Co-Founder, CEO & CTO at The Go Game Finn Kelly has spent the greater part of the last 20 years dedicated to creating a more playful universe. Sam and Finn catch up and dig into:

• The many facets of coding the ultimate team bonding experience.

• Why he updated GIF settings to Rated G.

• How Napoleon Bonaparte wins rock, paper, scissors.

Samantha Meazell: I'm psyched to have a chance to chat with Finn Kelly. He is the Co-founder, CEO, and CTO of The Go Game. We met ages ago through friends and it's been so fun checking in with each other through the years.

First of all, a huge congratulations to The Go Game, the leading provider of team building games throughout the world. They are in five countries and counting, 1,200 events a year, and really thriving. I had the chance, Finn, and you may not even know or remember this, but I was a plant in a game a few years ago. I wasn't a ficus but a secretly planted actor in the downtown Austin game. I was in the role of an art docent. I got to wear all black and probably throw on some glasses. And I got to give teams a clue for their scavenger hunt. It was really, really fun.

And as you know, a couple of weeks ago our entire team at Slide UX got to play one of your new remote team building games and it was great fun singing and battling each other out on some trivia. We really appreciate all of your work.

Finn Kelly: I'm thankful for the introduction. I'm CEO, and more now CTO, the last two or three years. I now spend time mainly in code and managing our team. And so this has been my project for the last couple years, building the remote games.

Coding while listening to music: if you know every lyric, you don’t have to listen to it.

SM: You taught yourself coding, didn’t you?
FK: I did. I was a jazz piano major, and then after college got to San Francisco and was like, maybe I can do some of this code stuff and learn Flash and work for a few startups there, then started the company. And that's what I did for the first 12 years of Go Game, code, and then I handed it off to some other folks to do it, and then I got back around to it again.

SM: How often did you scat while coding? I'm combining your jazz and coding world.
FK: There was a time where I could only listen to one album and that was the Cake album with “No Phone” on it. That was my album for every day. I just had to have the same thing on. I don't have that that situation anymore.

SM: They're so lyric heavy.
FK: I know, but I knew every lyric. That's the key. If you know every lyric, and you don't have to listen to it. And in college, it was Bill Evans. I’d listen to Bill Evans, on repeat, for everything.

I'm the code guy that wants to throw everything in, kind of like Microsoft style, and I need somebody else to be like Steve Jobs for me and make it simple and easy to use and unbreakable by a grandmother.

SM: Any sort of UX or UI lessons learned, or perplexing questions that came up, both in the in-person or remote games?
FK: The honest answer is, I'm not very good at the UI. I'm the code guy that wants to throw everything in, kind of like Microsoft style, and I need somebody else to be like Steve Jobs for me and make it simple and easy to use and breakable by a grandmother. And so that's what my business partner is. Ian Fraser is my business partner and we make a good team because I want to do these eight million things, you’ll triple click on it, then you’ll get to this avatar. And he's like, I don't get it. We make a good team that way and I've gotten better at that as well.

Part of the main thing is how do you get all these videos into a single browser. You're going to have limited CPU constraints, you're going to have a variety of platforms with a variety of browsers and a variety of bandwidths. And the more videos you have in the screen, the more everything starts to bog down.

And so all of a sudden, you have to really be optimizing for every single step and procedure that you're doing inside the app to be as clean as possible and try to be as simple as possible. At the same time, you're also like what if we want to have a big clue, we want to have the host coming to the center, we want you coming in the center. So some of the things that haven't been solved for here is how do you make four people show up as a panel in your Zoom meeting and have that known ahead of time. So, okay, now it's time for the panel, click “panel.” And they don't really give you any tools to do that.

So that was part of what I was thinking about in the beginning, is more facilitator tools, breakout rooms. I got very obsessed with taking polls and finding people's responses to those polls, and then having these ad-hoc teams that form based on the polls, and then you can come back to your original teams. And a lot of that stuff had to be peeled away and just focus directly on gameplay for this particular iteration. And that's why, it’s because that's obviously what are our audiences and that's what they're expecting, but I think there's a whole lot of innovation that can be done.

There’re probably not going to be normal conferences for at least six months, maybe longer, and we've got a good head start on getting 15 to 30 people in one room and having a meaningful interaction.

FK: What I think we're going for, and we've already designed as it's been built pretty much to handle the backend standpoint, is the conference game. So you come in, you have 1000 people, you've booked a two hour time slot. And people can arrive, filter through, look at the game, see the leaderboard, search for their friends, chat with them really quickly, decide they want to go play on this game. Maybe there's certain celebrity hosts that now you want to point out and have them say their little blurb about their game, come play in mine. They select it, countdown timer, and they head into the game and it kind of has this tournament feel where there are brackets and they go to the finals, everything they can watch and spectate.

