One of the hottest games around is perfect for fun team building
To help prevent things from going wrong, such as security measures being breached, many organizations, including Microsoft, will deploy a red team. A red team is a group that attempts to infiltrate an organization to expose potential security risks. In many cases, there will also be a blue team tasked with trying to prevent the red team’s attacks.
These “war games” are essential components of building out robust security to protect against the constant and ever-changing threats organizations confront all the time. In today’s world, trying to suss out bad actors is a difficult yet imperative operation. Perhaps that’s why an online game called Among Us has resonated with people around the world. In addition to being a delightful red team versus blue team experience, Among Us is a fantastic way to engage your team during remote happy hours or team building times.
The Impostor
Here at Kiefer we’ve been experimenting with different ways to get our team together to have fun and grow our interpersonal relationships while working remotely, such as playing Family Feud via Microsoft Teams. We regularly share our experiences in hopes your organization can also have some good times together even while you’re apart.
Now, we’re not associated with Among Us or its developer, InnerSloth, in any way. We just know it’s fun. And it’s been the number one request from Kiefer staff for our regular Teams happy hour. The premise of Among Us is this – players can join a local or online game of between four to ten players (for your team, choose a local game so you can control who gets to join). Each player takes the form of a blobby little being and is randomly designated to be a crewmate or an impostor. In a ten-player game, seven players will be crewmates and three will be impostors. The object of the game is for the crewmates to identify the imposters before the impostors smite all the crewmates.
Presently, Among Us features three maps – a spaceship, an office building and an otherworldly compound. The crewmates must complete various tasks while the impostors set about sabotaging equipment within the map and stealthily striking down crewmates. If an impostor is spotter or evidence is found – such as a slain crewmate – the crewmates can call an emergency meeting and vote on who they believe is the impostor to be tossed out of the airlock. During the meeting a chat window makes it possible for skilled impostors to further deceive the crewmates, often leading to innocent players being sent into the frigid vacuum of space.
With its colorful, retro aesthetic and easy-to-learn gameplay, Among Us is a supremely entertaining game that is ideal for groups. Our suggestion: gather your team together on Microsoft Teams to play Among Us. By using Teams you can use face-to-face meetings, rather than the in-game chat, to try to identify the impostor. It’s a splendid way to get your team together for some fun, to strengthen those vital relationships and maybe even find out who among you is the sneakiest.
Among Us is available on Windows, Android and iOS.