{"title":"HeySparko answer registry","description":"Questions buyers ask about virtual team building and about HeySparko, each with a self-contained answer, its sources on this site and the date it was last checked. Every comparative answer says when the right choice is not HeySparko.","license":"CC BY 4.0","attribution":"HeySparko, heysparko.com/answers","page":"https://heysparko.com/en/answers","stages":[{"id":"problem","label":"Is there a problem, and what is it"},{"id":"format","label":"What kind of thing solves it"},{"id":"choose","label":"Which one, and when not us"},{"id":"cost","label":"What it costs and how to compare"},{"id":"run","label":"How the event actually goes"},{"id":"after","label":"What you get afterwards"},{"id":"trust","label":"Data, security and who we are"}],"count":48,"answers":[{"id":"why-people-hate-team-building","stage":"problem","question":"Why do people hate virtual team building?","answer":"Mostly because of how it is scheduled, not what it is. In a corpus of 4,772 public forum posts about workplace team building that HeySparko analysed in September 2026, the seven most upvoted posts were all about being required to attend, usually outside working hours. \"Mandatory\" appeared in 255 threads; \"cringe\" in 38. Inside the activity, the complaints are consistent: being watched while performing, being made to share something personal on demand, and sitting idle waiting for a turn. An event that runs during work hours, lasts under ninety minutes, is optional, and gives everyone something to do at once removes most of the objection before the game starts.","sources":["https://heysparko.com/en/blog/the-cringe-index","https://heysparko.com/en/blog/virtual-team-building-for-teams-that-hate-it"],"asOf":"2026-11-03","tags":["cringe","mandatory","forced fun","objections"]},{"id":"why-our-quiz-failed","stage":"problem","question":"Why did our team quiz fail, and will a better quiz fix it?","answer":"A quiz tests shared references, and a team spread across countries does not have any. An HR director of a 180-person company in 21 countries told HeySparko about a New Year quiz on films and music: one group complained it was in the wrong language, another that the films were the wrong country's, and attendance was low. A better quiz does not fix this, because a question that is neutral for a colleague in Lisbon is not neutral for one in Almaty. Formats that work across cultures are built on mechanics everyone already knows (move, collect, crack a code, beat the clock) rather than on knowing the same things.","sources":["https://heysparko.com/en/blog/team-building-for-multicultural-teams"],"asOf":"2026-11-03","tags":["quiz","trivia","multicultural","international"]},{"id":"not-another-meeting","stage":"problem","question":"Our team does not want another meeting. Is there a team building format for that?","answer":"Yes: an asynchronous campaign with a short, optional live finale. Two organisers of remote-first teams (120 people in 30 countries, and 100 to 150 people across a dozen offices) told HeySparko in October 2026 that they would not ask the whole team to join a 90-minute call, and both proposed the same shape instead: one short task a day or a few short games over a week, played in each person's own working hours, points on a single leaderboard, and a 15 to 30 minute finale for whoever wants it. HeySparko runs this as a Marathon of 1 to 5 days; the live Big Game of 70 to 90 minutes is the finale, not the event.","sources":["https://heysparko.com/en/blog/team-building-for-multicultural-teams","https://heysparko.com/en/pricing"],"asOf":"2026-11-03","tags":["async","remote-first","meeting fatigue","marathon"]},{"id":"does-team-building-work","stage":"problem","question":"Does virtual team building actually improve productivity or retention?","answer":"Nobody has shown that it does, including HeySparko. The figures usually quoted (engagement linked to 18% higher productivity and 23% higher profitability) come from Gallup's Q12 meta-analysis, 10th edition, 2020, which compares high-engagement business units with low-engagement ones. It is correlational, it does not measure team building, and Gallup sells the engagement instrument it is based on. HeySparko read the public pages of 27 vendors in the category in September 2026: 8 claim to measure engagement and none of them publish what they measure. Treat any outcome number as a statement about engagement in general, not a forecast for one event.","sources":["https://heysparko.com/en/blog/virtual-team-building-measurement-audit"],"asOf":"2026-11-03","tags":["roi","gallup","productivity","retention","evidence"]},{"id":"what-hr-can-measure","stage":"problem","question":"What can HR actually measure after a team building event?","answer":"Four things, all of them behaviour rather than opinion: who turned up against who was invited, broken down by team rather than as a company average; who stayed to the end; how many completed the task; and a short pulse survey two weeks before and two weeks after, with the questions agreed in advance. Attrition in the 6 to 18 month tenure band is worth watching over a longer window, but no single event will move it visibly. HeySparko's post-event report carries participation and completion by team and by player, time on each stage, and survey results, with a CSV export so the numbers can be checked.","sources":["https://heysparko.com/en/blog/virtual-team-building-measurement-audit","https://heysparko.com/en/blog/how-much-does-virtual-team-building-cost"],"asOf":"2026-11-03","tags":["measurement","report","kpi","hr"]},{"id":"works-across-cultures","stage":"format","question":"What