Bringing a friend who does not play games into your group

Choose the game for them, not for you

The group’s favourite is rarely the right first game. A newcomer needs three things: a control scheme they can learn in ten minutes, a role in which being bad does not lose the game for everyone, and a session short enough that they can stop with dignity. That points towards co-operative games with forgiving difficulty, or party games where everybody is falling over anyway. It points away from ranked modes, from anything with a fifty-hour tutorial and from games where one slip ends the round.

Our checks score “Easy to join” for exactly this reason. A high number there means the install is quick, the first ten minutes are handled by the game itself, and there is a way for a beginner to be useful.

Say what the evening is

“Come and play with us on Thursday” is vague enough to be frightening. “We are going to play for an hour, it is a co-op game where four of us shoot bugs, nobody keeps score and you can leave whenever” is not. Set the length, name the game, and say out loud that nobody minds a beginner. The last part is the one people forget, and it is the one that matters.

Do the install together, over voice

Downloads are large and account setup is fiddly. If the new person does it alone they will hit a linking screen, not know what it wants, and quietly decide not to bother. Get on a call an hour before, share screens if you can, and walk through the publisher account, the cross-play toggle and the friend request. It takes fifteen minutes and it is the single biggest predictor of whether they turn up.

The three things that make a newcomer feel like baggage

1. Being carried in silence. If the experienced players do everything and say nothing, the newcomer stands in the corner. Give them a job with a clear result: carry the objective, hold the light, be the one who calls out enemies. Narrate what you are doing and why.
2. Jargon. Every game has fifty words the group uses without noticing. For one evening, use plain English. “Go to the yellow marker” beats a codename.
3. Pace. Regulars will want to push the difficulty. Do not. The first evening is played at the newcomer’s speed, and the payoff is a fifth player next month.

Cost and the shop

Ask a beginner to spend money on a game they may not like and you have set the evening up to fail. Start with something free, or lend the money for a cheap game as a gift, and tell them plainly that the in-game shop is optional. Our “Fair shop” score exists to warn you when that last sentence would be a lie.

Afterwards

Send a message the next day that says the specific thing they did well. People come back for the group, not the game. If the game was wrong for them, say so and suggest a different one; the picker is a quick way to find a calmer or sillier alternative.

Written by the Lobby Night desk. Checked September 2026. Corrections: contact the desk.