Akoha is an rather special online game – it combines social networking, online gaming and real-world activity to help make the world a better place.

Players carry out real life and virtual ‘missions’ such as “Donate an Hour of Your Time” or “Make Someone Smile” to collect points, recruit new players and, as important, spread good deeds and perform little acts of kindness. It’s still in Beta, having only launched at the TechCrunch50 conference last September, but it’s already seen more than 3,000 mission plays in 37 countries and was selected as a finalist for GamesBeat2009’s Who’s Got Game? start-up competition earlier this week.

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Akoha announced an initial target of 25,000 mission plays as part of a partnership with the charity group Room to Read that, if the target is met, will see the construction of a library in Nepal.

But, while the growing number of mission plays is exciting, co-founder of Akoha Inc, Austin Hill said it is also encouraging to see how the game is inspiring people. His example was this recent blog post of an Akoha user:

“When I started playing Akoha, it was mostly because it was fun to play missions and see my karma points collect. Almost six months later, I’ve begun to notice a change in the rest of my life…..What I really notice though, is that I say “Thank You” an awful lot more. Often times it’s just in my head, but more and more I’m willing to stop people (whom I don’t know) and say “Thank You”. These things make me smile and brighten my day, and hopefully by passing that on, I can make someone else’s day better.”

As yet more proof of the high esteem Akoha is being held in, they were invited to give a presentation at TED University in January. While they were there Akoha introduced its new Inspired Minds mission cards that were inspired by various TED speakers and talks:

Can a game change the world? Would you play it forward?