A gala night for gamer geeks
Grrl Got Game and I attended the Penny Arcade first annual Child's Play charity and auction last night. If you went to PAX, it was on the top floor of the Meydenbauer Center; dinner was where the big console game room had been. Outside there's this long stretch of tables littered with silent auction items and people dressed to the nines squeezing by each other awkwardly balancing hors d'oeuvres and champagne flutes, trying to surreptitiously camp on the items they've bid on. Dinner was not your standard rubber chicken - there was quite good steak, wine and dessert.
Overall, the event generated some $17,000, mostly from the live auction. The big ticket items were appearances in the Penny Arcade strip (which went for $1,000 a pop), signed art and the lifetime subscription to Steam.
We came home with the Nintendo DS (with four games), a lifetime subscription to Puzzle Pirates (I secretly love casual games, and I'd been meaning to get this for a year!), a Halo giftset (ours was the only one that didn't have the books - drat!), a billiards and videogame party and a massage for my sweetie. A pretty nice haul - and even though we overpaid for some of the items, it's all for the kids.
The fact is, I just couldn't justify buying a Nintendo DS at retail. I mean, it looks cool and all - but most of the time my GBA gathers dust on my bedside table while I focus every spare moment - the ones not spent at work or keeping our 22-month out of trouble - on console games. So the DS is an extravagence. The nice thing is that I'll have a bunch of games already and I can get more from Gamefly - so I'll be stocked. I plan to try the Metroid Hunters demo and Super Mario tonight between rounds of Outlaw Golf 2 and catching up on Survivor.
I've got to congratulate the guys at Penny Arcade, and urge you to make a donation to Child's Play. It's a great cause - one of the best, in fact. Many of the kids benefiting got a raw deal - if you've experienced or can even imagine cancer treatments as an adult, what if you had to do it when you were five?
Please give generously.
-=Gamewatcher
