Chore Wars
Chore Wars :: Earning Experience Points for Housework is another application of game logic to serious work, brought to you by the guy who made Urban Dead.
Chores are supposed to be serious. I can’t seem to get my kids to take them seriously, even by attaching monetary valuation to them.
Interestingly, the kids did have a good run about two weeks ago. The reason? They had found they wre missing a Pokemon game for the Gamecube from a few years ago. So they had to have it. And we refused to buy it, and told them they had to spend their own money. Goal established. Next, the game framework: they already earned dollars for their allownace by doing chores, but Kristen set it up so that whichever kid did more chores won the week and the higher dollar amount. The competition was on, and they did something like ten times the usual number of chores that week, and bought the game. Now they’ve reverted to their usual slothful behavior. 😉
I don’t know whether Chore Wars will have a similar effect, because they need to be emotionally invested in the goal of having a high level character. I do dig that it’s a use-based system: do chores that are intelligence-based and your INT stat rises, thereby changing your class into wizard. 🙂
There is the issue that the system only works in trusted groups:
Who chooses which chores exist, and their XP?
The players do, within each individual party. Anybody can add a new chore with an XP value of their choice, and that makes it privately available to the whole party. It’s up to your group whether everyone has common-sense free reign to add new chores, or if you’d rather add them by consensus when you’re all in the same room.
What’s to stop me claiming a chore a hundred times?
Nothing! But there’s no prize, or high score table, so you’d just be spamming your fellow party members with chore claims, if you had any. XP doesn’t mean anything outside of your party, and levelling up doesn’t give you any in-game bonuses.
This won’t work with kids of computing age, alas, who will immediately pollute the database, which will then result in parents being unable to use the levels as a metric. And really, anyone who is invested a lot emotionally in ranking is liable to try to pollute the metric. And if you can’t get invested emotionally in the ranking, the whole thing will fail to click as a game, and turn into just a skinned metrics system rather than an incentive driver. Maybe if only the party leader could approve chores, but anyone could submit a chore request (offer?).
Anyway, really cool concept, reminiscent of the stuff Byron Reeves is doing with Seriosity.
9 Responses to “Chore Wars”
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I grew up in a family where completion of chores was not rewarded with anything more than a “thank you” from mom and/or dad and maybe a rare trip to the ice cream shop. Work needed to be done around the house, and everyone had their part to do.
Nowadays, you can’t get your kids to do anything out of the sense of responsibility because all of their friends get paid (at rather absurdly high rates) for doing chores.
Sad thing is, I finally caved and agreed to give my 14-year-old a modest allowance provided that he complete his chores when he is supposed to and without being asked. And STILL, even getting paid, it’s like pulling teeth to get him to do it.
This younger generation……. 😉
[…] Chore Wars… Worth taking a look: http://www.chorewars.com/index.php Learned about it here: https://www.raphkoster.com/2007/07/20/chore-wars/ I formed a party just for fun named "Tortoise hunters" Reference URL to join the […]
it just needs to work more like tabletop gaming or sports and less like mmos. having a referee (or gm) who doles out the xp to the players. then, the competition is on and db pollution is tightly contextual within the group. whomever gets the most kills wins. whether the number of kills is 20 or 2000, doesn’t matter.
the key is having a referee. (aka mom and dad or any other boss) if there are chores being assigned, there’s someone assigning them.
m3mnoch.
I read the title in my live bookmarks and wondered if someone wrote a game based on the only measure of strain between my wife and I. 🙂
I grew up in a family where, although I did have an allowance, chores were done on the ‘or else’ principle.
Dollars? I made 25 cents for each room vacuumed and 10 cents for each room dusted. I could maybe buy an Archie comic every other week. I once tried to dust more rooms to earn more money, but since my sister didn’t vacuum (she was too young to move the heavy thing), she felt that I was cheating her. I somehow knew at that young of an age that making money at the expense of my relationship with her wasn’t right.
I’m still bitter that my parents made me split my lemonade stand earnings 50/50, even though I was the only one who setup the stand, made the lemonade, and sold the product. “Who bought you your cups? I did! So give half to her.”
[…] Chore Wars appears to be getting slammed pretty hard at the moment. Teehee! Probably the mention in Raph Koster’s blog got a crapton of people trying to log in and do chores all at once. […]
“I’m still bitter that my parents made me split my lemonade stand earnings 50/50, even though I was the only one who setup the stand, made the lemonade, and sold the product. “Who bought you your cups? I did! So give half to her.””
Learning the lessons of venture capital at an early age? 🙂
I remember hiring my brothers and sisters to work in my lemonade stand when I was 12. Nothing brought in money like having cute little 6+7 year olds holding misspelled Lemonade signs on the side of the road. We never got an allowance so it was up to my wacky money making schemes to keep us in ice cream and baseball card money.