Giving through Games
Since the earliest cavemen reveled in head-butting contests, people have been turned on by games. Early board games such as Monopoly and Scrabble challenged us to obliterate each other through real estate and words. Arcade video games had us mindlessly hitting a super-pixelated ping-pong ball back and forth until someone screamed ‘thumb!’ The PC-era had us building village economies and the Internet saw us lose it all to a twelve year old overseas. Through it all, we’ve loved games.
Games in and of themselves are great; but games that also do good are awesome. We had the crazy idea that maybe games are more than about having fun and entertaining your brain for a few minutes here a few hours there, although that is important stuff. What if games can change the way people behave in their real world lives? What if games can get people reflexively helping out noble causes as naturally as they do laundry, brush their teeth, or drive to work? What if giving just became apart of what we do everyday? What if, through the power of games, we can leverage our collective wealth, intelligence, and energy to solve hard problems?
While it may be a little naive to think that everyone will be motivated by games geared toward doing good, we think that all else being equal people will choose to play games with a philanthropic impact built-in.
And so this is the experiment we have set out to conduct! Wish us luck, but more than that stay tuned, because we are pretty sure you’re going to be discussing this experiment at your dinner table someday soon.
