Ever wonder why Trivia nights with friends, family or coworkers end up being so much fun? It’s because it brings everybody together and puts your wits and general knowledge to the test. But now that most of us are distanced, the only way to recreate this fun online is through virtual trivia games.
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The best part of virtual trivia games or remote trivia is that anyone can join in from anywhere in the world. It sparks conversation and friendly discussion, enabling team members to bond over the game.
In this post, I’ll be taking you through a list of the best virtual team trivia games that are guaranteed to entertain your distributed and remote teams.
1. What are Virtual Trivia Games?
Virtual trivia or remote trivia are challenges, games and quizzes that are played on conferencing platforms like Zoom, Hoppier and Google Meet. A host will prepare a list of questions that are to be answered verbally, or by filling out Forms that can take multiple choices, long answers and fill in the blanks. If you’re hosting it yourself, you can take a poll on the topics everyone wants to see questions on. If you’re opting to have this hosted externally by a facilitator, you can pick a Trivia format from the options they offer.
Virtual team trivia differs from collocated games in that the entire experience is digital, from answering questions to announcing who won. The purpose with paid or free virtual trivia games for work is to build up teams and provide members with the opportunity to break the ice and mingle freely, particularly if they’re sorted into groups to compete against each other.
2. What Makes a Virtual Trivia Game Fun?
A virtual trivia game exercises your brain, which is essential to keep your mind sharp. You know how the saying goes. Use it, or lose it!
There are different elements that make a trivia game fun, which include
- Pitting your wits against the others to see who can answer all or most of the questions in the given time limit.
- Staying connected to your coworkers and managers, pandemic or no pandemic.
- The flexibility to use it standalone or as an icebreaker or virtual happy hour activity.
- Learning something new about a subject.
- Having a good memory to revisit (if you’re recording the session).
Put simply, virtual trivia games are as educational as they are fun, because what you learn is more likely to stick when it’s gamified. They are also available in diverse formats, where you’ll have to lock down on an answer from multiple choices, recognize patterns or spin a wheel and play to win virtual cash prizes.
3. Virtual Trivia Team Building
When it comes to games, there are pure fun games and then there are fun education or skill building games that can serve a purpose. Playing virtual team trivia games online is an excellent way to help remote employees interact with each other, learn or develop skills. Some of the benefits that can be broadly stated are-
- Encourages Team Bonding
These games are great ice-breakers for new employees and refreshers for those employees who need a welcome break. The trivia games require employees to form groups so they can interact and bond during these sessions when trying to solve non-work related puzzles or issues.
- Creative Way to Induct New Employees
When it comes to new employees, these virtual trivia games can be a great way to let them know more and also understand how much they know about the company. These games can be customized based on company information to train and onboard new joinees in engaging and fun ways.
- Boost Productivity
Employees can benefit from the much needed downtime when they play with creative paid or free virtual trivia games for work. It gives them a chance to relax and recharge which in turn is great to enhance productivity levels and help achieve business goals.
4. Top 20 Hand-Picked Virtual Trivia Games For Your Remote Team 2023
4.1 GENSMAK
GENSMAK! digital trivia was developed by a fully remote team that knows how to have fun on screen. Based on the popular GENSMAK! card game that has had friends and families howling in laughter for years, GENSMAK! digital lets remote teams come together on screen to test their trivia knowledge with questions from five generations, including hints written by comedians. Think your boss knows nothing about TikTok trends? Think again–not only does she have an account, she can do the “Savage” dance on demand. And when you find out your co-worker has never heard of your favorite band from high school, well, it’s time for an impromptu karaoke session.
Gameplay is easy (and free!). Once everyone is on Zoom, Teams or another video platform, the host shares the game on screen and the players (up to 12, with 6 per team) follow instructions to join a team. Teams earn points by answering questions correctly. They earn extra points for not using hints and for answering questions outside their generation. The first team to 15 points wins!
4.2 Who Wants to be a Millionaire?
This highly popular, televised game has millions of viewers glued to their screen since it aired in the late ‘90s! Contestants answer questions lobbed at them by the host. They can use three lifelines as they progress, which include phoning in a friend, asking the audience and the process of elimination that crosses out two wrong answers. The online version of Who Wants to be a Millionaire? features much of the same rules with modifications to the way contestants use up their lifelines;
- The questions are in a multiple choice format, and the contestant has to select an option from the choices flashed on the screen.
- They can move forward to the next tier of the prize money only if the previous answer is correct. Otherwise, it resets to the beginning.
- The questions get progressively harder as you play to win bigger amounts.
