spend money on themselves perhaps it could be a more memorable and helpful experience for them to go out and have fun with no responsibilities.
Yet this may simply be an expression of the lonely ness and desire for human connection that I personally feel, due the current circumstances of semi isolation (just me and my partner) in a new and strange city.
I am not a CEO, I just graduated and I’m working to get my first job. One day I would like to lead people, and perhaps this, per my lack of knowledge, seems a bit farcical, but I wanted to gather some opinions, thanks!
In that circumstance, a periodic board game day might be better.
Its social, but much more relevant, and gets new ideas into the team, or gives them ways to try shit out together.
Plus, professional game designers are the one group of people some if the denser and more experimental board games would be a team building rather than team sundering exercise for.
If it's paid we can go to Chuck-E-Cheese for all I care
Instead of coming up with cheap gimmicks for your workers in order to save yourself and the company money while playing PR games with your workforce .... just pay them all a bonus, give them time off and let them all decide what they want to do with their time and money.
This. My social battery drains like a sieve and I find work related social events especially draining. Give me a bonus and day off instead and I'll be singing your praises.
Would you find it better to get a surprise day off or another PTO day for you to spend? I get that the latter is probably better if you wanted to make plans but it somehow feels more sterile as a surprise good thing might be a pleasant thing, or maybe you could surprise them with a free pto day sometime in the month?
The goal of these evens are to make co workers socialize with each other. So that way when they're working on things they know that a week ago at the event bob said he dealt with X, I can ask him what he did. Or John studied Y in school, he could probably help me with this. If you just send everyone home then you're building an anti social environment where people just exist around each other, and because they're busy with work don't take the time to get socialize and get comfortable around the people they're working with.
Co-workers are like family
You can choose your friends but you can't choose your family
I'd rather spend as much time away from my co-workers so that in the long run, I can appreciate the times I have to be around them at work because I have to .... not because I want to.
I do the same with my family (as much as I love them) ... if I spend too much time with them, eventually, I'll find reasons to not want to be around them and our relationship suffers ... the less time I spend with them, the more I appreciate them and the more they appreciate me.
There's not a straightforward answer to this because it's far too context dependent, and even a CEO at a small company won't have absolute control over the culture of that company; I've seen company culture turn from amazing to toxic after losing only a couple key employees (good managers are gold dust).
To draw a comparison: staff pizza parties are so widely scoffed at not because people hate pizza, but because, when set against a backdrop of employees not actually being respected or valued, it makes them feel worse. Good will can't be bought, whether by pizza, extra days off, or field trips. Some of those things can help, but much more important is the cumulative culture that's built at the company.
Most decisions like discretionarily giving someone time off to look after family are going to be made at a level lower than CEO. Sometimes great policy ideas arise from a great manager using their discretion to make a sensible call, and then going "maybe we could put [idea] in place for future".
An envelope with cash!
As long as I'm getting paid you can send me anywhere to do anything.
But expect me to go somewhere without being paid and it better be something I'm interested in and that I don't have other stuff I would rather use my time to catch up on. I have better stuff to do at home than to just hang out and not be productive while also losing a day of wages.
But if it's paid I would greatly appreciate the stress free day.
Random field trips for shits and giggles?. Especially impromptu ones. That’s a bad idea. It’s a recipe for “I didn’t wear the right shoes for laser tag”, or “I don’t want to go see that [event/show]”, or “I have a deadline I need to meet, I’m going to be stressed the whole time”
Field trips should be planned, paid, during business hours, and if not related to business function, optional.
A neutral field trip would be: Hey, we are going to a restaurant for lunch Friday. The company is paying. Your lunch break will be extended, but the extension will be paid.
A good field trip is one you can make relevant to the project, that’s a different story. Say you are working on a medieval/fantasy action adventure: go to an arms or art museum and see all the cool swords, spears, and armor. If it’s a farm sim, maybe tour a cider mill or a historical/working farm: learn about the tools and equipment they use, etc.
If I had to attend events off the clock, my union president would eat nails and spit rust.
Definitely do it on the clock. No one likes unpaid mandatory work fun. If there is driving involved, make sure you pay for mileage or give a gas card to the drivers. Don't surprise people with an outing or give them too much notice; I find a week is the right amount of time. Lastly, if it's just for fun, make it optional.
I can't think of a more stressful work day than to see coworkers, in a new environment, with no way to immediately go home(or not compensated for my travel), unscheduled and unannounced, and being ordered to have fun and be social without breaking the social contract of the office.
