Cyber House Rules: how to host a winning virtual game night

Abstract

Our institution has hosted monthly board game nights for our campus community for the last several years. However, when the COVID-19 pandemic hit, we were forced to cancel our in-person events and rethink how we would deliver game nights going forward. While pivoting to a virtual event seemed like the obvious solution, we encountered numerous setbacks in our quest to make an online game night a reality. In spring 2020, we experimented with online gaming platforms in order to ascertain the feasibility of holding virtual library game nights. This included a pilot event with library staff. Throughout these experiments we ran into many challenges, including: fickle internet speeds and computing power; a steep learning curve for the online platforms we were interested in using; limitations of the software available to us at the time; and technological comfort levels of the committee members. These impediments were extreme enough to delay our second attempt until spring of 2021, after a year-long hiatus. We will discuss how we worked to overcome these challenges for our second attempt, and will give attendees the opportunity to reflect on how they can host similar outreach events in their own institutions.

Links: Introductory video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OX3eJQXKUrs Interactive slides: https://www.canva.com/design/DAEqjm4fZFo/DsF2g9SHj5ZA83uBDdJ-CQ/view?utm_content=DAEqjm4fZFo&utm_campaign=designshare&utm_medium=link&utm_source=publishsharelink