Gaming2Give's First Fundraiser Tomorrow

                Gaming2Give will be hosting its first charity event this Saturday. Starting at 8 a.m., the founder of Gaming2Give, Brandon Templeton, and his friends and co-workers will begin a 24 hour gaming marathon hosted in Templeton’s game room in Wichita, Kansas. They will game for 24 hours straight while uploading YouTube videos, tweets, and Facebook status updates. The group will be accepting donations until the end of the event on behalf of Child’s Play, a non-profit organization that buys toys, books and games for children in hospitals. As of Thursday, Gaming2Give had already raised $100 for the charity.

                While Templeton has participated in charity events before, this will be his first time organizing one.

                “A few years ago I did a marathon for the Texas Children’s Hospital,” Templeton said. “Since then I have looked for other events to join with little to no luck, so about a month ago I decided, ‘why wait to find one when I could start hosting them?’”

                Templeton, a self described hardcore gamer, is an outbound shipping supervisor for Hayes Retail Services. When he approached his co-workers with the concept of Gaming2Give and asked for their help, Alan McRoberts agreed to give it.

                “He told us about the YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter accounts and how we would be doing stuff to help charities, plus getting to play games for 24 hours,” McRoberts said. “How could I say no?”

                The participants in this month’s event will be playing a variety of the most recent first-person shooter releases. Templeton will post polls about the games being played to encourage the gaming community to join in the online games and donate. Gaming2Give will be a monthly event, with the proceeds going to a different charity every time. Templeton said the decision for the initial donation to be made to Child’s Play was influenced by the prospect of becoming a first time father. He said the decision just felt right.

                “It [Child’s Play] reflects what Gaming2Give is about,” Templeton said. “Taking something that has become so mainstream, like gaming, and using it as a platform to help build awareness for these charities that are working so hard to help others.”

                “I think it is an amazing program,” McRoberts said. “It helps in such an unconventional but truly important way.”

                The initial event is expected to have a turnout of 44 participants, though Templeton said he hopes to see that number increase. In future events, he is going to set up an auction — with all profits going to charity ­­ — and secure sponsors that will match the donations made by the gaming community. He also hopes to see enough support to move the event from his game room to a more public location, where interaction with the community will be easier.

                “By reaching out to the community and making them a part of the experience we hope to make a difference for everyone involved,” Templeton said. “We are here for one reason; to earn money and raise awareness for charities and we will do so through interactive entertainment.”

Build for Charity event will raise money for Child's Play

The non-profit organization Build for Charity will be hosting an online event on Saturday to raise money for the charity Child’s Play. Participants in the event will log onto the game Minecraft at 4 p.m., using a server donated by VanquishVPS. Over the course of 24 hours, 800 or more people are expected to log on to the server to explore, participate in a building competition, or just play the game with others.

“Our goal is to raise a thousand dollars,” said Seth Cottle, the founder of Build for Charity. “The money is raised strictly from people who want to give. We have a donations feature on the website and the donations go straight to Child’s Play, we never see a penny. Our entire event is completely non-profit.”

Cottle is the owner of Square Engine, an internet research company. He started Build for Charity in February as a way to give back to the gaming community. The event on Saturday will be the first for the organization. Cottle hopes to have several more events using Minecraft this year, each event raising money for a different charity.

“I really wanted to start giving back to the community and as a gamer I figured Minecraft was a great way to allow a large number of people to get together and have some fun,” Cottle said. “Minecraft gives everyone an opportunity to participate, no matter your age or skill. It's a fun way to be creative and build anything you can think of.”

Since its release on Nov. 18, 2011 over 5 million copies of Minecraft have been sold. Jeff Lofland, an employee at the Logan, Utah, Gamestop, said he has been playing the game off and on for months and has really enjoyed it.

“I love that you can build whatever you want to in the game,” Lofland said. “I haven’t really built that much though. Mostly I just mess around. It’s a lot of fun.”

