Reverse Charades - Engaging EVERYONE in a fun Virtual Meeting Game

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Reverse Charades—Improving Everybody’s Nonverbal
Communication

Goals: Play charades with more engagement and more energy.
Have you ever wished for a fun game where more people were engaged? Do you want a
game that’s high energy? Reverse Charades takes the game of charades and reverses it so only one person is the guesser and all the other attendees act out the word or phrase. You can see
the energy when you have 10–20 video windows all moving around in different directions
and with different strategies.

Time: 2 minutes per round

Participants: 2–50; you can do more if you use breakout rooms

Technology: Audio, video, chat, (optional) breakout rooms

Category: Fun, communication

Instruction: Choose one person to be the guesser; everybody else is now the actors.
Have the guesser close their chat window and cover the area where chat alerts can show up.
Test it by chatting “TEST WORD” and get a thumbs up that the guesser can’t see it.
Now chat to everyone the actual word or phrase.
Ask actors for a thumbs up so you can see if all or the majority of people saw it.
Count down 3, 2, 1 and start a 60-second timer, usually held up to the camera.
The guesser will now have multiple windows of information to guess from! You can
remind the guesser to click the right or left arrows if there is more than one screen full
of actors.

Tips: Start with easy words and move to harder ones. Another way to customize the
game is to have all the participants private chat the host a collection of words and phrases.

Case Study: I was introduced to Reverse Charades at the North American Simulation
and Gaming Association conference. Formed in 1962, it’s one of the oldest gamification
conferences. By turning charades upside down, it creates 100% engagement and a lot more
energy as so many people are acting at the same time. I have used this for special events such
as birthday parties where I ask people to private chat me one to seven words about the birthday
person, who becomes the guesser. Each actor gets to tell a story about why they chose
their clue about the birthday person and whether or not the birthday person got the answer.
You get to know something new about the birthday person and it’s just plain fun.