Ice Breaker

Ice Breaker is an “interaction game.” The goal of this game is to get people out in the world to interact in new ways. Generally, people will only feel comfortable playing this type of game if there are gate-keepers to lay a foundation of trust between the players. A good place to play this game would be in the first few weeks at a university to help students get to know each other. Another might be a small town that is focusing on community-building efforts, at a conference or a meet-up.

Supplies

White coffee cups. Markers. Plain white labels.

Rules

1. Write “Cold. Plunge. Chatter.” onto the coffee cup.

2. Walk around normally throughout the time period of your event. Now, you wait until someone comes up and guesses the word “Ice breaker.” They then give you a new word to keep the game going!

3. You now need to think of three words that can get the next person to guess the word you’ve been given. Cross the original phrase out, (or put a label over it) and write the next phrase on the cup. And repeat!

The Culture

Interaction games depend on the openness of the participants to engage with the game. When playing an interaction game, it is important to create a culture of team building and openness.

1. Be a nice human. You should feel comfortable being approached by people you might not normally talk to, and you should feel comfortable approaching someone you might not normally talk to.

2. Don’t give someone a word that is mean or impossible to guess.

The Theory

This section dives deeper into the underlying theory behind the design of the Ice Breaker game.

Everyone is awkward. Every day we cross paths with interesting people and wonder what they’re like. Most of the time we never even speak to them. For us awkward people it takes surprisingly big excuses to start any sort of interaction with a stranger. Things like sneezing, having to go to the bathroom while one’s possessions need to be watched, needing a pen or directions to a destination.

These might at first glance seem pretty small, but these interactions when seen through the lens of the forgiveness and the trust placed in a stranger are actually relatively big.

· Sneezing is an involuntary convulsion that potentially gets the people around you sick. When someone says “Bless you,” it quietly signals that they hope you are alright and that they are not angry at you. People are highly dependent on the approval of those around them.

· When you need someone to watch your stuff at a café, you place trust in them to not steal potentially hundreds of dollars of your personal possessions.

· When you borrow a pen, there is a chance that you will not give it back. They are trusting you to not steal one of their possessions.

· When you ask for directions, you put faith in a stranger that they will get you to the right place.

These two actions represent one human request-response cycle that adds to the total amount of trust you have in them. You did an action or needed something from someone around you, and they either denied or acquiesced. Over time if you work around the same people, there is a build up of trust and you move from strangers to acquaintances. This can take months. For most of the people around you most of the time, it is never.

To move past these highly scripted social norms and actually start a conversation, you need to move past this initial interaction loop. You can make a joke about how you always lose your pens. You can share how you’re new to the city and where you just moved from.

These next interactions usually involve 1. Sharing more personal information outside of the direct context you’re in, and 2. Sharing this information with the goal of finding some common ground between the two of you so the other person can respond with some information of their own.

Essentially, you’re trying to create a second request-response cycle.

There are currently few ways to signal to other people around you that you want to have interactions with them outside of sneezing/pen borrowing/direction giving. Why? I have a hypothesis it is not because we are scared of starting conversations. We’re scared about not knowing how to end them. The other person could be annoying. They could be crazy. There could just be an awkward silence and you’ll say something dumb and think about it over and over again later that night.

“Ice Breaker” was specifically designed to give a positive signal to the people around you that you want to start a conversation, but also that you want the obligation of the interaction to be short: there’s a guess, a response to that guess, and a new word. The interaction could be three words long. Or it could be the start of a new friendship.

The goal of “Ice Breaker” is to help people create more ties to the people around them to form a more connected and friendly city.