Some players will participate in a building competition for a chance to win prizes, all paid for by Cottle. There will be a variety of Minecraft themed gifts, as well as an Alienware TactX Illuminated Keyboard that players could win. The building competition will have an entrance fee of $10, all of which will go to Child’s Play.

According to the company, “Child's Play is dedicated to improving the lives of children in hospitals around the world through the kindness and generosity of the video game community and the power of play.”

Started in 2003, Child’s Play raises money to purchase video games, toys, books and other entertainment products for children in more than 70 hospitals across the world. Last year it received over $3 million dollars in donations.

“I chose Child’s Play due to the impact they have on the gaming community,” Cottle said. “Not to mention, I really like what they do.”

Anyone interested in participating in the event on Saturday should visit buildforcharity.com, where a live feed will be available for anyone who wishes to observe.

Controversy has no effect on Mass Effect 3 release

Numerous controversies associated with the release of Mass Effect 3 had little effect on first day sales of the game. The 890,000 copies sold on the release date are more than the Mass Effect 1 and 2 first day totals combined. Since the release date EA has sold over 3.5 million copies of the game. This is the first game released by EA to be created simultaneously for PC, XBOX 360 and PS3.

The gaming community reacted with outrage two months ago, when EA announced that the use of Origin would be required to play the game. In addition, the game would not be made available on Steam. EA also announced that a DLC would be made available on the day of the launch.

These decisions were perceived as unethical corporate tactics by many fans of the Mass Effect 3 series.

“They just wanna make more money,” said Tiffany Smith, one of the 80 customers at GameStop’s midnight release of the game. “It irks me that they are hurting themselves, hurting their own reputation to do it. It’s a money grab.”

 DLCs are typically released a few months after the game. Smith joined other outraged gamers in claiming that a DLC released the first day is content that could have been included in the base game, but was purposefully taken out in an attempt to make more money.

Casey Hudson, director and executive producer of Mass Effect 3, said that is simply not true.

“When we finish a game, we finish it many months before it actually hits the shelves and that team goes on to work on something else that in those intervening months represent millions of dollars of development time, which either goes towards the next game that you might not see for several years, or a different game that they might go to work on like Dragon Age or The Old Republic. We work on all these different things,” Hudson said. “So in this case, we chose to work on a DLC, which people really enjoyed for Mass Effect 2 and we also wanted to make sure that people had it as an opportunity to build it into their first play-through if they wanted that as an optional thing.”

Aside from the first day DLC, which affected all platforms, PC gamers were particularly distressed by the announcement that the game would be unavailable on Steam, and only accessible through Origin, EA’s new client, which is still being beta tested.

  Another customer at the GameStop release, Brandon Scriver, was annoyed by the decision.

“Well, given that Origin hasn’t had an impressive track record,” Scriver said. “It sucks.”

EA stated that Steam has more restrictive terms of service which prevent EA from interacting with its customers the way it would like.

“During initial release Mass Effect 3 will be available on Origin and a number of other third party digital retailers, but not on Steam at this time,” said Chris Priestly, Biowares community coordinator. “Steam has adopted a set of restrictive terms of service which limit how developers interact with customers to deliver patches and downloadable content.”

Hudson believes that the release of the game has helped the community understand the reasons behind the decisions.

“Ultimately, I think people get it now,” Hudson said. “They get the fact that sometimes the way that things work in game development isn’t known very well by a lot of people, so there’s an opportunity for misunderstanding.”

The Purpose

The Gamers Block is a website dedicated to creating a forum for mature, thoughtful discussion of the news that most impacts the gaming community. For years, games have been considered a toy, not worthy of critical thinking or analysis. We gamers know better. Whether deciding which of your friends must die for the good of the world, or whether to execute a starving man for stealing food, video games have the potential to help us better understand who we are in a way that no other medium can. Games face a critical time in their development, and it is more important than ever that gamers pay attention to the world around them, and be informed of what is going on in the gaming industry. This website will seek to provide impartial coverage of the most important, interesting and relevant news of our industry. Hope you enjoy!