Seattle game startup Game It Forward has announced Quingo, its first “game for good.” Seasoned designer Brandon Bozzi started Game It Forward to create games that are fun and also happen to make the world a better place. This inspiration propelled Brandon to spend the last nine months growing the concept, building the team, and assembling the charity partners. The company is now ready to widely share information on its first game release, Quingo.
Quingo is a free-to-play, fun, and light-hearted combination of trivia and bingo – two of the most popular game categories on mobile devices. Releasing for iPad in September, players can earn money for their favorite causes through the game. They will select a specific charity project to play for, and Game It Forward will share the revenue from advertising and in-app purchases with its charity partners to fund those projects.
Quingo is a fresh take on trivia. Each question has five correct answers hidden amongst twenty wrong answers. The answers range in difficulty, to help make every question engaging for players of all skill levels. Some of the incorrect answers are designed to trip players up, and others are there to make them laugh.
People worldwide spend three billion hours a week playing games. If those games donated just one penny an hour, they could raise $30 million a week for people in need. Co-founder Bozzi comments “We are excited to enable people to help causes they believe in simply by playing a game they enjoy.”
“We want to make sure our players see the concrete results of their contributions, so we worked hard with our charity partners to define specific projects that will receive the funds,” says Morgan Belford, Game It Forward Co-Founder. “Within Quingo, players see how much they’ve contributed and how well each project is tracking.”
Splash Director of Development Peter Drury comments, “Splash is a charity with a bold model and an innovative spirit. When we learned about Quingo we were impressed, because it too is charting new territory, in an entrepreneurial way, and with a sincere commitment to improving the lives of others.”
Susan Dolbert Ph.D, Vice President of Development for Fred Hutch, says “We are delighted to partner with Game It Forward and work together to have fun and save lives.”
Quingo originated at the Game It Forward Summit last year, a ground-breaking collaboration between passionate social-change agents (from the nonprofits PATH and Seattle Children’s) and talented game designers (working at Valve, Zynga, PopCap Games, Big Fish Games, Amazon Game Studio, and Hasbro’s Wizards of the Coast). Bozzi’s thinking in driving this summit:: “What if I could pair the most talented game designers with people passionately working for social change? The games that would come out of this collaboration could be world-changing.”
Game It Forward plans to bring on new charity partners, add new questions and features, and expand Quingo to other platforms throughout the next twelve months.