MI-80 De Oppresso Liber

So it's that time of the year again! The local temperature went from 70 to 30 overnight, half the people I know are sick, and the guys and gals over at Penny Arcade are ramping up Child's Play again.

To quickly recap Penny Arcade is a web comic devoted to video games. A few years back someone wrote the classic “video games make kids violent” article and the Penny Arcade guys said enough is enough and decided to appeal to their legions of gaming fans to give the mass media something positive to report about gamers. The result was Child's Play, an annual charity where children's hospitals build-up Amazon wish lists (there are alternative ways to give, but that's the biggest one) and all you do is login to Amazon, pick something out, and it goes straight to that children's hospital to be given to the kids on Christmas. Having only run the past few years in 2006 it collected over one million dollars in donations and now expands to dozens of hospitals all around the world!

I can't say before Child's Play I was ever big on charity. I'm not going to pretend I'm Bill Gates here; $20 is a lot of money to me. But I had to put it in perspective: I buy $60 games all the time. Plus I spent my fair share of time in hospitals as a kid with all sorts of random crap from broken bones to appendicitis, and after reading the initial Penny Arcade posts it really struck a nerve. Since then I've been more than happy to send a few games to the children's hospital nearest to me (about 10 minutes down the road actually!).

In short it's a fantastic cause and the guys running it are in it for a good reason: to make kids happy. I urge everyone to consider giving what they can, rather it be a $6 coloring book or a $250 Wii, because us gamers can really unite for a good cause when we want to and I can't think of one better than making sick children happy on Christmas!