This. At least the kids can trade Pokemons or some shit and carry the gameboy around outside. My gameboy was my best friend (as sad as it sounds) as a kid.

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Pixel Equity also accepts used consoles, and some of what they do is for youth centers, as is stated in the post.

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I don't understand the binary assumption so many are jumping to that a charity set up to provide video games to the less fortunate precludes someone from setting up a charity to provide books for them.

In fact there are several charities that do just that.

It's quite possibly now that Pixel Equity is covering this aspect of entertainment for a needy child to have the balanced childhood you said you had.

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Thing is, when you were a kid (much like when I was, I'm guessing) video games weren't the graphical masterpieces they are now. They had bright colours, but not any of this online garbage and graphixxxxx. So books were a way of making pictures in your mind that you couldn't find anywhere else.

Its different, these days.

And you can't say 'library'. Think about it. A kid has some video games. Is he going to want to leave home, to go get a book, that he's going to have to return in a week, when he could just stay in his room and play a game?

@doubtful:

A balance would be nice, but thats not whats going to happen if we start donating copies of Halo. Donate some Mario Bros and old NES'es instead.

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Lolz. I wasn't throwing Halo down because of VIOLENCE WARPING A CHILDS MIND, DETAILS AT 11!

Its just its not really doing anything to encourage imagination by spoon feeding everything to you. Do you think most kids who grow up on Halo as it is, give two shits about the lore of it, or read any of the backstory? Or do they just want to blast things?

I've got no problem with that... but to youngins, it kind of kills the inquisitive nature of life when your mind doesn't have to do any work for anything. Its why you should tell your kids to get the fuck outside instead of sitting around all day in front of the TV eating cheetos.

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Did you even read the article? The kids have to go to community centres to play the games. Unless these centres start lending games, I don't see how they'll play them at home. When done at the centre, they can use a library, or read books at home.

Are you willfully ignoring that the two ARE NOT mutually exclusive.

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The home thing was my mistake, and I skimmed the article much too fast.

I'm just basing my opinion on the general state of 'kids today'. I wasn't dismissing this charity at all, I was just reinforcing peoples previous statements above me that books are much more important than video games and we shouldn't give up on forcing kids to read. But I guess if you can't make them read, you might as well plop them in front of some entertainment and make them get along.

That is, until they discover how competitive video games are, and then nobody gets along. :P

Calm down, Cowboy.

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***

Being poor (god bless my parents because I didn't know) while growing up, everything I got went such a long way. Just the experience of playing games on my friends Turbo Graphics 16, borrowing his Gameboy overnight, playing Jail Break on his Amiga, or Flight Sim on his CGA Amiga were all magical experiences to me. When my parents saved for years to bring a 386SX (no math coprocessor) into the home, I loved every waking second with my Cirrus Logic VGA card and QBasic that came with MS-Dos 5.0. I played with Snake and Gorilla for months and then discovered shareware.

I'm not saying it's cool to be poor... its just that when you give a poor kid something, it probably means more to them and will open doors in their mind in ways that people who have no concept of want ever could imagine. If you have the opportunity to watch over them, you'll be amazed at how much effect a small gift from you can have.

I bet most of us never really thought we can do something to change someone's life for the better. Yeah it's only game to you but it could mean so much more to others.

...I'll stop now :(

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I would read the book, duhr.

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And is precisely why I would never trade in a video game.

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*shang tsung voice*

YOUR SOUL

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