25 Virtual Game Show Ideas for Work (Hosted & DIY Formats)

A game show is the easiest kind of team event to get right on a video call. The rules are already in everyone's head, the format forces turn-taking and chat participation, and a little friendly competition gives a remote team something to be loud about together. It is also easy to get wrong: a host reading trivia questions off a PDF to twenty muted squares is not a game show, it is a quiz with extra steps.

We run game shows for a living. As of September 2026, we have hosted 34,000+ virtual team experiences on Zoom alone, and our Ultimate Game Show is one of the most-booked virtual events in our catalog, with 2,699 reviews averaging 4.97 out of 5. Below you will find the hosted game shows teams book most, where else to look, and 25 virtual game show ideas you can run yourself, with instructions, group sizes, and the lessons we have learned from thousands of rounds of buzzers, feuds and price guesses.

This list includes:

1. What is a virtual game show?
2. The best hosted virtual game shows you can book
3. Where to book a virtual game show for work
4. How to run a virtual game show
5. 25 virtual game show ideas for work (DIY)
6. Classic game shows to play online
7. Interactive game shows for large groups
8. Quick game show ideas for meetings and presentations
9. Company game show ideas for corporate events
10. Online game show apps and templates
11. Prizes for virtual game shows
12. What we've learned from hosting virtual game shows
13. Virtual game show ideas we don't recommend

Here we go.

What is a virtual game show?

A virtual game show is a live, competitive game played over video conferencing software such as Zoom, Microsoft Teams or Google Meet, usually modeled on a TV format like Family Feud, Jeopardy or The Price Is Right. A host runs the rounds, players compete as individuals or in teams, answers come in through the chat, polls, breakout rooms or cards held up to the camera, and somebody wins a prize at the end. Most run 45 to 90 minutes, and the format works equally well for a team of ten or an all-hands of several hundred.

Virtual game shows are the online branch of team building game shows and a subcategory of online team building games. They are similar to Zoom games, virtual party games and virtual trivia, and they include formats like virtual Family Feud, virtual Jeopardy and virtual Price Is Right. Teams use them as the main event of a virtual team celebration, as a 15-minute energizer inside a meeting, or as a full virtual team event with a professional host. Virtual game shows are also called online game shows, Zoom game shows, interactive game shows, corporate game shows and company game shows.

We think of game shows as stealth team building: people show up for the buzzers and the bragging rights, and leave having practiced communication, quick collaboration under time pressure, and a bit of vulnerability in front of their coworkers, without a formal training frame around any of it. That framing has some backing beyond our own experience. An evidence review in American Psychologist (Lacerenza, Marlow, Tannenbaum and Salas, 2018) concluded that team building is one of four team development interventions supported by meta-analytic evidence across education, health care, military and aviation settings. A game show is simply the version of team building that people volunteer for.

The best hosted virtual game shows you can book

You can run every idea on this page yourself, and the second half of the article shows you how. Booking a host makes sense when you want the production value of a real show (buzzers, scoreboards, a personality on the mic) without one of your managers spending a weekend in PowerPoint, when the group is large enough that scoring and breakout rooms need a second pair of hands, or when the event matters enough that you would rather play than run it.

We ranked our virtual game shows using our Team Building Score, a points total each event earns from confirmed bookings, reviews and ratings. Only events with at least 20 survey responses appear here.

If you only book one, book Ultimate Game Show. It is a 60 to 90 minute team-vs-team event built from rounds modeled on Family Feud, The Price Is Right and other classics, led by a host who keeps score, runs the buzzers and gets the quiet people talking. It scales from 10 players to 1,000, which is why it shows up on so many all-hands agendas.

Learn more→

Ultimate Game Show

Compete in fan favorites like Coworker Feud & Price Hike.

Virtual90 min$45 pp 5.0(5,389)

For a shorter or cheaper option, Office Feud is a 45-minute survey-says showdown at $30 per person, and Office Jeoparty! runs the same length with a category board. If your team's competitive streak is more about knowing things than guessing them, the two Virtual Trivia formats at the bottom of the table are the same host-led production with a quiz instead of a show. You can browse the full catalog of virtual team events to compare formats and price points.

Where to book a virtual game show for work

We are a team building company, so weigh our opinion accordingly. There are only a handful of vendors we would put on a shortlist for a corporate game show, and they differ more in format and pricing model than in quality.

Company	Type	Typical price	Best for	Our take
teambuilding.com	Team building company	$30 to $45 per person for game shows; $20 for 45-minute trivia	Hosted game shows for 10 to 1,000 players, with themed and holiday editions	Our pick. Ultimate Game Show, Office Feud and Office Jeoparty! are run by our own hosts (95% are employees, the rest long-term contractors), and every format has been refined through post-event surveys.
Confetti	Experiences marketplace	Priced live on their site, roughly $20 to $50 per person	Teams that want to browse many short game formats and book one quickly	The strongest alternative. A broad menu of quiz and game-show style sessions, generally lighter and shorter than a full production.
TeamBonding	Team building company	Custom quotes	Organizations that want an established provider across virtual and in-person	Decades in the industry and a wide catalog that includes game show formats. Worth a quote if the show is part of a larger conference or hybrid event.
The Go Game (Weve)	Team building company	Custom quotes	Teams that want a highly produced, TV-style hosted show	Known for game-show-style hosted events with strong production. Fewer public reviews than the others, but well regarded.

Booking a host is the fast route, not the only one. The rest of this article is for teams who want to run the show themselves.

