Castle Paradox

[Rinku]

I also posted this in TIGSource and Eo, so I thought I'd post it here too.

Kiva is a website where you loan out small loans to third-world people and businesses. It has a 99.7% repayment rate. There's no interest, but you will eventually get back the money you put into it, so it's kind of like a charity where your money can be used over and over again to help many people, rather than just being given once and that's it. It lists the names and pictures and business proposals, so it's kind of like the "adopt a child" thing because you'll see how your money is directly impacting people's lives.

As one example, there was a woman in Zanzibar who made $340 a month renting out the use of her Playstation 1, and who wanted a loan to buy more games for it. You can read about it here: http://www.kiva.org/app.php?page=businesses&action=about&id=72423&_tpos=4&_tpg=1

Another related one: http://www.kiva.org/app.php?page=businesses&action=about&id=58905&_tpos=3&_tpg=1

Kiva also has a team system, and Clysm (who made Seiklus) started a team for independent game developers. The teams are listed here: http://www.kiva.org/community/explore

And here is ours: http://kiva.org/team/indiegames

If you're an independent game developer (or even if you're not and just like them!), just join the site and then the team. The minimum you can loan out is $25.

Harlock and I are also thinking of donating some percent of Immortal Defense sales to it as a regular thing (currently set to 10% of profits), since part of the reason we decided to make games was to have a positive impact on the world, and even if the games themselves don't do that, at least some of the money earned could.

The image is a character from Cave Story, if any of you don't recognize it.

Join the team before you make your first donation/loan if you want it to count toward the team's total -- I foolishly/enthusiastically made my donation/loan before setting up the team, so it didn't count. I will make another loan in a week or so, so that we can start building up the team's record, and compete with those other huge teams like Team Obama, Team Atheist, and Team Christians (the current top 3).

Please join if you're interested, thanks!

- Paul
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Tower Defense Game

[Camdog]

Kiva is awesome and this is a great idea, though I don't fully understand how a team works in this context. Do you compete to raise money? Do you vote on where the money goes? Could you elaborate a little more?

[Rinku]

Teams can compete, yes -- someone set up a competing "casual games" team to our "indie games" team, and it's ahead now. There is a list of teams by total donated, total loans, etc., and other statistics. You can join multiple teams but each time you loan it can only count toward one (or none) of those, depending on which you choose to have it count for. Teams can be useful for tracking what your friends are doing, for sending a message to the entire team at once to remind them to donate, and other web 2.0 type stuff. Some people also use teams to donate "in memory of" since that isn't supported normally, like they might create a team in memory of a certain dead person, and that person's friends would join it and donate under that team's name. The donation is listed by under your name and the team's name, so there's no real reason to not pick a team when donating (unless you're just a hermit or don't know anybody else who uses kiva or something).
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Tower Defense Game