I will be sick that day.
As long as it's on the clock, everything is paid for, there's food and drinks, not on a Friday, it's an activity that everyone can partake in, and not mandatory, I'm ok to join some extracurricular activities from time to time.
Agreed with all this, just don't keep me past my scheduled finishing time for the day.
Definitely the worst part of working is to give up 8+ hours of your day. It doesn't matter if it's a trip or staying in the chair looking at a computer. You still took away 8+ hours of my life.
In fact, when I signed up for the job, I did so wanting to be hours sitting in a chair looking at the computer. Not for "socializing" or whatever. I would prefer another day in the chair, since that trip will just give me less time to meet my deadlines.
I’m not a video game executive but I’ve been an executive and every single second you make a person do something is on the clock. If you pay people for their time, sure. Go for it. If it’s on your employees’ time, no pay, then absolutely not.
Work is not family or friends. They will cut you like a bad branch and forget you existed. Work your ass off when you’re getting paid to do so. But don’t work for free.
Absolutely agree pay people for there time, so it would be paid. But can’t you be friends? Maybe not as the executive, and no one can be forced to, but wouldn’t it be a good thing if your coworkers were also your friends?
You can have friends that are also coworkers, but you cannot have coworkers that are also friends - the "primary" relationship is important, IMO. If the primary reason we're interacting is that we work together, there's obviously no reason we can't be friendly but we are not actually friends.
If your coworker is a coworker first and a friend second, why wouldn't you pick a raise over them? Why wouldn't you pick a promotion over them? Why wouldn't you rather them out for something that negatively affects your job? At that point, it's just a subjective scale for what you would do for the job and what might screw over your coworker.
Yeah, of course. We did team building. Some were absolutely harmless. Field trips can be educational and fun for all. Like, once we all got a special tour of our city’s infrastructure system that wouldn’t have been possible without a team. That was cool for everyone.
Another (which came up from one of the teams) was that someone would pick a theme and each Friday, someone brought in a dish from their hometown. I offered to reimburse for ingredients and they were usually like, “I don’t know how my grandma makes these.” and never filled out an expense report.
And like a Christmas Party (or equivalent where you live) happens, the company pays. That’s once a year. Part of the job.
All I’m saying is that when you are at work, you should get paid. If you get paid in shares, you’re grown and can decide. But going to an escape room on a Sunday is not OK.
You can sometimes be friends - but that cannot be forced and you shouldn't try. Sometimes the strict morman will be on the same team as a muslem, an altoholic and a homosexual - you can ask all to work together in the office but they have significant personal differences and will not have anything common to do outside of work. If such things are not allowed them you don't have a diverse team. I have personally worked with someone live everyone of the above and it works because when we realize those differences we don't talk about those subjects.
There are two types of people in the world
There are people who want to socialize with their coworkers, bond with them, have friendships with them, etc.
And there are people who just work here, man. They show up everyday, spend 8 hours doing their job, collect their paycheck every 2 weeks, and don't want to spend a moment more than they need to at work and or think about their job or coworkers on their days off.
Field trips, team building days, etc. are great for the first type of person, they're torture for the second.
I'm the second type of person. I don't, overall, dislike my coworkers. I'll joke around with them, I think they're mostly all nice and decent people, maybe even above average. But at its core, the nature of my relationship with them is that I get paid to work with them, and that is plenty enough reason to be friendly (though not necessarily friends with) them. I don't need to go get a beer with them after work, or go bowling or whatever with them to build a bond with them. My bond with them is that if I do my job and they do their job, we both get paid and can go do whatever the hell we want to do off the clock, either with each other if they're one of the rare people who manage to make the jump from being a work friend to being a regular friend, or separately if all we really have in common is that we work together. I have plenty of friends and hobbies and such that I don't need to seek them out at work, and I prefer it that way, my professional life and private life don't really need to touch.
I don't want birthday cards from my coworkers, I don't want to contribute anything to the office Christmas party (I work for my county government, I really don't think we should even have an office Christmas party) and when they're taking up a collection for a coworker who is sick or about to have a baby or whatever, my only thought is "how 'bout they just pay us enough that we don't have to do this?"
So if it's decided that I don't need to work for a day, I'd rather just be home. Or have the option to go in and work to get caught up/get ahead on my work in exchange for overtime while all the type-A, middle management, people-people, chatty Kathy, office gossip, busybody types are out of the office doing whatever.