Since your audience is virtual, you can play this virtual team trivia as individual players or in teams of 4-6 members. Post the link on a group chat and ask everyone to set up in order to start together. If you’re going for the first option, everyone gets to play a round and they should reveal how much virtual money they won. If you’re splitting off into groups, one person can be nominated (or nominate themselves) to be the contestant and the others can be the audience who will lend a lifeline when the player crosses the tier.
4.3 Sporcle
Sporcle is a website and app-friendly virtual trivia game provider. I wanted to get a feel of what we’re dealing with here, and tried their bingo trivia against random opponents. I lost (oops!) but they do have an interesting selection of questions and formats which translates to fun trivia games for virtual meetings. You can try your luck as a group on multiplayer games such as Live5, Showdown and Bingo.
They also organize trivia hunts, which gives you a chance to collect some share of the $2,500 prize money. There are instructions on the site, but I’ll just summarize them here. It costs $25 to admit any number of teammates. The questions will be posted on the game page of the website and you’ll be able to access them using a code that they will email you beforehand.
4.4 Random Trivia Generator
The Random Trivia Generator is a site teeming with topics, from general to arts, science and geography that you can use to design a trivia for virtual meetings. The website opens to a set of questions that are pulled from different categories and are in a jumbled-up order (hence random). Since the tiles can be flipped to reveal the answers, don’t share the link with everyone in the beginning.
First, select the category or go with the random scramble and narrow it down to 10 or 20 questions. Next, give everyone 30 seconds to guess the answer before moving on to the next until you reach the end of the list. And finally, the player with the most number of correct guesses wins! Make sure to mention them on your team channel so that everyone can hail their new virtual team Quiz Whiz with some memes, emojis and Gifs!
4.5 Crowdpurr
Crowdpurr lets you create and host your very own virtual trivia night, complete with themes! You can create a survivor mode or points-based trivia game. The former style requires your teams to answer correctly in order to survive, while the latter scores you and rewards the audience based on who gets the highest score! We tried out the survivor-style virtual trivia because we found it intriguing, and were not disappointed! The team had to work quickly and strategically to answer the questions. We were warned beforehand that wrong guesses would disqualify members from moving forward. The team with the most or all of their members intact were deemed the survivors!
You can create several games and display the leaderboard to the crowd for them to know who is winning in real-time. 20 people can participate on the free plan, which offers 15 trivia questions and 3 simulation experiences. The classroom and seminar plan cost $49.99 and $149.99, while the conference and convention packages cost $249.99 and $449.99. You might find the classroom plan more to your liking if you’re expecting
4.6 QuizBreaker
Quizbreaker is a popular destination for virtual team players who wish to participate in team building and bonding activities. They offer a plethora of games, ranging from icebreakers and water cooler conversations to gamified quizzes. Besides their standard 100 icebreaker questions, you even have the option of creating a virtual team quiz about members. The questions can be about a member’s favorite music bands, shows, or sports. Even if you get some of the answers wrong, the right answer is revealed and this helps you know something about your colleague that you didn’t know already!
Quizbreaker lets you create an account on their free 21-day trial, which you can use to create your quizzes. If you want scheduled quizzes and weekly leaderboard reports, you can go for their paid plan, which comes to $20 annually, with 4 months free.
4.7 Virtual Team Pursuit
Typically, team pursuits are group cycling events and are held outdoors. Outback however has come up with its very own virtual team pursuit. It can be played one of three ways;
- Host it yourself or self-hosted, priced between $8 to $30 per person
- Remote-hosted, priced between $11 to $49 per person or
- Outback-hosted, priced at $25-$149 per person.
The last two remote trivia game options offer a dedicated event manager to extend help and provide instructions where required. Once teams download the app, they split off to solve mental and physical challenges. The app has the facility for members to record videos, messages, and photos of them completing the challenges. The team that completes most of the challenges when the buzzer sounds off wins! One of the challenges features Yogic poses, tasty trivia, and Limbo. In the tasty trivia, you get asked riddles. For example, What do you throw away outside and cook inside, then eat the outside and throw away the inside? You won’t be getting it out of us, so head over to Outback to find out if you guessed right!
4.8 Water Cooler Trivia
The literal water cooler talks may no longer be possible now that the team is officeless, but you can still play virtual trivia games around an e-watercooler! This company lets you choose your virtual team trivia categories and schedules them automatically. Their team writes up the questions and grades results to let everyone see who the reigning trivia champion is!You can decide on the difficulty levels and time period by which players should submit their responses. You can preview the format on their sample quiz to come prepared. There are rules at the top and a space to enter your answers below each question. The categories are scrambled, so you won’t get questions on only one or two topics!
Besides the 4-week free trial, Water cooler trivia conducts four quizzes a month for as low as $1 per user. Their pricing plans are tiered according to the number of participants, $10 for upto 10 users, $25 for 11 to 25 people, $50 for upto 50 people and $500 for unlimited users.
