Speaking of Penny Arcade, I posit it'd be easy to see a contradiction between the guys that drew Jesus throwing up the metal horns and the guys working tirelessly to promote a charity. Are others surprised to find guys known for a twisted sense of humor so focused on doing good?
"The last few times people have asked us about it, that question almost always comes up," Jerry says, hesitating as he wrestles with the answer. "I don't really have an excellent retort. It definitely is sort of ... there is an incongruity there. That's true. I don't have a great answer for it, other than to say that just because we are, you know, bad people, that doesn't really absolve us of our responsibility in that way. Just because we're people that have a strange sense of humor, that doesn't mean that we don't have to do our part in other social ways." We both observe it's kind of weird. "Yeah, it is weird. I think it's weird, too! I think we have to sort of set that aside and try to create positive outcomes, essentially."
Creating positive outcomes is what Child's Play does, marshalling an army of fans to get games and money into the hands of sick kids. Mike quotes me a figure of $590,000, which includes hundreds of thousands of dollars in toys from Amazon, as well as $130,000 in cash donations, including some big donations from major corporate donors like Microsoft, Bungie, Valve, Cerulean Studios and Epic. I'm interested in who does the giving on an individual level, speculating they're probably getting a lot of first-time givers.
Jerry responds, "Yeah, I agree. I think that we must be tapping into something, like I said before. Something that was already there, but just didn't have a muster point. Because I think there's a lot of people who give to Child's Play that don't give to other charities, that don't give to charity in general. And I think that there's a couple reasons for that. I think that it isn't as anonymous as a lot of charitable giving tends to be. Like you can give to an umbrella organization and then it goes into a pot and other people determine what that money does."
I observe that seeing a kid with cancer playing a game you bought is much more of an incentive than reading about the head of a charity getting a massive salary for administrative stuff. "I think the idea that there are no administration fees, all the money, all the toys, everything goes right to the kids," Jerry says. "I think that's another big reason that we saw so many donations. I think this year was a really good example and sort of proved that idea, because everyone was talking about donation fatigue. There were so many places to give to and so many catastrophes this year that people said this was going to be a bad year for holiday season giving and that just was not our experience at all. This was, by far, our most successful year ever."
Mike chimes in with a couple more reasons Child's Play might appeal to the routinely skeptical gamer crowd. "You purchase a specific, a game that you want. You're buying a very specific item and that's being sent directly to the organization, directly to the hospital of your choice." Again, appealing to people who might not be inclined to give a check to a faceless organization. Jerry adds, "And a lot of people can give in their area."
