PopCap Makes Sick 9-Year-Old's Dream Game a Reality
One of casual games giant PopCap's newest titles is not designed by the Plants vs. Zombies team, but by a 9-year-old boy with leukemia.
Like many of us here on The Escapist, nine-year-old Owain Weinert dreams of someday making his own videogame. Unlike most of us, however, Weinert suffers from leukemia - cancer of the white blood cells. The Make-a-Wish Foundation [http://www.wish.org/] enlisted the aid of Seattle-based PopCap Games to make Weinert's dream a reality.
According to MacLife [http://www.maclife.com/article/news/makeawish_popcap_help_9yearold_create_his_dream_game], Weinert has been visiting PopCap's headquarters regularly to help work on the game, Allied Star Police, which is reportedly similar to an RTS - but likely with PopCap's own twists on the genre.
Allied Star Police isn't quite complete, but when it is, it will be released on iOS - and all proceeds from its sales on the App Store will go to Make-a-Wish. From the looks of it, though, it's almost done: PopCap threw a launch party for Weinert and his friends, complete with pizza, cake, and a new iPad with his game already installed.
Predictably, Owain himself is over the moon about it. "It's awesome. I can't even think of something that could beat this," he said. His mother, however, went for the understated route, calling it a "high point" after all the time her son had spent in the hospital battling his disease.
This isn't the first time Make-a-Wish has teamed up with a popular videogame maker, either. Perhaps the most well-known instance is that of Ezra Chatterton, who in 2007 immortalized [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/72055-Blizzard-Teams-With-Make-A-Wish-Foundation] in-game as an NPC.
We can only hope that Owain Weinert's story, touching as it is, has a happy ending of its own.
(MacLife [http://www.maclife.com/article/news/makeawish_popcap_help_9yearold_create_his_dream_game])
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Like many of us here on The Escapist, nine-year-old Owain Weinert dreams of someday making his own videogame. Unlike most of us, however, Weinert suffers from leukemia - cancer of the white blood cells. The Make-a-Wish Foundation [http://www.wish.org/] enlisted the aid of Seattle-based PopCap Games to make Weinert's dream a reality.
According to MacLife [http://www.maclife.com/article/news/makeawish_popcap_help_9yearold_create_his_dream_game], Weinert has been visiting PopCap's headquarters regularly to help work on the game, Allied Star Police, which is reportedly similar to an RTS - but likely with PopCap's own twists on the genre.
Allied Star Police isn't quite complete, but when it is, it will be released on iOS - and all proceeds from its sales on the App Store will go to Make-a-Wish. From the looks of it, though, it's almost done: PopCap threw a launch party for Weinert and his friends, complete with pizza, cake, and a new iPad with his game already installed.
Predictably, Owain himself is over the moon about it. "It's awesome. I can't even think of something that could beat this," he said. His mother, however, went for the understated route, calling it a "high point" after all the time her son had spent in the hospital battling his disease.
This isn't the first time Make-a-Wish has teamed up with a popular videogame maker, either. Perhaps the most well-known instance is that of Ezra Chatterton, who in 2007 immortalized [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/72055-Blizzard-Teams-With-Make-A-Wish-Foundation] in-game as an NPC.
We can only hope that Owain Weinert's story, touching as it is, has a happy ending of its own.
(MacLife [http://www.maclife.com/article/news/makeawish_popcap_help_9yearold_create_his_dream_game])
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