Shopify Party reimagines the future of remote working
Canadian e-commerce platform giant Shopify has built an internal game that aims to make virtual hangouts more fun.
Shopify Party is pitched as an investment and experimentation in the future of remote work.
Daniel Beauchamp, Principal AR/VR Engineer, tweeted this week: “There are many tools for virtual hangouts, but most focus on using video chat to recreate the office experience.”
“We wanted to give people a break from video fatigue, and make a space designed for social play and being silly.”
He added: “It’s entirely browser based. Each game is designed to let people hop in & out at any time, and to encourage free play over specific rules.”
“It's made in Unity + WebGL, with the amazing Nomcore library powering all the networking functionality. The core experience was built over 3 months by @byrondelgado (Byron Delgado, UX Lead, AR/VR at Shopify) and myself. Big shout out to our culture tools team who helped with integration & rollout!
Hundreds of games are played each week for one to ones icebreakers, standups, and other team events
“My favourite feedback is from the people who say they feel more comfortable and less anxious participating in this playful setting than in a large video call,” Beauchamp said.
Holiday shopping predictions
Harley Finkelstein, President at Shopify, recently gave his predictions for how the 2021 holiday season in retail will pan out.
Taking to Twitter, he said: “QR codes will continue to play a big role - the pandemic reinvigorated the use of QR codes as a form of communication. This will continue as retailers seek out contactless interactions.”
The line between retail and gaming will, meanwhile, become increasingly blurry.
Brands and celebrities will use platforms like Roblox to extend and monetise their reach, giving customers new shopping experiences.
And retailers with strong omnichannel strategies will succeed.
“Consumers will continue to shop in a hybrid reality of online/offline and brands that cater to this (ie. showing inventory availability online before shopping in-store and augmented reality try ons) will succeed,” Finkelstein observed.
