We have covered several games that are making the world better, from planting trees to fight desertification, to feeding the poor, learning about renewable energy, energy policy, even disaster preparedness, here is another great example of how playing games can make the world better.

One Square Foot is a game much like the free rice game. It allows you to have fun, while making small contributions to the greater good. In One Square Foot you answer trivia questions in order to preserve portions of the rain forest (cleverly enough one square foot at a time).

They are following a bit of an open source/crowd sourcing model as people who visit the site are able to add their own questions. Which from the looks of it is in need of a bit more tweaking. I played for a while and saved a couple square feet of rain forest. Which is pretty sweet, as I am sure I am responsible for more than a couple square feet of its destruction.

They also have an interesting statics view that lets you see exactly how much they have saved so far in relation to the real world. It is both inspiring and heartbreaking. When you realize that even with all that they have saved, there is still so much more to go.

While they don’t technically save the actual number of feet you “rescue” they are donating all their ad revenue (the ads that run along the bottom) to the world land trust to buy land in the rain forest. I could see this becoming very popular, especially if they expand the model to include other types of gaming, and really raise some serious cash. The next time you are bored at work, do check out one of the games listed in this article, at least when your boss catches you, you can claim you are doing it for the earth.

(Via)