12 virtual trivia team building games to bond remote teams

In 2021 — well over a year after the pandemic started — a report revealed that 70% of workers were feeling more isolated than when they commuted to an office. This wasn’t just connected to working alongside others. When asked, remote workers said they missed team building activities at work like office celebrations and after-work happy hours, too.

You might have tried plenty of various virtual team building activities. However, if you feel like your virtual team members are struggling to integrate online, here are some virtual trivia team building ideas to spice things up and get everyone engaged again. If you are looking for more team building ideas, check out the best team building apps.

‍

Paid virtual trivia ideas

Most of the suggestions on this list are free — or at least start free and have in-app purchases. However, there are a few options that require a cash investment up front.

Don’t let the automatic price tag steer you away, though. We’ve tried some of these personally, and there’s no doubt that you get your money’s worth. Paid games tend to have higher value, tech support is spot on, and the overall experience is often better.

‍

1. Monkier Partners Team Building

Price: Starting at $20 per person

Best for: Large teams of up to 300.

‍

Monkier Partners is a virtual team building company, offering various trivia games such as Pub Trivia, Classic Trivia, and Music Trivia. It is a fully hosted experience, inspired by late night game show productions with live facilitators for each event to add excitement to the experience.

2. Jackbox Games

Price: $30

Best for: Having some good, old-fashioned fun.

Jackbox Games is a popular online party game platform. Anyone from your team can access it by:

1. Going to jackbox.tv on a computer or mobile device.
2. Putting in their name.
3. Joining your game via a 4-letter code that you provide. 

Once everyone is in, you can get started. The site includes many different amusement options, several of which are a perfect source of online trivia, puzzle games or quiz games for team building. 

For instance, Fibbage is a fun combination of trivia and the age-old classic, Balderdash. Participants invent definitions for a word and then attempt to choose the correct one on the screen.

‍

3. TriviaHub

Price: $299

Best for: An immersive, third-party run experience.

If the logistical element of hosting a trivia night seems too intimidating or won’t fit into your overcrowded schedule, TriviaHub offers a solution. This paid online platform comes with its own questions, event format structure, and — get this — live hosts. 

When you sign up for a TriviaHub event, you get a Zoom link sent to your team. Everyone joins within 15 minutes of the event starting, and your assigned TriviaHub host walks you through the rest of the process.

Free virtual trivia ideas

If spending a few hundred or even a few dozen dollars isn’t in the team building budget, that’s okay. There are still plenty of cost-effective options out there. 

The rest of the ideas on this list are either completely free or at least have free versions with options to scale your experience if you choose to invest down the road. If you are also interested in some quick and free minute to win it games, we have compiled a list for you.

‍

4. Kahoot!

Price: $0

Best for: Creating a comprehensive, educational bonding experience.

Kahoot! is well-known as a fun combination of gaming and education. The gamified platform is popular in classrooms, living rooms …and workplaces.

The platform allows users to create trivia quizzes, or “Kahoots.” You can tailor these to the kind of subjects, languages, and devices that your team is accustomed to. The educational focus of the subject matter makes this a good option if you’re looking for a way to work on things like your team’s knowledge base or problem-solving skills.

‍

5. Crowdpurr

Price: $0

Best for: Getting your team engaged and involved.

Crowdpurr is a cloud-based platform designed to encourage engagement. It helps create polls and add interactive elements to a variety of presentation formats. It also has trivia quizzes.

You can conduct these quizzes live and personalize them with things like your brand logo. They are even designed to work in hybrid workspaces. The best part? Crowdpurr is free to use.

‍

If you don't feel like setting up your own game, you can also use their free weekly trivia show:

‍

6. Trivia Crack

Price: $0

Best for: Teams in different time zones.

Many remote teams are scattered across the globe. This can lead to teams living in time zones that are so different that it becomes difficult for them to meet at the same time for an event.

If that’s the case, you can use a mobile-friendly, asynchronous option like Trivia Crack. Your team can create free accounts and then challenge each other to an ongoing trivia competition that can play out over the course of several hours or even a few days.

