‍This is part 3 of our series. Start from the top with Article 1 on values, or Article 2 on structure.‍

In 2013, Edgar Allan was 13 people making the internet together in one room in Atlanta. In 2025, we’ve become 55+ scattered across four continents. Going fully remote taught us that real culture isn't about proximity or forced fun—it's about intentionality, transparency, and willingness to constantly adapt. 

This series shares the practical stuff that's actually kept us sane(ish) and thriving.

Culture Tip 3: Variety, options, and fun are amazing. But only if they’re renewable and non-mandatory.

Over the past five years, we’ve tried out dozens of online games, challenges, teambuilding exercises, lunch-and-learns…you name it. Some were hits. Some were dogs. Here’s a specific look at some things we’ve done that have been repeatably successful:

• Walktober: Walk a mile daily in your town and post a picture. We’ve tried to get fancy with this with themed days and scavenger hunts, but it works best to keep it loose and just enjoy the scenery from around the world.
• May Moments: We’ve done two varieties of this. One where participants created 30 days of micro-videos via the 1-Second-A-Day app. Another year, we did photo prompts: Take a picture of something quintessentially “your country-esque.” Show me something in your house that just makes you happy. Photograph your oddest collection. 
• Fantasy football and March Madness brackets. Simple and managed by third-party apps for the most part.
• MusicLeague: An app we found this year that lets you create themed digital mix-tapes and vote on submissions. This one was a hit in rounds one and two…and fizzled for round three. We’ll put it in the backlog and come back to it.
• Best X (burger, pizza, etc.) in your country. Go grab your fave, snap a photo, and write a short, heartfelt narrative around it in your native language. We vote on the “winner.”

What we’ve learned: 

• Easy to participate > elaborate (Simple, one-step activities tend to work best.)
• Non-mandatory > forced (If no one participates, it’s just information. Do something different next time.)
• Variety > consistency (Not everyone loves sports or takes daily walks.)
• Personal glimpses > generic team building (Getting a peek into your far-flung colleagues’ lives is super engaging. At least for us, it is.)
• "Just for fun" > point systems (With a few outliers, we’ve generally found that corporate rewards for fun feel hollow. Instead, we reward for a job well done, tied to project success.)
• Less frequently > every single month (Fatigue sets in quickly.)

Also: Continuous evolution is everything.

We retro everything at EA, and then do our best to make change happen. 

For projects, we discuss what worked, what didn’t, and decide what we should change. We do annual process reviews where we dig into big, hot-button topics. (This year, we’re analyzing and retooling our Discovery, Content & QA processes.) We even wrote a collaboratively created handbook called “500 Questions, Zero Answers, Good Luck!” that defines the basic components of how we work, what we deliver to clients, and how the machine rolls on in the background, but empowers everyone to improve upon it, not just “follow the rules.” Even the fun games above are always under review. Did people really get into the last go-around of one of the Slack games? Talk about it in standup? Then it’s definitely on the list for next year. Did participation seem to wane almost immediately? Let’s rethink that one, or maybe just give it a rest for a while.

Why this matters for remote culture: Hallway conversations don’t exist anymore. Osmosis never did. You have to deliberately create mechanisms for feedback in a global, virtual office, stay on top of executing on change, and then do it again. And again. 

The bottom line: This stuff is hard. 

And we’re not perfect. We fail at some or all of this on any given day at EA. And honestly, different things work for different people: all 55 of us aren’t on the same page 100% of the time. But what we do that helps the greater whole hang together is this:

• Constantly evaluate what’s working and what’s falling flat
• Being willing to change course
• Holding curiosity as a core operating principle
• And problem-solving as a default mode

Remote culture isn't about recreating an office experience online. It's about building something different - something that respects time zones, doesn’t just support but celebrates personal lives, and understands the reality that glimpsing someone's daily walk or their favorite burger spot might create more connection than any mandatory team-building exercise ever could.

The real question isn't "how do we make remote feel like the office?" It's "how do we make remote feel like something worth showing up for?" 

FAQs

1. What team-building activities work best for remote teams?

Simple, one-step activities win over elaborate programs. Successful things we’ve done: daily walk challenges with photo sharing, themed photo prompts, fantasy sports brackets, music playlist competitions (MusicLeague), and sharing favorite local spots with narratives. The pattern: easy participation beats complexity, non-mandatory beats forced, variety beats consistency, and personal glimpses beat generic team building. Skip point systems and corporate rewards for fun—they feel hollow. Instead, focus on activities that let people share their actual lives and locations. Less frequent activities (not every month) prevent fatigue.

2. Should remote team activities be mandatory or optional?

Always optional. Forced participation in remote team building creates resentment rather than connection. (I’d venture it does that in-office too, yet “fun” is often mandated anyway.) Make activities easy enough that people want to join, but never require attendance. The goal is genuine engagement, not checkbox compliance. Different people connect through different activities—sports brackets, photo challenges, music sharing—so rotate options and let people opt into what resonates. Mandatory "fun" isn't fun; it's just another meeting.

3. How do you continuously improve remote work culture?

Retro everything. Review projects to discuss what worked and what didn't. Conduct annual process reviews on major topics that matter to your team. Create living documentation that empowers people to improve systems, not just follow rules. Monitor engagement with activities—did people talk about it in standup? Repeat it. Did participation immediately wane? Rethink it. The key in remote environments: deliberately create feedback mechanisms since hallway conversations don't exist. Execute on changes, then do it again. Continuous evolution matters more than getting it perfect once.

4. How do you get honest feedback from a distributed team?

Build deliberate feedback mechanisms into your workflow since spontaneous hallway conversations don't exist remotely. Retro every project discussing what worked and what didn't. Schedule annual deep-dives into hot-button process topics. Create collaborative documentation that invites improvement suggestions, not just compliance. Monitor engagement patterns with activities and initiatives—participation levels tell you what's resonating. Make feedback channels accessible across hierarchy levels. Stay on top of executing changes based on feedback, then gather more feedback. In remote environments, you can't rely on osmosis—feedback must be intentionally structured and acted upon.

5. What's the biggest mistake companies make with remote culture?

Trying to recreate office experience online. Remote culture should be something different—respecting time zones, celebrating personal lives, understanding that glimpsing someone's daily walk or favorite local spot creates more connection than mandatory team-building exercises. Stop asking "how do we make remote feel like the office?" Instead, ask "how do we make remote feel like something worth showing up for?" Other mistakes: making activities mandatory rather than optional, adding elaborate complexity instead of keeping participation simple, maintaining consistency over variety, and implementing point systems that feel hollow.

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