Do Your Chores, Earn Virtual Rewards!

Incentive has always been a key motivator to get kids to do their chores at home. Clean your room? Eat some dessert! Take the garbage out? Here’s a new toy!

Handipoints has developed a program that takes the idea of incentives into the virtual world. The Oakland, CA-based company has developed a chart-based system where kids and parents can keep track of what chores have been completed and creates a points/rewards system for the completion of tasks. The kids earn points in the virtual world – points used to buy things for your “Cool Cat” in Handiland, play games and watch cartoons, but can also earn RW points to be redeemed for things like Nerf toys and the like.

SoftRatty compares the project to Club Penguin and Webkinz and admires how its founder, Viva Chu, has embraced the virtual world wholeheartedly:

“Setting up a system for kids to redeem points for physical goods (or money) was easy enough;”, writes Mark Hendrickson. “All they had to do was hook up Amazon’s APIs and create a custom storefront. But a significant effort has gone into creating an entirely new and appealing virtual world, one that’s replete with different settings, activities, items, and other users.”