Here at Mahoot, it’s beginning to look a lot like … FAMILY.

Some of it is the real DNA deal. Some of it is just a family-like rapport, like friends and colleagues have. And it wasn’t planned or anything. It’s just that one of us noticed the other day that WE ARE NOT IN THIS ALONE.

Take Evan (VP Engineering), for instance. His father has dusted off his 50-year-old copywriting skills to help us send out clear messages. Bonnie’s (QA Engineer) sister Amelia has joined us as an intern, helping create demos to make Mahoot’s output more perfectly clear. Aaron’s (Social Media Consultant) cousin is introducing Mahoot to brands that need us. Mike’s (Software Engineer) sister is giving some thought to helping Mahoot make new sales.

Son/father. Sister/sister. Brother/sister. Cousin/cousin. This place is beginning to look like family trees gone wild. Where will it end? Should it end? Will our other relatives be asking to sign up and help out? Will so-far uninvolved relatives feel offended? Are we hurting anybody’s feelings?

This is what happens when a group of folks work closely together on common goals. When they bring lunch to work and eat in, talking business. And when we have at least one meeting a week walking and talking on the trail that winds around the giant satellite dish near the office. The jelly bean jar even lures the children of staff members on Saturdays and Sundays.

We’d like to know if this is unusual, so tell us here at Mahoot whether you and your families work together and how you feel about it. Thanks.

Guest post by Pete

The Mahoot team is always looking for bright individuals to work with, so we decided to bring on some interns. We are currently looking to fill two slots, so get your resume’s in as soon as possible!

Client Preparation Intern

As an intern at Mahoot Games, you’d be helping to improve our user experience across both desktop and mobile. Currently our team is expanding our content and needs individuals to assist with organizing incoming content.

Responsibilities:

Assist engineers with content from clients and affiliate games

Provide input on brands

Requirements:

Current University student pursuing a BA

Understanding of Microsoft Office and Google Docs

Mac, PC, or Chome laptop

Ability to visit the Mahoot HQ in Palo Alto once a week

If interested, please email your resume to internapplication@mahoot.com with Client Preparation Intern. Any email received without that subject will be sorted incorrectly.

Engineering Intern
As an intern at Mahoot Games, you will assist with deploying client games onto new platforms. We like to assign interns projects and enjoy discussing options.

Responsibilities:

• Code new features or port features to new platforms

Requirements:

• Current University student pursuing a BA or BS
• Knowledge of Android and iOS platforms and code bases
• Understanding of Facebook Auth
• Mac or PC
• No design knowledge required
• Ability to visit the Mahoot HQ in Palo Alto once a week

If interested, please email your resume to internapplication@mahoot.com with Engineering Intern. Any email received without that subject will be sorted incorrectly.

*Mahoot is open to working with students to receive University credit but you are responsible for all paperwork with your respective University.

My favorite game when I was 12?

Laser Tag.

My favorite game now?

Dancing.

I was always into physical games. I loved to play hide-and-seek. I’d climb up in a tree and pretend I was a ninja. My friends would call “All ye all ye oxen free!”, our code for, “I give up! I can’t find you. Come out!”

There was a cool variation of hide-and-seek called Sardines. Instead of one person looking and everyone else hiding, only one person hides, and everyone else seeks. The first person to find the hidden one hides with them. So does the second. Pretty soon you’ve got like 5 people crammed in one corner of a closet. The last person to find the discreet mob gets to hide next.

Despite liking physical games, I could never get into competitive sports. The first time I played tennis, my friend whacked the ball way to the side. I glanced over my shoulder, then wandered over to retrieve it. “Hey, you’re supposed to run after the ball.” “Why?” “That’s the game, you have to try to hit it.” “But you hit way over there!”

The next time he hit the ball I tried to tell my brain, “There it goes! Run! It’s important!”, but another part of my brain would answer, “No it’s not. It’s just a ball!” To this day, there will be some great goal or near miss on TV, and everyone in the restaurant will “Ohhh” and “Ahhh”. I smile politely and think, “It’s just a ball.”

To test my theory that people don’t change, I threw some questions at my team members at Mahoot Games.

Linda’s favorite game when she was 12?

Scrabble.

Linda’s favorite game now?

Scrabble.

Hmm…

Evan’s favorite game when he was 12?

Ghosts & Goblins (Fantasy game)

Evan’s favorite game now?

Magic, the Gathering (Harder Fantasy Game)

At this point I’ve concluded that people don’t really change all that much! What resembled fun to us at age 12 is pretty close to what resembles fun to us at age 22, 32, 42…

Mike gets off the phone.

“Hey, Mike? What was your favorite game when you were 12?”

“DOOM.”  (Shooter video game)

“And what’s your favorite game now?”

“Investing.”

“Dammit, Mike, you messed up my theory! Computer shooting and investing have nothing to do with each other.”

“What are you talking about? Investing has everything to do with DOOM!”

The results of this study are inconclusive.

Leave us a comment. What was your favorite game when you were 12? What’s your favorite game now? In what ways has your idea of fun changed, and in what ways has it stayed the same?

When I was a kid, there was this board game, the game of LIFE, where you drive
around the board in little plastic cars. You can add a spouse or kids to your car (blue
or pink plastic pegs). Every spin on the Life wheel might bring you a new career,
fortune or misfortune.

Real life isn’t much different than the board game, only more complex, and longer.
Chance still throws its ups and downs, but the experienced player and the one
who pays attention has the best odds of ‘winning’. ‘Winning’ can mean whatever
you want it to mean. What motivates you? Money? Love? Feeding hungry kids in
Uganda? Producing a work of art to rival Picasso?

