Amazing, amazing, really.

How about donating for the sake of donating Bungie? Don’t try to swindle people into upping your online statistics………

Moody: I agree with you.

I’ve got to play devil’s advocate here. I think what they are essentially doing is trying to raise awareness among gamers. Sure, they are going to get a stat boost but I doubt that’s the bottom line. They would likely donate that cash (and then some) regardless, but this gets the concept of ‘helping out’ planted in the minds of those gamers. And then, maybe those gamers decide to send a little scratch of their own.

Even if 1% of the Haloverse sends some extra cash, that’s huge.

I see your point! It makes perfect sense, Ed. But I am always skeptical when it comes to getting people to participate into something then say…”Oh we will donate when we reach a million users” (Of course being dramatic). But I see your point and hope that was their intention all along…..

I just cant trust big business practices……there is always something behind what they are selling and/or promoting

Ed, I hope you are right.

Sorry, Ed, but I am having a hard time accepting that. Call me jaded and cynical. No really. Call me jaded and cynical I get off on that.
Jokes aside, have a problem with such PR stunts because they were masqueraded as genuine sharing and caring.  If the company openly said something like, “We are donating money, we are the good guys, play our games!” I would cheer them on. But what they are basically saying is that they wont donate a penny unless you play. In an essence they are blackmailing you into using their product.
What is double extra weird is that people fall for this crap. Take walks-for-cancer as an example. It is obvious that stopping traffic does no good to anyone in general and to cancer patients in particular. What helps is the money that’s donated. But marching on a road while wearing pink is not necessary to get donations. So why do it?
Those who will donate will do so anyway. Those who won’t donate will not be impressed by the giant logistical catastrophe that you create with your “charity walk”. A whole lot of innocent people will be annoyed and inconvenienced.
What’s worse is that the money spent on organizing the walk, the t-shirts, the water, etc. would better spent on the actual research/treatment.
Just my $0.02

Damnation, this new system doesn’t let me format things property or paste from MS Word.

Alaric, use the in-line editor.

[We are running a few tests on this new system]

Alaric – The fact that traffic stopped and it stuck in your brain long enough to make that impression makes me believe the cancer walk did the trick. Sure there are always going to be awesome souls who donate money because they care about the cause – but there are going to be those who don’t even know about the cause in the first place. So, one person’s traffic aggravation becomes another person’s enlightenment. I just think it’s way too easy to be cynical about these things. Not a nice trait of our species and that’s not to be taken as an indictment of you. It’s just a trend we unfortunately see all too often in the safe, anonymous confines of the ‘net.

I’ll give two examples to support my theory:

I’m from the Boston area and out here, the Jimmy Fund and their various charitable events are a huge deal for raising awareness of the Dana Farber Cancer Institute. Every year, the local sports radio station holds a three day telethon where they have local luminaries from the Red Sox, Celtics, Patriots, etc as well as celebrities call in to help raise cash for a cure. Like clockwork, Red Sox Team Owner John Henry will join this telethon on Friday afternoon and pledge that if callers can raise $500,000 by some arbitrarily picked time, then the Red Sox organization will match the donation. And every year, that figure is met and eclipsed and the Red Sox follow suit with their pledge. I have no doubt in my mind that they were planning on making the donation in the first place – they are just trading on fan loyalty to help inspire a few more donations for the good cause. And I say there is nothing wrong with that.

To illustrate my other point about awareness, last year my wife suckered me into joining a triathlon. This coming from a 37 year-old guy who hasn’t entered “athletic anything” since 4th Grade Field Day. But, I started getting in shape last winter, shedding 20+ pounds, and I thought it would be a nice challenge, and a cap to my personal accomplishment. So, I signed up.

On the day of the race, I noticed signs depicting these three young children, plastered everywhere. And then, as I stood at the starting line, getting ready to dive into a cool lake and kickstart the aquatic leg of the tri, a woman came to the microphone and spoke about how much this event meant to her – as it would raise awareness of the rare form of cancer that struck her three infant children (triplets) and would hopefully, one day, act as a small cog in the machinery that grinds cancer into submission.

And then, all of a sudden, my mission changed. I didn’t know those kids from a hole in the wall, and up until that moment, I wasn’t running for anything more than one more check mark on my bucket list. Now I was running for those kids and I really, truly felt that.

