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It's not on your list of causes, so perhaps you won't care, but the crew running Child's Play have been up front on where the money goes: it is spent on nothing but toys. None of the staff, such as it is, get paid out of your donations; they all work for Penny Arcade, who run Child's Play on the side.

Child's Play seems to be a good one, they help kids with severe problems suffer less and recover faster.

I've always thought that Child's Play was the most fantastic take on this. Video games distract you from the suck when you're sick or in pain. Gabe, Tycho, and thousands of gamers have grown up in the last couple decades experiencing that and have brought the same relief to lots of kids.

These guys are in Seattle. They need to hook up.

If you so chose the whole 100% of the donation for the bundle could go to Child's Play, a gamer-run charity that donates toys and games to children's wards in hospitals, or the EFF, a non-profit digital civil-liberties group. That answers your question.

Yeah, God (or Science, or Beer, your choice!) forbid that we do something to raise the quality of life for terminally ill children. WON'T SOMEONE THINK OF THE CHILDREN?!? Child's Play may or may not be the best, but in my opinion, it's WAY above the worst. They spawned DBfH, FFS!

ACK. I haven't finished Overture yet. Last I played I'd made it to a store room with a single way out under siege by some creatures that are scared of/damaged by light. I don't know when the next time I play will be, but it will be in the middle of the day with the radio on. Love it and recommend it.

If anyone doesn't already own World of Goo or Penumbra, the bundle is easily worth £20GBP/$40USD for those two games alone. The fact that the sale benefits Child's Play should make you dig a little deeper...

So... will Microsoft be making a big donation to Child's Play any time soon?

"This new X Box won't let me play today because it thinks I should get out of bed and do more exercise. It suggests half an hour of jogging. How many weeks did you say it be before I can walk again?"

Agreed. Seems like the perfect charitable "collaboration" (and the 2008 drive kick-off is right around the corner) http://www.childsplaycharity.org/

These "gamers change the world" for many kids in hospitals. I'd say they certainly are special.

Penny Arcade actually runs a large charitable fund for children sick in hospitals. While the comics themselves may not be suitable for Wikipedia, they have other notable things they've done.

While I'll agree that it may be a bit absurd that the Freemasons are left out, you're picking the wrong example to compare against.

The raw absurdity of this case has already been stated many times over, but to restate: people who played a violent, aggressive game took the time and effort to seek out a bad "sex" scene, and are seeking cash to solve their irreparably damages.

But what really gets me is the fact that the 3,000 people, and the theoretical defendants, have to pay legal fees. TFA says that the fees over this case have already gone into the millions! That is money wasted. Literally thrown down the drain. Not wasted like "I want to light cigars with 100 dollar bills," (which is a waste but looks PIMP) but literally millions of dollars have disappeared into an already overly rich system.

They should have just walked in and said "Alright, look - this case is dumb. How about this: We donate half of our theoretical legal fees to Child's Play, which will help young children who actually need it, and you GTA-players can enjoy our product and, by not taking our money, ensure you continue getting the titles you love so much."

This is a good time to mention Child's Play, a charity that won't ever call you and where 100% of what you donate goes to the kids.

Boy, you must be *really* new around here. Pretty clearly the answer is "both".

The NAME of the charity is "Child's Play". How is that hard to understand? I'm glad the other posts helped you figure it out, but the /.er you object to merely called you out for being lazy.

The answer to your question is right here and it would have taken you far less time to answer the question yourself than it did to type it up.

Just like it would have taken way less time for me to ignore your self-pitying remarks and just donate to Child's Play myself. I guess I just felt the need to lash out AND donate to charity. Off I go.

This is a good question, and the answer is: you *can* donate money. The Paypal link and address for donations by check are right in the middle of http://www.childsplaycharity.org/. In this case there is no benefit to cutting out the middle man (Child's Play), because we don't take out any money from the donation pool. Donate a dollar to CP, and we'll give that dollar to a hospital. So why not just send the dollar directly to the hospital? Because we use the cash donations to balance out the toy donations. Say the hospital in New Orleans has gotten plenty of toy donations, but the hospital in Liverpool has gotten few. We'll use the cash pool to even things out. The other benefit is that donating through Child's Play enables us to track total donations. This is important because one of the reasons Child's Play works is because donors, hospitals, and the media see evidence that it works: the yearly donation totals. A $10 check sent to Child's Play is counted; a $10 check to a hospital is not. Both result in a hospital getting $10. So might as well help out the drive, and send the check to CP. All that said, if you'd rather mail a check directly to the hospital of your choice PLEASE DO SO. The whole point is helping out sick kids.