How to run a virtual game show

Every format below runs on the same four decisions. Get these right and even a homemade Family Feud feels like a show; skip them and the best slide deck in the world turns into a meeting.

1. Pick one format and one host. Choose a single game show for the session, or two at most for a full hour, and put one person on the mic. The host does not play. Their job is to read, adjudicate and keep the energy up, and a second person on scoring and breakout rooms helps once you pass about 20 players.
2. Split into teams before the call. Teams of four to six are the sweet spot. Assign them in advance, name them (or let them name themselves in the first two minutes), and use breakout rooms for any round that needs a huddle. Individual play works up to about a dozen people; beyond that, someone is always waiting.
3. Decide how people buzz in. The chat is the universal buzzer: the first correct answer typed wins, and the host reads the timestamps. For simultaneous reveals, have everyone type an answer and press enter on a count of three, or hold a card up to the camera. Reserve the "unmute and shout" buzzer for groups under ten.
4. Keep visible score and end with a prize. Share a simple scoreboard slide between rounds, or type running totals into the chat. Announce the prize at the start, even a small one, and let the losing team pick the next game.

Timing matters more on video than in a room. Most hosted virtual events settle into the same window, and our data says that window is not an accident.

Here is a run-of-show for a 60-minute DIY game show that we would put in front of a real team.

Time	Segment	What happens
0:00 to 0:05	Arrival and team names	Host welcomes people in, teams confirm their names in the chat, host explains the buzzer rule once.
0:05 to 0:10	Warm-up round	Five easy questions with chat answers so everyone learns the mechanics with nothing at stake.
0:10 to 0:30	Main game, round 1	The headline format (Feud, Jeopardy, Price Is Right). Scores announced at the end of the round.
0:30 to 0:35	Lightning break	A 60-second scavenger hunt or a spin-the-wheel bonus question to reset energy. Cameras on.
0:35 to 0:52	Main game, round 2	Either a second format or double points on the first. Trailing teams can catch up here, which keeps everyone playing.
0:52 to 0:58	Final wager	One question, teams wager any share of their points in a private chat to the host, big reveal.
0:58 to 1:00	Prizes and photo	Announce the winners, screenshot the gallery view, close on time.

Platform choice is less important than people think. Among the virtual events booked on teambuilding.com, clients host 82% on Zoom, 11% on Microsoft Teams, 4% on Google Meet and 2% on Webex, and every format on this page works on all four. Use whatever your team already has open.

25 virtual game show ideas for work (DIY)

The formats below are the ones we would actually run with a real team. Several are rounds lifted straight from our hosted events, the rest are TV classics we have adapted for a chat panel and a gallery view. Each one comes with instructions, a "best for" line and, where we have one, a lesson from hosting it. They are grouped by the job you need done: a classic show for a team social, a format that scales to a large group, a five-minute game for a meeting, or a full company game show.

Activity	Best for	Group size	Time	Cost
Virtual Family Feud	Team socials, all-hands	8–100+	20–45 min	Free
Virtual Jeopardy	Trivia-loving teams	6–50	30–45 min	Free
Virtual Price Is Right	Any group, zero prep for players	5–200+	15–30 min	Free
Wheel of Fortune	Word-game fans	4–20	15–25 min	Free
Pyramid	Communication under pressure	4–20	15–30 min	Free
Match Game	Laughs, small teams	6–30	15–25 min	Free
The Newlywed Game, Coworker Edition	Pairs who work closely	6–24	20–30 min	Free
Hollywood Squares	Bluffing and trivia	11–30	20–30 min	Free
Name That Tune	Fast, high-energy rounds	5–100+	15–25 min	Free
Chat Waterfall Quiz	Large groups, warm-ups	20–500+	10–20 min	Free
Bet on the Crowd	Getting to know a big team	10–1,000	15–30 min	Free
Last One Standing	Town halls, no speaking required	15–500	10–15 min	Free
Lightning Scavenger Hunt Showdown	Energy and movement	5–100+	10–20 min	Free
Guess Who Said It	Connection in mid-size groups	10–60	15–30 min	Free
Virtual Minute to Win It	Physical, silly, quick	6–40	10–20 min	Free
Lightning Recap Quiz	Training sessions, presentations	5–500	5–10 min	Free
The Stats Are Right	All-hands and business reviews	5–500	5–10 min	Free
Spin the Wheel Hot Seat	Recurring meeting ritual	5–30	5–15 min	Free
True or False Showdown	Big rooms, fast eliminations	10–500	5–10 min	Free
Build Your Own Company Game Show	Company events, parties	10–1,000	60–90 min	Free
Most Likely To: Live Vote	Celebrations, year-end	8–100	15–20 min	Free
Trivia League	Ongoing engagement	8–200	20 min weekly	Free
Our Company's Got Talent	Parties, big personalities	10–200	30–60 min	Free
What's My Line? Secret Skill Edition	Discovering hidden talents	6–40	15–30 min	Free
Holiday Game Show	December parties	10–1,000	45–90 min	Free

Classic game shows to play online

These are the TV formats everyone already knows how to play, which is exactly why they work on a call: you spend thirty seconds explaining the buzzer rule and no time at all explaining the game.

1. Virtual Family Feud

Family Feud is the format we get asked about most, and the one that translates best to video, because the whole game runs on guessing what other people think. Our hosted version is Coworker Feud, and the DIY version needs one survey and one slide deck.

