World of Goodcraft: Woman Feeds Real Homeless for Virtual Dollars (Which Helps Her Level Up)

A young woman offered to feed the homeless for virtual dollars, and three people assigned her to do just that. When she had succeeded at that quest, three homeless folks were somewhat less hungry -- and she was even closer to leveling up. This is among the most interesting recent tasks on Coffee & Power, the new start-up from Second Life founder Philip Rosedale, in which people offer and accept real world tasks in exchange for virtual dollars. On a visit to the C&P office yesterday, Philip mentioned this mission created by user "CatherinetheGreat", who set the task at 5 Coffee Dollars (equivalent to USD$5) per delivery. As you can see from this screengrab, three people took her up on the offer. She can now convert her Coffee Dollars to cash to cover the cost of the food purchases. And by successfully completing the mission, Catherine is closer to leveling up in the Coffee & Power system, which quantifies user activity into an MMO-like leveling structure. (She's now Level 6 in the C&P network, as you can see.)

When Philip first told me about the task, my first snarky reaction was, "This would be a perfect mission for guilty yuppies who want to ignore panhandlers." But really, it's much more interesting for several reasons:

For Coffee & Power, it shows the emergence of a diverse range of missions which do not resemble traditional work; it's a clear example of C&P users thinking beyond the traditional work structure. For this particular user, it's is a potential way of subsidizing volunteer work. For the people who paid her for the mission, this is a more direct way of helping people in need, which eliminates the usual, abstracting middle man of a non-profit or NGO. And for three homeless people, it means three less empty bellies.

And for all of us, it's a way of thinking about the future of work, and the nature of work itself: If enough of us are connected to a virtual currency system and a global community which is able and willing to enrich our lives in ways that aren't usually possible through our daily structured routines, what new and ambitious forms of work are we likely to see?

Comments

[Hitomi Tiponi]

Most people I know do some voluntary work out of a desire to help others, and do not expect payment for it, except in the pleasure you get from helping. Surely the same motives also exist in America?

[Hamlet Au]

According to the mission description, she used the C$ to cover the costs of the RL food purchases.

[InformationChef]

Several different game systems have been built to virtually reward & encourage virtuous actions. The pay-it-forward card game Ahoka got a couple M$ in venture funding to build an interesting system, which I tried and enjoyed but gave up on fairly quickly, and they had to close up shop about a month ago. Ultimately, I think that game systems around giving are problematic if they reward "Karma Points" as it tends to build Leaderboard gaming, aka "Holier than thou". It's one of those unintended consequences of a basically good idea. This Karma competition is also what I blame for Plurk being a tiny niche system, even though it has an arguably better interface than twitter.

It'll be interesting to see how this plays out in an otherwise Commercial skills marketplace, though. Certainly I prefer to patronize businesses who support issues I care about, such as feeding the homeless. Maybe a middle ground will be built. Certainly the C&P points system isn't exclusively based on points for "virtuous" activity, but instead represents how may tasks you completed that are valuable to others - virtuous, commercial, or even seemingly frivolous.

[Johan]

I live down the street and dropped in to Coffee & Power a few weeks ago, just because it isn't clear what their purpose is. (I actually was hoping it was a day workspace)

I'm pretty familiar with Second Life. About 6 years ago, I started a content development business with an architect friend of mine. We did well enough to be in the top .1% of income earners in SL, then or since. To be honest, however, I lost interest and didn't want to continue to compete with that stinky hippy that runs (ran) Electric Sheep Company, and my partner went on to some other Virtual World development gig.

Interesting concept. (Coffee & Power) After talking with a few folks in that place, I now know why people hide out in the Virtual World. :)