kind of team building works across cultures and languages?","answer":"A shared task whose rules need no cultural background: a game. It works for a mechanical reason, not a motivational one. The rules are written down and the same for everyone, the subject is the puzzle rather than the person, participation is an action rather than speech, and the common ground is on the screen instead of inside people's heads. Organisers of teams in 20 to 80 countries told HeySparko the same thing in different words: the mechanics everyone grew up with (dodge, collect, crack a code, beat the clock) are the one language the whole team already shares. Run the game and the host in the company language and let each team talk in whatever language it likes.","sources":["https://heysparko.com/en/blog/team-building-for-multicultural-teams"],"asOf":"2026-11-03","tags":["multicultural","languages","culturally neutral","global team"]},{"id":"across-time-zones","stage":"format","question":"How do you run virtual team building across time zones?","answer":"By changing the shape of the event, not by finding a better meeting time. Run the activity asynchronously over a week or a month, with short tasks people complete in their own working hours and one leaderboard everyone can see, and keep the live part to a 15 to 30 minute optional finale. Organisers of teams across 30 and 80 countries told HeySparko this is the only shape that did not leave one region always joining at 11 pm. In a corpus of 4,772 forum posts about team building, \"time zone\" appeared in only 14; what people complain about is being required to attend, so optional and inside work hours matters more than the clock.","sources":["https://heysparko.com/en/blog/team-building-for-multicultural-teams","https://heysparko.com/en/blog/asynchronous-team-building-activities"],"asOf":"2026-11-03","tags":["time zones","async","distributed"]},{"id":"big-game-vs-marathon","stage":"format","question":"What is the difference between a HeySparko Big Game and a Marathon?","answer":"A Big Game is one live session of 70 to 90 minutes with a host: everyone plays at the same time in teams of about eight and comes back together at the end. A Marathon runs the same game over 1 to 5 days with no fixed slot: people play when it suits them and a leaderboard carries the competition. The Marathon price is the Big Game price multiplied by 1 plus 0.5 for each extra day, so three days is double and five days is triple. Remote-first teams that do not want another meeting choose the Marathon and use a short Big Game as the finale; co-located or hybrid teams with one overlap window choose the Big Game.","sources":["https://heysparko.com/en/pricing","https://heysparko.com/en/blog/how-much-does-virtual-team-building-cost"],"asOf":"2026-11-03","tags":["big game","marathon","format","live","async"]},{"id":"what-is-heysparko","stage":"format","question":"What is HeySparko, in one paragraph?","answer":"HeySparko is a virtual team-building platform that runs story-driven games built in-house for remote and hybrid teams, in the browser, with no installation or account. A company founded in 2022 by a team that has run virtual events since 2020, it has worked with 700+ companies in 50+ countries and run 2,000+ events in total. The catalogue holds 22+ games: escape rooms and adventures, detective mysteries, arcade challenges and trivia. Formats are a hosted Big Game of 70 to 90 minutes or an asynchronous Marathon of 1 to 5 days, in 16 languages, for teams from 5 participants to 10,000 participants. Pricing is per event by tier and published in full.","sources":["https://heysparko.com/en","https://heysparko.com/en/activities","https://heysparko.com/en/pricing"],"asOf":"2026-11-03","tags":["heysparko","company","what is"]},{"id":"how-80-people-play-one-game","stage":"format","question":"How do 80 people play one game together without it being chaos?","answer":"They do not all play in one room. The group is split into teams of about eight, each in its own room inside the game, solving the same puzzles against the clock; the host watches all rooms and steps in where a team is stuck. At the end everyone comes back together, the leaderboard is read, and there are two rounds of sharing: inside each team, then across the whole group, in an order the host runs. An organiser of a 75-person remote sales team asked HeySparko exactly this in October 2026 after seeing a screen full of players: the answer that satisfied them was teams of eight and the two rounds.","sources":["https://heysparko.com/en/blog/how-to-choose-a-team-building-game-for-your-team"],"asOf":"2026-11-03","tags":["large group","teams of 8","how it works"]},{"id":"no-install-no-login","stage":"format","question":"Do participants need to install anything or create an account?","answer":"No. A HeySparko game opens from a link in the browser on a laptop or a phone, with no download, no account and no corporate email required; players enter a name and are in. Organisers can send the link themselves by email, including blind copy, so no new channel is needed. This matters more than it looks: three organisers in a row told HeySparko that getting people into the game was their biggest worry, and one said that the link opening easily on their phone was \"an indicator of how the actual event would go\". For companies that do not want to hand over employee emails, registration by ID works without them.","sources":["https://heysparko.com/en/play","https://heysparko.com/en/pricing"],"asOf":"2026-11-03","tags":["install","login","browser","phone","privacy"]},{"id":"free-to-try","stage":"format","question":"Can