To play:

1. A week before the show, send a short survey with eight to ten "name something" prompts. Use your own team as the sample: "Name something that gets said in every stand-up," "Name a snack that disappears from the office kitchen," "Name a Slack channel nobody has muted." Collect the top five answers for each prompt and note how many people gave each one.
2. Build one slide per prompt with the five answers hidden behind boxes, or use a free Feud template.
3. Split into two teams. For the face-off, one player from each team types a guess in the chat; whoever lands the higher-ranked answer wins control.
4. The controlling team guesses one at a time, unmuting in turn. Three wrong answers (post a big X in the chat for each strike) and the other team gets one guess to steal everything on the board.
5. Play five or six boards, then a Fast Money round where two players from the leading team answer five prompts in 20 seconds each.

If you would rather not survey your team, here are Family Feud questions and answers to start from.

Best for: 8 to 100+ people, in two teams or a bracket of several
Time: 20 to 45 minutes
Materials (cost): Survey form and a slide deck (free)

What we've learned: The survey is the show. Boards built from your own company's answers get twice the reaction of generic ones, because the reveal tells people something about their coworkers. Also announce the strike rule out loud before the first board; on video, the host is the only strike graphic there is.

2. Virtual Jeopardy

Jeopardy is a category board of clues with increasing point values, answered in the form of a question. It is the best format for a team that likes knowing things, and the easiest to theme around your company.

To play:

1. Build a board with five categories and five values each. Mix two general categories (world capitals, '90s movies) with three about your team ("Acronyms we actually use," "Products by launch year," "Who runs which meeting").
2. Share your screen. Teams take turns picking a category and value; the host reads the clue aloud.
3. The first team to type a correct response in the chat, phrased as a question, wins the points. A wrong response costs the points and opens the clue to the other teams.
4. Hide one Daily Double on the board, where the team that finds it wagers before hearing the clue.
5. Finish with Final Jeopardy: each team privately messages the host a wager, then answers one clue in 30 seconds.

Need clues fast? This generator produces trivia questions on demand:

For a deeper walkthrough, including free board templates, see our guide to team building Jeopardy.

Best for: 6 to 50 people, in teams of three to six
Time: 30 to 45 minutes
Materials (cost): Slide or template board (free)

What we've learned: Keep clues under 15 words. On a shared screen, long clues get read twice and the buzzers get confused. And put the company categories on the right side of the board; teams always start on the left, so the inside jokes land in the second half when the room has warmed up.

3. Virtual Price Is Right

The Price Is Right is the lowest-prep game show on this list and the one most likely to get a silent team shouting numbers. Players see a product and guess the price; closest without going over wins.

To play:

1. Before the show, pick eight to ten products and screenshot them with the price cropped out. Keep an answer key in a spreadsheet.
2. Share the first product. Everyone types a guess in the chat but waits to press enter until the host counts down from three, so nobody can copy.
3. Closest without going over wins the round and one point. Anyone who goes over is out for that item.
4. For the Showcase finale, show a bundle of three items. Each team wagers their points on being within 10% of the total.

For team play, let each team huddle for 20 seconds in the chat thread before submitting one answer.

Best for: 5 to 200+ people, individually or in teams
Time: 15 to 30 minutes
Materials (cost): Product screenshots and a spreadsheet answer key (free)

What we've learned: Pick products people recognize but have not memorized. Everyone knows what AirPods cost; nobody knows what a specific brand of stand mixer, a 40-pound bag of dog food or a single ostrich egg costs, and those guesses are where the laughs are. Two or three wildcard items per game is the right dose. Company swag store items make a great final bundle.

4. Wheel of Fortune

Wheel of Fortune is a hidden-phrase puzzle where players spin for a point value and guess consonants, buy vowels, and try to solve. It plays like Hangman with a scoreboard and rewards the people who are good with words rather than facts.

To play:

1. Prepare six to eight phrases and put each one on a slide as blanks, with a category hint ("Thing," "Phrase," "Around the office").
2. Use a free online spinner wheel with point values, a Bankrupt segment and a Lose a Turn segment. The host spins it on a shared screen.
3. The team in control spins, calls a consonant, and earns the wheel value multiplied by the number of times the letter appears. Vowels cost a flat 250 points.
4. A team can attempt to solve on its turn. A wrong solve passes control.

Company phrases make the best puzzles: product names, a line from your values page, the name of the conference room everyone fights over. For more of this kind of thing, see our list of word games.

Best for: 4 to 20 people, in two or three teams
Time: 15 to 25 minutes
Materials (cost): Slides and a free online spinner (free)

What we've learned: For groups larger than about 20, skip the wheel and run Toss-Up rounds: reveal one random letter every five seconds and award the round to the first person to type the full phrase. It keeps 60 people playing instead of watching.

5. Pyramid

Pyramid is a describe-the-word game played in pairs against the clock. One partner sees a list of words and describes them without saying them, the other guesses, and speed wins.

To play:

1. Pair players up. If you have teams, each team nominates a pair per round.
2. The host privately messages the clue-giver a list of seven words in one category ("Things in a kitchen," "Famous ducks," "Meeting jargon").
3. Spotlight the pair. The clue-giver has 30 seconds to describe as many words as possible; the guesser calls them out. Saying any part of the word skips it.
4. One point per correct word. The pair with the most points after two rounds plays the Winner's Circle: six categories in 60 seconds, where the clue-giver lists items and the guesser names the category.

Best for: 4 to 20 people
Time: 15 to 30 minutes
Materials (cost): Word lists (free)

What we've learned: Ban "rhymes with" and "starts with" up front, or every round turns into spelling. And write at least one category about your own work; "Things our customers say" is consistently the round people talk about afterward.

