Gamers Charity

Tom Loftus of MSNBC.com has posted a story about our work with Ultima Online and Red Cross:

Questing for charity
Over at "Ultima Online," a massive multiplayer online role-playing game, or MMORPG, Joe Harden says he has committed $200 to the Red Cross with another $200 awaiting conversion from gold to U.S. dollars.

Gold? Dollars?

MMORPGs like "Ultima Online" are infamous for the time users spend online in their never-ending quest to improve, or level up, their character. Success in questing or other challenges
yields gold, "Ultima Online's" virtual monetary system, or other goods.

Over the past decade such items have gained a real world value, particularly among players not content to gain status the old fashioned way, with a gray market for virtual money and goods appearing on eBay and a handful of virtual world-specific auction sites.

Harden first tapped into that market after the Asian tsunami. Selling his own gold and gold donated by other "Ultima Online" players on eBay, he raised $8,000 in five months.

"Although players become absorbed in the virtual world," Harden e-mailed MSNBC.com, "this proves how concerned they are about the real world around them."

Harden's Web site, GamersCharity.com, is now collecting for Katrina relief and word of the project is being spread by game players soliciting gold within "Ultima Online."

"People I have never met or talked to contact me at all times of the day to ask where they may donate virtual goods," said Harden.

It's a great read about all the Virtual Charity work going on, other than Gamers Charity. Be sure to read it!