we try a HeySparko game for free before booking?","answer":"Yes, two ways. The free co-op challenge at heysparko.com/play runs for up to five people in the browser with no signup and takes about ten minutes: it is the fastest way to see whether the pace suits your team and whether anyone needs IT to get in. For a hosted event, organisers can get trial access to two or three catalogue games and play them as a small group before choosing; a 75-person sales team's four organisers did exactly that in October 2026 to pick between three games. If a vendor will not let you play before paying, treat that as information.","sources":["https://heysparko.com/en/play","https://heysparko.com/en/blog/how-to-choose-a-team-building-game-for-your-team"],"asOf":"2026-11-03","tags":["free","trial","demo","try"]},{"id":"how-to-choose-a-game","stage":"choose","question":"How do we choose a team building game for our team when there are so many?","answer":"Use three filters, in this order, and ignore genre. First, a setting the team will claim as its own: a hospitality company chose a hotel mystery because \"then they think it's been tailored just for them\", and that worked better than a sports game for a sports-minded team. Second, the tone the team will tolerate: decide what would get a complaint (a graphic plot, a religious holiday) before looking at anything. Third, play two or three candidates yourselves for thirty minutes; it is the only filter that produces information rather than opinion. \"Competitive\" on its own tells you only that the team needs a score and a winner at the end. The short version is a picker at heysparko.com/choose-a-game: four questions about the team, three games back, with the price.","whenNotUs":"If the goal is a conversation rather than a task, for example a leadership retreat built around discussion, a facilitated workshop vendor is the right choice and a game is not.","sources":["https://heysparko.com/en/blog/how-to-choose-a-team-building-game-for-your-team","https://heysparko.com/en/choose-a-game"],"asOf":"2026-11-03","tags":["choose","which game","catalogue"]},{"id":"game-for-competitive-sales-team","stage":"choose","question":"Which online game suits a competitive, sports-minded sales team?","answer":"One with a scoreboard, a clock and a winner announced at the end, in a setting the team already knows something about. Sales teams tolerate public competition better than any other department and get bored fastest when nothing is at stake, so timed mysteries and heists with team rankings fit; long cooperative puzzles with no ranking do not. A 75-person remote sales support team in a hotel group chose a hotel mystery over a sports game in October 2026, asked for a leaderboard the moment they had chosen, and planned custom trophies for the winning team. The prize does not need to be worth anything; it needs to exist.","whenNotUs":"A team that wants a physical sports day or a live sports stream wants an event company, not a browser game.","sources":["https://heysparko.com/en/blog/how-to-choose-a-team-building-game-for-your-team"],"asOf":"2026-11-03","tags":["sales team","competitive","leaderboard"]},{"id":"game-for-engineers","stage":"choose","question":"What team building works for engineers who hate team building?","answer":"A puzzle with sound logic and no social performance. Engineering teams want the game to be fair: a clue that only works if you guess what the designer meant will be found and resented. Escape rooms with a visible system behind them land well; charades, improv and anything that depends on being funny on camera land badly. Give them something to debug together, in teams of four to eight, with a time limit, and let the quiet ones contribute by solving rather than speaking. The free ten-minute co-op challenge at heysparko.com/play is a cheap way to test whether a given team will engage at all.","whenNotUs":"If the team's objection is to any scheduled activity, start with an asynchronous Marathon or nothing at all; a better game does not fix a mandatory calendar invite.","sources":["https://heysparko.com/en/blog/virtual-team-building-for-teams-that-hate-it","https://heysparko.com/en/blog/how-to-choose-a-team-building-game-for-your-team"],"asOf":"2026-11-03","tags":["engineers","introverts","hate team building"]},{"id":"team-that-never-met","stage":"choose","question":"How do you do team building for a remote team that has never met in person?","answer":"Faces first, then the task, then a short celebration. Two weeks before anything live, run a photo prompt everyone can answer in their own time (the view from your desk, a holiday photo), so forty faces are familiar before the game starts. Then a shared task in teams of four to eight, mixed across locations on purpose and told so, with the rules on screen and a clock running. Then an optional 15 to 30 minute live finale where the leaderboard is read. Organisers of a 75-person team whose members had worked together for five years without meeting asked for exactly this sequence in October 2026.","whenNotUs":"If the company can afford to fly everyone to one place once a year, do that; a game sustains the effect between meetings, it does not replace the first one.","sources":["https://heysparko.com/en/blog/team-building-for-multicultural-teams","https://heysparko.com/en/blog/how-to-choose-a-team-building-game-for-your-team"],"asOf":"2026-11-03","tags":["never met","remote","onboarding","photo prompt"]},{"id":"december-without-religion","stage":"choose","question":"Is there a December team event that does not assume everyone celebrates Christmas?","answer":"Yes, and