Humble Bundle Mojam Raises Big Bucks For Charity

Andy Chalk

One Flag, One Fleet, One Cat
Nov 12, 2002
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Humble Bundle Mojam Raises Big Bucks For Charity

The Humble Bundle Mojam has raised over $450,000 for charity in a single weekend.

Minecraft studio Mojang, along with fellow indie outfits Wolfire Games and Oxeye Game Studio, teamed up with the good folks at Humble Bundle for a 60-hour "game jam" [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/115849-Mojang-and-Humble-Bundle-Team-Up-for-Charity] this past weekend, an iron-man development session for a good cause - four of them, actually. Gamers were invited to donate to charity and then vote on their game genre of choice, after which the devs would spend 60 hours creating games based on a blend of the most and least-popular genres, livestreaming the whole thing.

When all was said and done, Mojang ended up with something called Catacomb Snatch, "a real-time strategy shoot 'em up with a steampunk, ancient Egypt theme" - remember, this was a user-voted thing - while Wolfire had The Broadside Express, a game of the same "genre" as Mojang's. Oxeye did something a little different, opting for the second-most-popular (and least popular) choices, resulting in Fists of Resistance, "a dungeon crawler beat 'em up set in a post-apocalyptic World War 2."

The resulting games aren't perfect, if the reaction over at indiegames.com [http://indiegames.com/2012/02/humble_bundle_mojam_creation_c.html] is anything to go by - although I'm not sure how shocked we should be that something thrown together over a weekend crash-course is buggy and incomplete - but the event was a huge success nonetheless. Unlike "normal" Humble Bundles, 100 percent of donations to the Humble Bundle Mojam went to charity, adding up to $458,229 for Child's Play, the EFF, charity: water, and the American Red Cross, a tidy sum by any measure. Congratulations to everyone at the Humble Bundle, Mojang, Wolfire and Oxeye for a job well done!


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DeepComet5581

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Mar 30, 2010
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Kudos and congratulations to them! While I haven't played the games myself, it does seem that, despite them not being "Perfect", it doesn't matter when you're raising money for the kiddies!

Its nice to see this kind of thing from Indie developers. AAA devs are really becoming more alienated from the general population every day.
 

Formica Archonis

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Nov 13, 2009
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Andy Chalk said:
When all was said and done, Mojang ended up with something called Catacomb Snatch, "a real-time strategy shoot 'em up with a steampunk, ancient Egypt theme"
The fact that they managed a game that does just that amazes me in and of itself.

Andy Chalk said:
The resulting games aren't perfect, if the reaction over at indiegames.com [http://indiegames.com/2012/02/humble_bundle_mojam_creation_c.html] is anything to go by
(Reads.) Oh my God what a bunch of entitled little pricks. They give five bucks to charity and expect a set of AAA games for it when they knew upfront these were going to be cranked out in a weekend with no preplanning. Do these people complain if someone forgets the lyrics to a song during Desert Bus for Hope, too?

There's stuff you can ***** at Mojang and specifically Notch for, sure, but this ain't one of them. Good on the folks at Mojang for doing something I've never done and probably won't ever do.
 

80Maxwell08

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Jul 14, 2010
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I'm kinda sad I missed this one. I was trying to do the math to figure out if I could pay $15 for this and get all the games I want coming out soon but by the time I figured it out I went to sleep and when I woke up it was over. Freaking time difference. Well to my on consolation it turns out I would have to pass on buying The Witcher 2 Dark Edition for 360 if I bought it.
 

TJ Johnston

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Apr 1, 2010
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The games aren't perfect, but it's nice to see these guys coming together to do some good in the world, and having the live stream on in the background all weekend was lots of fun. Good on them.

I donated, and I'm getting 3 games that are fun diversions for a few hours. I don't get the hate.
 

Aity

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Jan 26, 2012
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I love seeing this kind of news in the ... news. Kudos to the devs that took part in this event. Love to see this kind of thing. :)
 

Benjamin Rosa

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Feb 2, 2012
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Never expected to be such an addictive game for just 60 hours of development. The first released beta was horrible, but interesting the mixture of such different genres... At least it was just a very early beta.

It's surprising that they managed to make that in so much little development time and being still alive.