Monitoring a Beer Game - tips and tricks

This article details some helpful functions you can use while you are actually hosting a live or remote Beer Game session.

If you haven't already, I suggest you first read the article Organizing a Beer Game Session - the complete guide to have an overview of the process.

Remote or Live Hosting Configuration

Our Beer Game is used every day in all kinds of setups: in-presence, remotely or in a hybrid setting. All configurations work quite well, simply choose depending on either the participants are based at the same site or not.

If you are playing remotely, schedule a meeting using your classical video-conferencing software (ex: MS Teams, Zoom, Google Meet, Webex, etc.). The participants will keep the video-conference window open on their computer, and access the game on another web-browser window.

When playing in presence, the participants should have their laptop with them, or alternatively a smartphone (our beer game can be played in any phone web browser). You can simply assign players into teams based on the position they are in the room.

Follow-up the advancement

From the session follow-up page, you can quickly see a recap of the players connected, who has sent its order and the current week.

If you want to have a look at what is happening inside a game, you can use the Session Lobby to join a game as Observer. You can open several observer views, for the different games, on different tabs of your web browser. This allows you to be able to switch quickly between teams to see how everyone is doing.

Quick game updates

From the session follow-up, you can access "quick update" buttons, to help you manage the teams and evolution of the games. You'll find below a list of available buttons and their effect.

Master the session duration using the Timer:

After you have clicked on the button "Start Timer", the players will only have 1 minute to decide how much to order every week. If one or several of them haven't sent their order, the computer orders for them, and the game advances to the next week (and the 1-minute timer starts again).

You can change the duration of the timer inside a game's settings by specifying the number of seconds it lasts (for example 60s, 90s, 120s..). You can also decide to automatically start the timer from a given week, for the participants to get comfortable with the interface before their decision-making time is limited.

Send admin message:

Click on "Send Message" to send a message to several players at once, or filter on specific games/roles. Use this feature to distribute a message to specific participants/roles, for example asking them to order. It complements the scheduled messages you can prepare inside the game configuration, which are more meant to support the game narrative.

Pause games:

If you want to make a pause in the middle of a game, for example to get the impression of the participants, or explain some concepts mid-game, you can use the "Pause" button.

Players will see the following screen:

Set games as Finished:

Click on the button "Finish Game" to end the game of one or several teams, even if it hasn't reached its final week. You may use this function in case the games are taking a bit too long, or to reach the debriefing pages prematurely.

Reset games:

Click on the button "Reset" to bring the games back to their initial state. If some players are connected they will remain in their current position, allowing them to start again.

Disconnect players:

You can remove all players of one or several games via the "Disconnect Players" button:

For more control, go on the session lobby page, where's you'll see a "Disconnect" icon in front of each role where a player is connected: