Spy games make work fun again

From the creators of the highly popular “The Go Game” comes “The Spy Game,” an exercise in collaboration and corporate intrigue. This is not a video game or any kind of handheld experience; rather, it’s a company-run series of “games” that will help a company’s employees bond together in the processing of solving mysteries, beating deadlines, and otherwise emulating spies.

Your key gadget in this mission, should you choose to accept it, is a camera phone. You use this phone, which may or my not be equipped with GPS, to receive instructions and otherwise do research to help you achieve the goals set by the team-building exercises that are at the heart of “The Spy Game.”

You might be tasked with finding an executive who has disappeared. You might have to solve a puzzle written in a piece of art. You might re-enact a scene from a famous spy movie, capturing it on video using your camera phone.

It’s all in good, yet serious fun that has as its goal building togetherness and group thinking by corporate types outside a corporate environment.

Some of the largest employers in America have taken part in similar exercises, including AT&T, Adobe, Blockbuster, Cisco, Honeywell, and Starbucks. The typical charge is a few hundred dollars a person, and the typical venue is a somewhat controlled environment, such as a hotel or a mall.