In January, Haiti was struck by a massive earthquake that resulted in countless damage, over two hundred thousand dead, and millions left without a home. In the following months, we witnessed an enormous surge of companies looking to get their players involved in donating to the cause: Participants including Blizzard, CCP Games, Frogster Entertainment, Sony Online Entertainment, and more. These events offered players an opportunity to purchase items with real money, with a portion (or all, or more) going to charity.
The folks over at Hello Kitty Online had a different idea on charity: Instead of requiring cash donations, why not allow people to donate just by playing the game? Food For Friends 2, the charity initiative, was set up to allow players to donate any type of in-game item, with the worth of that item being translated to real cash and donated to the Haiti relief efforts.
So far only one of the two servers has chimed in with its results: over eighteen thousand dollars from more than a million items donated. By my own calculations, and the current count of items on the other server, the total donation should be somewhere along the lines of twenty five thousand dollars, to be donated to Doctors Without Borders.
Obviously the titles on MMO Fallout have been a joke, but when it comes to the idea of companies fighting over who can donate the most to charity, trying to spark a little competition can go a long way.
MMO Fallout 