childs-play posts

The Child's Play charity has been a staple of the holiday season for the gaming community for a while now. While fund raising efforts for the organization begun by Penny Arcade are held throughout the year this week Child's Play officially started its 2010 holiday drive for donations of games, toys and cash to be given to a number of children's hospitals around the world.

Last year the charity collected $1.78 million and already this year the drive has collected close to $200,000. In addition to individual donation there are a number of events that are raising money to be given to Child's Play. That includes the blow out auction that will be held in Seattle on December 7 that features tons of unique items donated by the game development and publishing community.

Indie game developer Arcen Games launched a major revamp of its space strategy game AI War late in October. This week the developer gave an overall update on the company and its future. First is the expansion pack Children of Neinzul. Pre-orders for the expansion have generated $1,640.80 for the Child's Play charity and Arcen Games' Christopher M. Park states, "We look to be well on our way to hitting our goal of $14,000.00 for the year."

Arcen Games plans to release a new expansion to AI War, Light of the Spire, in the first week of December. However two other planned games, Cayenne and A Valley Without Wind, are "off the table for now" and another upcoming game, the top down adventure title Alden Ridge, will be switching from a hand-made story and levels to one that will generate both via a procedural model. An alpha build of the game is scheduled for release in the first quarter of 2011.

Overall Arcen Games seems to be in a better financial position than it was a couple of months ago with Park stating, "In short, we aren't out of the woods yet, but this past week has been hugely positive for us and things are definitely moving in the right direction at long last."

Last Friday was supposed to be the last day that Telltale Games offered up the Great Adventure Bundle 2010 featuring a number of downloadable adventure games for the low price of $19.95. However Telltale has decided to extend that offer for a bit longer. The developer has announced that the bundle deal will now end on Friday, September 17.

Just a reminder: The games in the bundle include The Whispered World, Jack Keane, King's Quest Collection (with several games in the King's Quest series), Penny Arcade Adventures: On the Rain Slick Precipice of Darkness, Episode 1, and Puzzle Agent. When the deal sells 5,000 bundles, Telltale will also unlock Sam and Max: Across Time and Space for free. 25 percent of the procees go to several charities including Child's Play, The World Wildlife Fund, The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, Nyota e.V., and the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

If you want to help out some worthy charities while also buying PC games, today is the last day you will be able to so for two such efforts. Telltale Games' Great Adventure Game Bundle ends today with players able to download and purchase a number of adventure titles from Telltale and other game developers and publishers for $19.95. 25 percent of the proceeds from the sale will be used by a number of different charities.

Also, Stardock's Impulse PC game download site is holding the last day of its own charity efforts as a number of publishers have agreed to donate a portion of its sales from Impulse to the Child's Play children's charity.

If you love classic and new adventure games and also want to contribute something to society, Telltale Games has a deal for you. Today the developer launched The Great Adventure Game Bundle 2010 where you can purchase six game title for just $19.95. The games included in the bundle are The Whispered World, Jack Keane, King's Quest Collection (with three games in the King's Quest series) and Penny Arcade Adventures: On the Rain Slick Precipice of Darkness, Episode 1.

In addition to the cheap price Telltale will give 25 percent of the proceeds from the bundle to five different charities (Child's Play, The World Wildlife Fund, The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, Nyota e.V., and the Electronic Frontier Foundation). You can pick which charity you want to support when you purchase the bundle. If you don't choose the money will be spread evenly among the five organizations.

Finally if 5,000 bundles are sold, Telltale will throw in access to its own game Puzzle Agent for free and will also provide Sam and Max: Across Time and Space for free after a second, unknown, amount of bundles are sold. There's no word on how long the bundle deal will last

The Impulse PC game download service from Stardock is doing something more than just some price cuts on its library of games this Labor Day weekend. Today the company announced that from now until September 10 a portion of the revenues generated by sales on Impulse from various publishers will be donated to the game-related Child's Play children's hospital charity.

The list of game publishers on Impulse that are participating in this event include Meridian4, N3V, JoWood, Kalypso, Paradox Interactive, THQ, EA, 1C Company, Muzzy Lane and EGames. You can also donate directly to Child's Play from the Impulse home page. In addition Impulse has a new list of games on sale this Labor Day weekend which you can check out right here.

The indie-made space strategy game AI War: Fleet Command from developer Arcen Games has already spawned one expansion pack but this week the developer announced the second expansion for the game. AI War: Children of Neinzul will contain 36 new ships, six new AI types, two new map styles, three new music tracks and more. The expansion is currently in beta but it can be pre-ordered for $3.99.

All of that is newsworthy in of itself but here's the cool bit. Arcen Games has pledged to donate 100 percent of the proceeds from Children of Neinzul to the Child's Play children's hospital charity. The goal is to raise $14,000 for the charity by the end of 2010 but any proceeds after 2010 will also go to Child's Play as well.

[Via Blue's News]

In one of our News Bits and Bytes posts a little while ago we mentioned that a person who had obtained one of the rare "Golden Wrench" weapons for Team Fortress 2 was going to destroy it to raise money for the Child's Play charity. Well things have gotten a bit bigger since that last post.

That single Golden Wrench has now expanded big time with 10 more people who own the special weapon now saying they will destroy it for charity. On August 31 all 11 owners of the special item will take it out and blow it up and will let the 20 highest donors watch on a special server. Everyone who donates to the cause will get a special Steam Community group to join. As of this news post the charity has raised over $15,000 so far with most of the month still to come.

Valve has mentioned the charity event on the Team Fortress 2 web site, saying that the team knew that destroying such a rare in-game item would be controversial. However, it adds, "We never imagined that it would empower a small group of players to benefit a much vaster group of children in need. We are constantly shocked and impressed by the creativity of the Team Fortress 2 community, but today we are humbled."

All they did was to write and draw a game-oriented comic strip on the internet. Yet Mike Krahulik and Jerry Holkins's launch of the Penny Arcade web strip and site in 1998 was just the starting point for a host of other opportunities. Now those efforts have landed the duo on the list of Time's 2010 list of the world's 100 most influential people.

While the Penny Arcade web site has 3.5 million readers, Time focuses on two of the team's other ventures; the Penny Arcade Expo, which now has two events per year that bring in over 50,000 attendees for each event, and Child's Play, the children's hospital charity that raises over $1,000,000 in money and gifts per year. While the creators of all these ventures give the credit for their success to their fans, Time states, "Krahulik and Holkins have become the tastemakers, and conscience, of an industry the size of Hollywood."

The holidays are over but there are a lot of kids out there who got a lot of gifts thanks to the Child's Play charity. The organization, started by the Penny Arcade gang, has announced that their 2009 holiday fund raising drive have brought in over $1.78 million in cash, games and other item to be donated to a number of children's hospitals around the world.

That number blows away the $1.4 record the charity raised during its 2008 drive. While the official drive is over Child's Play still accepts cash donations all year. You can also purchase a Child's Play t-shirt with all proceeds going to the charity.