The Problem
At Quantana, we take fun seriously. It is a weekly ritual to catch up for a game session every Friday, where the team is encouraged to participate in quizzes, activities, and a whole lot of fun. With a majority of the team working remotely, these Friday Fun sessions were an outlet, an opportunity to virtually meet friends and colleagues who one hadn’t seen in ages. People came together over video calls to play games individually or as teams and competitive spirits were always at a high. As fun as these sessions sound, they did, however, come with one problem! It was hard to keep track of who sent in their answer first and which individual or team won a point. There was always one person volunteering to be a scorekeeper, but this meant that they were left out of the fun.
The Goal
The team needed something more. Something to make this game time experience less chaotic and more inclusive, while saving time on scorekeeping and management. We were sure that others have also experienced instances where they want to play a game with family or friends that needs a timer or you need a neutral device to decide who got the answer first but they don’t have a gameshow like buzzer device on hand. That’s when we decided that we wouldn’t let not having a physical buzzer prevent us from planning our next game session.
The Solution
It was on one of these virtual Friday Fun sessions that the team came up with the idea to have their own busser app that would enable everyone playing to have a fair chance at the game. Our uber-talented UI/UX Design Team quickly designed the screens for what they wanted the app to look like. Picking up from there, our amazing Mobile App Development Team used their skill and gaming experience to develop a buzzer app using Flutter and Firebase.
On the live app, the host will Create a Room and give the guests a code to join the same room. Guests will click Play, enter the room code and create a name. Everyone can now buzz their timer and the host will be able to see who buzzed first. The app also allows the host to keep track of individual or team scores.
Tested in-house, we found that using qPlay makes our game sessions much easier to organise and even virtual players could have as much fun as the others. Version 2.0 of the app is intended to have built-in games that users can enjoy with family and friends, as well as support for quizzes and other physical games.
Watch this space for more updates on qPlay.