Chore Wars – Thumbs Up

When I was like eight years old, my mom bought a Lion King themed dry-erase board where my she would write chores that needed to be done and my sister and I would get stickers on the board when we finished them.  It was pretty much the only time in my life that I was a little excited about doing chores – but the fun factor of the dry erase board dwindled after two or three weeks.  It is too bad that Chore Wars didn’t exist when I was a kid, because it would have worked a lot better than the dry erase board.

Chore Wars is kind of like Foursquare for household tasks, with World of Warcraft mixed in.  The group leader (AKA the parent) creates different tasks that need to be done around the house.  Each person doing the chores can log onto the site and claim the task once they have completed it.  The person’s character receives experience points based on information that the parent designated when he or she created the task.  Once a certain amount of experience points are accumulated, the person’s character can level up.  The person gets assigned a class based on the types of chores they complete.  For example, by doing a lot of chores that require strength (vacuuming, gardening, etc) you could become a warrior, but by doing more intellectual tasks, you could become a wizard.  There are also more intricate things to the game, such as combat with monsters and collecting gold and treasure.

Chore Wars gets kids excited about doing chores because it transforms boring and unpleasant tasks into a fun competition.  As Tom pointed out in his last post, in the future, games are going to be everywhere.  Chore Wars is just another example of where we are headed.  From the testimonials on the game’s site, it looks like parents hare having huge success with it.  I’m jealous that kids today are having a lot more fun doing their chores than I ever did.