For That Kind Of Money, I Hope The Strip Is Airbrushed On A Jetta
Seems that Gabe and Tycho had a good night with their annual Child’s Play charity dinner (scroll down to the second item). They raised over $82,000 for the night, putting them on track to raise on the order of $400,000 this year, and a three-year total of $800,000.
Now you can argue over whether this is primarily a gamer thing, but one fact puts it squarely in the “webcomics” realm: the centerpiece of last night’s auction was an appearance in Penny Arcade, which went for Twenty. Thousand. Goddamn. American. Dollars. Somebody spent the equivalent of a new car, or a year’s tuition at an Ivy League college, on one appearance in a 750×390 pixel, 24 bits of color webcomic. That is utterly batshit insane, and if I ever find the guy who dropped twenty large in such a fashion, I am going to buy him booze until he can’t stand up.
There’s been a fair amount of hand-wringing this year about how little webcomics have accomplished, about how they’re artistically bankrupt, existing only to sell t-shirts, and how gamer comics and their readers suck (wade through the text, if you dare). You know what? Screw that. If this is how webcomics fail to get their shit together, appeal to base commercial concerns, and inspire their readers to a state of “frothing-at-the-mouth-crazy” (thanks, William G.!), then sign me up for more.
Update: According to Gabe, Child’s Play 2005 is now over $420,000 and may well crack half a million dollars this year.
Update: From Tycho:
We’re at over $420,000 already. I suppose I could exhort you to take us to $430,000, and don’t let me dissuade you, but money is still coming in from companies and sites that pitched in which will take us very near to a “cool half-mil.” My private objective was for Child’s Play to reach a million dollars in donations over three years, and it’s already done that. Of course, I say it has already done that, but it doesn’t have the power to do anything. You have done it.
If you’re part of the collective you that he’s talking about, you’re my friend.
Dude, unless you went to college fifteen years ago, $20,000 ain’t even close to a year’s tuition at an Ivy.
Which doesn’t diminish their achievement at all, I’m just sayin’. Pedantically and stuff.
By Beeeej on 12.22.05 4:15 pm
Actually, it costs about 20k per *semester* at an ivy league school. It’s freakin’ expensive.
By Wingie on 12.25.05 11:57 pm
[…] This was important enough not to bury as an edit to the original posting. […]
By Fleen » Final Child’s Play 2005 Update on 01.04.06 4:08 pm
[…] Also on this fine Monday, what will probably be the final word on Child’s Play 2005: the long-awaited $20,000 guest appearance is finally here. As Tycho remarks in today’s newspost: Many stories about the man who donated that money bubbled to the surface that night. Was he a friend to young people, fashioned from transient living snow? Ex-game developer, perhaps. Possible vampire, dispensing a hoard of ancestral wealth over lonely centuries. I even heard (actually, for real heard it) that he was the luminous counterpart to Jack Thompson: a lawyer who used his powers for good, not evil. […]
By Fleen » Hey, Did You See The ClickWheel Thing Just Down There? This Post Is Nothing Like It on 02.06.06 3:37 pm
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