XES has group rooms. Up to eight people. Voice, video optional, slide-out chat. They’re a separate mode from the random-match lobby and they have a different shape, both in what they’re good for and in who they suit.
Things group rooms are good for:
Playing games together. The in-call games — chess, backgammon, battleships, hangman, tic-tac-toe, pac-man, tron, the music jam — come into their own with three to four people in a room. One person playing while everyone else commentates is usually more fun than the game itself.
Working in parallel. Some people leave a small room open while doing whatever they need to be doing, with their friends doing the same. It’s background social. Like working in a café, except the café is in your headphones. People drift in and out, you talk when you want to.
Hanging out at a specific time. If you and your friends already plan to be online at the same time, a group room is a lower-overhead way to do it than a Discord server. Make the room, share the link, done. No persistent server to maintain.
Things they’re not particularly good for:
Meeting new people. The random match queue is one-on-one specifically because it’s the only format where you can actually get to know someone. Group rooms with strangers tend to either turn into one or two people dominating, or fall apart from lack of focus.
Having a serious conversation. Group dynamics rarely let one. Even with friends, the conversation tends to fragment, the topic shifts every couple of minutes, and the kind of thing that needed a quiet one-on-one gets lost.
Group rooms aren’t for everything. They’re for what they’re for. Most regular users use one-on-one calls and group rooms at different times for different things.
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