SM: And that’s up now?
FK: This is designed and we're starting the code for it right now.

SM: Well, you have a whole host of conferences to talk to now.
FK: Right. So that means they're coming in the door and people are more and more realizing there’re probably not going to be normal conferences for at least six months, maybe longer. And so the solutions that are out there currently are pretty minimal and we've got a good head start on getting 15 to 30 people in one room and having a meaningful interaction. And if you can get that for a conference feel and have it feel connected and you can get other people.

You're gonna do something silly, but you're going to get applauded for it, you're gonna have a laugh track.

SM: That leads me to a question, thinking about how your work and particularly now this remote work because it's so scalable and reaches such a wide variety of people. How do you think about the variety of diversity of needs and attitudes that people have when they jump into your game?
FK: The things that we have to be most concerned with are sensitivity around working related topics. And that's what we've been doing for pretty much our whole existence in The Go Game. How can we push up to a certain edge where there's humor, and there's self deprecation, and there's embarrassment, but it’s not going to make you feel bad. You're gonna do something silly, but you're going to get applauded for it, you're gonna have a laugh track. So that that's definitely part of our magic sauce I think already.

But little silly things like that challenge where you have to go and search a giphy. Initially, I didn't realize you could put a rating on that in the backend. And so people were pulling back completely inappropriate things because giphy is pretty wide open. So then you go back, okay we can fix that and just make that Rated G.

I'm trying to create an online energy that the current, very homogenous, set of tools within Zoom or whatever else is currently out there don't really do.

SM: You've got an up-sell opportunity here for inclusive training that follows.
FK: Yeah, facilitation is a huge opportunity here as well. When I was developing it, I was working with a number of facilitators who were like, this is something we really need that they don't have this yet, and it's because it's an environment, video conferencing, that creates a feeling.

You know, like environment in here has energy, it has something different, it has feeling. That's why I do the in-person facilitation, because I'm trying to create that feeling and you're left with a very homogenous set of tools within Zoom or whatever else is currently out there that don't really do that.

SM: How are you creating that feeling?

FK: Well, I mean, I'm not a facilitator. I go for are people smiling? So my first little trick, everyone has their tricks that they do when they're hosting, and my first one is they get five points and then I see someone smiling, and I'm like “Samantha's smiling the biggest, she gets bonus points. Hey look, they’re in the lead.” And everyone’s like, “Hey!” And you get some laughter and then you put some sound effects after that. You know, you're wearing something silly or a bow tie. You're kind of making yourself vulnerable as well.

Imagine you're building a game for Bill and Ted's buddies Napoleon Bonaparte, Billy the Kid, and Socrates.

SM: Speaking of being in a game, imagine you're building a game for Bill and Ted's buddies. So your players in this game are Napoleon Bonaparte, Billy the Kid, and Socrates. What's the game and how does the competition go down, or who wins?

FK: Ah, let's see. What's funny is, do you know master game designer Jane McGonigal?

SM: I don't think so.

FK: She’s written a bunch of different books and “Super Better” was one and “Reality is Broken” was the one that got her famous. She used to actually work at The Go Game when she first was getting her degree and she’s now this preeminent scholar of the ARGs, the Alternate Reality Games.

What's funny is her big thesis was to do a basically rock, paper, scissors game, but you're walking around as a zombie and you have to say something and one side would be rock, one side would be paper, one side would be scissors, but you're doing it collectively as a whole. And so there's an action that you're going to do when you encounter that other group and you see them, you have to do it first and then you ends up winning.

As simple as rock, paper, scissors. Napoleon would probably be good at that game.

SM: You think Napoleon's going to take that?

FK: I think probably.
SM: The little guy wins!
FK: The little guy guessing when are the other guys going to move first.
SM: Defense becomes your best offense really.

What’s on your billboard and where do you put it?

SM: And finally, I want to be mindful of your time, imagine you get to design a billboard and it's gonna be put up tomorrow. What's on it and where do you put it?
FK: I'll put some some lines of code that I need to fix and an advertisement: Need Work? That's basically all I could think about right now.
SM: It’s perfect.

FK: We have an infinite loop. Can you fix it?
SM: That's deep, Finn. Come on!

SM: I'm so glad to see you and a huge congratulations on everything you've created. I know how much work that has to be.
FK: Yeah. Well, we're pushing the boulder uphill and it's a good problem to have. Honestly, I was telling a friend of mine we're keeping people employed.
SM: Totally so rad, let me know how I can help spread the word or if you need any support with anything. Most of all, just so great to see you again. It's been a long time.
FK: Yes, I know. Have a great rest of your day.

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