House of Fun Impact on running charity promotions within a mobile game

Online casino apps are not necessarily the first one would think of as the site of a charity campaign. But Playtika and House of Fun Impact recently ran just such a campaign, and is said its audience was very enthusiastic about it.

HOF Impact is the community initiative of Playtika, the entertainment company behind, among others, the online slots game House of Fun. Recently HOF Impact partnered with Dots Eco to run a specific charity promotion. According to the people behind the campaign, the players were very enthusiastic about the ecological cause.

How does one engage slot players in the act of charity? HOF Impact said the key was making it part of their normal play.

House of Fun and the forest

Playtika founded House of Fun Impact as a way of harnessing its House of Fun community for good. It’s not the company’s only recent connection with charity: It donated $100,000 to the Red Cross Ukraine Appeal Fund following the Russian invasion of the country.

Last month, HOF Impact and Dots Eco ran a campaign benefiting the Nez Perce-Clearwater National Forests. The forest service was attempting to replenish the forest’s population of Western white pine trees after it had been ravaged by disease. According to HOF Impact, its users chose this charity from a poll.

Nadav Gross, Dots Eco CEO, said at the time, “We are thrilled to see House of Fun take on board such an important cause and turn it into a campaign that aligns with the fun of their game and the passion of their player community. In working with the HOF Impact team, we cannot wait to see the trees firmly planted in the grounds of Nez Perce-Clearwater National Forests!”

Tal Friedman, the general manager of House of Fun, said the app has maintained a fairly consistent audience in its 10 year-long run. The Nez Perce Forest initiative was not its first charitable endeavor — in Christmas 2020, House of Fun planted 30,000 trees in Yosemite National Park on behalf of its top players.

“This year, we wanted to do something more fun and interactive … . We wanted to transform playtime into environmental impact. First, we sent a survey into the game, and we asked players if they were interested in an in-game activity. We know the main reason they come is to play, and they don’t want anything to interfere with that. Then we gave them a few causes that we brought through Dots Eco. They voted for the reforestation.”

How slots become trees

To get their players engaged in the charity campaign, House of Fun ran a “play-to-plant” initiative. Players would complete in-game missions in order to plant trees in the real world. In the four day-long event, players would fill a progress bar on a special platform within the app while doing their usual gaming. Players who accomplished milestones on the progress bar would be awarded in-game items and acknowledgement of their progress. They could plant up to two trees per player.

In total, House of Fun’s players funded the planting of 108,000 trees. The company gave players who participated in the activity a special certificate thanking them for their help. According to Friedman, the forest service will plant the trees next month.

When asked how the audience responded to the charity promotions, Friedman said it was positive across the board. “When we had the normal surveys for player satisfaction, we saw an amazing rate for this activity — higher than almost any activity we’ve had before, and we have a lot of them. More than that, we have a lot of social activity. We saw crazy engagement on our social channels. Players wanted to guess how many trees we planted and shared their certificates.”

Since then, House of Fun has run at least one other major charity campaign: HoF for Ukraine in collaboration with Unicef, in which players could help send 36,000 aid kits for refugee children. According to its Facebook page, it accomplished this goal.

Friedman said that, in future, they’re going to make it easier for players to meet contribution milestones. “We saw that the more the player was able to contribute, the more we saw engagement. We understood that next time, we have to make it more achievable for more players.”