How do you schedule play times with players in different countries?

Question

I'm in India and I have some friends in the US. We met a few players from different countries online (Malaysia ... etc) and we want to setup an online game. The problem is how to find a good TIME to schedule our games.

For example I'm usually free from around 6pm - 10pm (and sometimes from 7am - 8:30am) in my local time zone. The others would have their own preferred times. Is there any service or tool we could use to find the best or most optimal time slot that everyone could use?

The current idea we're experimenting is converting our timezones to GMT - but does anyone have a better or EASIER way?

Converting time as you suggested seems to me to be the easiest way. That way you can compare times straight off. If you choose GMT or any other timezone is less important. — Whettingstone, Aug 16 '12 at 04:52
Comedy option: Swatch Internet Time! (can you tell I was a PSO fanatic in my youth?) — Rilgon Arcsinh, Aug 16 '12 at 04:58
I’m voting to close this question because it's about social skills, not gaming. — pppery, Jul 26 '22 at 18:36

score 4 · Accepted Answer · answered Aug 16 '12 at 05:55

4

This website allows you to provide a list of cities and then shows optimal times when an event might be scheduled:

http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/meeting.html

answered Aug 16 '12 at 05:55

Steve V.

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The irony, is that I ended up PM-ing my friends. But This looks like a more elegant solution. Marking it! – chronodekar Nov 10 '12 at 04:57

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Aug 16 '12 at 06:51

I usually deal with hours i.e. 'join the next race session in 2 hours time'.

You could use Google Calendar to schedule events; when people confirm attendance their client will handle the time conversion for them . That way time conversions typically become irrelevant.

Mobile apps will let you show more than one clock as well so you could all pick one to work off of and just deal with that. Same issues you face now but less thinking = easier. :)

How do you schedule play times with players in different countries?

2 Answers2