Casual Gaming Goes Non-Profit: Rezilio and Game for Charity

Posted by Cyndy Aleo-Carreira on May 4th, 2008

Just about everyone has participated in some type of casual gaming by now, whether it's Scrabulous on Facebook, Bejeweled on PopCap, or you are a card-carrying member of Club Pogo. But Rezilio has come up with a way of making casual gaming less casual by creating Game for Charity.

With Game for Charity, Rezilio leverages two of the fastest growing online technologies: online charity donations and casual gaming. Charities can use Rezliio's technology to create an online tournament which users can participate and play for prizes once they have donated to the charity. The charity, in addition to the user fundraising, can solicit donations from businesses to use as the tournament prizes.

Rezilio themselves point out why this is an innovative idea for charities: while charity tournaments like golf tournaments have been popular for years, they haven't allowed the same unlimited potential for entrants as well as a more passive entrant: users can play in an online game tournament at any time of day or night from anywhere in the country. In addition, it increases the potential audience of any of the sponsors for the tournament.

Of course, marketing the tournament may be tough when it comes to the amount of publicity noise that you see online. I only found the Delta March of Dimes tournament skimming through press releases, which is rarely the best way to announce anything you want end-users to find. And the user interface for the tournament looks a little dated, with a hard-to-read font and needless Flash header. The game, however, has a familiar look and feel for anyone who's played casual games before, and the addictive nature of these types of games can't be denied (you are allowed to play as many practice games as you'd like, with the temptation always there to enter the tournament). As a fundraising idea, it's certainly a novel one, and if you are going to spend time online playing games, you may as well make it worthwhile and help other while you are playing.

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