Shuai Chen is the Founder and Chief Puzzle Officer of Gr8er Good Games. In addition to her work at Gr8er Good Games, she is also an event coordinator with the SF Urban Adventure Club, a co-organizer of the No Ordinary Week (NOW!) Festival, a co-founder of Adult Recess, and a co-founder of Middle Circle. Prior to Gr8er Good Games, Shuai was the Executive Director of SCRAP, a San Francisco nonprofit institution. Shuai has produced, coordinated or hosted over 700 events in the past 10 years, including creativity workshops, field days, cross-factional volunteer events, augmented reality games, art exhibitions, Amazing Race-like challenges, corporate teambuilding games, pop-up escape rooms and more. Her events range from intimate 2-person puzzle-game experiences to educational summits with over 1000 participants. Shuai was proud to represent Team USA in the 2017 World Escape Room Championships in Budapest. She holds two degrees from MIT and one from Stanford.

Tell us about Gr8er Good Games. At Gr8er Good Games, we create scavenger hunts, races and games that incorporate social good activities. Players might solve a puzzle, race to a secret location and make sandwiches for the homeless, or hero capes for children in hospitals. Our goal is to give our participants a taste of a bunch of great organizations and give them opportunities for follow up later, as donors, as volunteers, or as board members.

Over the past 10 years, you’ve organized over 700 events—from workshops to teambuilding games to massive summits. What inspired you to start Gr8er Good Games? How did your past experiences shape the company?

I've always loved gathering people to do things together and to build community. And the inspiration for Gr8er Good Games came from a combination of a couple of things: my love of escape rooms and scavenger hunts, my passion to get more people involved in nonprofit communities and volunteering, and also my previous experience in hosting corporate teambuilding events at another job. I've lived through some very toxic work cultures-one boss actively mocked us at staff meetings to try to make us cry to "motivate" us to do better-and that experience, really helped me shape the company to help groups create a better working environment. Through organizing so many different kinds of events, I honed my logistical juggling skills. But nothing really prepares you for starting your own business: it's a crazy roller coaster of AMAZING highs and DEEEEEP lows...

What makes a game or event successful?  At the heart of it, I'm basically creating a game that gets people to let down their work-faces and kind of get to know each other. Because when you see Bob as a real human being, with feelings, emotions and who can belt out a great Whitney Houston, you're not going to go back to the office and treat him like garbage. It's about creating that psychological safety that Google's Project Artistotle found most important in making great group dynamics. They studied 180 teams and found that the group norms and the way that teammates treat one another is vital to a team's success or failure. Social psychology has known for decades that people in groups tend to normalize to the group, but how can we encourage people to break out of those "group-think" ways of doing things? By doing silly, fun, or meaningful activities outside of the workplace.

How can companies benefit from engaging employees in games or events like yours?

Team building games like mine build trust, teamwork, and company culture. After an event, employees are happier and feel that their work is more meaningful: leading to a more motivated workplace, better team collaboration and communication, less sick days, less employee turnover (each employee costs the company between half and 3/4 of their annual salary to replace) and so many more benefits. There’s lots of great teambuilding companies out there, and it’s not an one-size-fits-all kind of thing. So if anyone’s interested in doing teambuilding games with social good, please get in touch with me at hello@gr8ergoodgames.com.

Wow, we heard that you represented team USA in the 2017 World Escape Room Championship! What was that experience like? How were you chosen? How did you prepare for that?

It was truly an unforgettable experience! We did well on the pre-qualifiers, which was kind of like a giant life-sized video game, where we had to connect things to each other using strategy and communication. Then they flew us out to Budapest to play the semifinals, which was basically a giant set that was built into a warehouse, complete with moving pieces, an over-life-sized light-brite kind of puzzle, a giant lasermaze that we had to navigate and much more! Our team was kind of a rag-tag team of people who actually just met each other in the pre-qualifiers. We had had some email exchanges, and I knew one of my teammates, but we basically had nevere worked together. So to prepare, we all flew to San Diego (since we had played a lot of the games in SF and LA already), and played 13 escape rooms in one weekend together, to develop our teamwork. It was then that we kind of learned who was good at which kind of puzzles, who knew morse code by heart, etc, and so had specific people who would focus on specific tasks. When we got to Budapest, well, it was a haven for escape room enthusiasts, there were so many rooms to play! And the championship was just so beautifully crafted and so interesting to play.

What has been one of your biggest career challenges? How did you overcome it?

Avoiding burnout. When you love what you do, you want to work on it from 7am to midnight 7 days a week, but that’s not a sustainable way to work. I try to take at least one day per week where no emails are checked, but it’s hard.

What advice would you share with other entrepreneurs who are just starting out?

Entrepreneurship is really hard- make sure you really love what you’re creating, but don’t be afraid to pivot.

