Yes, I built the world’s largest “private” Board Game Cafe (well, as far as I know!) at the Google Singapore office.

My nine-year career at Google Singapore was amazing and successful, but ask anyone I worked with, and they’ll agree it was the “extra” stuff I did that everyone remembers most. Perhaps nothing impacted as many people or fostered as many connections as my beloved creation: the Office Game Cafe.

When I joined Google in 2016, we were in a cozy office in the heart of the CBD with around 500 employees. My favorite feature was a central staircase that traversed the four floors. Brief greetings with colleagues on those stairs sparked connections, which blossomed into collaborations and friendships.

Later that year, we moved to a cavernous new office. Something felt amiss. Our “vertical” office became more “horizontal,” and with the change, those chance encounters became rare. Connections with new joiners were being lost.

Driven by a vision, a passion for board games, and funding from our Culture Club, I secured space in our cafeteria, some rickety shelves, and a few dozen games. My goal was to build a new space for people to meet and connect. Google is known for its end-of-week social gatherings, and soon, Googlers were bringing their food and drinks to the Game Cafe tables to spend time with colleagues.

I remember aiming for 100 members in the first six months. We hit that in under 30 days! Fast forward several years, and we topped one thousand active members, with over 425 games in our collection. By my estimates, over the years we had well over 4,000 unique players in the Game Cafe. Our collection evolved into a fully functioning game library, with colleagues checking out games via a QR code system and playing them over nights and weekends with coworkers, families, and friends.

I gradually developed deep friendships with several of the world’s top board game designers and publishers, helping them play-test games and adding their donated titles to our expanded shelves. We even hosted an industry event for 50 of Asia’s largest board game publishers in 2023. One favorite story is how the Game Cafe directly led to employee retention - one of our software engineers told me he turned down a lucrative offer to join another company because the thought of leaving the Game Cafe and the friendships he made there convinced him to stay.

But what I’m most proud of are the connections, camaraderie, and team building opportunities we created. Working with a fantastic group of volunteers, we hosted hundreds of team development training sessions in our Game Cafe. While many were social, we also built a curriculum using board games to practice and enhance business skills like communication, collaboration, and interdependence. This was my first real taste of blending fun with leadership training - a passion that has since evolved into creating immersive escape room training experiences.

That journey is what eventually inspired our work at Teamwork Unlocked, where we’re pioneering leadership escape room training in Singapore. Just like the Game Cafe, our programs are designed to help people connect, collaborate, and grow - but now with a sharper focus on leadership, trust, and performance under pressure. If an escape room Singapore challenge can reveal how teams work together in real time, then those lessons carry back into the workplace in ways that stick.

Want to hear more about my quirky but fun creations at Google? I’ll be sharing plenty more of these stories while working on my next big thing at Teamwork Unlocked - the world’s first B2B escape room created for leadership training Singapore and team development training. Stay tuned!