Donating Games – excellent move
Yesterday I blogged about US game libraries, or the lack thereof, and then took to twitter for more searching. I came across a few gaming cafés which also struck me as a nice place to donate games to.
I strongly believe in giving back to the community and donating games seems easy.
Games let us forget our challenges for a moment and give us a wonderful way to interact with others.
For the game designer, donating games can be a bit expensive depending how your game is published.
Donating games won’t bring much attention to your games, and should not be donated with that intent, but it can make a difference. Even just one game can be played over and over again.
I’m fortunate my unorthodox approach to game design allows me to make even small quantities in an economical manner (no need to do minimum runs of 2000 games).
Erin of The Geeky Gimp expanded my perspective by suggesting shelters and hospitals and Nate of MicroStack Games added charity auctions to the list.
I’ll be creating a list of cafés, shelters, hospitals, and charities that seek game donations and make that a dedicated page linked from the sidebar with their contact info.
Personal note – at first I questioned the value of donating to gaming cafés, after all, they are commercial enterprises and some will even rent your game out. They should buy my game! But, gaming cafés nurture and share what tabletop gaming can do and in today’s hectic and stressful world, being able to unplug might benefit us all with kinder human interactions.
I know that’s lofty and such, but isn’t that a nice thought for what your game could do? =)
US Game Libraries? Do they exist?
I heard a story on NPR yesterday where a 22 year old mentioned playing board games with his family for the last 10 years. Sometimes a new family friend would be introduced and it allowed him to develop a more balanced perspective in dealing with different viewpoints and opinions.
A show guest mentioned the positive physical effects that dealing with real people while gaming has, including simple things like high fives and fist pumps. *splode* =)
As board game folks, you already know the benefits of games and I suspect that’s why tabletop games are a larger part of many Western European cultures than here in the US.
That got my little cogs turnin’ and wondering what I could do to help.
Mint Tin Games, which will now Kickstart in September, are fairly inexpensive to make and don’t rely on huge orders to fulfill. I can make them one at a time and don’t need to order 2,000 of each. Of course, it becomes more economical to produce 100 at a time but you get my point.
From what I gather on Twitter, ludological libraries are a big deal in France and that concept is new to me. BUT in the US, a Google search led me to the International Games Day @ your library and not much else. =(
I’d love to donate a few dozen Mint Tin Games to active US libraries and maybe I’m just not searching with the right terminology.
While there’s some positive PR from this for me, it realistically isn’t much but falls in line with other things I’ve done in the past.
Such as our free Sim-on-a-Stick with 40,000 downloads (not even an ad on its website) and me having been a volunteer firefighter and paramedic long, long ago. I believe giving back to the community is important and if a handful of games helps a tiny bit – I’m all for it!
If you know of game libraries, please let me know here or on Twitter. Thanks! =)