the setting is the whole answer. Choose winter or New Year's Eve without the holiday: a snowed-in hotel, a clock stopped at midnight, a temple, an arcade. An HR director of a company with colleagues in Israel, Georgia and Kazakhstan hesitated over a game called \"Save Christmas\" because she was not sure how those colleagues would take it. HeySparko's neutral December options are Midnight on Hold, a New Year's Eve story in which the clock freezes a minute before midnight, and Wintervald Hotel Mystery, which has the snow and none of the holiday. Put the occasion in the framing and the prizes, not in the game. The same applies to any national holiday: a setting the whole team shares beats one that half the team celebrates.","whenNotUs":"A company where everyone keeps the same holiday loses nothing by choosing the themed game, and themed games exist in the catalogue for that case.","sources":["https://heysparko.com/en/activities/midnight-on-hold","https://heysparko.com/en/activities/wintervald-hotel-mystery","https://heysparko.com/en/occasions/holiday-party","https://heysparko.com/en/blog/team-building-for-multicultural-teams"],"asOf":"2026-11-03","tags":["december","christmas","holiday","inclusive","religion"]},{"id":"cringe-free-activities","stage":"choose","question":"Which virtual team building activities are the least cringe?","answer":"Shared tasks, by a wide margin. HeySparko scored the fifteen activities that appear most often in the big virtual team building lists against five published criteria (being watched while performing, forced disclosure, idle time, no shared task, dependence on a host). Two truths and a lie scored 10 out of 10, desk tours 9, happy hours and baby-photo guessing 8. Hosted escape rooms and murder mysteries, team trivia and Codenames scored 1 to 3. The scores are a rubric applied by HeySparko, which sells a shared-task game and says so; the rubric is published so anyone can rescore.","whenNotUs":"Quizzes are not cringe, they are a fairness problem: they reward whoever knows the most trivia. If the team loves trivia, a hosted trivia vendor will serve it better than a story game.","sources":["https://heysparko.com/en/blog/the-cringe-index"],"asOf":"2026-11-03","tags":["cringe","activities","ranking"]},{"id":"alternatives-to-happy-hour","stage":"choose","question":"What can we do instead of a virtual happy hour?","answer":"Give people something to do together rather than something to talk about. A virtual happy hour scores 8 out of 10 on the things employees say they hate (idle time, no shared task, dependence on the organiser's energy), because it is unstructured conversation between people who mostly do not know each other. A ten-minute co-op game that opens from a link, with a clock and a shared goal, keeps everyone busy and asks nobody to talk about themselves; the free one at heysparko.com/play runs for up to five people. For larger groups, a hosted game of 70 to 90 minutes in teams of eight does the same job with a host.","whenNotUs":"A team of six that already likes each other and wants to drink together does not need a vendor; schedule the call during work hours and skip the icebreaker.","sources":["https://heysparko.com/en/blog/what-to-do-instead-of-a-virtual-happy-hour","https://heysparko.com/en/play"],"asOf":"2026-11-03","tags":["happy hour","alternatives","social"]},{"id":"heysparko-vs-hosted-trivia","stage":"choose","question":"How is HeySparko different from a hosted trivia or game-show vendor?","answer":"The product is a game the vendor built, not an activity run over a video call. In a hosted trivia or game-show event the host is the product and the video call is the venue. In a HeySparko event the game is the product: a browser world with a story, roles, puzzles and a scoreboard, with a host watching the rooms. That is why it costs more at small sizes ($1,300 for up to 50 people against roughly $500 to $1,000 for an hour of hosted trivia from vendors that publish a price) and why it holds up better for teams that dislike performing on camera or do not share a language.","whenNotUs":"For a team that wants its own in-jokes read out by a charismatic host, a game-show vendor is the better buy and cheaper.","sources":["https://heysparko.com/en/blog/how-much-does-virtual-team-building-cost"],"asOf":"2026-11-03","tags":["comparison","trivia","game show","vendors"]},{"id":"heysparko-vs-self-serve-apps","stage":"choose","question":"Should we use a self-serve team building app instead of a hosted event?","answer":"If the team will run it themselves and keep running it, yes, and several good ones are free or under $250 an event. The trade is the host and the build: a self-serve app gives you a mechanic (a scavenger hunt, a Slack olympics, an escape room template) and leaves the energy, the pacing and the teams to you. HeySparko sits between: the game is built and themed, and a host runs the live session, but there is also a free self-run challenge and an asynchronous Marathon that needs no host. Organisers who said \"we're not party planners\" chose the hosted format for that reason.","whenNotUs":"A small team with an enthusiastic organiser and a weekly ritual is better served by a free self-serve tool than by booking a vendor.","sources":["https://heysparko.com/en/blog/how-much-does-virtual-team-building-cost"],"asOf":"2026-11-03","tags":["comparison","self-serve","apps"]},{"id":"cost-50-people","stage":"cost","question":"How much does virtual team building cost for 50 people?","answer":"With HeySparko, $1,300 for a hosted Big Game of 70 to 90 minutes for up to 50 people, host included, which is $26 per person; a