A good start

They Mean Well started off as an entry for the Game Jolt’s Perma-Death Jam back in 2015. Since then, we have worked hard to improve upon the initial concept. We’ve diversified the gameplay, improved the graphics and added a bunch of content, but the core message we wanted to send about the complex relationship between nature and technology stayed the same.

In a couple of weeks time, the Game Jolt version rounded up 24 000 plays, with the average rating of 4.3. When you add the fact that about a dozen youtubers made a video of the game, and that one of them reached 500 000 views, we had a feeling we did something right.

We also had a lot of positive feedback regarding the game’s environmental feel. People liked that we portrayed Earth as the main protagonist, and they were able to empathize with the troubles that our planet has been dealing with ever since the uprise and the advancement of technology.

The fact that our players made an emotional connection with the game in a way that we’d hoped, only inspired us to think bigger and motivated us to explore how we can go from simply raising awareness, to helping the fight against major global issues.

Developing a business strategy with a fresh approach

After seeing how well the players responded to the game, “sending a message” just wasn’t enough. Our new mission was to engage the players, provide them with a call to action, and give them a way to directly take on some of the issues brought up in the game.

Writer’s Note 01:

“It’s easy to point out the things that are wrong. It’s a completely different story to actually try and do something about it… And we wanted to put our money where our mouths were. Except that we didn’t have any money to put up in the first place. But hey! It sounds a lot better than saying “we wanted to work our asses off where our mouths were”. You can see where the idiom falls apart…”

We had to choose, or better yet adapt, the right business model. We understood that the whole project needed a huge audience in order to reach its full potential, so the game needed to be free-to-play. As soon as you set a price on something, you’re cutting yourself off to a huge portion of the market. Plus, we were already going to ask people for donations, and we didn’t feel right about making them pay for the game as well.

We also believed that the players should be able to choose which cause they would like to support. We realized that the best way to do this was to partner up with different charity organizations and NGOs. We were going to promote them through the game, and allow people to send money to them directly.

Writer’s Note 02

“We believed that, if presented with the right setting, gamers would rally up, show support, and potentially become a new source of funding for charitable organizations.”

Our goal was to make the whole process of donating money through the game as easy as possible. It was supposed to be as simple as making an in-app purchase. But when we described the situation to the AppStore and GooglePlay support teams and asked them about their policy, they responded that they do not currently offer a donation feature and that there is a 30% transaction fee for all in-app billing transactions.

Since we predicted that people wouldn’t take kindly to the fact that Apple and Google were going to keep a sizable portion of their contribution, we decided we were just going to bypass them and add external links to the donation page of the organization’s website. Even though the responses we got spoiled our whole “easy-to-donate” concept, we weren’t going to let it bring us down.

Finally, we had to figure out how we were going to make money ourselves. We didn’t want to diminish the whole user experience with ads, so we agreed that we should leave it up to the public, and allow people to donate to us as well, if they liked our ideas and wanted to support us in our future endeavors.

Looking for partners and coping with the feedback

We made a detailed analysis of the types of organizations that would be ideal partners. We were looking for someone who could give the game a significant social media boost, while also being aligned with the game’s style and narrative. If we estimated they were a good fit, we would try to find a way to reach someone who was, or was close to, a decision maker. The end product was a list of 100 people from different charities we were going to get in contact with, and offer them the same deal:

We want to use our game to promote your charity and get people to support your cause.

We won’t take a percentage of the donations, if people want they can donate to us as well.

We would appreciate it if you could support the game by posting about it on social media when it’s released.

Since we were all high on believing we were about to do something memorable and innovative, our reasoning of the events that would follow was simple:

First, all of the organizations are going to be ecstatic with our idea, and will gladly support the project in any way they could.

After that, we would clearly be getting amazing press and support from everyone on social media.

Then, all of a sudden, Matt Damon would show up and offer to be the voice of Mars, for obvious reasons.

At which point we would be making a shit-ton of money, so we could really start solving the big issues, and, eventually, end all sorrow and suffering on planet Earth.

But, sadly, there are things in life that just can’t wait to spoil your ambitious plans. Things like, reality…

Writer’s Note 03

“You know that quirky moment when the hero of the movie makes the most badass entrance ever, and all that is left to greet him are some crickets and a fucking tumbleweed?! Well…”

We first had problems with a very low response rate. Even though we sent e-mails a couple of times, only 20% of the organizations we contacted actually replied, and half of those were automated messages. The organic, personalized answers we got, in retrospect, we kind of wish we didn’t.

One organization replied that, in order to use their logo for promotion, we had to either pay or guarantee them what we considered a “large sum of money”. A couple of others were basically trying to sell their Facebook posts and Tweets, and the prices ranged from 5k-25k USD. One organization had a special request, money aside. They demanded that we don’t promote other charities supporting the same causes as them, and at that point, we started to pull back from the whole idea.

To be fair, we did have a couple of legitimate responses. Most just weren’t interested, but we had one positive reply, where people got what we were trying to do, liked it, and wanted to support the game. Unfortunately, it just wasn’t enough.

Disappointing insight or a fitting response to the current state of affairs?

Now, based on what you’ve read so far, it’s pretty easy to jump to a conclusion that there is something very odd going on in the world of charity organizations. We certainly made the same assumption while trying to make sense of all that was happening.

What we failed to take into account was that running charities is also a business, and in every business you need to put your needs first in order to survive the rough, competitive nature of the market. We can’t hold against them the fact that they incorporated and developed strategies that worked best for the capitalistic, business oriented setting we currently live in. It’s sink or swim, and that’s just how they plan to keep on swimming.

We got blinded by our desire to make something that would change the game, bring something new, and basically, do a lot of good. It didn’t work out for us as we’d hoped, but in hindsight, the spark of passion which initiated the whole campaign is still with us. We just need to be aware of how things work, learn from this experience and adjust our approach. If you really want to change the world, and help others, you can’t let it be a one time thing. You need to sustain your existence first, so you can keep moving forward and push others in the same direction.

Writer’s Note 04

“The same approach could be adapted to the whole “nature vs technology” subject. Keeping in mind that in both examples, the relationship between sustainability and progress is a two-way street, and one should always enable the other.”

What is yet to come…

After a lot of discussion, we decided to adapt our business strategy and you will be able to read about it in depth soon in another piece.

If our business model is successful, we are going to invest a portion of our profits into developing different programs that will fight the issues represented in the game. This way, we are going to take a hands on approach and help the way we choose to help. Hopefully, one day we will be able to contribute to the necessary balance between the sustainability of our environment and our desire to reach new technological heights.