Yesterday, while looking for a game company I couldn’t remember the name of, I stumbled upon a KOBI5 piece titled “Black and women-owned gaming company in Medford makes history with new venture funds.” I was on KOBI’s 5 on 5 a few years ago, so the headline immediately jumped out as local.

Intrigued, I went to take a look. First, I read their “about” page, and about their team. First impression, positive:

We use behavioral technology to create interactive media that is wickedly fun and actively good.

Like get out and use the broken pieces of this world to build a better one—good.

You can probably tell from the quote that W!cked Saints has a clear voice. They know who they are and what they’re doing, and they’re proud of it.

The founders are not your typical video game company founders, and not only in the ways pointed out in the headline above. Jessica Murrey and Alicia Clifton have both spent time working in the non-profit space, and more specifically in conflict resolution with Search for Common Ground.

Conflict resolution, social change, empowering young people, making the world a better place, these are themes throughout – and it’s a game company. They are attempting to achieve big things through video games, and that’s a fascinating spin. While other companies are figuring out ways to harvest more and more of your data, here is a company trying to weave behavioral psychology into their games to improve the world around us.

I love that!

“Sure, but rainbows and butterflies don’t make fun games,” the cynic in you might say, but tell the cynic to pipe down for a minute.

W!cked’s CTO, Daphne Larose, is someone who definitely knows how to make games. I’m not sure if you’ve ever heard of Pokémon Go!, but I think it’s safe to say that it achieved some modest popularity… Yep, Daphne came over from Niantic to lead the tech team.

Their flagship game, World Reborn, is still in development, so no reviews on that front, but I can say I dig the artwork on the site, like a lot. There is a Discord and members apparently get access to help play test, so check it out.

I mainly just wanted to give them a shout out. I don’t know if they’re still local to me or not, but what they are doing is worth highlighting.

Kudos on your aspirations, W!cked, I hope everything goes well for you!