three-day Marathon for the same team is $2,600. Across the category, the 14 of 27 vendors whose pages allow the sum range from about $250 for self-run software to about $3,000 for per-person hosted events, read on 2026-10-27. Among vendors selling a built game rather than a hosted activity on a call, HeySparko's price sits in the middle of the range.","sources":["https://heysparko.com/en/pricing","https://heysparko.com/en/blog/how-much-does-virtual-team-building-cost"],"asOf":"2026-11-03","tags":["cost","price","50 people"]},{"id":"cost-100-people","stage":"cost","question":"How much does virtual team building cost for 100 people?","answer":"$1,800 with HeySparko for a hosted Big Game for up to 100 people, $18 per person, host included; a three-day Marathon is $3,600 and five days $5,400. The price is per event by tier, so a team of 110 moves to the 150-person tier at $2,500. Per-person vendors in the category publish rates of roughly $15 to $45 a head at this size, which comes to $1,500 to $4,500, and several flat-rate vendors stop publishing a price above 100 people and ask for a quote.","sources":["https://heysparko.com/en/pricing","https://heysparko.com/en/blog/how-much-does-virtual-team-building-cost"],"asOf":"2026-11-03","tags":["cost","price","100 people"]},{"id":"cost-500-plus","stage":"cost","question":"What does virtual team building cost for 500 to 2,000 people?","answer":"$5,300 for up to 500 people and $6,800 for up to 1,000 with HeySparko, which is $6.8 per person at the larger size; a team of 2,000 falls in the 3,000-person tier at $11,300. This is where the pricing model matters most. Per-person vendors grow in a straight line (published rates come to $7,500 to $22,500 for 500 people), and flat-rate vendors generally stop publishing above a few hundred people. HeySparko's ladder is published to 10,000 participants, so a large organisation can read its price without a call. Large groups often choose a Marathon so nobody has to be online at once.","sources":["https://heysparko.com/en/pricing","https://heysparko.com/en/blog/how-much-does-virtual-team-building-cost"],"asOf":"2026-11-03","tags":["cost","price","large","enterprise","500","1000"]},{"id":"smallest-price","stage":"cost","question":"What is the smallest HeySparko event and what does it cost?","answer":"The smallest billing tier is up to 15 people at $550, host included. The platform itself runs for teams from 5 participants, and the free co-op challenge at heysparko.com/play covers up to five people at no cost, so a very small team does not need to book anything. The largest published tier is 10,000 participants at $22,500. There is no per-person pricing and no minimum spend beyond the tier price.","sources":["https://heysparko.com/en/pricing","https://heysparko.com/en/play"],"asOf":"2026-11-03","tags":["cost","minimum","small team"]},{"id":"customization-cost","stage":"cost","question":"How much does it cost to customize a game with our brand or our people?","answer":"A fixed amount per layer, whatever the headcount: $1,000 for your logo and branding inside the game, $2,500 for your own people as characters, $5,000 for the story rewritten around your company, or $7,500 for all three. Customization is added to the format price and is never priced per person or per day. A game built from scratch is quoted per project from $25,000. Any customization needs ten business days; an off-the-shelf Big Game can be booked three business days out and a Marathon two.","sources":["https://heysparko.com/en/pricing","https://heysparko.com/en/build-your-own"],"asOf":"2026-11-03","tags":["customization","branding","cost"]},{"id":"which-vendors-publish-prices","stage":"cost","question":"Which virtual team building vendors publish their prices?","answer":"About half. HeySparko read the public pages of 27 vendors in the category on 2026-10-27: 13 publish a price in full, 9 partially (a range, a \"from\", or a number only inside a calculator or for in-person events) and 5 not at all. What is rare is a published price that still applies above about 100 people: flat-rate vendors switch to \"contact us\" there, and per-person rates reach $7,500 to $22,500 for 500 people. Every price is copied verbatim with its page and date in an open dataset under CC BY 4.0, with HeySparko's own ladder in the same table.","sources":["https://heysparko.com/en/blog/how-much-does-virtual-team-building-cost","https://heysparko.com/api/datasets/vendor-prices"],"asOf":"2026-11-03","tags":["vendors","prices","transparency","dataset"]},{"id":"how-to-compare-quotes","stage":"cost","question":"How do we compare quotes from different team building vendors?","answer":"Ask every vendor the same five questions before putting two numbers side by side: is the price per person or per event; is the host included or billed separately; is there a minimum headcount or minimum spend; how is customization priced (per participant becomes the largest line at scale); and what do you deliver afterwards, and what is it calculated from. The last one separates a report from a slide. HeySparko's answers: per event by tier, host included, smallest tier up to 15 people, customization fixed per layer, and a report built from participation data you can export.","sources":["https://heysparko.com/en/blog/how-much-does-virtual-team-building-cost"],"asOf":"2026-11-03","tags":["quotes","compare","procurement"]},{"id":"justify-to-cfo","stage":"cost","question":"How do we justify a team building budget to Finance?","answer":"Frame it as a small cost per person set against a large cost Finance already carries, and propose a pilot with measures agreed in advance. Four