4.9 Psyche! Outwit Your Friends
Psyche! Also known as the Truth Comes Out is a game that guests on the Ellen De Generes show have played! And it’s now available on the app store.
You can choose from a variety of fun categories. Each player has to make up fake answers to real trivia questions in this remote trivia game. Laugh as you watch everyone trying to take wild guesses and bluff their way out, thereby outwitting the competition. A simpler version of this game comes in rounds, where you have to answer questions about your colleagues.
Examples include, “ If X started a band, what would he or she call it?” or, “ Who is X’s celebrity look alike?”. You can vote your favorite answers and increase your points if your answer gets chosen!
4.10 Jackbox Games
If you haven’t heard of Jackbox Games before, you’ll thank me for including it here! Jackbox games is a studio and game creator that was developed by Harry Gottlieb in the late 80s.The virtual trivia games come in party packs of 4,5,6 and 7 and cost $24.99. Upto 8 players can get in this virtual team trivia, with an audience of 10,000 members! The games coming under the 4 Party Pack include
- Fibbage: Enough About You
- The web-based Survive the Internet
- Spooky Monster date-a-thon and
- Bracketeering, the deranged debate match
There are also standalone virtual team quizzes such as Fibbage and Quiplash. We tried out the standalone Quiplash which scores you on your wits. If you’re looking for something simple as trivia for virtual meetings, give this a shot. If you wish to create your own episodes, pick Quiplash 2 and 3. All of these are great choices because there are no wrong answers! You can even create your own episodes 3- 8 players can take part at a time. We were a 6-team member, and the remaining 60 were in the audience upvoting for their favorite comebacks. It was quite fun, and made me realize there are some closet Chandler Bings in our group!
4.11 Poppy Quiz
Poppy Quiz is a multiplayer social virtual trivia game. You can sign up using your social media account and find friends online to play a remote trivia game. There are over 200 topics with popular categories such as movies and TV shows, literature, athletics and science. Once you zero in on a topic, you can pick friends and add them to the virtual room. They’ll get 30 seconds to respond, and if they don’t, the system assigns random players from any part of the world. The matches consist of 6 rounds and a bonus round to conclude the game.
You’ll have 10 seconds to select an answer from the choices given. The system awards you scores based on your speed and accuracy, with a maximum of 20 points. This doubles in the bonus round. If you don’t answer quickly, your points get docked off. Incorrect answers get a 0. At the end, the player with the most points wins the match!
4.12 Jeopardy Online
If you are searching for free virtual trivia games for work, Arkadium’s Jeopardy is definitely worth playing. Players get topic-based clues for which the answers are given. The twist is that your response has to be framed into a question. The game opens to a board with three topics and 4 clues apiece (12 clues in total). You can select any and answer it as best as you can. If the answer is right, you’ll get points which are scored based on the hint difficulty. As you move across the board, you’ll get more points but the level’s difficulty increases, so answer wisely!
4.13 Trivia Maker
The trivia maker is one of the best virtual trivia apps out there because you can create your very own trivia from the style and formats they provide. The game choices include trivia, grids, wheel or lists. I tested out a teacher’s chemistry quiz. The window opens to rectangular tiles that contain letters you’re supposed to guess. The players have three moves, which are
- Buy a vowel
- Spin the wheel
- Solve the puzzle
If you guess the right letter, the rest of the word appears. At the end, the total money won by the contestants is displayed on the leaderboard. The best part is that the games are playable on the web so you don’t need to install anything on your mobile devices for these trivia games for virtual meetings.
4.14 BreakOut IQ
Breakout IQ is a place for remote team building, and besides remote trivia, they offer office feuds, virtual scavenger hunts, escape rooms and the perfect (Brain)storm. We explored remote trivia, which can be played via Zoom. It started with us going into breakout rooms for a quick huddle where we got to pick a team captain and name. This was also how the 100-point puzzle started! Next, we eased into the game with simple questions which have no right or wrong answers. At this stage, the intent is to just get members to relax and discuss among themselves. As we moved ahead, we noticed that the puzzles got harder to crack and most of them came off as trick questions.
I like that you can request to customize a theme for your remote trivia game to really get everybody in the mood. You can submit your answers on a virtual answer sheet that the host provides. You’ll reconvene in the main meeting room for the big reveal and scores! The best part here is the sheer variety you have in terms of trivia games for work meetings.
4.15 Let’s Roam
You can’t go wrong with Let’s Roam, because it is THE website to roam the virtual office, catch up with your coworkers and indulge in a bunch of games and activities of your choosing! There’s an on-page teaser that you can try to get a feel of what the actual game is like. The questions range from your knowledge on artists to geography. For example, I was asked to match a picture to where it’s located on a virtual map (although I was off by around 1400 miles, I was still closer to the answer than I expected!).
