Sunday, September 30, 2007

Having trouble peeling the roommate/spouse/sibling/child away from video games to get the household's daily tasks done? Well, thanks to Chore Wars ( http://www.chorewars.com), a simple yet surprisingly adaptable Web application, you may be able to get results by making a video game of the scut work.

The free and easy-to-use site turns everyday jobs into a computer role-playing game. After creating characters, users establish a list of chores (with accompanying rewards) that they compete to complete. Finishing a task racks up experience points, virtual treasure and, of course, bragging rights.

Adventures can vary from washing the dishes to emptying the fridge to, um, submitting a story on time. More experience brings higher character levels, and characters change -- becoming stronger, smarter or quicker -- based on the types of chores completed.

Accountability Web sites are nothing new, but Chore Wars' whimsical concept stands out. Kevan Davis, the 31-year-old freelance Web developer and game designer behind the site, says the idea came up in an idle conversation "about how people are happy to spend an extra half-hour leveling up in an online game that even they will admit is dull, boring work, but they can be much less willing to get up and finish washing the dishes."

The game, which launched in July, was an instant success on blogs and was lampooned on the popular Web comic Penny Arcade (an indicator of video game success). But the site has found a much larger audience than Davis expected, with more than 40,000 members having completed 450,000 chore claims.

"There was a huge uptake from families using Chore Wars for their children, which I hadn't fully anticipated," Davis says. "I did wonder if it was just going to be a few dozen all-geek households using it."

The site is used not only by families but also by people who want to track exercise or self-medication regimens. There is even a 300-person knitting group using it to competitively log members' stitching.

Davis plans to support the site as long as it remains popular, and he hopes to improve its functionality as a game. But it will remain mainly a task-tracking tool, because it's so motivating.

"If I'm only a few experience points short of leveling, I get a bit twitchy and look to see what extra housework I can do," he says.

-- Justin Rude