In their spare time, Kate Williams and Nathan Cruz Coulson are keen mobile gamers. In 2022 they turned their hobby into a business when they set up Bold Donut, which uses gaming to encourage people to do their bit for the planet.
“Sustainability managers are expected to engage their audiences and motivate them to take action in the interests of reducing their organisations’ emissions and environmental impact. However, just being told ‘what goes in what bin’ makes for a pretty boring experience,” Kate Williams says. “Our platform combines fun game play with sustainability learning, while also providing organisations with insights and data to inform their sustainability actions and initiatives.”
The company’s games are aimed at big organisations (educational institutions and large corporates) who need to develop responsible environmental behaviours in their students and employees. Its first commercial game, which is focused on waste management, was piloted at Trinity College earlier this year.
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“The idea of using gaming came from Nathan, who recognised the need to reframe climate action in a more positive way, as the prevailing ‘doom and gloom’ is not helping anyone,” Williams says. “As keen gamers we recognised the engagement power of the gaming medium, and our game design is inspired by globally popular casual games such as Candy Crush, which is played by millions worldwide.”
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Williams says gaming provides a safe environment in which people can experience climate-positive behaviours without fear of judgment or getting it wrong. Waste Game, which was aimed at both staff and students in Trinity, ran for a week in May. By the end of it there was a 15 per cent improvement in participants’ waste behaviour knowledge, says Williams, who has a background in international business, while Cruz Coulson is a sustainability enthusiast with an MSc in data science and experience in building and selling enterprise software.
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Bold Donut’s revenue model is a “games-as-a-service” subscription, which gives its subscribers access to a customised, own-branded game, assistance with promotional campaigns and regular reporting and impact data. The company’s second game, which is focused on energy, is now taking shape, and Williams says Bold Donut is offering interested companies the opportunity to get in on the ground floor by joining in the development process.
Bold Donut is not alone in the environmental gaming space. It is up against engagement platforms and companies creating bespoke games for their clients. “Engagement platforms tend to attract the already climate-committed, but often fail to engage people at scale, while custom-built games tend to be very expensive,” Williams says.
We already have paying clients in Ireland and the UK and are planning to expand to the EU and the USA in the next 12 months
— Kate Williams, Bold Donut
“Our USP is that our games are designed to have broad reach and mass appeal in themselves. Secondly, our licensing fee structure keeps costs a lot lower than fully bespoke games. Sustainability managers can choose which level of customisation they want, based on their budget, and this will allow them to reach wider audiences for longer at a relatively low cost and low risk.”
Both founders have been working full-time in the business since last year and have already developed a number of mini-game demos such as Pizza Party, which illustrates how the company’s games can be used by consumer-facing brands to encourage positive waste-disposal behaviour among their customers.
Born Again Bites, which features a grain character called Bar Lee, is designed to educate people about circularity and waste reduction in food production.
Williams estimates the company’s start-up costs at about €50,000, which includes the development and launch of the MVP. “We’ve done this mainly through bootstrapping, while we also had the grant from our participation in the New Frontiers programme at TU Blanchardstown,” she says. “We already have paying clients in Ireland and the UK and are planning to expand to the EU and the USA in the next 12 months. We have not yet started raising private investment, but plan to do so in 2024.”