quarterly Big Games for a 200-person company cost $12,000 a year, $60 per employee. Set that against your own voluntary attrition in the 6 to 18 month tenure band and against the cost of a hire. Be honest that the research linking engagement to outcomes is correlational and does not measure team building. The pitch that survives is \"one event, three numbers, then we decide\", not \"morale\".","sources":["https://heysparko.com/en/blog/how-much-does-virtual-team-building-cost"],"asOf":"2026-11-03","tags":["budget","cfo","finance","business case"]},{"id":"what-companies-spend-on-parties","stage":"cost","question":"How much do companies usually spend per employee on a team celebration?","answer":"More than a hosted game costs. ANNA Money's 2025 poll of 500 UK small businesses found an average end-of-year party budget of £1,353 per company, or £108 per employee, down 10% on the year before. ezCater's 2025 US survey put food and drink alone at $59 per employee at the party, with total holiday budgets up 13%. The samples and currencies differ, so do not add them together, but either makes a 70 to 90 minute event at roughly $18 to $36 a head look like a small line in a budget that already exists.","sources":["https://heysparko.com/en/blog/how-much-does-virtual-team-building-cost"],"asOf":"2026-11-03","tags":["budget","benchmark","party","spend"]},{"id":"how-long-is-an-event","stage":"run","question":"How long does a virtual team building event take?","answer":"A hosted Big Game runs 70 to 90 minutes: the difference is a longer finale and more time per puzzle for larger groups, not more content. A Marathon runs 1 to 5 days with short daily tasks of 5 to 15 minutes each. Organisers of remote-first teams told HeySparko that anything over an hour of required live time is where attendance falls, and that an optional 15 to 30 minute live finale is what their teams will actually join. The free co-op challenge takes about ten minutes.","sources":["https://heysparko.com/en/pricing","https://heysparko.com/en/blog/how-to-choose-a-team-building-game-for-your-team"],"asOf":"2026-11-03","tags":["duration","how long","minutes"]},{"id":"how-far-in-advance","stage":"run","question":"How far in advance do we need to book?","answer":"Three business days for an off-the-shelf hosted Big Game and two for a Marathon; the limit is the host's calendar, not the build. Any customization (logo, characters, story) needs ten business days. Events above 1,000 people need five to seven days so the hosting team can be staffed. December is thin on host availability, so for a holiday event booking by mid-November is the safe date. Warm-up activities before the event, such as a photo prompt or a wish map, are usually started two to four weeks ahead.","sources":["https://heysparko.com/en/pricing"],"asOf":"2026-11-03","tags":["booking","lead time","advance"]},{"id":"team-size-inside-game","stage":"run","question":"How many people should be on a team inside the game, and who decides the teams?","answer":"Four to eight. Below four, one person can carry the team and the others watch; above eight, the quiet ones have nothing to do. The organiser decides: random assignment is fair but lonely, self-selection is comfortable but reinforces existing clusters, and deliberate mixing (people who do not normally work together) is what organisers who want cross-team connection choose, and they tell the team that is the point. Organisers can build the teams themselves and send the list; the deadline for that list is the one date the plan hangs on.","sources":["https://heysparko.com/en/blog/how-to-choose-a-team-building-game-for-your-team"],"asOf":"2026-11-03","tags":["teams","team size","assignment"]},{"id":"languages-supported","stage":"run","question":"What languages are HeySparko games available in?","answer":"The platform and games are available in 16 languages, including English, Spanish, German, French, Italian, Dutch, Polish, Portuguese, Turkish, Japanese, Korean and Chinese. For a multilingual team the usual arrangement is the game and the host in the company language and each team speaking whatever it likes internally; the puzzles are visual and mechanical, so a team can argue in Polish and solve in English on the shared board. An HR director with staff in 21 countries chose exactly this split to avoid forcing one language on everyone.","sources":["https://heysparko.com/en","https://heysparko.com/en/blog/team-building-for-multicultural-teams"],"asOf":"2026-11-03","tags":["languages","multilingual","localization"]},{"id":"what-is-the-host-for","stage":"run","question":"What does the host actually do during a HeySparko event?","answer":"Runs the room so the organiser does not have to. The host opens the session, explains the rules once, watches every team's room at the same time, drops a hint where a team is stuck, keeps the clock, and runs the finale: the leaderboard, the two rounds of sharing (inside teams, then across the group) and the prize announcement if the organiser has one. Organisers who said \"we're not party planners\" named this as the best part of a hosted event. Prizes are the organiser's; the host will announce whatever they provide.","sources":["https://heysparko.com/en/pricing"],"asOf":"2026-11-03","tags":["host","facilitator","what happens"]},{"id":"warm-up-before-event","stage":"run","question":"What should we do in the weeks before the event to get people interested?","answer":"Two things that need no performance: a teaser and a photo prompt. A short teaser (a video or a message in the game's voice, \"get ready, the hotel is snowed in\") sent a few weeks out sets expectations; a 