The Weekly Nuke: Charity Begins at The Title Screen – Wrap Up

This week’s Weekly Nuke was another quiet one. The topic for this week was gaming for charity. I wanted to hear about any gaming charity events you guys had attended, or how you supported a particular charity.

On The Forums

Faye kicked us off this week:

I very regularly (read, every time it’s happened) donate via the Humble Indie bundle over the mean amount. It’s $10 here and there but I do it regardless of whether I own the games or not. It’s what I can afford to give to charity. Last year I bought a couple toys for The Liverpool children’s hospital that Child’s Play sponsors.

Donating money via the Humble Indie Bundle was a common theme among the forum posts with almost everybody mentioning it. I hope they continue to put them out for a long time. They’re a great way to pick up some good indie games on the cheap, while donating some money to charity at the same time.

Other than paying above the average amount for the Humble Indie Bundle, Jajayal told us about some charity work involving the Wii:

 I’ve also volunteered for the British Heart Foundation, and I’ve done work for Age UK (formerly Age Concern). I was at Age UK on placement but carried on volunteering there when I had ‘finished’. I worked with a group and helped to get them a Wii with all the usual easy-to-play games, such as Wii Play, Wii Sports Plus. They seemed to really enjoy it, though it took awhile for them to get used to controls. It really showed the massive gap in the ability to understand and use technology between the older and younger generations.

Ace Flibble raised a good point:

Truth be told when it comes to charities there’s already three (not gaming-related) that I spend most of my energy, time and money on. While it would be nice to be able to throw my support behind each cause, ultimately you have to prioritise, pick your battles so to speak.

As much as you would like to, you can’t give to every charity. Times being tough and all, you need to just give what you can afford. Even if you can’t give much, at least you are chipping in and doing your part.

Finally, Pete came up with a great suggestion on how money could be raised using free-to-play games:

I think there’s an opportunity to do cool things with free-to-play and charity. What if there was an item you could buy on a free-to-play game, and you could get the $2 version, or the $3 version which is the same, but the extra $ goes to charity and you get a small bonus, like maybe you get a distinct looking edition of the item, or perhaps a temporary stat boost as a thank you, or something like that. I think that could be a great thing.

On The Front Page

Earlier today I documented my Extra Life attempt. I had a lot of fun reliving the day. To give you a taste, here’s a small excerpt:

Around 6am, sleepiness started to take over. A little advice for anyone playing Deus Ex, don’t try and play stealthy while falling asleep at your desk. It doesn’t work. I started to just run blindly around corners into guards without thinking about it.
After dying five times in the same area, I started to get frustrated and gave up on stealth altogether. Why bother when I can just walk up to enemies and blow them away with my pimped out shotgun?

Give it a read. I hope you all enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.

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That’s all for the week’s Weekly Nuke. Check back soon for the new topic.