Playing with a conscience
The Age
Thursday March 18, 2010
An industry icon sets aside profits to help children in need, writes Mike Wilcox. ADMITTEDLY, James Cameron's Avatar has taken more at the box office than the Australian games industry managed for all of 2009.But thanks to smash hits such as Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, however, which broke opening-day sales records for any game or movie last year, the global video game industry remains an entertainment force.The industry's good standing is a motivating factor behind OneBigGame, the world's first not-for-profit video game publisher. Founder and director Martin De Ronde says: "We consider our industry to be one of the biggest industries in the field of entertainment, yet industries which are allegedly smaller in size than ours [music, movies, television] are far better at leveraging the status of their celebrities for charity than we are. We wanted to change that."Mr De Ronde, based in the Netherlands, was required to take a contractual sabbatical from the games industry in 2004 when he left the company he co-founded, Guerrilla Games, creator of the Killzone series.This gave him the chance to pursue several personal projects, including setting up OneBigGame. "The initial plan was to create one big game with contributions from a number of individual famous designers," Mr De Ronde says."That name stuck, also because of the playful notion of the combination, as in 'not too serious'. We didn't want to come across as a charity; more as an entertainment non-profit."OneBigGame aims to raise money for Save the Children and the Starlight Children's Foundation through the sale of games. Mr De Ronde says the publisher wanted to "really establish a link between kids and young adults playing games", helping those less fortunate while doing so.OneBigGame has just released its first title, the musical puzzler Chime, through the Xbox Live online service. The game's developer, Zoe Mode, donated the game, with all proceeds being passed on to charities. Mr De Ronde says the beauty behind the concept of OneBigGame is that the intellectual property remains with the developer and OneBigGame only has a limited exclusive distribution period.The developer has the option to release a commercial follow-up, a sequel, an enhanced version or whatever it wants."In the case of Chime," he says, "I can very much see this happening. User feedback has been tremendous; everybody loves the game and the main and only criticism that is heard is that there's simply not enough of the game. People want more, so there is a tremendous opportunity for Zoe Mode to build on the franchise with new versions in the future."Chime is available to download through Xbox Live for $6.60 (400 Microsoft Points).
© 2010 The Age