Shuai Chen is the Founder and Chief Puzzle Officer of Gr8er Good Games. In addition to her work at Gr8er Good Games, she is also an event coordinator with the SF Urban Adventure Club, a co-organizer of the No Ordinary Week (NOW!) Festival, a co-founder of Adult Recess, and a co-founder of Middle Circle. Prior to Gr8er Good Games, Shuai was the Executive Director of SCRAP, a San Francisco nonprofit institution. Shuai has produced, coordinated or hosted over 700 events in the past 10 years, including creativity workshops, field days, cross-factional volunteer events, augmented reality games, art exhibitions, Amazing Race-like challenges, corporate teambuilding games, pop-up escape rooms and more. Her events range from intimate 2-person puzzle-game experiences to educational summits with over 1000 participants. Shuai was proud to represent Team USA in the 2017 World Escape Room Championships in Budapest. She holds two degrees from MIT and one from Stanford.

Tell us about Gr8er Good Games. At Gr8er Good Games, we create scavenger hunts, races and games that incorporate social good activities. Players might solve a puzzle, race to a secret location and make sandwiches for the homeless, or hero capes for children in hospitals. Our goal is to give our participants a taste of a bunch of great organizations and give them opportunities for follow up later, as donors, as volunteers, or as board members.

Over the past 10 years, you’ve organized over 700 events—from workshops to teambuilding games to massive summits. What inspired you to start Gr8er Good Games? How did your past experiences shape the company?

I've always loved gathering people to do things together and to build community. And the inspiration for Gr8er Good Games came from a combination of a couple of things: my love of escape rooms and scavenger hunts, my passion to get more people involved in nonprofit communities and volunteering, and also my previous experience in hosting corporate teambuilding events at another job. I've lived through some very toxic work cultures-one boss actively mocked us at staff meetings to try to make us cry to "motivate" us to do better-and that experience, really helped me shape the company to help groups create a better working environment. Through organizing so many different kinds of events, I honed my logistical juggling skills. But nothing really prepares you for starting your own business: it's a crazy roller coaster of AMAZING highs and DEEEEEP lows...

What makes a game or event successful?  At the heart of it, I'm basically creating a game that gets people to let down their work-faces and kind of get to know each other. Because when you see Bob as a real human being, with feelings, emotions and who can belt out a great Whitney Houston, you're not going to go back to the office and treat him like garbage. It's about creating that psychological safety that Google's Project Artistotle found most important in making great group dynamics. They studied 180 teams and found that the group norms and the way that teammates treat one another is vital to a team's success or failure. Social psychology has known for decades that people in groups tend to normalize to the group, but how can we encourage people to break out of those "group-think" ways of doing things? By doing silly, fun, or meaningful activities outside of the workplace.

How can companies benefit from engaging employees in games or events like yours?

Team building games like mine build trust, teamwork, and company culture. After an event, employees are happier and feel that their work is more meaningful: leading to a more motivated workplace, better team collaboration and communication, less sick days, less employee turnover (each employee costs the company between half and 3/4 of their annual salary to replace) and so many more benefits. There’s lots of great teambuilding companies out there, and it’s not an one-size-fits-all kind of thing. So if anyone’s interested in doing teambuilding games with social good, please get in touch with me at hello@gr8ergoodgames.com.

Wow, we heard that you represented team USA in the 2017 World Escape Room Championship! What was that experience like? How were you chosen? How did you prepare for that?

It was truly an unforgettable experience! We did well on the pre-qualifiers, which was kind of like a giant life-sized video game, where we had to connect things to each other using strategy and communication. Then they flew us out to Budapest to play the semifinals, which was basically a giant set that was built into a warehouse, complete with moving pieces, an over-life-sized light-brite kind of puzzle, a giant lasermaze that we had to navigate and much more! Our team was kind of a rag-tag team of people who actually just met each other in the pre-qualifiers. We had had some email exchanges, and I knew one of my teammates, but we basically had nevere worked together. So to prepare, we all flew to San Diego (since we had played a lot of the games in SF and LA already), and played 13 escape rooms in one weekend together, to develop our teamwork. It was then that we kind of learned who was good at which kind of puzzles, who knew morse code by heart, etc, and so had specific people who would focus on specific tasks. When we got to Budapest, well, it was a haven for escape room enthusiasts, there were so many rooms to play! And the championship was just so beautifully crafted and so interesting to play.

What has been one of your biggest career challenges? How did you overcome it?

Avoiding burnout. When you love what you do, you want to work on it from 7am to midnight 7 days a week, but that’s not a sustainable way to work. I try to take at least one day per week where no emails are checked, but it’s hard.

What advice would you share with other entrepreneurs who are just starting out?

Entrepreneurship is really hard- make sure you really love what you’re creating, but don’t be afraid to pivot.