With a very sports-driven last few months, getting together with friends at a bar or an apartment for a watch party felt pretty effortless. However, between those events, one can begin to feel nostalgic for those casual hangouts that weren’t dependent on good weather and that occurred during the week. A possible solution to this problem, should you choose to accept it, is having game nights! With a competitive edge similar to sports, playing games with your friends -- whether board, trivia, card, or invented -- can make for a silly fun time and a surprisingly deep bonding experience. These are 5 ways I noticed game nights can help you get to know friends better!
Trivia And Common Knowledge Answers
I recently played the board game Anomia with my friends and realized how much you can learn about a person through their answers in a "common knowledge" game like this. Given a prompt like "celebrity couple" or "disturbing book" and having to shout the first answer that pops into your head can be quite revealing. You can get a sense of the things your friends are engaging with in their free time and what’s really ingrained in their minds. Body language and reactions can also tell you a lot; for example, some freak out and freeze, others accept defeat before trying, and others get fired up and competitive. And in trivia scenarios, it’s so interesting to see certain categories that people seem to know a lot about; some can be random, but others match their personality, which can help you bond over predictable or unexpected answers.
True Nature Revealed In Competitiveness
Being highly competitive isn’t always pretty -- just ask my family why I’m not allowed to play Monopoly with them anymore. With friends you’ve never seen in said context, it can be illuminating to learn who’s a sore loser, who has cheating tendencies, who likes to try hard to win, who doesn’t care, and who’s just there for vibes and fun. I think if your friendships can leave a game night unscathed, especially in a competitive group, it’s a strong sign that the relationship is solid. Games can bring out parts of your personality that can be hidden most of the time and bring life and passion to a room, creating a more authentic environment and a new level of closeness. However, I think a game night gone south can be a cautionary tale about certain friendships. If you find someone turns mean or is a perpetual cheater, it can be a true reflection of their character apart from the heat of the game. At the end of the day, games are meant to be fun, so look out for any signs that make a room no longer fun.
Personal vs Shared Humor
Humor and laughter are by far the best way to bond with people. In friend groups, you might find that you share a different sense of humor with each individual and one as a whole group. Playing Cards Against Humanity is such a fun way of getting to know each person’s humor individually that others can then attune themselves to. The key for doing well in that game is recognizing each person’s type of humor and picking the card specifically for that person each round. For example, some people find the most logical card amusing and judge based on that, but others might be tickled by more outlandish/random answers. This rapport can then translate into everyday life, like when you see/hear something you think a friend would find funny and want to share it with them.
Teamwork Makes The Dreamwork
Games involving teams/teamwork can help you recognize who you work well with and the roles each person takes in the team/group. Perhaps you feel like you have great chemistry with a friend in real life, but in a team, your personalities clash. Or the other way around, where being in a team with someone reveals commonalities and your differences balance each other out for the sake of the game. Bringing it back to sports, team sports are a great developmental tool for social and collaboration skills, and those skills are crucial in everyday scenarios. These skills come into play during game nights, and learning to work together as a team can greatly strengthen these relationships. And not only that, but it also provides you with the best way of communicating with different people that can facilitate conflict resolution down the line.
“Who Knows Me Best” And Slideshow Presentations
Now this is more on the nose "get to know me" territory, but a great activity to incorporate into a game night can be trivia/slideshows about each other. One way of doing this is creating a Kahoot! quiz. You might’ve played Kahoot! in school as an informal quiz or review, but it’s basically a way you can create a multiple-choice quiz about any topic of your choosing and project it onto a screen/wall. People then join it on their phones and answer the questions as they pop up, and you accumulate points based on correctness but also the speed at which you answered the question. With questions about people in the room like "What’s Sofia’s favorite food?" or "What’s Matthew’s biggest pet peeve?", this game is a fun way of testing your knowledge about your friends but also finding out new things about them depending on the questions they each set up for the quiz. Another educational-coded activity involving a projection is a slideshow "presentation". This in itself requires a degree of comfort with each other and "public" speaking, but it’s not meant to be serious. The slideshows can be about any special interests or even a silly way of gossiping/explaining niche lore.
Whatever you choose to do during your own game nights can be catered to your own friends and interests, and it’s a fun and accessible way to get together and socialize when the weather doesn’t allow for a picnic or night out. Plus, it’s the perfect excuse to wrangle your friends into a hangout space, like the World Cup or NBA watch parties, filled with excitement and shouting and wins and losses.