6. Match Game

Match Game is a fill-in-the-blank game where a contestant tries to match the answers of a panel. It is silly, fast, and the reveal-one-at-a-time mechanic is perfect for a gallery view.

To play:

1. Pick a panel of four to six people and one contestant per round.
2. The host reads a prompt with a blank: "There's free ____ in the break room!" or "Worst possible name for a company Wi-Fi network: ____."
3. Panelists write their answer on a piece of paper and keep it face down. The contestant then says their answer out loud.
4. Panelists reveal to the camera one by one. The contestant scores one point per match.
5. Rotate contestants every round; the panel stays.

Best for: 6 to 30 people
Time: 15 to 25 minutes
Materials (cost): Prompt list, paper and markers (free)

What we've learned: The show lives in the reveal, so make the panel hold their cards up slowly and let the host react to each one. Prompts should be workplace-safe by design rather than by luck; a blank that invites an off-color answer will get one.

7. The Newlywed Game, Coworker Edition

The Newlywed Game asks pairs how well they know each other. The coworker version pairs people who work together closely (a manager and a direct report, two engineers on the same project, sales and the account manager they hand off to) and scores how well they predict each other's answers.

To play:

1. Send each player a form with eight questions about their partner: favorite work snack, the app they check first in the morning, their most-used emoji, where they would go on a month off.
2. Send a second form asking each player the same questions about themselves. Now you have both sides.
3. On the call, display the pair's answers side by side, one question at a time. One point per match. Let the pair defend their wrong guesses; that is the entertaining part.
4. The highest-scoring pair wins. Tie-break with a live round where partners write answers on paper and reveal together.

Here are Newlywed Game questions you can adapt for coworkers.

Best for: 6 to 24 people, in pairs
Time: 20 to 30 minutes
Materials (cost): Two short forms (free)

What we've learned: Pair by working relationship, not friendship. Two best friends who match on everything is a dull round; a manager who confidently gets their report's coffee order wrong is a great one, and the two of them will talk about it for weeks.

8. Hollywood Squares

Hollywood Squares is tic-tac-toe played over trivia and bluffing. Nine "celebrities" sit in a grid, two contestants pick squares, and the celebrity answers a question that may or may not be true.

To play:

1. Spotlight nine players as the squares and arrange them in a 3x3 gallery view. Split everyone else into Team X and Team O.
2. Team X picks a square. The host asks that person a trivia question, and they answer confidently, whether they know it or not.
3. Team X decides whether to agree or disagree. Right call claims the square; wrong call gives it to Team O.
4. Claimed squares switch their virtual background to a solid color (or hold up a paper X or O). Three in a row wins.

Best for: 11 to 30 people
Time: 20 to 30 minutes
Materials (cost): Trivia questions and two solid-color virtual backgrounds (free)

What we've learned: Brief the squares privately to bluff on about a third of the questions and to keep a straight face. Without that instruction, everyone answers honestly and the game becomes ordinary trivia with a grid.

9. Name That Tune

Name That Tune is a music-recognition race. The host plays a few seconds of a song and the first player to identify it wins the point. It is the highest-energy classic on this list per minute played.

To play:

1. Build a playlist of 15 to 20 songs, grouped into themed rounds: one-hit wonders, movie themes, songs from the year the company was founded.
2. Share your screen with "share computer audio" enabled. Play the first five seconds of a track.
3. The first correct title typed in the chat wins a point; the artist earns a bonus point.
4. Play a Bid-a-Note final: teams bid how few seconds they need ("I can name that tune in two seconds"), and the lowest bidder has to deliver.

Best for: 5 to 100+ people
Time: 15 to 25 minutes
Materials (cost): A streaming playlist (free)

What we've learned: Test the audio share in a private call first. Half the failed Name That Tune games we have heard about were silent on the participants' side for the first three songs. Intros work better than choruses because the guessing is harder and the buzzer race is closer.

Interactive game shows for large groups

A game show for 12 people and a game show for 300 are different products. Once the group passes roughly 15, unmute-and-answer stops working and the only formats that hold the room are the ones where everyone plays at the same moment: chat waterfalls, polls, reactions and cameras. The five formats below all scale to hundreds of players without anyone waiting for a turn, and they are the mechanics we lean on in our own large-group events.

Scale is not a niche use case. The median virtual event we run is a team of 16, but we have hosted 448 virtual events with 100 or more participants, the largest with over 1,000 attendees. If you are planning something that size, our guide to virtual team building for large groups covers the logistics in more depth.

10. Chat Waterfall Quiz

The Chat Waterfall is the simplest large-group buzzer there is: everyone answers at once, and the chat becomes the scoreboard.

To play:

1. The host reads a question and tells everyone to type their answer but not to send it.
2. On "three, two, one, send," everyone presses enter at the same time, and the answers cascade down the chat in a waterfall.
3. The host scans for correct answers and calls out the first few names. For team play, a scorer counts correct answers per team.
4. Run ten questions, mixing trivia with "guess the number" prompts and one-word opinion questions.

Best for: 20 to 500+ people
Time: 10 to 20 minutes
Materials (cost): Question list (free)

What we've learned: Use the waterfall as the warm-up round of any bigger show. It teaches the whole group the chat mechanic in two minutes with nothing at stake, so the main game runs clean.

11. Bet on the Crowd

Bet on the Crowd is part trivia, part social experiment: instead of asking what is true, it asks what your coworkers think, and players bet on the majority. It scales to a thousand people because the crowd is the game.