You can host game nights on a weekly basis. The virtual trivia can be general or player focused. Besides trivia for virtual meetings, Let’s Roam’s other team building activities include Let’s Draw, Guess Where?, and Emoji decoder. After the 7-day free trial, you can go for a paid plan which costs $19.99 per month. You’ll get more game and multiplayer options!
4.16 Trivia Crack
Trivia Crack is Etermax gaming division’s popular trivia game! I came across it by chance on Facebook.
The objective of the game is to collect all six characters on the wheel. The characters represent one of the question categories, and the first player to obtain all six characters will be declared the winner! Start by clicking on the wheel to spin it until it lands on a category. You have to answer the question. If you guess wrong, your turn goes to an opponent. If it’s right, a metered Crown gauge at the bottom of the screen generates the result. When the wheel lands on the crown, you’ll be presented with a choice to either challenge your opponent or answer a question to collect the next character!
4.17 Virtual Trivia Time Machine
This fast-paced virtual trivia game is a big walk down memory lane as it takes you decades back to the 60’s in the Outback Time Machine. To break the ice, the game show host has a few breakout room mixers where teams are divided and warm into the game. You can use phones as buzzers to battle it out and claim fame as trivia champions.
4.18 Trivia Maker
With TriviaMaker, you get to choose from a wide range of pre-designed games that are available or create new trivia games. There are typically five different game styles that include Grid, List, Trivia, Wheel, and Tictac. This one is the perfect choice for video conferences and in-person gatherings. What’s more is that it can be customized based on team member skill levels.
4.19 Kahoot!
A popular free virtual team game, Kahoot! features brainstorms, word clouds, and polls. Easy as it is to host a live game with questions on a large screen, this one can also be conveniently shared with remote players. With a unique platform, you can customize the questions for work or use their pre-written questions to play the game. Players will enjoy the different themes available and audience participation features.
4.20 Virtual Beach Staycation
When everyone’s all aboard Captain Furling’s virtual yacht, the tropical adventure begins on a gorgeous Cancun beach. Replete with realistic vacation footage and ocean sounds, this one’s a perfect virtual staycation for remote employees. Trivia game questions from travel destinations, themed movies, pop hits and more will give remote teams a truly well-deserved immersive experience.
5. FAQ: Virtual Trivia Games
5.1 How to play Virtual Trivia Games?
You can follow the steps below to maximize your fun playing free virtual trivia games for work
- Decide on the format, type and number of games to play.
- If you’re playing it using your own custom template and rules, convey them clearly at the start or provide written instructions via email so that players are aware of how to play. If the game is hosted via an external facilitator, ensure that the pack you’ve subscribed to accommodates all the players.
- Have everyone do an audio and video check before starting so that they don’t miss out or drop off midway. Keep checking in to see if everyone’s in the game.
- Announce the winners or direct the players to a leaderboard after the game ends.
- Record the session and share the clip on a common group for everyone to replay at their convenience.
- Take feedback afterwards to see how everyone feels and to know if they’d be up to play again in future!
5.2 Which categories can you pick for a good virtual trivia party?
You can pick any type and number of categories you like, based on your personal interests. If you’re a lab geek, science questions may be your forte. Or, if you like arts and culture, you may try your luck at those questions on the virtual trivia app!
5.3 How many people can participate in a virtual trivia party?
A minimum of 3 to 6 players is needed to make the competition interesting. However, it also depends on the game provider. If you wish to add more people to the virtual trivia party, you’ll need to get onto a plan or membership to avail all the benefits of multiplayer games.
An excellent way to get more people onboard or at a mass level is to use an employee engagement software. The software can be used with third party integrations in your system to engage a large number of employees to participate in such game or quiz sessions. Sorry, I was on Mute offers one such integrated platform that can be used to acknowledge and reward excellent work or contributions at an individual or team level across your organization. Make accurate data-driven decisions based on the in-depth reports and analytical information that this software provides to create customized rewards and recognitions. You can then take it one step further and align these with your company mission and value system to create a dynamic performance recognition centre.
5.4 Are there some good virtual trivia games for smaller groups?
Trivia Crack, Crowdpurr and Who Wants To Be a Millionaire? Are great for small groups. You can play this on your browser or via app, allowing for members of any remote team to join in on the fun!
5.5 What are some virtual trivia games for a large group?
Some websites, such as Let’s Roam and Jackbox games, offer packages and bundles for both large groups. This is because audience participation determines the score participants get, so the larger the group the better!
