New charity using social gaming techniques to attract interest

Here at Games.com -- The Blog!, we're all about social games. But we're also all about helping humanity. Just because we don't write about the second one as much as the first one doesn't mean we're not all about them both, OK?

Anyway, when something combines social games AND helping humanity, we're REALLY all about it. So we're REALLY all about Armchair Revolutionary, a new group that promises to "adapt the features of Facebook games such as FarmVille and social networking applications such as Foursquare to involve people in social and environmental causes," according to a write up in today's The USA Today.

The site, which allows users to uplaod photos, cast votes for various causes and even donate virtual currency to help them, sounds a bit more like a general social network than a social game at first. But performing tasks around the site earns players decorative rewards for their profile page and moves them up in the competitive rankings -- two nice social gaming touches. And some of the 250 projects to be funded are social games themselves, including one focused on promoting ocean sustainability. This cycle of using social games to fund other social games is one we're pretty sure ends in madness. Or in Zynga. One of those.