Right now I’m playing the game of ”Don’t Get A Traffic Ticket in Downtown Palo
Alto”. The first week of parking was stressful, but now I’m a pro! I can detect their
chalk dusters marking my tires a mile away. I know how to swap spots between the
3-hour parking garage to the 2-hour street spots at just the right times, avoiding
lunch hour traffic. I set phone alarms so I get there right before the Palo Alto Parking
Militia arrives. I hop in the car and escape like a ninja. I didn’t invent the game of
Parking Enforcement, but I always win.

Kids play different games. When I go to my friend’s house, her little daughter always
wants to play ‘grocery store’ with me. She never gets tired of filling baskets with
fake food, and making fake sandwiches with plastic bread and tomatoes. Yet most
adults I know approach grocery shopping as a chore, to get over with as fast as
possible. We’ve grown bored with the aisles of food growing on shelves. Something
that would be magic in any third world country has lost it’s magic here.

Every once in a while, something new appears which stirs up the magic again. Last
week, my co-worker brought a gluten-free quinoa brownie to work. Since then,
I’ve hunted through grocery stores in search of quinoa, cocoa and grape seed oil, in
focused attempt at replicating the recipe. The game of grocery shopping has jumped
to a new level – gluten-free baking. Having something ‘new’ to conquer is the driving
force behind most games. It is the difference between fun and mundane.

Our minds filter out what we already know, and are enticed by what is new and
different. At the farmer’s market, I’m enticed by a purple carrot. I hash out change to
obtain the purple carrot, perfect for my soup tonight. But the child next to me is just
as impressed by an orange one. For the child, the orange carrot is still new.

All of life is a game. We lose when we stop being aware of the games we are in.
That’s when we walk back to our car to find the parking ticket on the window shield.
Or we suddenly regret not spending time with a friend or family member after
getting notice they passed away. A rewarding life is a life well played. Where no
matter what the wheel of chance gives us, we are quick to learn and to use it well. A rewarding life is playing hard the games we choose, and even creating some of our own.

Sometimes we have the audacity to create our own games, and we change the world
around us. Other times, we are stuck playing the games of others. We might win and
we might lose, but we are out there playing. Still other times, we are just sitting in
the bleachers, living vicariously through the victories and failures of others. What
category do you find yourself most in? And what magic carrot motivates you to jump
your games to the next level?

Hello! I’m Linda, one of Mahoot’s Founders.

Typically after work you can find me plopped on our armchair with the TV on, playing a quick casual game or poking around shopping sites. Some of my favorite games are Words with Friends, Solitaire, Candy Crush Saga and W.E.L.D.E.R.

When I first discovered W.E.L.D.E.R., a beautifully designed game where you create words by moving tiles around, I became particularly obsessed with getting to the highest level, to the point that my husband frequently has to prod me away from my iPad to eat dinner or walk our dogs. Our dogs, two adorable cavaliers, were named after the board games Twister and Trouble, by our breeder. I like to say it was fate that they became Mahoot mascots.

I am equally enamored with shopping. FAB.com, OneKingsLane, Nordstrom and Amazon can always be counted on to show me some goodies I’ll either buy immediately or bookmark for future temptation.

So, when our team came up with the idea for Mahoot – rewarding game play with offers on stuff you want – I was hooked. It is an awesome way for me to spend my day combining my two favorite habits, games and shopping! Now if my husband catches me on katespade.com or Angry Birds, I can say I am doing work! It’s all in the name of research. We have given our players justification for the many hours they spend playing our games. Now they can tell their significant others “Honey, look how much I just saved us by playing Mahoot!”

The rest of our team will be contributing occasionally to this blog., They love to play all day too, each in their own way

Feeling guilty about spending too much time gaming with nothing to show for it? Don’t worry, you’re not alone. After countless hours hurling birds through the air or trying to get a triple letter double word combo, we realized that maybe bragging rights weren’t enough. So we decided to invent something new – combining our favorite pastimes – gaming and SHOPPING. As we were whiling away time gaming and shopping, thinking “wow, this is great. What could make it better?” Uhhhhhh helllooo….. DISCOUNTS!

So we partnered up with some of our favorite retailers to make our time gaming even more fun, and rewarding. (Literally.) And don’t tell anyone, but also slightly a-d-d-i-c-t-i-v-e.

Here’s how it works. Log on to Facebook (our other favorite time-“utilizer”). Go to Mahoot. See what games are happening that week. Challenge yourself to Match, challenge your Memory (best with a glass of wine) and rack up the points. You will still have time to glance at the postings from your friends of what they have just been served for dinner or the foam on their latte. (Yawn.)

The “points” now mean discounts and special offers from your favorite retailers, on your favorite stuff!

Play. Earn. Shop. Repeat.

You can play our games on your laptop or your iPad. You’ll be so hooked that you won’t notice the time passing until summer, when we launch mobile on iOS so you and your Mahoot are never separated.

We’ve been playing, shopping, and developing in secret up until now but today we are ready and excited to tell you all about it! (And the great deal we just got on a new pair of platform sandals.) In addition to being professional gamers and shoppers, we have had “real jobs” at places like Microsoft, Twitter, and eBay, and even co-founded cool companies like Neato Robotics. (A robot can vacuum while you shop and play. Life is good.)

Stay tuned to hear from us as we add more cool retailers and super fun games. Check it out at http://apps.facebook.com/mahootgames. You’ll be hooked. Also if you have any comments, raves (or even rants), drop us a note at play@mahoot.com. Or if you are a cool retailer that wants a game of your own.

Shop on!