‍

7. Heads Up!

Price: $0

Best for: Easy, party-game fun.

Developed by the one and only Ellen DeGeneres on her show, Heads Up! is a fun online game that combines charades and trivia elements into one delightfully awkward activity. Participants hold their phones up to their foreheads with the screen facing out. Then their teammates give them hints about what word is on their screen.

This one requires everyone to be on a separate video conferencing platform (e.g. Veertly, Zoom, Google Meet) as they play. You need to:

1. Set up a live feed first.
2. Have your participants connect through the app on their phones.
3. Play the game over the live video feed.

This one requires a little more logistical cooperation. Nevertheless, the popular party game remains a powerful way to get your team interacting and laughing together. It can also be a good communication exercise for your team, as well.

‍

8. Christmas Trivia

Price: $0

Best for: Holiday-themed team building fun.

Sometimes a generic trivia game isn’t enough to spark everyone’s interest. When that’s the case, you can steer into extracurricular elements to crank up the engagement. One way to do this is by choosing a virtual trivia option that aligns with a holiday, like Christmas Trivia.

This online assortment of jolly questions focuses on end-of-year activities, from decorating the tree to guessing popular holiday music and movies. It’s a great way to add an additional level of fun to your trivial pursuits.

‍

9.  Who Wants to Be a Millionaire

Price: $0

Best for: Structured, nostalgic, relatable entertainment.

Another way to add an additional layer of complexity to your team trivia night is by steering into a classic entertainment format. Who Wants to Be a Millionaire was a game show that enthralled viewers across the nation for years — and now, you can use the same format to lure your team into bonding over random, high-stakes interrogations.

The WWBM game style raises the intensity of a normal round of trivia questions by adding an (admittedly fake) monetary element to the equation. The tried and true game show setup can simultaneously add a sense of pressure and nostalgia to any virtual trivia team building activity.

‍

10. Popcorn Trivia

Price: $0

Best for: Teams that love pop culture.

Sticking with the Hollywood theme, Popcorn Trivia is another entertainment-based trivia option that can add a welcome sense of relatability to your team building experience. The app features thousands of questions that center on a popular topic for most individuals: movies.

It doesn’t matter if your team consists of Academy-Award-obsessed movie snobs or fairweather Netflix bingers, everyone can get into a trivia game about their favorite on-screen entertainment. This introduces a common ground element that can turn a generic game into a bonding experience for your team.

‍

11. Sporcle

Price: $0 (up to $599 for live sessions)

Best for: Having lots of different gaming options.

If you like having options, you want to check out Sporcle. The virtual team building platform is a juggernaut of trivia selections.

You can book live sessions with a third-party host. You can also choose from a massive selection of pre-existing categories and trivia formats. If you aren’t sure what your team’s trivial preferences will be, Sporcle allows you to get comfortable with a specific cloud-based format with plenty of room to tailor things as you go along.

‍

12. Build your own virtual team building quiz

Price: $0 to infinity

Best for: Making the most custom-tailored experience you darn well please.

If the already-mentioned trivia team building activities aren’t quite what you were looking for, you can always opt to create your own trivia or a game show quiz. This gives you the freedom to tailor the experience for your particular group, whether it’s made of leaders, employees, or a specific department.

All you need is a good video conferencing tool and some questions. You can look up existing questions or come up with your own. Once you have your questions in hand — or more accurately, on device — you can:

1. Start a video chat with your team. 
2. Have everyone mute their mics.
3. Share your desktop screen with the questions.
4. Give everyone a set amount of time to answer each question.

And just like that, you’re off to the races. Good luck!

If you are looking for some more blood-pumping trivia-style games, you might want to try out family feud team building activities or perhaps some fun and competitive virtual bingo games.

Incorporating virtual trivia into your team building

Team building is a critical part of the remote work process. It’s also often overlooked or pushed to the back burner as management focuses on day-to-day logistics.

If you want your team to have longevity, consistency, and better productivity, you need to invest some serious effort into helping your employees bond. Virtual team building trivia games are an accessible and effective way to bring your team together, even when they’re laboring from afar. Plus, virtual team building activities sometimes don't need too much effort. You can even use tools such as Zoom to organize regular and fun team building gatherings.

