The Philanthropic Gamer

cross-post by website developer, gamer (and philanthropist!) Amanda Farough

It was seven in the morning when the troupe of gamers arrived in my tiny, one-bedroom apartment in the suburbs of Vancouver. They came armed with gaming consoles, televisions, a handheld camcorder (with a tripod), many snacks, and their most comfortable clothing (in duplicate). I opened the door and they rushed in, eager to plunk their armament down in order to set up for a gruelling task: gaming for twenty-four hours straight in order to raise money for BC Children’s Hospital.

And although the task that Sarcastic Gamer had set for us seemed lofty — any by any non-gamer’s reckoning, completely daft — we were eager to do what we could for those sick little kids. I mean, how would we feel to be six-years-old, in a horrible hospital, and have no video games to play?

Catastrophic melancholy hit and we were resolved: it was time to make those kids smile.

Before the event, people were asking me about the charity they had donated to and why it was that we were playing video games and not riding our bikes across Canada or something. Truth be told, many of us gamers are not great athletes. In fact, a fair few of us don’t enjoy going outside, let alone physical activity. However, what we do best is sitting down and challenging ourselves to defeat bosses, level up, and save the princess. Or, y’know, in a femme gaming sense, toss the princess a blade so she can help out too. We had a specific goal in mind. Our donors put the money where our mouths were. We had twenty-four not-so-blissful hours to prove to the world that gamers are not blithering idiots hiding in our parents’ basements.

We are philanthropists. We have big hearts and even if our wallets don’t match, we will work hard to make sure that sick children can have access to the same entertainment that we often take for granted.

And so, we have the Philanthropic Gamer.

In the summer, we raise money for Extra Life.

In the fall, we game our faces off for Extra Life.

In the winter, we donate what’s left of our Christmas money to Child’s Play.

And in the spring, we gear up to do it all over again (once we’ve recovered from the plethora of holiday game releases, that is).

Child’s Play, the brain child of Penny Arcade creators Mike and Jerry, was the product of rage mixed with a healthy dose of “Oh yeah? Well, eff you too, media.” In short, Jerry was angry. In truth, he knew that the gaming industry had a bad rep for being all glitz and no substance in the real world; at least according to the press. When an article made its way to Jerry’s inbox, his rage was palpable. Gamers aren’t angry because games told us to be that way. We don’t want to kill people and we certainly aren’t primed to train youth to kill people either. But if there was ever an occasion for rage and violence, Jerry was primed. But instead of tearing a journalist a new one, he and Mike started Child’s Play in 2003 to provide consoles, games, and gaming peripherals to Children’s Hospitals; first in America and then internationally.

In 2010 alone, with the help of gamers all over the world, Child’s Play raised well over two million dollars in donations to dole out to needy hospitals.

It was thanks to the ingenuity and generosity of gamers and game developers (including sub-projects like The Humble Bundle, where indie game developers put their heads together and gave gamers a chance to buy their games and donate the entirety of the proceeds to Child’s Play) that hospitals worldwide are now able to stock their playrooms with Rock Band, Xbox 360s, and PlayStation 3s; as well as being able to put Wiis in every room with a game library that would both shock and amaze you in terms of sheer volume. It’s because of the big hearts and even bigger teams that Penny Arcade and Sarcastic Gamer are able to pull it all together.

Gamers are misunderstood and mis-categorized, as a good friend of mine often puts it, as mushrooms; a mushroom being a basement dwelling human whose lack of personal hygiene leads one to believe that this is indeed a piece of fungus. If the media is to be believed, gamers are also antisocial freaks, hellbent on destroying families and the traditional way of life with their World of Warcraft frenzies and tendency to take a rifle and actually shoot someone.

The truth is simple: we are people.

Some people have troubles with reality and probably shouldn’t be playing Modern Warfare 2 in the first place; perhaps Little Big Planet would’ve been a healthier choice. Others aren’t properly socialized as children and really are antisocial; in no way does that make them freaks primed to shoot up their schools.

 The rest of us have jobs and families and a whole lot of friends. A great party would involve those friends and more than a few rounds of Marvel vs. Capcom, Geometry Wars 2 or Rock Band.

It’s because we are people that we want to feel like we’re making a contribution to bettering the world. The best way we know how to do that is to open our wallets, smile, and say to our friends, “So, who wants to play twenty-four hours of Halo: Reach today?”