Akoha- Earn Points In A Game By Doing Good Deeds
Akoha is a game that encourages players to “play it forward”, as good deeds will earn them points in a multiplayer game. The company presented at TechCrunch50, and their presentation appears below.
During the akoha presentation, the company opened their pre-registration to a very limited number of beta testers. I was lucky enough to sign up quickly, and yesterday I received my VIP Starter Deck in the mail. Using the code on the starter deck, I signed in and created my account. Here’s what it looks like:
How To Play:
From the instructions in the starter deck:
Akoha is played by launching the missions found in your VIP Starter Deck into the world. Missions are simple activities that can be “played forward” from person to person. Missions are considered complete when your friend confirms the mission at www.akoha.com
You earn karma points by launching missions and helping others play their missions forward. Adding videos, photos and stories to your missions earns you extra points. Your missions continue to earn you points as long as they keep traveling. You can also create your own missions in the mission factory and track their progress as others play them around the world.
In short, you receive karma points by doing good deeds. You report the “missions” that you’ve accomplished on the akoha site, and the recipient of your kindness has to confirm that you’ve actually done it.
Here are my current akoha missions:
- Invite Someone for Coffee
- Give Someone a Book
- Wild Mission Card
- Give Someone a Surprise Gift
- Give Someone Flowers
- Donate an Hour of Your Time
- Invite Someone for Drinks
- Thank Someone
- Send Drinks to a Couple in Love
- Read a Blogger, Feed a Blogger
- Give Someone Chocolate
- Give a Compact Fluorescent Bulb
- Make Someone Smile
It looks like there are only about 30,000 decks out right now in the first beta round.
Akoha is definitely a fun idea, and I love their site’s design. Like any membership site, however, the concept only works when you have friends that are members. When I went to the site to report that I’d completed a mission, I had to enter the recipient’s email address. They sent him an email to confirm, and eventually he responded and ended up joining the site. That could get annoying. When you do something nice for someone, it’s a little weird to say “hey, now that I did something for you, can you give me credit for it so I can get points in this game I’m playing?”
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Filed under: TC50, TechCrunch50, Uncategorized, betas, social media, startups
Thanks for posting this…. I really like this idea. Any idea how I can get my hands on a deck or a mission card? I’d like to play this
I’m Simon and I’m from Akoha.
It’s true that someone’s initial reaction might be a little weird, especially since lots of people want to sell us something when we get things for free. But once you explain that Akoha is about paying-it-forward and you’re truly genuine about helping someone, we’ve found that people get really excited the idea.
I’ve quite a few friends playing Akoha now, and it’s really nice to be able to see how generous they are.
Simon,
You’re right, and the game is definitely a lot of fun. I was just saying that my initial reaction was that it was a little weird asking for someone to confirm a mission when they have no context. In my case, the person I needed confirmation from had never heard of akoha. But you’re right…given the context it’s not bad at all.
Very interesting idea. I’m going to keep my eye on this.
You make a good point about it being a little weird to ask someone to reward you for being nice to them. But maybe that’s the future of web 2.0 relationships??