Sunrise city! Which I own, but have not yet played. Yay kick starter!
And now, letters from whitechapel!
(CNN) -- On November 2 you can help raise millions of dollars for sick children by sitting on the sofa and playing video games.
Just like the weekend athletes who collect donations from family and friends for every mile they race in a charity run, thousands of gamers will be enlisting their networks to support them in a marathon of a completely different sort.
This novel fund raising idea is sponsored by Extra Life, which is now a part of the nonprofit Children's Miracle Network Hospitals. Players can sign up to play for this charity at any time throughout the year. But November 2 is Extra Life's annual game day.
And because this year the day ends with clocks falling back an hour, they have upped the challenge from a 24- to a 25-hour marathon of gaming.
Would anyone really support gamers spending an entire day just playing? And would gamers sign up for such a thing? Even Extra Life founder Jeromy Adams was unsure.
Back in 2007, he reached out to a gaming community called Sarcastic Gamer to see whether they would donate a few games to Tori Enmon, a young girl who was going through cancer treatment in his local hospital.
Jeromy Adams hoped video games would help Tori Enmon through her cancer treatments.
Jeromy Adams started Extra Life in honor of Tori Enmon, who passed away in 2008.
He received such an overwhelming response from gamers all over the world that he and Tori had to spend the next few months trying to find enough hospitalized kids to take all the games. Adams says he realized that gamers were the ideal audience for a good cause. Here, he thought, is a group that loves trying to save the day and be the hero.
"Gamers are not the stereotype of the angry pale kid in mom and dad's basement," he said. "They are more likely to be the mom and the dad.
"We are some of the most connected people on the planet. We communicate more efficiently, and we want to make a difference. Despite these expert qualifications, nobody really asks us for our help."
Tori succumbed to her cancer in 2008, and Adams started Extra Life that year in her honor. Since then, his faith in gamers has been more than proven. Every year thousands of new players sign up, and to date they have raised more than $4 million.
Are gamers really the giving type?
The argument could be made that some gamers might be signing up so they finally have an excuse to spend a whole day playing without the guilt that they're wasting time.
But other charities have started to tap into this audience, and they have also found a giving community. The charity Child's Play is celebrating its 10th anniversary of gamers giving back, and in 2012 it received more than $5 million in contributions. And then there is the philanthropy, Humble Bundle.
Humble Bundle is a unique online store that sells a rotating collection of games at a price determined by the purchaser. The buyer also gets to select what percentage of that price will go to the game's developer, the Humble Bundle team, and how much goes to a selected charity.
Humble Bundle's Will Turnbull and his team were nervous when they offered their first bundle in 2010. What would gamers do? If they were just trying to get the lowest price possible for these games, the model would never work.
The team hoped to raise $200,000 with that first offering. Instead, they brought in more than $1.2 million, with about $350,000 of that going to charity.
"We were totally floored to see that people were willing to give more than the minimum," Turnbull said. "It changes the message that this is just a discount ... We really trust the consumer to do the right thing, and they have proven that trust, and the charity part is incredibly integral to that."
On Humble Bundle purchases, the default portion that goes to charity is 20%. In most cases, Turnbull said, buyers slide that percentage up to give the majority of their payment to charities like the Electronic Frontier Foundation, charity:water and the American Red Cross.
To date, Humble Bundles has raised more than $25 million for charities.
Adams keeps a picture of Tori Enmon at his desk at work as he prepares for their big marathon.
This year he is looking to expand his gaming audience. Extra Life is inviting everyone who plays any type of game, whether it is sports, board games, even live-action role-playing.
He says he believes the generous spirit he found in video gamers is a universal trait that just needs an opportunity, and perhaps the incentive to have some fun.
That, he says, is what Tori showed him, from a hospital bed full of games and a determination to find a child for each one.
Why is Cards Against Humanity a great game? LOOK!
Source: geeksaresexy.net
Somewhere, I have the blue set, which isn't as kewl as this one. But for $150? Not sure.
Source: io9.com
Some of the games we played today. Evil Baby Orphanage was frantic, but I enjoyed it. i think it would be a great play with more than we had, which was three.
Second was Mansions of Madness with one of the expansions. I enjoy the story-telling aspect of this game. Mr. Walder was not pulling punches, either. It was brutal, but we ended up winning. This is a very fun game. We also played Circus Maximus, which is an old Avalon Hill game of chariot racing, and Cards Against Humanity, which I contend everyone in America should play at least once.
Tabletop miniature games can be loads of fun, but there’s a high barrier to entry. You usually have to paint figures by hand. Then there are the rules, which often confuse beginners with esoteric stat modifiers and character skills. Golem Arcana aims to be something different. This mobile-enhanced tabletop board gameis looking for funding on Kickstarter to make these games more accessible and attractive to gamers.
Golem Arcana comes from the team behind the previousKickstarter success Shadowrun Returns, an RPG video game. There are four clans in the game, each with four unit models. All the models come pre-painted so they’ll look perfect. The Kickstarter campaign includes some stretch goals that will unlock additional models for the game.
I love this game. Please read if you like fun board games.
In Letters from Whitechapel, a team of detectives scour the streets of Victorian London, searching desperately for the depraved murderer known as Jack the Ripper. It’s a lot like the classic '80s board game Scotland Yard, but with more bloody murder.
Last night my kickstarter order of the board game Eons arrived. What is special about this? 1. It's a fun and educational game about planets and synthesizing elements. 2. Pledging a certain level allows backers to name one of the planets in the game. This one is mine...named for a story I wrote years ago. 3. The most important point is that this game was designed by my brilliant and talented coworker Krista Witt.
Up to 40% off select board games today on Amazon! 7 Wonders! Flash Point! Dominion! HOORAY!
(via Gold Box Deal of the Day)
Source: amazon.com
made me lol, and sad that I'm not going to be at Gencon this year. :(
Videos of the history of the warhammer universe. Click link for more, this is just the intro. (by VaultsOfTerra)
Source: youtube.com