tl;dr: We played Rock–Paper–Scissors with 500 people in ~06:40 minutes to kick off a tech conference. It was a well-received energizer game and provided a lot of fun to all attendees.
Why we did it
Every year, trivago organizes an event called Tech Get Together. An event with a particular focus on bringing tech-related people from all trivago offices together, get to know each other, and exchange knowledge. tech-related means Engineers, Data Scientists, Product Managers, Designers, and more.
The major part of this event is a two-day conference with workshops and presentations. This year (2019), my peer Wolfgang Gassler and I were responsible for organizing this conference. We were thinking about how we can kick off this event.
One week before the conference, I was attending a workshop about Stress, Resilience, and Conflict Management by Philip Schwidetzki from CONTRACT. After lunch, typically, you play quick energizer games to avoid fatigue. With eight people, Philip played Rock paper scissors differently than we were used to it.
The idea was born to scale this up to 500 people and start the conference with this game.
How we did it
We played the standard version of Rock paper scissors. But how did we scaled this game up to 500 people and finished it in under seven minutes?
Every player chose an opponent by random and started playing the first round. Every loser of the first round joined their opponent (the winner) as a fan. The responsibility as a fan was to support the player by cheering them up during the next game. The winner searched now for another winner of the previous game and started playing the next round.
By this technique, we divided the crowd by two in every round. In the first round, 250 games happened in parallel, 125 games in the second, etc. The final game has formed by the two winners with 249 fans each in their back.
To execute this with 500 people, we had to apply one organizational trick: Divide it!.
We played this game in a big audience room with ~500 seats and enough space at the side. Space is essential because people need to stand up, move, and find their next opponent. We divided the room into four areas and assigned two volunteers with experience in facilitation or agile coaching to one location. The volunteers don’t play the game itself. They actively push the winning players to their next opponents to avoid groups standing around. We executed the gameplay per area with ~125 people until we had one winner per area. This procedure led to the final two games with four people in total. After that, we had a winner.
The final result
It went smooth and better than initially expected. Due to the split into areas and the helping hands of the agile coaches, the people could find their next gaming partner quickly. We played Rock–Paper–Scissors with 500 people in ~06:40 minutes. Imagine how you would feel to win against 499 people in Rock–Paper–Scissors in only one day?
The feedback from the audience was positive. Many of them had a lot of fun; it was a quick game, not dull and highly energizing. Especially when the people start cheering up one person with >= 30 people (the fans!). We can recommend this game to a bigger audience.
Fun Fact: According to Philip and his peers from CONTRACT, we are holding the inofficial record of the most players with this game. Start playing it, record it, and beat it!
Here are some impressions of the event.
The official event video from trivago
Recording by Hans Puac of the final game
Recording by Beatriz Huélamo of the final game play
Appendix
Rock–Paper–Scissors gameplay
You play the game Rock paper scissors with one of your hands. There are three different actions:
- Rock (Hand forms a fist)
- Paper (all your fingers are straight)
- Scissor (two fingers form a scissor)
You and your opponent are staying in front of each other. You count down from 3 … 2 … 1, and both come up with one of the three actions by forming your hand accordingly. Based on the actions, the winner will be determined:
- Scissor beats paper
- Paper beats rock
- Rock beats scissor
That is everything you need to play it with two persons.
If you think this is too easy and you want more complexity, have a look at the game extension Rock–Paper–Scissors–Lizard–Spock from the series The Big Bang Theory.
Credits
This game would not have been possible without a few people. They deserve a vast Thank you for this:
- Philip Schwidetzki from CONTRACT for this idea and his support by providing feedback
- Wolfgang Gassler for his trust and help in the execution of this idea
- Denise Beckers and Stefanie Vogel to make this event happen at all
- Beatriz Huélamo and trivago for filming and editing of the videos
- trivago for making this event possible at all
- All participants for being there and playing with us :)
Icons
- Thanks to Cristiano Zoucas for the icons Fist, Hand and Scissors
- Thanks to Danil Polshin for his People2 collection.