Building a company with an agenda - up high or down low?

Our "green home" is featured on the cover of today's Boston Globe Magazine, along with a fetching photo of my wife and kid (they smartly focused on the attractive 2/3rds of the family). The focus in the article is how you would never know the house was eco-friendly unless I walked you through and pointed out the bamboo flooring or recycled quartz countertop. It does not scream its identity, it just is.

The article also covers two other homes that, while impressive, certainly scream ECO from the top of their lungs. I have no doubt about which homes would sell faster and at a higher profit if you built 1,000 of each.

Typically when people talk about "doing good" they mean a kind of "hit over the head" kind of agenda The serious games movement fits this. This week for instance:

    1) Peacemaker came out. This game, which covers a topic near and dear to my heart, allows you to take the role of the Prime Minister of the Palestinian Authority or Israel and attempt to bring the region to peace.

    2) The BBC also released a game on global warming. It's more fun that in sounds.

I'm reluctant to discourage such efforts if they can offer any help at all. But I'm skeptical. These usually come off with the kind of chest-thumping earnestness that is easily punctured by the sarcasm I usually reserve for Harvard freshman trying to spout geo-economic theories they read this morning and barely understand let alone actually believe. (sorry, it happened again a few minutes ago at Darwins). I'm not sure these types of approaches do anything but reach people who already believe.

I'm much more of a "soft power" versus "hard power" person. At Ambient we did several studies with Mass General Hospital and others, and found if a patient was given an Ambient Orb tuned to communicate a color-based countdown on when to take their meds, it would end up being more effective than a phone call or alarm.

This was because of the kind of presumption of control that hard power has. Someone calling you to tell you to take your meds feels like they are usurping control over your life, same with a big buzzing alarm. But a gentle suggestion? Just think about how SimCity makes you think about how to solve crime problems, or what The Matrix implies about the power of belief (ergo religion). (Note: I love in the comments on Broken Toys where someone says everything they learned about American history they got from Civilization).

This is one of the areas where MMOs, as they move into the mainstream, can have the kind of soft-power effect on our society that TV did in the 60s.

You may only visit blogs that match your ideology, or watch TV that matches your ideology, but MMOs offer a common experience for more and more teenagers who don't know if that woman they are making out with in the hot tub is from Duluth or San Francisco, is black or white, Shiite or Kurd.

Comments

[Kent Quirk]

Well, I started to comment here, but it turned into a counterpost at my blog. Continued on next rock.

[nabeel]

Great post Kent. Here's the link folks: link">http://www.cognitoy.com/meltingpoint/blog/2007/02/06/finally-some-real-competition/">link everyone

To be clear, I do admire what you are doing and your motivations. But you probably could guess that when we both met up at the SciFi Channels Visions for Tomorrow campaign.

As you state, my issues with persuasive and serious games are that you have to believe they are going to be effective or you shouldn't do them.

For a game to be successful it needs to be fun, and it needs to be accessible enough to reach the amount of audience you have targeted for it. For a serious game to be successful, it needs to be fun, it needs to persuade, AND it needs to get in the hands of folks who could need convincing.

That last criteria can be very difficult indeed when you are overt about your agenda.

[bijan]

beautiful house nabeel.