Second Annual Desert Bus for Hope and Other News

Posted by Dan on November 30, 2008

Hi to all the visitors we’ve gotten from our shoutout on the Desert Bus for Hope (Thanks Tim and Jer!).

If you’re not familiar with Desert Bus, it’s an endurance game, where you drive a bus through a desert for hours and hours and hours, and you have to ensure that you don’t run off the road and crash, which ends the game. The DB team is doing their second annual marathon play-through of Desert Bus, which they broadcast live on camera (both driver cam and bus cam), with the length of time that they have to play determined by your donations, which then go to Childs Play.

After 22 hours so far, they’ve got almost $14,000 in donations, including $50 from myself on behalf of Gameslaw.net and the staff here. (Kindly, they gave us a shoutout on the driver cam and in the live chat). If you were planning on donating to Childs Play anyway and you didn’t care about buying a specific item (last year I bought DS games specifically because I was pissed at losing my PSP, which I’ve now thankfully found) I’d suggest donating to Desert Bus. Your donation will go to the same place, and it can be as little or as much as you want; not only that the drivers will do funny stuff for you on camera.

In other news:

• Our own Gwyddia has a review of Chrono Trigger DS on her site. Normally we don’t link reviews, but its one of our own, and I know Liz Surette is really psyched about it too.
• Also, thanks to those of you that came out to VGXPO. I met several GamesLaw readers there, which was cool, and we’ve got some interesting plans that I’ll reveal to you all over the next few weeks.
• Mona Ibrahim of the Under Development Law blog is setting up a social network for Entertainment Lawyers on Ning. It’s general entertainment law, so not restricted to games, but it’s worth a join for lawyers and law students in the industry.
• Apparently Jack Thompson had more influence than we all feared — while he pisses of Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum, he did manage to convince him that Manhunt 2 on the Wii will use the motion sensing capabilities to train young killers! McCollum, however, seems to have shaken Thompson’s grip and is instead advocating for parents to follow ESRB ratings for the holidays. Parents taking responsibility for their children’s entertainment habits? A sensible solution indeed. Press release available here.
• 90% of compulsive gamers are not addicts. Well that’s sure to please the PTC isn’t it?

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