Make a Game

SkillsAdaptability Creativity Group Mind Team Building

Make a Game is an applied improv exercise in which participants practice identifying the repeatable element in an emerging scene or group interaction and deliberately heightening and playing that element as the scene's game. Drawn from short-form improv theory and applied to collaborative contexts, the exercise trains the ability to recognize what is unusual, specific, or interesting in a moment and consciously develop it into a playable pattern that gives the interaction structure and shared direction.

Structure

Setup

Participants begin an open, unstructured scene, conversation, or group task. The facilitator instructs them to watch for the moment when something unusual, repeated, or interesting emerges -- and to name it as the game.

Progression

As the interaction develops, participants watch for a pattern: something that happens once in an interesting way, suggesting it could happen again. When a participant identifies this element, they can heighten it -- do it more deliberately, reflect it back, offer a variation -- to establish it as the repeatable engine of the scene or interaction.

Once the game is identified and named (either aloud or through agreement), participants continue the interaction by playing the game: heightening the element, exploring its variations, and building to a satisfying escalation or conclusion.

Conclusion

The exercise ends when the game has been identified and played through at least one full escalation cycle. The facilitator debriefs what made the game visible, how it was established, and what made it playable.

How to Teach It

Objectives

Make a Game targets game-recognition in real time and the ability to move from passive participation to active shaping of a scene's direction by identifying and committing to a repeatable structural element. It builds the skill of finding the game rather than waiting for the game to announce itself.

How to Explain It

"The game is already in the room -- you just have to see it. Something happened that was unusual or interesting. The question is whether you recognized it and made it the thing. If you can do that, you don't need a premise -- the game gives you the structure."

Scaffolding

Begin by reviewing examples of game in prior scenes -- naming retroactively what the game was and when it first appeared. This builds game-recognition from observation before requiring it in real time.

Common Pitfalls

Participants sometimes try to invent a game rather than finding it in what is already present, producing a forced structure that the scene has not organically generated. Coach the group to look for the unusual thing that already happened rather than importing a game concept from outside the scene.

In Applied Settings

Learning Objectives

Make a Game trains the ability to identify an emergent pattern in a group interaction and consciously develop it as the structure for the remainder of the exchange. In applied settings, this skill transfers to the ability to recognize and build on productive group dynamics, naming and reinforcing patterns of collaboration that are working rather than letting them pass unacknowledged.

Workplace Transfer

In organizational settings, productive collaboration patterns emerge and disappear without being recognized or deliberately sustained. A team that accidentally discovers a useful problem-solving rhythm in a meeting may not replicate it in the next meeting because no one named it or chose to play it again. Make a Game trains the habit of noticing what is working in real time and making it explicit -- a pattern of turn-taking that produces good ideas, a question format that opens up new possibilities, a dynamic of challenge-and-response that improves the quality of decisions. Once named and made deliberate, the pattern can be reused.

Facilitation Context

The exercise is used in facilitation training, innovation and ideation workshops, team-building programs, and applied improv sessions focused on collaborative pattern recognition and group dynamics. It works well with groups that are developing their capacity to self-facilitate, to notice and develop productive dynamics rather than relying on an external facilitator to structure all interactions.

Debrief Framing

After the exercise, ask: What was the game? When did you first notice it? What made it playable? What would have happened if no one made it the game? Where in your actual meetings or collaborations do you notice patterns emerging that could be named and developed -- and what gets in the way of doing that?