To play:

1. Before the event, survey the team with a dozen this-or-that questions: dogs or cats, morning person or night owl, would you rather have a four-day week or fully remote.
2. On the call, ask "Did more people on this team say dogs or cats?" Everyone votes on which side won, using a poll or reaction emoji.
3. Reveal the real split. Everyone who bet on the majority earns a point.
4. For a knockout version, anyone who bets wrong turns their camera off, and the last cameras on win.

Best for: 10 to 1,000 people
Time: 15 to 30 minutes
Materials (cost): A survey and a poll tool (free)

What we've learned: Put the survey link in the calendar invite and again the morning of the event. The game is only as good as the response rate, and a 30-person sample of a 300-person company makes the reveals feel like guesses.

12. Last One Standing

Last One Standing is an elimination game show for the biggest rooms. Everyone plays every round, nobody has to speak, and the whole thing takes ten minutes, which makes it the best game we know for the top of a town hall.

To play:

1. Everyone turns their camera on. The host asks a would-you-rather or a majority-rules question ("Would you rather give up coffee or music for a month?").
2. Players show their side: a raised hand for option A, nothing for option B, or a reaction emoji for each.
3. The host announces which side had more votes. Everyone on the minority side turns their camera off and is out.
4. Repeat until one player, or a small handful, remains. Ask them one bonus question for the win.

Best for: 15 to 500 people
Time: 10 to 15 minutes
Materials (cost): A question list (free)

What we've learned: The game is about which side people think the majority will pick, not what they personally prefer, so say that out loud in the intro. Once people realize they are reading the room rather than answering honestly, the strategy starts and the shouting begins.

13. Lightning Scavenger Hunt Showdown

A Lightning Scavenger Hunt is a race to find an object and get it on camera first. Run as a scored game show round, it is the fastest way to get a large group out of their chairs.

To play:

1. The host announces a clue: "Something older than you are," "The strangest thing in your desk drawer," "A mug you would be embarrassed to bring to a meeting."
2. Players have 60 seconds to find a qualifying item and hold it up to the camera.
3. The first three back with a qualifying item earn points for their team. For subjective clues, the host awards a bonus point for the best item.
4. Run six to eight rounds. Let one or two people tell the 20-second story behind their object between rounds.

Best for: 5 to 100+ people
Time: 10 to 20 minutes
Materials (cost): Nothing (free)

What we've learned: Ask for categories, not objects. "A coffee mug" gets you 200 coffee mugs; "something you own that you cannot explain" gets you a story from every square. Use it as the mid-show energy break in a longer game show rather than as the whole event.

14. Guess Who Said It

Guess Who Said It turns your team's own facts into the answer board. The host reads a surprising fact or opinion submitted anonymously by a coworker, and teams guess whose it is.

To play:

1. A few days before, ask everyone to submit one fact about themselves that most coworkers do not know, plus one strong opinion ("Pineapple on pizza is correct," "Meetings should start at :05").
2. Build a poll for each fact with four candidate names, including the real one.
3. Read the fact, run the poll for 30 seconds, then reveal. Teams score a point per correct guess.
4. Give the person 30 seconds to add the story behind the fact. That is where the connection happens.

Best for: 10 to 60 people
Time: 15 to 30 minutes
Materials (cost): A form and a poll tool (free)

What we've learned: Prompt for "something you did before this job" rather than "a fun fact." Fun facts produce "I like hiking"; the before-this-job prompt produces former lifeguards, ex-touring-drummers and a surprising number of people who once worked at a theme park.

Quick game show ideas for meetings and presentations

Not every game show needs an hour. These five run in five to twenty minutes, need almost no prep, and drop into a weekly meeting, a training session or the middle of a long presentation to wake the room up. The rule for all of them: one round, one winner, back to the agenda.

15. Virtual Minute to Win It

Minute to Win It is a series of 60-second physical challenges using ordinary objects. On video, each team sends one representative per challenge and the rest of the call cheers, which is why it works as a break in the middle of a longer meeting.

To play:

1. Choose three or four challenges with a countable result: stack the tallest tower of office supplies, stick the most sticky notes to your face, bounce a crumpled paper ball into a mug from arm's length, move the most pieces of cereal between two bowls with a spoon held in your mouth.
2. Each team picks a representative for each challenge. Announce the challenge 30 seconds before it starts so people can grab supplies.
3. Run a visible 60-second timer on the shared screen. Representatives stay on camera the whole time.
4. Count the results on camera. Winner takes the round; most rounds wins.

Here is our full list of virtual Minute to Win It games.

Best for: 6 to 40 people
Time: 10 to 20 minutes
Materials (cost): Office and household items (free)

What we've learned: Pick challenges where the camera can see the score. "How many sticky notes are on your face" is instantly verifiable by 40 people; "how many times did you flip the bottle" is an argument.

16. Lightning Recap Quiz

The Lightning Recap Quiz is a game show built from whatever was just presented. It turns the last 20 minutes of slides into five questions, and it is the format we would use in any training session.

To play:

1. While preparing the presentation, write five questions about the things people will actually need to remember: the new process, the date something changes, the one number leadership cares about.
2. After the content, announce a five-question lightning round. Chat is the buzzer; first correct answer wins the point.
3. Read the questions fast, no more than 20 seconds each. Post the correct answer in the chat after each one so it is written down twice.
4. The winner gets a small prize or first pick of something real, like the next project or the good time slot.