So review the list above and pick out some team building quiz games. Keep the unique aspects of your team in mind as you do this and look for platforms that will suit their particular proclivities.

‍

Virtual trivia team building FAQs

Using online quiz team building may sound easy in theory. When you try it, though, several questions can crop up as you go along. We’ve attempted to answer some of those questions for you here:

How do I organize a virtual trivia night?

If you decide that you want to try a virtual trivia night, you want to go about the activity in an organized manner. Otherwise, you can end up creating a chaotic, ineffective event that doesn’t accomplish its goal of building your team through a fun, seamless experience.

Here are four steps you can take to make your next team building virtual trivia night a smashing success:

1. Inform your team ahead of time: A team building exercise isn’t helpful if it’s a major inconvenience. Tell your team about the event well ahead of time so that they can plan for the upcoming extravaganza.
2. Choose your virtual trivia tool and topic: Start with the list of trivia games listed above. Pick a platform or create your own questions. Let everyone know if you’ll be focusing on a particular topic or keeping the questions general.
3. Decide how to create teams: You can steer into the spontaneous by choosing teams on the spot. You can also choose teams ahead of time to partner up specific co-workers whom you might want to see interact together more often.
4. Stick to a (loose) schedule: Sketch out a rough idea of how you want your game night to go. Don’t be too strict, though, and don't forget to plan a little extra time for everyone to join the event once it goes live. Then use your structure to start the game, keep score, retain everyone’s focus, and choose your team’s winner in a fair and unbiased manner.

Organization is a balancing act when it comes to team building. You don’t want to stifle the fun. Even so, if you can go into the event with at least a rough idea of how you want it to go, it can help you stay focused on the team building part of the proceedings.

‍

What are the benefits of virtual trivia for team building?

If you’re wondering how all of this trivia-infused fun actually helps your team, there are several answers to that question. Virtual trivia benefits your team by:

• Bringing everyone together and avoiding excessive time spent isolated from the group.
• Encouraging camaraderie and relationship-building between coworkers.
• Developing a stronger sense of collaboration as team members learn about the strengths and skill sets of other employees.
• Enhancing communication between team members as they learn to work together toward a common goal.

Team building is a powerful tool in the workplace. Virtual trivia is one of the most effective ways to tap into team building benefits in a virtual setting.

‍

How big of a budget do I need for team building trivia games online?

Deciding how much money to budget toward team building is always a complicated debate. 

On the one hand, there are plenty of free virtual team building activities that you can engage in with little-to-no cost involved. Many of the platforms listed above are also free to use, including:

• Crowdpurr
• Trivia Crack
• Kahoot!

At the same time, if you find a particularly effective tool that fits your team’s needs, you don’t want to pass it up because it has a price tag attached.

When you boil it all down, this spectrum of costs means you can team build with any budget. While that means you don’t have to aim for a specific number, though, it’s wise to at least figure out what money you have to spend before you consider your options. 

If you can invest some funding into your team building, you can spring for things like a live third-party trivia host or get some goodies for your team during the event (more on that below.)

‍

How can I make trivia team building activities enticing?

Trivia can be a fun baseline activity for a team building event. However, if you feel like you want to make things even more interesting for your team, you can spruce up the proceedings in many other ways, such as:

• Paying for your team’s food and drinks.
• Creating questions that are about your team.
• Picking a prize that resonates with your employees.
• Encouraging your team members to communicate via a video chat while playing non-video trivia games.
• Pitting yourself and other management team members against your employees to see who can gain the upper hand in a friendly competition.

All you need is a little brainstorming and you can come up with plenty of ways to turn each virtual trivia night into its own unique, entertaining experience.

‍

Can I get help coming up with trivia questions?

If you’re trying to create your own online quiz for team building, you don’t have to come up with all of the questions yourself. There are many sites designed to generate topical trivia questions for you.

For instance, you can use a site like TriviaMaker to create a quiz of trivia questions. There are plenty of other options that are just a Google search away.