Good idea, I was unaware they had these.

Charity
Game

I think the heart of the debate about violence in video games comes when you contrast TFA with this.

Really, is there anything left to discuss about the issue?

I'm not usually one to criticize how people spend their own hard-earned money. But given the time of year, if I had an extra few dollars to spend, it would not be to buy a game to have it open-sourced, it would be to help sick kids enjoy life.

I once seen a (dutch) documentary in which researchers handed over some Aibo-dogs to elderly people:

Whereas I thought they would immedeately reject it (scary technology and such) I was amazed that not only did they accept it, they also embraced it because of its multiple functions an 'ordinary' pet couldn't offer.
For one, it didn't need any care that one, once forgetting starts to be a daily part of life, tends to forget (hell, some even forget feeding themselves once dementia has been set in).
Also, whereas normal pets could be too exhausting, the Aibo with its 'react-to-impulses-from-the-owner'-mechanism, was much easier to comprehend and adjust to.
It was endearing to see how some of them used the doggy to attract other people's attention in the elderly home, who normally they would have shyed away from talking too; But once the curiousity broke the formality-barrier, they would be socialising very quickly with them. I was amazed how some of them really started treating them as real pets (calling it names, talking to it as if it really understood them), and were shattered when, at the end of the research, they were taken away from them.

I really -do- think there is an opportunity here, where we could start some more research in this area as to start to make the last stages of life more enjoyable for the less fortunate... Hell, we should be donating Wii's to kids -and- elderly homes ;).

Whenever somebody says something along the lines of "all gamers are evil", I just point them to http://www.childsplaycharity.org/

They have: http://www.childsplaycharity.org/

I think this study makes an excellent point for penny arcade's child's play charity!
http://www.childsplaycharity.org/
Good thing! (TM)

http://www.childsplaycharity.org/

• Alder Hey Wishlist
• Child's Play
• Penny Arcade

Methinks that Gabe and Tycho prove you wrong. Gamers have the capacity to be good people, just like everybody else.

A: We have partnered with Amazon.com, which hosts a series of "Wish Lists" stocked with toys the hospitals have requested, as well as age appropriate videogames and game systems selected by Child's Play. Simply choose the hospital nearest you from our interactive map at http://www.childsplaycharity.org/ and the toys you purchase will be delivered directly. We also accept cash donations via Paypal to childsplaycharity@penny-arcade.com, which will be split evenly among the hospitals in this year's event. There are no "administrative fees" or other hidden costs associated with giving to Child's Play - every cent is passed on.

He said (iirc) that he'll put it to a donation regarding the wish of the take two entertainment's CEO?

Anyway, as for the tally, Penny Arcade (ie. Krahulik and Holkins) matched his 10K offer and donated to The Entertainment Software Association Foundation, and donated under his name (yeah!)

Check Penny Arcade and scroll down for more info.

And if somebody want's to donate anything, consider Child's Play charity which is run by Penny Arcade

For information's sake, many hospitals will not take used consoles or games as they are often not conducive to a sanitary environment. There are however charities designed for donating consoles and games. Child's Play (http://www.childsplaycharity.org/) is one that runs during the holiday season and takes new games. SavedGames (http://www.savedgames.org/) runs all year long and will take used games and consoles.

I think that there is a pretty negative stigma attached to being a gamer. It's very difficult to overcome. I don't think a games award show (be it Spike's horrible monstrosity or otherwise) is going to help the situation. There are a lot of gamers who are good people. The first big example that comes to mind is the guys over at Penny Arcade who set up the Child's Play Charity - http://childsplaycharity.org/ - in response to the negative image of gamers in the media. I'm sure there are others, but that was the first that came to mind.