Best for: 5 to 500 people
Time: 5 to 10 minutes
Materials (cost): Five questions (free)

What we've learned: Tell people at the start of the presentation that there will be a quiz with a prize at the end. It sounds like a gimmick, and it visibly changes how many cameras stay on for the next 20 minutes.

17. The Stats Are Right

The Stats Are Right is The Price Is Right played with your own company's numbers instead of retail prices. It is the best five minutes we know for the top of an all-hands or a quarterly business review.

To play:

1. Pick five numbers from the business that you would like people to remember: support tickets closed last quarter, customers in the newest market, years since the company was founded, cups of coffee expensed in the office.
2. Show the label without the number. Everyone types a guess and sends on a count of three.
3. Closest without going over wins the round. Reveal the real figure with one sentence of context.
4. Keep a running tally in the chat; the winner across five rounds gets the prize.

Best for: 5 to 500 people
Time: 5 to 10 minutes
Materials (cost): Five slides (free)

What we've learned: Guessing a number makes people care about it in a way a chart never does. The wildly wrong guesses ("40,000 tickets?" "Try 4,000.") are the whole point; they show leadership what the team does and does not know about the business.

18. Spin the Wheel Hot Seat

Spin the Wheel Hot Seat is a two-minute ritual for recurring meetings. A random spinner picks a person, that person takes the hot seat for one rapid-fire question, and the meeting moves on.

To play:

1. Load everyone's name into a free online spinner wheel and share the screen.
2. Spin. The person the wheel lands on answers one question in 60 seconds: a get-to-know-you prompt, a would-you-rather, or a trivia question worth a point for their side of the room.
3. The person who was just in the hot seat picks the category for the next spin.
4. Two or three spins per meeting. Keep a running leaderboard for the quarter.

Best for: 5 to 30 people
Time: 5 to 15 minutes
Materials (cost): A free online spinner (free)

What we've learned: The wheel does the job a facilitator usually has to: it decides who speaks, and nobody argues with a wheel. Teams that run this for a few weeks stop needing the wheel, because people start volunteering.

19. True or False Showdown

True or False Showdown is an elimination quiz where every player answers every statement at the same moment. It is the fastest way to run a game show in a very large meeting, and a round takes 30 seconds.

To play:

1. Prepare 12 to 15 statements that split the room: company history, product facts, a few absurd animal facts, one or two about the people on the call (with their permission).
2. Everyone turns their camera on. The host reads a statement; players hold up a thumbs up for true or a flat palm for false. On larger platforms, use the reaction emoji instead.
3. Reveal the answer. Anyone who got it wrong turns their camera off.
4. Last camera on wins. If several survive the whole list, run a sudden-death guess-the-number tiebreaker.

Our hosted version of this mechanic is True or False: Unusual Beasts, built entirely on animal facts too strange to be true, several of which are.

Best for: 10 to 500 people
Time: 5 to 10 minutes
Materials (cost): A statement list (free)

What we've learned: Aim for statements where the room splits close to even. Obvious ones eliminate nobody and the round is dead; a good false statement is one that a reasonable person would defend.

Company game show ideas for corporate events and parties

The formats above are rounds. These six are whole events: the game show is the party, the celebration or the season. They take more planning and pay it back in the only currency that matters here, which is people still talking about it a month later.

20. Build Your Own Company Game Show

Build Your Own Company Game Show is a 60 to 90 minute production that strings three short formats together under one scoreboard. It is the DIY version of our Build Your Own Game Show event, where the client picks the rounds and our host runs them.

To play:

1. Choose three formats from this list with different mechanics: one guessing game (Price Is Right), one knowledge game (Jeopardy or Family Feud), and one everyone-plays-at-once game (Last One Standing or a chat waterfall).
2. Give the show a name and a theme, assign a host and a scorekeeper, and build one deck with a title slide, a scoreboard slide and the three rounds.
3. Split into teams of four to six with names. Run the rounds at 15 to 20 minutes each with a two-minute scoreboard break between them.
4. Finish with a final wager question worth up to double a team's points, so the last round matters for everyone.

Best for: 10 to 1,000 people
Time: 60 to 90 minutes
Materials (cost): One slide deck and a scoreboard (free)

What we've learned: Vary the mechanic between rounds, not just the theme. Three trivia rounds with different names feel like one long quiz; a guessing round, a knowledge round and a movement round feel like a show.

21. Most Likely To: Live Vote

Most Likely To is a voting game show where the audience is the panel. The host reads a "most likely to" prompt, everyone votes for a coworker, and the winner collects the title. It doubles as an informal awards show for year-end parties.

To play:

1. Prepare 10 to 15 prompts: most likely to reply to an email at 2 a.m., most likely to win a reality show, most likely to have a secret hobby. Use the generator below for more.
2. Read the prompt and open a poll with four or five nominees, or let people type a name in the chat.
3. Reveal the winner, hand them a made-up title ("Chief Night Owl") and give them 15 seconds for an acceptance speech.
4. Track titles per team; the team with the most winners at the end takes the prize.

Best for: 8 to 100 people
Time: 15 to 20 minutes
Materials (cost): A prompt list and a poll tool (free)

What we've learned: Keep every prompt flattering or neutral. "Most likely to be late" gets a laugh once and a resentment for a quarter. "Most likely to help you move apartments" gets the same laugh and makes someone's week.

22. Trivia League

A Trivia League is a game show as a season: a 20-minute match every week for six weeks, standings in Slack, playoffs at the end. It is the format we recommend when the goal is ongoing engagement rather than one big event.

