Two major players in the video game business, SEGA of America and Blizzard, have taken it upon themselves to provide separate acts of charity to excellent causes, remembering that there are still kids out there who might not be able to enjoy video games.
The former company is teaming up with KaBOOM! and Youth Uprising to build a Sonic the Hedgehog themed playground in Oakland, CA, and the latter company is holding an auction of decommissioned World of Warcraft server blades for St Jude's Children's Research Hospital in Memphis, TN. Has your heart warmed yet?
The playground, which will be designed by the kids who will be using it, will be built on October 28 in East Oakland (that's the bad part of town, seriously) by volunteers from SEGA and members of the community. It will be built in one day and be able to facilitate around 400 children playing in and around it. What will a Sonic the Hedgehog themed playground look like? There will probably lots of blue and hopefully no spiked objects that emulate his hair, but the blue is probably a sure thing. Perhaps a lot of loops and different attractions themed after favorite levels of the series.
Sonic Generations will be releasing about a week after the playground being built, so if kids want to try and get some Sonic related shenanigans in their real life, they'll have a place to do so. For more on Generations, you can watch the Modern Era trailer.
Blizzard will be holding a series of charity auctions where the prizes that can be acquired are actual pieces of World of Warcraft history, the server blades from the early days of the game. Yes, you can own server blades that contained hundreds of thousands of WoW realms where you have explored, raided, and talked unnecessary trash to strangers. All in all, 2000 original server blades from 500 different realms will be auctioned off with all proceeds going to St Jude's Children's Research Hospital.
Each server blade will come to the winner in its own custom made windowed case that offers a view inside of the computer hardware. If you squint really hard, you might even see the ghost of one of your characters within. If you weren't sure about these server blades being collector's items, don't worry, they also come with a commemorative plaque that is signed by the World of Warcraft team. The auctions start on October 17 and more information, including a schedule, can be found on Blizzard's eBay site.
Blizzard will be busy in the coming weeks, with BlizzCon 2011 rolling around with a lot of news that's bound to surprise and please fans. Including, perhaps, an announcement of a new MMO called Titan.
It's not getting close to the "giving" time of year, because it should always be the giving time of year. To see major game publishers and developers reach out and help kids...that's just a good thing, no other way to describe it.
Sonic Generations releases November 1, 2011 for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.
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