As we developed Kwedit Promise, I bounced the idea off of friends, game publishers, fellow parents, potential investors, and, of course, my wife. Responses ranged from “This is brilliant!” to “This is insane!” … to the occasional “huh?” Many were intellectually intrigued (“You’re building a laboratory for behavioral economics!” “Kwedit Scores…what a fascinating machine-learning problem!”). Publishers saw the potential for their businesses (“Finally a way to expand my addressable market!”). Still others viewed Kwedit Promise through a lens of morality (“What a great way to reward honesty!” “I don’t trust anyone… no one will ever pay you back!”).
This feedback reinforced our view that the world is a complicated place populated with honest and dishonest people, and our system should anticipate both. We should reward honest people for being honest, and we should try to stop dishonest people from abusing the system. That’s why we implemented Kwedit Scores and Kwedit Limits – features that provide positive and negative consequences in Kwedit’s virtual world without impacting consumers in the real world in any way.
My wife emphasized the importance of parental oversight, so we developed the “Promise sharing” feature of Pass the Duck that allows parents to supervise their teens’ Promises, and we created the Kwedit Kontract for families.
A friend who has been working to resolve the debt crisis got excited about Kwedit Promise and said, rather forcefully: “Most people have had no way to learn about credit until it’s too late. Kwedit provides an opportunity to help people learn.” That's why we promote Kwedit Promise as a safe environment in which teenagers and adults can safely learn about and experiment with the life-impacting concepts of credit scores and credit limits. It's also why we provide links to financial literacy sites.
Regardless of your view of the world, we hope you’ll take advantage of all that Kwedit Promise has to offer – intellectually, educationally, or, perhaps most importantly…just for fun! As always, we welcome your comments.
Quack On!
Danny Shader