To play:

1. Set fixed teams of three to five and a fixed weekly slot, ideally attached to a meeting that already exists.
2. Each match is 15 questions in three themed rounds, answered by chat waterfall. Rotate the quizmaster each week so nobody has to write six weeks of questions.
3. Post standings the same afternoon. Award one point for a win and a bonus point for the best team name change of the week.
4. Finish with a playoff between the top two teams and a championship prize.

If you would rather have someone else write and host the matches, Virtual Trivia: Team vs Team is a 60-minute hosted version with rounds that change format as the game goes on.

Learn more→

Virtual Trivia: Team vs Team

Choose your trivia theme and let the friendly competition begin!

Virtual60 min$30 pp 5.0(4,183)

For question material, start with our library of trivia questions.

Best for: 8 to 200 people
Time: 20 minutes weekly, for six weeks
Materials (cost): Questions and a shared standings doc (free)

What we've learned: The standings are the engagement. A team that is three points back in week four will show up to week five, and a public leaderboard does more for attendance than any reminder email.

23. Our Company's Got Talent

Our Company's Got Talent is a performance competition with a game show wrapper: acts, judges with buzzers, an audience vote and a winner. It is a natural centerpiece for a holiday party or a team celebration.

To play:

1. Recruit six to ten performers at least two weeks ahead and ask each to name their act, so you can build a running order and warn the audience about the accordion.
2. Appoint three judges. Give each judge a "buzzer" (a red card held up to the camera) and one comment per act, kind by rule.
3. Each act gets three minutes on camera, spotlighted. Leave a minute between acts for reactions and chat.
4. Run a poll for the audience favorite, then a final judges' pick. Award both.

Here is our full guide to running a virtual talent show.

Best for: 10 to 200 people
Time: 30 to 60 minutes
Materials (cost): A running order and a poll (free)

What we've learned: Ask performers to invent a backstory for their act and let the host read it as the introduction. "Priya has been juggling since the 2019 offsite incident" is funnier than "Priya will juggle," and it takes the pressure off the performance itself.

24. What's My Line? Secret Skill Edition

What's My Line? is a classic panel show where contestants ask yes-or-no questions to uncover a mystery guest's occupation. The workplace edition uses a coworker's hidden past job, unusual hobby or secret skill.

To play:

1. Collect secrets via a form a week ahead: a job before this one, a skill nobody at work knows about, a competition they once entered. Pick the six best with permission.
2. Each round, one guest is spotlighted and the host privately confirms the secret. A panel of four asks yes-or-no questions in turn.
3. Ten questions maximum. A "no" answer passes the questioning to the next panelist. The panel can make one guess per "no."
4. If the panel guesses within ten questions, the panel scores; if not, the guest wins and tells the story.

Best for: 6 to 40 people
Time: 15 to 30 minutes
Materials (cost): A form (free)

What we've learned: Vet the secrets before the show rather than live. Every team has at least one former semi-professional athlete or child actor, and the format is at its best when the host already knows which round to save for last.

25. Holiday Game Show

A Holiday Game Show is a themed version of any format above, run as the main event of a December party. December is the busiest month of the year for team building, and a game show is the format that holds a mixed group of a hundred people in party mode for an hour.

To play:

1. Pick three rounds and theme each one: Holiday Feud ("Name something that goes wrong at a family dinner"), Price Is Right with gifts, and Name That Tune with holiday songs.
2. Ask everyone to join in a festive sweater or a themed virtual background, and give a bonus point to the best one in the first five minutes.
3. Run the rounds at 15 minutes each, with a two-minute break for a toast between rounds two and three.
4. Award the prizes on camera, then leave the room open for ten minutes of unstructured chat for anyone who wants to stay.

The hosted version is Ultimate Holiday Game Show, and for the rest of the evening's plan, see our guide to running a virtual holiday party.

Best for: 10 to 1,000 people
Time: 45 to 90 minutes
Materials (cost): Slides, a playlist and prizes (free to run; prizes optional)

What we've learned: Book the date early. The good slots in the second and third weeks of December go first, whether you are booking a host or just trying to find an hour when the whole team is free.

Online game show apps and templates

You can run everything on this page with slides and the chat panel. If you want buzzers, timers and automatic scoring, these are the tools we see teams use most. Prices change; check each site before you commit.

Tool	What it does	Formats	Typical cost
Kahoot!	Live multiple-choice quizzes where players answer on their phones and a leaderboard updates after every question.	Trivia, recap quizzes, true or false	Free tier; paid plans for larger groups and business features
TriviaMaker	Game show templates you fill with your own content, including a category grid, a list format and a wheel.	Jeopardy-style boards, Feud-style lists, wheel games	Free basic version; paid tiers
Jackbox Games	Party game packs where one person shares the screen and everyone else plays from a phone using a room code.	Trivia, drawing, fill-in-the-blank party games	One-time purchase per party pack
QuizShow.io	Custom quiz shows with phones as buzzers, several question types and built-in visuals and sound.	Buzzer trivia, estimates, fill in the blank	Free trial; monthly plans
Slides plus a free template	A shared slide deck with a Feud or Jeopardy template from the web, scored by hand in the chat.	Any format on this page	Free

For pre-written boards, see our online Jeopardy games and this list of quiz games.

Prizes for virtual game shows

Game shows are supposed to have prizes, and a remote team is not going to fit a speedboat through the chat. Announce the prize before the first round; it changes how people play. These are the ones that work at a distance.