I certainly don't want to come in on my day off to deal with any of that. Those days off are the reason I work, so that I can enjoy the rest of my time.
Two particular examples I recall that ground my gears.
I used to work in a warehouse. The company used to do two Christmas parties, one for the office staff, one for the warehouse employees. Usually the office staff would get treated to dinner at a restaurant after work. For us warehouse people, they would usually get us a catered lunch. Never anything particularly special, but at least I didn't have to pack a lunch that day. One year they decided that they'd take us warehouse plebs out to a nice steakhouse for dinner. I declined. I was busting my ass all day in a warehouse, I'd be gross and sweaty and want to go home to shower and change after work. I had time to do that, we got off at 5, and the dinner wasn't until I think 7, but after dealing with almost an hour of rush hour traffic, and being tired from working all day, I really didn't want to get dressed again and go back out. And to top it off, I was one of only like 3 people in the warehouse who spoke decent English, and the other two were 2 or 3 times my age, and one was my boss. The rest mostly spoke Spanish, and they were nice enough, but I couldn't really have enough of a conversation with them to even determine if we even had anything in common to talk about, much less actually talk to them about it. About all we could manage is "hey, can you go grab this box for me?" or showing each other funny videos and laughing.
To me that sounded like I was going to spend a couple hours sitting mostly in silence with people chatting in Spanish around me.
And of course, they were paying for food, but not for drinks. If I'm going to a nice steakhouse, I'm going to want at least a beer, glass of wine, or cocktail with my dinner, and I'll be damned if I'm going to pay anything out of pocket to attend a work function.
I also really don't get the appeal of a steakhouse, don't get me wrong, I like steak, but I can make a steak with some sides as good or better as any steakhouse at home for half the cost. Steak isn't complicated.
My boss was surprised I didn't want to go. I'm surprised that anyone wanted to go. I'd rather they have me a few bucks to order some pizzas, grab a six pack, and stay home with my wife (who was invited to this as well, I asked her if she wanted to go, she felt the same way) watching Netflix.
The next one is more recent. My current job has been on a big mental health thing lately. We have to do a mandatory training thing a couple times a year, usually it's pretty bullshit, but at least there's a thing veneer of ",you need to do this to keep your required certifications, even if none of it actually applies to what we do"
But this last time they decided to do a "wellness retreat"
Which consisted of us mostly sitting in an auditorium listening to about 4 different speakers talking about mental health, suicide prevention, fitness and healthy eating, etc. and a guided meditation thing,, doing a middle school science class egg drop experiment as a team building exercise, and a Cornhole tournament. We had to provide our own lunches, and they had therapy dogs visit us, not really giving any presentation or anything just kind of there and we could pet them during our lunch break.
Half of the presentations felt like I was watching an ad for these people's businesses, and the other half were just boring rehashes of things we've all heard a thousand times before interspersed with some sad stories.
I had to give up my day off for that. I wanted to flip a fucking table when they had the nerve to mention work-life ballance. And half of us are night shifters, and they never schedule any of these things overnight, so it was downright insulting when they talked about how important it is to get enough sleep.
And I don't even want to play Cornhole when I'm drunk with my friends I actually want to be around, I really don't want to play it with a bunch of coworkers totally sober.
I got overtime pay for it, but I gladly would have paid that much out of my own pocket to skip it.
If you want to surprise your employees, let them leave early (with pay) on a Friday, hand out gift cards for takeout or a movie or something, buy them pizza, or better yet, just give them all a raise or a bonus. If they want to go hang out together and bond, they can go do that with their extra money after they leave work early on a Friday, maybe invite them to join you for whatever you're doing. If they don't, they can go enjoy life on their own terms.
If you gave a person a choice at the beginning of their job between a day off or an office field trip, most would probably just choose an extra day off.
Then why would you force anything else? You know what they'd pick but you're still considering forcing some bullshit holiday? I've worked both type of places and I'll take the day off every single time.
A truly diverse office will be full of very different types of people - people that'd rather be with their kids, older people that won't enjoy the same things, introverts, people keeping their mental disorders secret, etc etc. Statistically, probably some women that are uncomfortable around some of the men because of some shit they overheard.
You don't know what's best for every single one of these individuals. They do.
My job has a yearly thing and i would want to go but while at large the company is very open and inclusive they tend to forget such when planning these.
