Since the COVID-19 pandemic and the transformation of the workplace to hybrid remote solutions, Microsoft Teams has been one of the giants in business collaboration and communication. To ensure Teams remains top of the pile, Microsoft has kept throwing features at the platform for the last two years.
In its latest effort, the company is bringing games to Microsoft Teams. Available in both chats and video calling, Microsoft thinks games will bring some levity to meetings. Critics may say this is Microsoft simply adding a feature because it can, and this is one tool too much.
After all, Teams is an enterprise communication and collaboration service. Either way, Microsoft will now allow users on Teams to use a new app known as Games for Work. Through this app, users (individually and in a group) can play a selection of classic casual games.
For example, Minesweeper, Wordament, Solitaire, and IceBreakers are among the catalog of available games. Up to 250 people can play the games together. Surely many organizations will see games as a productivity distraction during working hours.
Productivity
Microsoft argues that while this can be the case, it does not have to be. The company points to a study from Brigham Young University that finds playing short games helps workers stay 20 percent more productive if they play together. Playing for 45 minutes can be more productive than standard team-building exercises.
Have we just found the real reason is buying Activision Blizzard for $69bn? Maybe the company will be folding Call of Duty into Microsoft Teams so workers can play 50-person deathmatches against their executive team.
Tip of the day: To prevent attackers from capturing your password, Secure Sign-in asks the user to perform a physical action that activates the sign-in screen. In some cases, this is a dedicated “Windows Security” button, but the most common case in Windows is the Ctrl+Alt Del hotkey. In our tutorial, we show you how to activate this feature.
