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[Pedro Picasso]

I've been thinking about this charity idea, and since you are the smartest collection of people I know, I thought I'd run it by you and see what you think.

IDEA: What if I held a charity event akin to a "walk for the cure" thingy where instead of milking your sponsors by running miles, you and a group of friends performed a difficult and well-defined feat in an online video game.

Detail: Remember Urban-Dead?  No?  It's a web-browser game where you get 50 turns per day to either kill zombies or kill humans (all of which are other players) or build/destroy infrastructure for EVEN MORE kills.  The game rewards group-cohesion. What if a human group and an opposing zombie group held an event where the players got people to sponsor them and then for three days fought in three neighborhoods (perhaps with 300 men).  The number of kills and buildings left standing at the end of the day would formulate the donations (as laps/miles do in charity runs).  The Urban Dead event would specifically benefit the prevention of infectious diseases.

Background: I always thought the walk/run charities were silly, but now I understand the psychological effect of feeling like you're doing something about a problem instead of just asking for money.  It provides motivation to get the money in the first place, and the money is what actually does something.  This could be reproduced in a World of Warcraft setting (benefitting mental illness), in Counter-Strike (benefitting victims of gun violence), or in GrandTheftAuto IV (benefitting ummm... auto safety). 

Anyway, I've never mentioned this idea to anyone before.  What do you think?

[lprkn]

The competition aspect would add something missing from from charity run/walk thingies. I think that your biggest problem would lie in getting the word out, but once you did, seems like it should be able to snowball from there. If you could advertise with venues that have major pull with your target audience, then you would have it made. Child's Play is a great example of knowing your target audience and appealing to their sensibilities. I think that a problem may lie in the pledge donation facet of it, however. Maybe corporate sponsorships by video game companies could help with this?

[Gimpson]

I bet if word hit some of the big gamer sites/blogs you'd find hell of sponsors online.  I'd certainly be willing to sponsor such a team. 

[Pedro Picasso]

Perhaps both teams raise money, and the corporate sponsor matches the donations of the winning team.  No, then the team that raised less money would want to throw the game.  Each team could have a specific charity, and the proceeds could be divided 60/40 between winning and losing charity.  That seems a bit cut-throat.  Maybe that would make it more interesting, but it would probably turn off a bunch of people.  If your teams sponsors ponied up on a formula of number of kills and number of buildings razed/standing and powered then individual effort could be rewarded, and team winning would just be bragging rights.

[jay-ell]

You crazy cat. 

I love you, Pedro Picasso.