75-person team's organiser said the previous year's teaser \"got people really motivated\". Then one or two individual warm-up activities two weeks apart, built on photos (a holiday photo, the view from your desk, a wish pinned on a shared map), because people share photos readily and it makes faces familiar before the teams are revealed. Keep the teams secret until the event if you want the mixing to land.","sources":["https://heysparko.com/en/blog/how-to-choose-a-team-building-game-for-your-team"],"asOf":"2026-11-03","tags":["warm-up","teaser","engagement","pre-event"]},{"id":"prizes-and-leaderboard","stage":"run","question":"Do we need prizes, and is there a leaderboard?","answer":"A leaderboard, yes, in every game, personal and team, updating live; it is what carries a Marathon when there is no live room. Prizes are optional and are the organiser's to supply, and the ones that work are symbolic: a custom trophy, a named award, a day off. One organiser avoided gift cards because of the tax paperwork; another ran a daily $50 draw from the list of people who had completed the day's task. The report gives the completion list by week for exactly that purpose. The prize does not need to be worth anything; it needs to exist and be announced.","sources":["https://heysparko.com/en/pricing"],"asOf":"2026-11-03","tags":["prizes","leaderboard","rewards"]},{"id":"hybrid-office-and-remote","stage":"run","question":"Does it work for a hybrid team with some people in the office and some remote?","answer":"Yes, with one rule: everyone plays from their own device, including the people sitting in the same office. A browser game with teams of four to eight does not care where the devices are, and putting the office group on one screen while remote colleagues join individually recreates the exact imbalance a hybrid team feels every day. Mix teams across office and remote on purpose. For a December event where the office has its own party, several organisers run the game asynchronously in the week before and use the office party as the finale.","sources":["https://heysparko.com/en/blog/team-building-for-multicultural-teams"],"asOf":"2026-11-03","tags":["hybrid","office","remote"]},{"id":"what-is-in-the-report","stage":"after","question":"What do we get after the event?","answer":"A report built from what actually happened, not from a slide template: participation by team and by player, who joined and when, time spent on each stage, completion, the final leaderboard, survey results if a survey was run, and a CSV export. The organiser's dashboard shows the same numbers live during the event. HeySparko read the public pages of 27 vendors in September 2026: 8 offer some form of post-event measurement and none publish what the report contains, so ask any vendor to show the inputs behind their numbers.","sources":["https://heysparko.com/en/blog/virtual-team-building-measurement-audit","https://heysparko.com/en/pricing"],"asOf":"2026-11-03","tags":["report","analytics","dashboard","after"]},{"id":"typical-turnout","stage":"after","question":"What percentage of invited employees typically take part?","answer":"On average more than 85% of invited employees take part, averaged across HeySparko events and read from the per-event participation reports as of 2026-11-03. That is an average over events of very different sizes, not a promise for yours: the report gives you your own number by team, which is the one worth acting on. What moves turnout, from what organisers report: the event sits inside working hours, runs under ninety minutes, is optional, and is preceded by a warm-up that makes faces familiar. Anything scheduled after hours draws the fewest people, and a format repeated unchanged from last year draws fewer each time.","sources":["https://heysparko.com/en/blog/virtual-team-building-measurement-audit","https://heysparko.com/en/pricing"],"asOf":"2026-11-03","tags":["turnout","participation","benchmark","attendance"]},{"id":"repeat-events","stage":"after","question":"Should we run the same event again next year?","answer":"Run the same ritual with a new theme, not the same activity. Organisers told HeySparko that repeating an activity kills attendance: a games studio's quizzes worked for two years and then stopped drawing people. What survives is the shape (a December campaign, a spring kickoff) with new content each time. Two organisers independently described their event as a tradition that continues last year's (a wish map replacing a kudos board), and said that framing was what made it easy to approve internally. Plan the calendar as a ritual and change the game.","sources":["https://heysparko.com/en/blog/how-to-choose-a-team-building-game-for-your-team"],"asOf":"2026-11-03","tags":["repeat","annual","tradition","ritual"]},{"id":"who-is-behind-heysparko","stage":"trust","question":"Who is behind HeySparko and how long have they done this?","answer":"HeySparko was founded in 2022 as the international build of a virtual team-building platform the same team has run since 2020. Across both, the team has worked with 700+ companies in 50+ countries and run 2,000+ events in total, a cumulative figure rather than a yearly one. The founders are Serge Sigal, who designs the games and runs the hosting team, and Paul Medvedev, who runs the commercial side. Named clients and case studies are on the site with the client's approval only.","sources":["https://heysparko.com/en/about"],"asOf":"2026-11-03","tags":["company","founders","track record","trust"]},{"id":"employee-data-and-privacy","stage":"trust","question":"What employee data does HeySparko need, and can we avoid sharing