Prize	Why it works	Typical cost
Time off	An early log-off on Friday or a bonus half-day. The most-wanted prize we see, and it costs nothing in cash. Set a deadline to use it.	Free
Digital gift cards	Emailed the same day, so the winner gets the prize while the win is still fresh. Let winners choose the store.	$10 to $50 per winner
Lunch on the company	A food-delivery credit for the winning team, ideally used together on a call the following week.	$15 to $25 per person
Company swag store credit	Works when the store has items in the credit's price range. A rare or retired item beats a generic hoodie.	$20 to $50 per winner
Bragging rights	A rotating trophy emoji next to the winning team's name in Slack until the next show. Free, and surprisingly contested.	Free
Losing team consequences	The losing team picks the next game, sings the winners a jingle, or wears the ugly virtual background for a week. Silly, never humiliating, and agreed to in advance.	Free

For more ideas that ship anywhere, see our list of gifts for employees.

What we've learned from hosting virtual game shows

Game shows were among the first virtual events we launched in 2020, and they are still among the most booked. A few patterns hold across the thousands of rounds since.

The host is the show. The same Family Feud board is a great event with a host who reacts to every answer and a dull one with a host who reads the slides. This shows up in the data: roughly one in five published reviews of our virtual events mention the host by name. Participants remember who ran the show, not the software.

Teams beat individuals almost every time. Individual play puts one person on the spot and leaves everyone else watching. Teams of four to six let the confident people carry the buzzer while the quieter people carry the huddle, and the loudest moments in our game shows are teams arguing about an answer in a breakout room.

The point of the competition is the laughing, not the winning. This is worth taking seriously rather than treating as a nicety. In a six-month field study of nearly 1,800 British Telecom call-center workers published in Management Science (Bellet, De Neve and Ward, 2023), a one-point increase in self-reported weekly happiness was associated with about a 12% increase in productivity. A game show is a cheap way to move that number for an hour, and a well-run one keeps moving it for the rest of the week.

Group size changes the format completely. The mistake we see most often is running a small-group format in a large room: a Match Game panel for 80 people, or unmute-to-answer trivia at a town hall. Here is how we would pick.

Group size	What works	What to avoid
Under 15	Turn-taking formats where everyone speaks: Match Game, Pyramid, The Newlywed Game, Spin the Wheel Hot Seat. Unmute is a fine buzzer.	Polls and elimination games. The room is small enough to just play.
15 to 40	Team formats with a chat buzzer: Family Feud, Jeopardy, Price Is Right, Hollywood Squares. Breakout rooms for huddles.	Individual turn-taking; anything that needs everyone to unmute.
40 to 100	Everyone-plays-at-once rounds: Chat Waterfall Quiz, Bet on the Crowd, True or False Showdown, with a scorekeeper and pre-assigned teams.	Panels and pairs games, unless the rest of the group has something to do.
100+	Poll- and reaction-based games with a co-host: Last One Standing, The Stats Are Right, waterfall trivia. Or book a host and play.	Anything scored by hand in the chat. Above 100, the scorer cannot keep up.

Prep is the whole difference. A game show has more moving parts than any other meeting your team runs: slides, timers, breakout rooms, scoring, prizes. Every rough DIY show we have heard about broke on a detail that could have been tested the day before, usually the audio share or the breakout-room assignments. Run the mechanics once with two colleagues before you run them with two hundred.

Virtual game show ideas we don't recommend

The old version of this article included a few formats we would not run today. Some need props that cannot be sent to a remote team, some fall apart on video, and some are fine games that simply are not game shows. Here is the list, so you can skip them and the lists on other sites that copied them.

The Lame List

Activity	Why skip it	Verdict
Virtual Chopped	Nobody can taste the food, so the judging is guesswork, and mailing mystery ingredients costs more than a hosted event. If you want to cook together, book one of these online cooking classes instead.	Skip it
Masked Dancer	Requires coworkers to film themselves dancing in advance, which most people quietly decline to do. The reveal is fun; the recruiting is not.	Skip it
Whose Line Is It Anyway?	Improv on a video call needs performers who are comfortable failing in front of coworkers, and latency kills the timing. It is a good improv game for a willing group, not a game show for a whole company.	Better in person
Virtual Amazing Race	The TV format is a travel show. Online versions become a scavenger hunt with extra rules, and the scavenger hunt alone (number 13) is better.	Usually skip
Trivia read off a PDF	Fifty questions, no teams, no scoreboard, no host energy. It is a quiz, and a long one. Add teams, a buzzer rule and a visible score before you call it a game show.	Add structure
Punishment-based prizes	A pie in the face or a dare for the losing team reads as fun in the planning doc and as humiliation on camera. Keep consequences silly, opt-in and agreed to in advance.	Keep it kind
Any format with 200 people on unmute	Turn-taking does not scale. Above about 15 people, every game show needs a chat buzzer, a poll or a card held to the camera.	Change the mechanic
Two-hour marathon shows	Energy on video runs out around the 90-minute mark no matter how good the host is. Two shorter shows a month apart beat one long one.	Cut it in half

Final thoughts

A virtual game show is the rare team event where the format does the work for you. The rules are familiar, the competition is built in, and a chat panel turns out to be a very good buzzer. Pick one format, put one person on the mic, split into teams before the call, and keep score where everyone can see it.

If you would rather play than host, our hosted game shows run from 10 players to 1,000 and our hosts have run thousands of them. Either way, the goal is the same: an hour where a remote team gets loud together, and a few stories that follow them back into the work.

Next, check out our list of virtual game night ideas, these workplace competitions, and this guide to hosting a virtual award ceremony.