I think the biggest problem is not that there are violent videogames. The games are rated for a reason. If you don't want your child to play GTA, Hitman, Halo, etc., don't buy them. I used to work at Target as a cashier. As a cashier, you're supposed to check IDs for games rated M (must be 17 or older). I'd ask people for them and they would have no clue that the game was rated or what the game was even about. The problem is that people like scapegoats for the way our society is. Violent videogames and movies are easy targets. They are easier to make go away and "fix" things than actual fixes are.

Alright. So, a couple things happened.

One, the Sony Syndrome "story" is probably over. We're fond of this as an ending place for it, but we your comic masters are mercurial and delight in misdirection. One never really knows. We promise nothing, and you should expect nothing. Nothing!

The second thing is that the Spike event sort of put me off of awards for the time being. Just as a random comment, if your 2004 awards program does not include Metroid Prime 2 or World of Warcraft, it has no authority whatsoever to coronate the king of any genre. I'm not even saying that those games need to win. I'm simply stating that the games exist and are real, news which has not reached them out there on the ragged periphery of taste and intellect. It has been our annual tradition to list the twelve most delicious games of the year here at Penny Arcade, and though the odds of us telling you our favorites are actually quite high doing it the way we've done it for the last few years really sounds awful to me. To both of us, even. So we're not going to do that.

What we are going to do is present a very short children's book concerning a celestial alignment which awakens the doom that lies dead and dreaming in R'lyeh. The first page can be found here. Ia! I'm sure you'll agree that this will be a great deal more fun for everyone involved. It goes until the 27th of December, the Monday after next. This is the cover.

Child's Play: Kiko's Child's Play Shirt is, like his other work, a stunning act of design savvy. He still has a few left in the run, if you'd like to climb aboard. We're coming up on the end of this year's drive, and I have every faith that when we incorporate the gifts from the partner sites last year's high score will be defeated, and we will enter our initials.

Please consider what the games you enjoy could mean to a young person staring down a long-term illness. If you haven't given yet, it's possible you don't know: you're entirely capable of heroism. The barrier to entry is surprisingly low.

(CW)TB out.

Thank God /. gave another plug to Child's Play. It's a great cause and if you forgot about it after the initial ./ announcement, get out there and buy a gift or two for some sick kids who could really use the cheer.

Time's getting short!

I don't think many people will take it the way you suggest. For those not in the know, penny arcade holds a season long charity called "child's play" that asks for donations for children's hospitals. This is the second year running for it. Child's play has been receiving much more media attention this year, thus driving up the bandwidth needed by the site.

So a major news outlet does a story on the most popular webcomic in the world, and fails to mention that said web comic also runs a massive charity for children?

I would think it was at least worth mentioning.

If you're a gamer (or even if you're not) you should check out Child's Play. It's a charity set up by the Penny Arcade guys to give games and toys to kids in hospitals who need them.

Last year (the first year) they raised something like $250k and really did a lot of good for the hospitals.

It's a chance for gamers to show the community what we're really about instead of being stereotyped as violent misfits living in basements.

Of course Penny Arcade's Child's Play charity.

http://www.childsplaycharity.org/, enough said.

Considering the ramifications of this article, I urge any of you with spare cash/games to check out Child's Play. It's a huge charity that collects video games and systems for children in hospitals, run by the folks at Penny Arcade

I normally don't plug things, but this is too relevant to the article to ignore, and it can help out a lot of kids.

This is the perfect charity for me and I love the feeling every time that I turn on my xbox that there is some kid/family/whatever not too far from where I live who can enjoy a fun game for a while and forget about whatever pain they are in.

http://www.childsplaycharity.org/
http://www.childsplaycharity.org/
http://www.childsplaycharity.org/

This is the perfect charity for me and I love the feeling every time that I turn on my xbox that there is some kid/family/whatever not too far from where I live who can enjoy a fun game for a while and forget about whatever pain they are in.

http://www.childsplaycharity.org/
http://www.childsplaycharity.org/
http://www.childsplaycharity.org/

This is the perfect charity for me and I love the feeling every time that I turn on my xbox that there is some kid/family/whatever not too far from where I live who can enjoy a fun game for a while and forget about whatever pain they are in.

http://www.childsplaycharity.org/
http://www.childsplaycharity.org/
http://www.childsplaycharity.org/