Games
Build connections with Games for Work, a new Microsoft Teams app
Connect with your coworkers through play? Yes, please.
People everywhere are struggling to build trust, create connections, and improve team morale. Why not play games to help? Playing games with coworkers has a powerful ability to foster relationships and collaboration. Although some may consider games at work a distraction, the benefits are plentiful. In fact, according to a study by Brigham Young University, teams who played short video games together were 20 percent more productive than those who participated in more traditional team-building activities.
With the move to remote and hybrid work, our social capital has weakened, impacting cross-group collaboration and employee retention.2 In fact, over 40 percent of leaders consider building relationships to be the greatest challenge in hybrid or remote environments, according to the Work Trend Index.3 Games can be an easy way to connect and build trust with our teammates. Along with our morning caffeine, sometimes we need a brain teaser or some friendly competition to get relationships going, infuse levity into our workday, and build a sense of community.
Build work connections through play
Today, I am excited to introduce the Games for Work app,* developed by Microsoft Casual Games, an Xbox Games Studio.** Now, you can easily add a game in the context of where work happens: in Microsoft Teams meetings. Choose from a selection of favorite casual games including Microsoft IceBreakers, Wordament, Minesweeper, and Solitaire—all easy to play in quick, interactive, and multi-player versions (from 2 to 250 players). They are safe for work (verifiably “E” rated) and ad-free. To address the various needs of teams, each game within the app emphasizes a different element of team building.
“Over 3 billion people around the world play games, serving a crucial role in bringing people together – especially during these last few years,” said Jill Braff, General Manager of Integrations and Casual Games, Microsoft. “Games promote creativity, collaboration and communication in powerful and unique ways, and we can’t wait to see the how the Games for Work app on Microsoft Teams inspires productivity and helps foster connections in the workplace.”
Microsoft IceBreakers
Encourage new teams to communicate and learn about each other with ease. It’s a variation on this or that—pineapple or pepperoni on your pizza? It’s so simple and intuitive, you can’t help but answer the question. It can also spur lively and, at times, passionate conversation to foster connections and build team morale.
Microsoft Minesweeper
The most cooperative game of the bunch. This game encourages individuals to come together to solve problems and accomplish objectives quickly. Does this sound like something your team could use?
Microsoft Wordament
Exercise your brain and create some healthy team competition over a word challenge. Wordament easily accommodates large groups, designed to play with up to 250 participants.
Microsoft Solitaire Collection
And fan favorite Microsoft Solitaire Collection provides a head-to-head competition encouraging group participation. This might sound like an oxymoron—the multi-player capability and enhanced spectator mode allows everyone, whether actively playing that round or not, to follow the action and engage with the players on-screen. It’s like calling out the answers while watching a game show or assisting a friend with a word puzzle.
The Games for Work app integrates directly into the flow of the workday—once the app is added, you and your co-workers can seamlessly enjoy the experience inside Teams meetings, on desktop and mobile. With the safety and security of Microsoft, you can access all four games for free today.
Explore other social apps in Teams
In addition to the Games for Work app, there are more apps in Teams to help strengthen your team’s relationships, boost productivity, and, of course, have fun!
- Polly in Teams: Run live polls, surveys, quizzes, trivia, and Q&A for an instant, live engagement. Get hands raised, minds activated, and creative juices flowing. Put your team at ease and encourage candid responses and lively conversation. Polly can be used in a Teams chat, meeting, or channel. Watch How to use Polly in Microsoft Teams to learn more.
- Kahoot! in Teams: Launch a live game to bring people together and facilitate team learning. For those colleagues that can’t join a live game or are on the go, assign a challenge that is self-paced, with questions and answers displayed on players’ devices. You can even track progress with a leaderboard for some friendly competition. Kahoot! can be used in a Teams chat or channel.
You can expect more apps powered by our ecosystem of partners to come in the next calendar year.
Learn more
Check out the new Games for Work app designed to bring people together in Microsoft Teams meetings by sparking conversation, creativity, and community through play. Please send us your feedback—these games will continue to evolve, and we will add new games based on your recommendations.
Odyssey has been the lead content writer and content marketer. He has vast experience in the field of writing. His SEO strategies help businesses to gain maximum traffic and success.
Nintendo has released the first patch to Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, but the game’s duplication glitches remain.
Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom’s patch notes for version 1.1.1 are minimal, with notes that the update fixes “several issues” to “improve the gameplay experience”, as well as an issue with the main quest ‘The Closed Door’ that prevented players from completing it (I am not that far, but if you know, you know).
More interesting is that the game’s item duplication glitches remain intact.
As we reported earlier this week, there are several glitches that allow players to infinitely duplicate items – handy not only for extra fuse ammo, but for valuable items you can sell for extra Rupees.
One glitch I’ve tried involves fusing an item to the bow, switching bows in the pause menu, then quickly un-pausing and pausing again. This last bit is the tricky step as it requires precise timing. I also struggled with the glitch until I realised the bow needs to be equipped but without an arrow nocked or aimed.
After downloading today’s patch, this particular glitch still worked for me.
