Penny Arcade and Child's Play

I have been remiss in not plugging Penny Arcade in any of my posts here.  Started by two normal guys with a passion for video games, they were one of the original video game blogs as well as a pioneer in the world of on-line comics.  They are often funny, always insightful, and usually very blunt in their opinions.  They cover a wide variety of topics from console gaming (even my beloved Nintendo DS) to PC Gaming, as well as industry trends, hardware news, and political commentary.

For the past three years, they have been running a charity called Child’s Play.  The motivation behind the charity can best be described by a quote from one of the writers of the site:

Child’s Play is a Seattle based, gamer-run organization that holds an annual toy drive for childrens’ hospitals. Many of the gifts donated by gamers are, as you might imagine, age appropriate videogames and gaming systems – but they are by no means the only things donated. We received eager donations of coloring books, art supplies, crafts, movies, cartoons, virtually anything a young person could ask for. We asked the world-wide community of gamers, and they gave so much we had to move to larger storage facilities three separate times.

Our 2005 event raised over six hundred thousand dollars in toys and cash for twenty children’s hospitals around the US and the world, putting the community’s total contribution level well over the one million dollar mark. This year, we’ve expanded Child’s Play once more, including our first hospitals in Australia and Africa.

I’ve placed a banner in my sidebar that will link to their site.  I would encourage all of of you, as we enter the holiday season, to think about making a donation to this charity.  The same passion that we share for reading, for video games, and for science fiction can be spread to these children who are in dire need of a means to take their minds off of their situation.