I was recently contacted by a representative of giffgaff, the mobile phone network provider. They offered me the chance to help in hosting a games night/day/lunch event for my family and/or friends as part of their #giffgaffgamers campaign. As a gamer at heart, both playing video games and board games from an early age, I leapt at the chance to host another family games night event!
giffgaff kindly sent over a couple of boxes of goodies as you can see from the photos above and below. One box contained a bunch of cool giffgaff and technology-related items, which obviously suited me well. Included was an Amazon Echo Dot, Go Pro Camera, Anker USB Power Bank, 2x giffgaff SIM cards, £50 Food Voucher and even a Winner’s Trophy!
In the other box, there were three awesome party games from the British indie gaming company: Big Potato Games. Specifically, Weird Things Humans Search For, Obama Llama 2 and Bucket of Doom.
The Importance Of Maintaining Family Connections In The Modern World
We’re a close family and have a get-together over a Sunday roast meal at least once or twice a month. However, given how busy modern life can be, it can still be tough to stay connected with your family on a day-to-day and week-to-week basis. But it can at least be made a bit easier these days with technology such as our mobile phones and suitable network tariffs that facilitate this at a low price point.
This is especially important in our family as my brother-in-law is Australian, so he communicates with his family back in Australia on a weekly basis using text messaging and video calling etc. However, that’s no substitute for seeing people in person every year or two, so my sister, nephew and baby niece are now due to head out on another long journey to the other side of the world to visit the other half of the family.
So with that in mind, we felt it was definitely a worthwhile reason to have a family gaming night/day before they set out on their month-long trip away from home. Thanks to giffgaff they gave us the idea and excuse for a good old-fashioned family-get-together in which we could make some cool new family memories to tide us over while we’re separated. Plus, we rarely play any party or board games outside of the occasional one or two at Christmas, so that’s another bonus!
However, having recently watched the film “Game Night”, we were hoping the event didn’t spiral out of control as it does in that movie! If you haven’t seen it and like party and board games, you should definitely watch that film.
The giffgaff Family Games Day/Night/Event
Thanks to the giffgaff pre-loaded SIM cards that were included in the box, while everyone was getting settled in (and testing out playing suitable gaming music through the Amazon Echo Dot), I was able to set up my mum and my gran’s mobile phones on giffgaff. Which means that they can now call each other for free as a means of staying connected on a daily basis. That to me is one of the major community-minded benefits of using the giffgaff network for your mobile phone call provider and will be recommending it to other people in future.
Weird Things Humans Search For
When it came to the actual games, we started off by choosing to play one of cool-looking Big Potato party games, namely “What Humans Search For”. This is a card game that is based around guessing the correct word that completes a phrase that you (or perhaps someone vastly different from yourself) might search for on Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo etc.
This game immediately stood out to me as someone who is very tech-orientated and has had this actual technology-based website for many years now – 12 years actually, wow, how time flies when you’re having fun with tech!
“Weird Things Humans Search For” is definitely a fun game in the style of the TV show; Family Fortunes and this was actually mentioned by a couple of family members while we were playing.
Monopoly – York Edition
Next up was a game we weren’t planning to play, but my 4.5-year-old nephew has become a real fan of playing Monopoly in the past 6 months. So, we got our local edition of the game out, Monopoly York (of course) and a few of us sat down on the floor with my nephew and had a good long game of Monopoly (aren’t they all?) before calling time on it.
Formula D
This was then followed by another of my nephew’s favourite board game’s that we’ve come to love in the form of Formula D. This is a board game version of the Formula 1 Monaco Grand Prix and given that the actual race isn’t one of the most exciting to watch, it’s a lot more interesting and fun to play this board game version of it!
Exploding Kittens
In between these meatier board gaming sessions, we also played some other card-based games. One of which was a new one that I’d bought especially for this gaming event, Exploding Kittens – it had been on my Amazon Wishlist for quite some time, so this was the perfect excuse to finally add it to our gaming collection. It’s a card-based version of Russian Roulette involving ‘kittens that might explode’ and it certainly didn’t disappoint. The reputation and reviews that it has are well deserved and I’d also recommend you look at it if you haven’t already. And to think that it initially started out as a Kickstarter project, it’s very inspiring for any would-be creators out there.
Summary
It’s great that board and party games seem to be, at least in my eyes, making a real resurgence among so many different people in the age of video games on computers, consoles, and mobile devices. As good as it is to be able to play games online with people all over the world, there’s still nothing quite like people meeting up, being in the same room to have some fun playing games and sharing some laughs together.
A big thanks to giffgaff for the initial idea and the help in putting on this family games night/day event. We all had a wonderful time together and look forward to doing it again on a more regular basis going forward!
Having used giffgaff previously before this event, I’ve recommended several people to use their network in the past and will continue to do so going forward as a family, as people’s contracts expire and look to move to a cheaper SIM-only mobile provider that has the following main benefits for us:
- Signal coverage (O2 network) – which isn’t always the case with other networks in the area that we live.
- SIM-only plans/tariffs that provide a good number of calls, data, texts at a reasonable price.
- Free giffgaff to giffgaff calls and texts – this is great if you want to regularly check in with family members.
*** Disclaimer – giffgaff provided the items as described above, but the opinions expressed are our own. ***
Simon Barker is the founder and editor of Zath and has over 25 years’ worth of experience of using computers and technology in general. He can normally be found researching or testing the latest in technology products.
He has provided IT consultancy services to both home and small business users for over 15 years, building PCs, fixing hardware/software problems and providing comprehensive training.
Simon always likes to get the best out of the technology products he is using, by both making informed purchasing decisions and also optimising how they are used to get the most benefits possible.