emails?","answer":"Nothing beyond what a player types at the door, and emails can be left out entirely. A game session opens in one of two ways: by email, where the player enters an address and receives a link, or by access code, where the organiser hands out codes generated for the event and the player enters a code. With codes, HeySparko never holds an employee email. On first entry the game asks only the fields the organiser switched on in the settings, which can be as little as a nickname or a first name and an initial. For a multi-day marathon the code also keeps a player's progress and personal results between visits. No account, password or app install is involved.","sources":["https://heysparko.com/en/privacy","https://heysparko.com/en/pricing"],"asOf":"2026-11-03","tags":["privacy","gdpr","data","security","emails","access codes"]},{"id":"anonymous-participation","stage":"trust","question":"Can our employees take part without HeySparko ever knowing who they are?","answer":"Yes, and large companies run it exactly this way. The organiser keeps the full employee list (name, department, corporate email) on their side and never sends it. HeySparko generates a batch of access codes; the organiser assigns one code per person and sends back two columns only, the code and a short display label such as a first name and an initial. Players enter with their codes, build or join teams by code, and the organiser's dashboard shows live who has entered and which team they are in. After the event the report comes back keyed by the same codes, and the organiser matches it to their own list in a spreadsheet. HeySparko sees pseudonyms and codes and nothing else. A company with an internal portal can issue permanent codes from there and receive results through an API: data flows out of HeySparko to the client, never the other way.","sources":["https://heysparko.com/en/privacy","https://heysparko.com/en/pricing"],"asOf":"2026-11-03","tags":["anonymous","pseudonymous","privacy","security review","enterprise","access codes"]},{"id":"hosting-and-retention","stage":"trust","question":"Where is HeySparko hosted and how long is data kept?","answer":"The website and the international game platform run on DigitalOcean; the website's server logs are kept for 30 days and error reports go to Sentry's EU region with personal fields scrubbed at capture. The website sets one functional cookie for language and uses cookieless analytics. Lead form submissions are kept for 24 months from the last interaction. Game-side data is minimised by design: with code-based entry HeySparko holds codes and display labels rather than identities, so there is little to retain. Buyers with a formal security questionnaire get written answers on request before the first call; the questions regulated companies ask are familiar and the code-based setup above is the usual answer to most of them.","sources":["https://heysparko.com/en/privacy"],"asOf":"2026-11-03","tags":["hosting","retention","gdpr","security","digitalocean","procurement"]},{"id":"cheating-and-prizes","stage":"trust","question":"If there are prizes, how do you stop people from cheating?","answer":"By design of the games rather than by policing: answers in the story games are specific to the session, the arcade challenges are played live inside the browser rather than submitted, and the leaderboard records time and completion the host can see. For money prizes, the report's per-player log lets an organiser check an outlier before announcing a winner, and an organiser running daily draws can draw from the verified completion list rather than from scores. No system makes a quiz un-googleable; that is one more reason not to build a prize event on general-knowledge trivia.","sources":["https://heysparko.com/en/pricing"],"asOf":"2026-11-03","tags":["cheating","anti-abuse","prizes","fairness"]},{"id":"open-data-and-method","stage":"trust","question":"Does HeySparko publish the data behind its claims about the category?","answer":"Yes, as open datasets under CC BY 4.0, each with its method, its limitations and the author's conflict of interest stated inside the data. The vendor measurement audit records what 27 vendors promise as outcomes and what they can measure afterwards, read in September 2026. The price survey records the published prices of the same 27 vendors, read on 2026-10-27, with HeySparko's own ladder in the same table. Both are available as JSON and CSV and through a read-only MCP server, and every row carries the vendor's own wording and the page it was read from.","sources":["https://heysparko.com/api/datasets/vendor-measurement-audit","https://heysparko.com/api/datasets/vendor-prices","https://heysparko.com/api/mcp"],"asOf":"2026-11-03","tags":["open data","dataset","method","mcp"]},{"id":"ask-a-machine","stage":"trust","question":"Is there a way for an AI assistant to get HeySparko facts and prices directly?","answer":"Yes. HeySparko runs a read-only Model Context Protocol server at heysparko.com/api/mcp that needs no key: it quotes a price for a headcount and format, lists the games, returns company facts, serves the two open datasets and answers the questions in this registry. The same material is on heysparko.com/llms.txt and llms-full.txt as plain text, and every blog post is available as Markdown by adding .md to its address. Prices and facts come from the same stores the site renders from, so an assistant and a human reader see the same numbers.","sources":["https://heysparko.com/api/mcp","https://heysparko.com/llms.txt","https://heysparko.com/api/answers"],"asOf":"2026-11-03","tags":["mcp","llms.txt","api","agents"]}]}