Child's Play eSports Central

A League of Legends player Ovan Sama recently hosted a 24 hour streamed marathon -- dubbed appropriately "League of Life" -- of him playing for Child's Play charity. He was determined to raise money for Child's Play after they donated toys to the hospital his younger sibling was in. Seeing the affect of the donation on his sibling, bettering his mental condition and eventually his health, Ovan was moved to give back in the form of his League of Life marathon.



So what is Child's Play Charity? Child's Play was founded in 2003 by Mike Krahulik and Jerry Holkins (the authors of Penny Arcade). This charity's purpose is to supply hospitals with videogames and other toys for children to play with during their stay. It is no secret that hospitals can be a very boring place if you have to stay there for an extended period of time. Now imagine that you're a young kid that barely has the attention span to watch a whole movie, and you're stuck in a hospital bed with nothing to do. These donated games and consoles are a true blessing for kids stuck in hospitals, and older patients as well.

Another goal of Child's Play is to combat the media stereotype that gamers are violent and anti-social. Child's Play was actually a partial response to a local web article entitled "Violent video games are training children to kill." After the response to this article was creating a charity organization based around video games and gamers, the author of the article actually apologized in the same column and supported the movement.




Even though this is not the first organization (see Get-Well Gamers) to have this idea it is growing rapidly. Donations have shot up from $250,000 annual donations in 2003 to $3,512,345 in 2011. Talk about improvement! Child's Play's current running total for donations is $12,510,909, which is very impressive for an organization so young. The popularity of Penny Arcade is no doubt to thank, and it is great that Mike and Jerry have used their site's popularity to benefit such a worthwhile cause.

I have seen several threads on various websites trying to organize a League of Legends donation drive for Child's Play, and I hope to see this trend continue in the future. It is good to feel like the gaming community can grow into a more helpful and generous place.

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