A Virtual Game in Action
NBC News 4 New York this week previewed our new Escape To the Museum Virtual Scavenger Hunt. Anchor Natalie Pasquarella spoke with our own Julie Jacobs about making the switch to virtual games and showed viewers a game in action.
If you’ve wondered how our virtual games work, watch the video!
For your convenience, here is a transcript of the video:
NBC Reporter Natalie Pasquarella: Well, as some businesses start to think about re-opening and how to go about it, many adopted new virtual business models to stay in business. But for one company, not only did they bring in outdoor activity indoors, they also turned a local game into one of global proportions.
Video of Outdoors Hunt, Voice of Hunt Host: This is a Watson Adventures hunt, so you’ll be working together as a team.
Pasquarella: Six weeks ago, a day with Watson Adventures, a scavenger hunt company based in Manhattan, looked like this.
Video of Outdoors Hunt, Voice of Player: Hey, let’s go to the next one. Come on!
Julie Jacobs, Chief Development Officer of Watson Adventures: The in-person hunt started as a way for groups to get to know museums and historic neighborhoods, and it quickly became a big corporate team-building activity.
Video of Online Game: Hi, I’m Chad, your Watson Adventures virtual scavenger hunt guide for today.
Pasquarella: But since the Coronavirus hit, their adventures have a whole new look. All that searching is now happening online. Instead of landmarks, it’s a hunt for answers.
Jacobs: It’s more intellectually challenging. The questions are cleverly worded riddles that you have to work together as a team to do well.
Pasquarella: Julie Jacobs of Watson Adventures says they never saw this game plan coming.
Jacobs: And when this all went down, we’re like, let’s figure out a way to do what we were doing and convert it, so if everybody is remote, how would that work?
Video Online Game, Player Speaks: Hey, guys.
Pasquarella: They made it work with Zoom and other video chat technology.
Jacobs: We started with one game and now we’re up to, I think, we have seven games. Thing that’s been amazing about this is now we’re talking to people in multiple time zones and all over the world. That’s the silver lining here, is that you can bring all these people together.
Video of Online Game, Player Speaks: The hint is “Jimmy Carter, the 39th President, famously farmed them.”
Pasquarella: They’re now doing virtual public hunts on weekends and private groups during the week.
Jacobs: We’re doing many, many a day and we just are working with a high school senior class because they aren’t going to have their prom, and they aren’t going to have graduation, possibly, and so this is a way to bring the whole class together.
Video of Online Game Host: They should be arriving soon, all right!
Jacobs: One person’s good at reading a map, or one person’s good at wordplay, or one person says, “We’ve spent too long on this question.” It also really works well with the multiple generations, yet we do student groups, as well, and we’ve had 80th birthday parties.
Video of Online Game Player: Ta-da! OK, three points for that, guys.
Pasquarella: Definitely something to do while you’re in quarantine. For more information, go to WatsonAdventures.com. There’s a limited number of people allowed to do those public hunts, so they advise you sign up two weeks in advance.
Anchor Stefan Holt: Something fun to do at school, that’s cool!