Special-price rice game getting social links
We like this report on the BBC about a game that aims to stretch the mind and feed the starving.
Having stumbled over the story while full of dinner and half dozing through an episode of ‘Who wants to be a Millionaire’, we really like the idea of a game that combines the parlour fun of Call My Bluff with the ability to donate meals in countries where they are keenly needed.
The BBC tells us that three years since its launch on the World Food Programme pages, the Freerice.com game has set its sights on social networking big hitters Facebook and Twitter and the Apple iPhone and iPad.
The game is a simple enough proposition, users are asked to find the correct meaning of a word from four options, and for every one they get right 10 grains of rice are donated to countries such as Uganda and Bangladesh.
Ten grains of rice may not seem like a lot, but consider that the game gets 40,000 users a day – without being part of the Facebook/iPhone fold, that’s a lot of rice. In fact, in the three years it has been live, the game has raised enough rice to feed four million people in day. When the game hits Facebook it will be exposed to some 500m more users, which can only be good news.
Nancy Roman, director of communication for the World Food Programme, told the BBC, “Freerice is making internet history. It’s a stellar example of how a fun and simple idea can harness the internet’s potential to contribute to the world’s most pressing global issue – hunger.”
We are off for a game now.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-11218557
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