If you do this, you must organise them well. I am autistic and the mental challenge of Figuring out whether an event is compatible with me. (Where do i need to be, what are we doing, how much people/noise will there be, when will i be back home) is often more straining and time consuming then just doing my job.
Also a bit beyond topic but a small indie gaming company should not have a dedicated CEO. Creative works genuinely do not benefit from corporate structures. But that is my opinion.
-Must be paid
-Get employee input on desires and liked events before planning anything.
-Make sure deadlines are accounted for and adjusted a day or two later to compensate for a lost days work. getting a paid event but knowing in the back of your head that it's going to make you fall behind on what you had laid out for the day is the absolute worst.
work is work: if your going to give me free time then let me go home."
This is it right here. I would much rather spend my time doing what I want than whatever it is you imagine I would enjoy. Because mostly what I would enjoy is - no offense - time away from you/coworkers/anyone else I don't choose to spend my time with. If you make it a work thing it feels compulsory and that will make it harder to enjoy no matter what it is. A better option would be to give everyone the day off and say 'By the way a few of us are going to <wherever>', that makes it optional and I can accept or not as I see fit. Although some people will still resent driving into work if you were just going to (effectively) tell them to go home again.
A day off is ten times better than a field trip for no reason. I'd be annoyed if I lost a day because the CEO now decided we're going wine tasting and cheese shit something. Especially since they're the ones pressing the production team for results. Come on.
Now a field trip that is relevant to what I'm working on sounds great, although you probably have a window of relevance for those during the concept or pre production stage, maybe pushing a little bit after that but absolutely not relevant after you have already figured out most of your aesthetics and plot.
My workplace tried to make me attend a steak dinner after work with my "coworker" who I don't like and some random new shift supervisor in the highest turn over position on site. Predictably he was gone 4 months later. I refused to go. While the food would be compensated, my time wouldn't be and that's the #1 thing of value to me. I don't work for free.
For me it depended entirely on how happy I was in the rest of my job.
If I'm, say, being death-marched, or requirements are written in sand, or senior management refuses to ever make a decision in writing, or my manager looks over my shoulder when I'm typing, or you just told me we're going 100% AI for QA, I don't want your fucking playdate.
If the team is happy, offsites can be a fun way to get some bonding in.
If the team is unhappy, they are there for their check and that is it, they are not paid to pretend to like you at an off-site. Take the money you would use for the party and hand it out as cash in an envelope to everybody individually.
The best managers can find out exactly what motivates their people, and lean into that to make things fun and rewarding (or as much as possible, being work related).
The tricky part is that this won't be the same for everyone, so a one-size-fits-all field trip won't necessarily be received the same by all the employees. Maybe the group dynamic is such that everyone has a good time, and this may work out well. Maybe some members resent being compelled to spend relaxed time with people they don't want to see that way.
In a perfect world, everybody could get their own individualized rewards and recognition, based on what they value most. The only way to get there is to put in the work to know the employees as people.
This I think it’s the crux of it, you def want it to be something everyone is interested it which can be hard. So I guess I probably won’t know until I get to know the heterogeneity of my hypothetical team and their personalities and interests
My company has a summer picnic. They get a few rows of seats at the MLB stadium, and a dedicated area with free food and drinks. I think they pay for a bus from the office to the stadium too.
It’s on a weekend but they let people bring family members or a date (not that they check)
It’s actually pretty fun.
I would want to accommodate all kinds of people and situations.
- Off-work activities should be optional - technically and practically (no or little social pressure)
- On-work activities should be optional, possibly with a little push depending on goals and hoped for gains, and be introduced with context of what they are useful for or intended for
Due to personality and consequential social anxiety, I'm more sensitive than most people. If there's open communication and accommodation to all parties, and a shared goal, it should be possible to find a good way.
Activities may be for team-building, to visit places for reference, or other activities that may have more or less direct usefulness for projects.
If it's an on-work-hour activity, I don't think there's a need for alternative compensation. Either you join or do your normal work.
Off-hour work has a more informal tone and should have more distance from concrete projects.
I despise the ones where it's basically like "get on the bus, we're having mandatory fun!" and then you get going and it won't finish until 2 hours past your quitting time, but it's totally cool, because it's a good time!
OTOH, I'm not at all interested in sports and I've had a good time going to a baseball game and once a company took me to an arcade which was a lot of fun. Alcohol provided by the company.
For me, as long as quitting time stays quitting time, I'm more or less happy even if I don't actually like the event, but if you keep me away from my family, I'm unhappy and I can't imagine how pissed the people who pick up their kids from work/school/etc... must have been.
