Busy Gamer News

Mario quilt at Child's Play 2009 auction (more and bigger pix)

Another year, another Child's Play charity auction. We've attended every one to date (2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008) because it's a cause we truly support and believe in. This year we felt the economic pinch and expected to walk away empty handed.

Apparently we weren't the only ones - overall bidding seemed low with no $10,000+ items. As a result, we actually won some goodies in the silent auction (our first bids got away, but we did finally prevail with the PopCap and Ubisoft game and goody bundles. This marks the second time we've won Peggle at an auction (the first was in 2007), and now we're swimming in games, Chuzzles and other surprises that we'll share in future Free Stuff Friday giveaways.

8-bit Resident Evil art - the one that got away!

But back to the auction. Big hits were a Super Mario quilt ("An opportunity to wrap yourself in your own childhood," quipped co-founder Jerry Holkins) that went for $4000 and a $6,000 seat at the Penny Arcade guys D&D game ("Anybody want to be murdered, by me?" taunted Mike Krahulik.)

A fully loaded Xbox 360 with every Rock Band song released so far, plus all of the Rock Band games sold for $1700, and another 360 that includes every Xbox Live Arcade game to date landed $1900.

PopCap pack - one of two prizes we won at silent auction!

Some lucky winner with a spare $2000 gets to be an honorary member of the Xbox Live Enforcement Crew during a 6-hour tour of Xbox HQ. Mike noted, "You can spend the day there ruining people's lives."

The cheapest live auction item was a $400 custom decorated Ragnaros Noob from Blizzard. A Bungie Studio tour to preview Halo: Reach netted $2700, a skeeball machine was worth $4600 to someone with a lot of free space, a $2000 Mystery Box proved to be a 52-inch TV and the annual PA strip appearance was had at the bargain price of $6900 - down from $10K last year and $20K in 2005. Finally, a $6500 song written by the PA crew with Harmonix musicians will be immortalized in Rock Band and proceeds from its eventual sale via the soon-to-launch Rock Band Network will benefit NEXT year's Child's Play. Awesome!

The total evening's take was only $191,000 - a bit less than the $200K+ raised at past year's dinners. Seems like the high rollers and big corporate sponsors stayed away, or made their donations and called it a day. The bigger news was that the overall campaign broke $1 million BEFORE the auction started, which is a welcome first! Grassroots efforts seem to be really making a difference. Last year, the auction pushed the total just above the $900K mark (they ultimately broke their $1 million goal by year's end).

Still, a good night for a good cause. It was fun, and they finished early (before 9:30 p.m).