Another glitch involves duplicating weapons and shields, with a similar un-pause/pause method between saving the game. I’ve had no luck with this myself, but reports online suggest this does still work.
Of course, these glitches severely unbalance the game. Still, if you’re desperate for Rupees…
Odyssey has been the lead content writer and content marketer. He has vast experience in the field of writing. His SEO strategies help businesses to gain maximum traffic and success.
Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is a certified hit, breaking series sales records and, probably, filling your social feeds with gameplay videos.
Its open world, focus on exploration and overall depth has earned it overwhelmingly positive reviews from critics and players.
And its new crafting mechanic has spawned dozens of viral videos showing off gamers’ bizarre creations.
But for some fans it’s more than just a game.
They’ve been telling BBC Newsbeat how Zelda and the communities that formed around it have helped them through difficult times.
The series is famous for its sense of escapism – players can spend hours outside the main quest, roaming the world at their own pace.
Nintendo fan and Twitch streamer Derby Munns says this element was what drew her in.
Last summer, she turned to prequel Breath of the Wild (BotW) as she experienced a “pretty horrible bereavement”.
“It made the whole summer feel awful,” says Derby.
But she says BotW “was able to take me out of the moment that I was in, in real life, and take my mind off things”.
The game also delved into subjects like memory and bereavement, something Derby says helped her personally.
“There’s some pretty deep themes that run throughout,” she says.
“I think the game guides you through characters going through similar things that you might be experiencing and shows you how they’re dealing with their emotions in different ways and how they’re coming out on the other side.”
Fellow fan Amber Elphick was starting to move away from home when BotW was first released in 2017.
“I was leaving family and friends behind,” she says.
“Playing the Legend of Zelda helped ground me, because I had a really big community of gamers who were all playing it as well.”
Amber says the game’s open-ended nature, which means it can be played in any way people choose, was therapeutic for her.
“The whole world is open to you,” she says
“If you want to go and collect all the different fruits and take loads of pictures, you’re free to do that. And that can make it a very relaxing experience”.
The success of Tears of the Kingdom (TotK) has earned attention from media outlets where you might normally expect to see negative stories about games.
And Amber says more coverage should focus on how titles like Zelda can make people happier and healthier.
“I think when people see the negative side, they don’t understand how much positivity games can bring”, she says.
One person focusing on the positive impact games can have is Sky, who works for Safe In Our World.
It’s a charity that looks at mental health in the gaming industry, and is putting on a summit about it with BAFTA this month.
Sky’s also turned to Zelda, “running around Hyrule Field and being immersed in the sounds and sights”, when feeling stressed, upset, or burnt out.
Games are great at “transporting you somewhere else”, Sky says, but the networks that spring up around them can be equally helpful.
Online fandoms can get a bad press but Amber, who lives in Norwich, now runs a Nintendo fan community and says it’s helped her and others find meaningful connections.
That’s an experience Derby can relate to.
“If you’re not necessarily finding people in real life that you want to hang out with, games can be a great way to find and meet people,” she says.
- Tears of the Kingdom becomes fastest-selling Zelda game
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And Sky says this can be especially helpful for neurodivergent people.
“I find it quite difficult to make friends, make conversation and meet new people,” says Sky.
“For me, it’s been a way to begin to start opening up and forming friendships when I might not otherwise be willing to engage in conversation.”
One of Safe in Our World’s aims is to encourage people to reach out for help when they need it.
Games can be a great way to take your mind off things, but they might not be the answer to all problems.
“It’s nice to use as a tool to hold your hand through tough times,” as Derby says.
But Derby, who plans to spend many hours in TotK’s Hyrule, says she’s comforted to know it’s there for her when she feels like she needs it.
“If you’re finding every day a struggle in real life, you can just get out Zelda, and because the world is so bright, you can just escape.”
Odyssey has been the lead content writer and content marketer. He has vast experience in the field of writing. His SEO strategies help businesses to gain maximum traffic and success.
The Closed Door is now open.
The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom’s first patch has landed, and while it’s fairly minimal it will come as a relief to anyone whose progress has been barred by The Closed Door quest.
As logged by Nintendo’s support website, the newly released version 1.1.1 has fixed an issue where “sometimes, the player could not clear main quest “The Closed Door,” even if they fulfilled the conditions to advance the quest.”
The patch notes say that the new update will fix the problem even if you’ve already encountered the issue, so those who were stuck at The Closed Door should now be able to continue on the main quest uninterrupted.
Beyond the fix to the Closed Door quest, Nintendo just says that v1.1.1 addresses several issues “to improve the gameplay experience.”
The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom – MAJOR Cheat: Duplicate Items, Infinite Money
No mention is made of the recently discovered duplication glitch that allows players to infinitely duplicate any resource that can be fused with an arrow. It seems there’s still time to glitch your way to a fortune of rupees.
The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, which we called a masterpiece in our review, has been out for a little more than a week now and has already sold more than 10 million copies.
Odyssey has been the lead content writer and content marketer. He has vast experience in the field of writing. His SEO strategies help businesses to gain maximum traffic and success.
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