This was my career. Seeing popular sci-fi/fantasy movies maybe 1-2 times a year (especially on opening day...woot!) seemed fun and to boost morale a bunch. The studio was large enough so that several times we could rent out the theater to ourselves and be extra raucous, which was also fun. I don't think people complained, since this was during office hours and not after hours or on a weekend. Otherwise, I think 'if your going to give me free time then let me go home'.
I think longer 'field trips' might have sucked, even if they related to a game we were making. Sticking to sci-fi and fantasy films with cool fx was close enough.
I can't imagine anybody would prefer work-sanctioned "fun" to the same amount of PTO and the money the activity would have cost.
I would be interested! But I think the best way to implement this would be to give people the power to choose. Maybe, for whatever reason, they want to work that day? Or maybe they'd rather go home and get some good zzzs in? If the goal is cultivating a healthy work environment, then I think letting people take the day to recharge in whatever way suits them best would be ideal. Having a fun activity or excursion available to join in on only enhances this imo
Meh, even if "relieved of responsibility for the day", projects and tasks still have deadlines and it could easily have a ripple effect that increases stress more than relieves it.
No fucking surprises. Work should be the least surprising thing ever. "Surprise, we're going to have a meeting just the two of us. No agenda". Surprise, you thought you would close the last tickets today but now I am taking you socialising.
I think going to a location related to the project would be a great idea. I'd encourage note/ pictures. Then, I'd discuss those observations as a group, and how they could be implemented in the game.
If you're talking about r and r, throw them a day off.
At a previous job we had outings occasionally, the last one was axe throwing and we had our bonuses handed out there.
Do it on the clock, during a work day. Make sure you plan for nothing to get done that day. Make it optional: go to the field trip (expenses paid), or take a free day of PTO. Either way they get paid and, because you planned for it in the development schedule, don't have to worry about potentially having to play catch up because of the day off later. That way it gives them the choice to go do something fun on the company's dime or stay at home and recharge. Another thing to note: don't limit yourself to game-related stuff like video game museums.
Go to an aquarium.
Go to a zoo.
Go to a national park if there's one nearby.
Go to a natural science museum.
The artistic side of game dev takes inspiration from a wide variety of sources, not just other forms of media. Tbh, the most boring field trip I can think of would be to go to a movie theater or video game museum. I want to see something new and take inspiration from that.
Honestly love these ideas because I get the sense that as an adult (it’s stupid) but some people would be afraid to go to these places alone
"...you get to be relieved of your responsibilities for the day and go do something fun" is a terrible attitude to take about the underlying work if you're trying to make games. If you didn't enjoy making it, they won't enjoy playing it.
Edit for the downvote: I have a small games studio. I also attended d.school and have an EMBA. Large companies will have some people who phone it in day-to-day. A small studio needs people to be committed and giving 100% basically at all times. If you've done your job properly, you might find that you have to force people to take time off or even go home at the end of the day. That's what I was getting at. Field trips might form part of that engagement strategy, but not as a respite from an otherwise grim day-to-day.
If i wanted to hang out with my coworkers i would do so.
I don't for a reason.It seems pretty common in the industry to go see a movie during the workday every once in awhile. I think companies often get free or discounted tickets so its relatively low cost for them. Doing a surprise day of mandatory fun isn't likely to go over well with anyone who has actual work to get done.
Whatever you do make it optional.
I love your rationale and agree. You seem like a good leader and I hope you get there some day
At my work in the past we had a scheduled day where we all showed up at 8am and took a bus to go do activities downtown, it was nice and it was good to plan ahead of time.
A different time to congratulate us they did a surprise event to go go karting but I worked two jobs at the time so I would get to work at 6 to be off at 2 to be at my next job by 3 so this late surprise made me have to call my other job to tell them I couldn't go which sucked but also i didn't want to miss karting. overall I did not like the surprise. I rather know ahead of time to plan what I'm going to wear or bring lunch etc even if I did get paid over time
My job offers quarterly team building budgets to each department so we can go out to dinner or whatever during work hours. I think this is preferable to surprise events since people might have things they need/want to get done and it would be annoying to spring this on people without prior notice. We don't use it every quarter but it's still nice to get away every now and then even though I don't always enjoy the social aspect of it.
Pro-Tip - If you get a party bus, make sure it doesn't look like a prison bus. Just sayin'...