So, my point is that awareness may not hit you square in the head but I think there are those out there that it can touch and I think it’s better for us all if we sometimes grant others the benefit of the doubt. When it comes to cancer or earthquake relief – while companies like to be seen in a good light – there’s no harm in raising others’ attention as well, even if it incites a little ire.

You have your opinion. I have mine.

The only thing we know for sure is that we’re both right. : )

I am all for charity. In fact I generally believe that people should be able to do whatever they want as long as it doesn’t hurt others. If someone wants to be altruistic, or pretend that they are altruistic for whatever reason, I can only support that. Granted there are instances of charity that actually do more harm than good, but in case of financing research (any research) you can hardly go wrong. More knowledge is always better, be it knowledge of cancer or knowledge of mating habits of dung beetles.
What I don’t like is when one man’s charity event becomes another man’s problem. Some people will be stuck in traffic for miles and as a result will be hours late to wherever they are going. They have rights too (or at least should.)  Raising awareness of one’s disease of choice is good, but why must it be done an the expense of a large number of unwilling participants?
There are plenty of noble and charitable organizations that do their best to collect money for a number of worthy causes, and they manage to do their jobs without creating a pompous grand spectacle, without pontificating, and without causing distress to others.
Now, going back to the original post, I am much less inclined to complain against it, since nobody is really affected by it who doesn’t want to be. My only issue is pretty much with the wording. It seems that it somehow makes the whole thing much less charitable and much more mercantile. It’d be unpleasant for me to participate in such an event because it has “PR” written all over it.
Once again though, the company will end up donating money and that is a good thing of course. No argument there.

And yes, I can definitely agree – we are both right! =)

Alaric says: “Some people will be stuck in traffic for miles and as a result will be hours late to wherever they are going.”Not necessarily.  Such events are organized weeks, or even months, in advance.  People (at least the ones that pay attention to the announcements in the news) have plenty of time to find an alternate route to wherever they’re going, and the police will set up detours so that people can still get to where they’re going on time.  There will inevitably be a few who are inconvenienced, but not as many, or as badly, as you make it sound.  They might be late by a few minutes… not hours.I can see how the wording of the announcement can be construed as a PR stunt, but the last sentence made it clear that Bungie was going to be donating, one way or another: “… any and all profits … from Bungie apparel and accessories sold through the Bungie Store between now and the end of February will also be donated to the relief.”  (emphasis mine.)  What they are trying to do is raise the awareness of gamers who might not otherwise be aware of what other methods of donating are available to them.  (I donated via the Red Cross.)Frankly… all those trailers that FEMA bought for the Hurricane Katrina victims and didn’t use?  Instead of auctioning them off, the government should donate them to Haiti.  Those trailers are nicer than what a lot of Haitians were living in even before the earthquake, and they need them a lot worse than we do.  But that’s just my opinion.  I could be wrong.

Not necessarily, but quite possibly. As to the fact that an event is announced, my conviction is that it is not a person’s duty to monitor the media for possible announcements of various disturbances. I don’t watch television or listen to radio, and no announcements are usually made on the web sites that I frequent.As to Bungie, like I said, more power to them. My issue is not with what they do but with their choice of words. And it’s not even that important. They are going to donate (or by now have already donated) and that is great.Regarding what the government “should” do, I disagree with you most vehemently. The day that no one is suffering at home should be the day when our government can consider helping someone else. Its duty is to its own people first and foremost! I can’t believe this simple truth is forgotten constantly. If our government should ever succeed in making our country a place where nobody is sick, hungry, homeless or endangered, then and only then should it maybe spend some our money on helping others.

Alaric, consider the fact that those trailers are sitting there doing NOTHING, which is what they have been doing since they were purchased.  FEMA spent over $2.5 billion to buy these trailers for the victims of Hurricane Katrina… and only then did they discover that they couldn’t use them, because of FEMA’s own regulations!  (Of course, this is the kind of thing that happens when you put a horse breeder with no experience in emergency management in charge of a disaster relief agency.)And what is FEMA about to do with them?  Auction them all off for scrap, just because some of them were discovered to have been manufactured with dangerous levels of formaldehyde.  So, yes, they “should” have all of them tested, and then give the usable ones to people who actually need them, instead of letting them sit around costing the government money or selling them for their scrap value.  I agree that they should be given to the homeless here in America first, but let’s face it… it isn’t going to happen unless it somehow becomes an election issue.

This is certainly a great idea. It shows how much people are capable of and willing to reach out, help, and connect with others especially when they need it.