Some of you might have been to a console games site called The Gaming Intelligence Agency.

Well, they had massive hardware failures and pretty much went bankrupt digging into their own pockets to fix it. They're just a hobbyist site, so it's gonna put them under.

Like so many other sites, they started asking for donations a few days ago. And the fans have shown up in force...as I write they, they're up $9100 bucks!

http://www.thegia.com/donate.html

Here's the interesting part (thanks for waiting)... they set a bunch of dollar milestones, and for each one they reach, one of their "staff" will force themselves to play through one of the WORST games they've ever touched and write up something about the experience. They call it the Gauntlet of Pain.

What a great idea! Give a buck or two, and watch your local mom 'n pop website monkeys suffer!

Tom, Mark, you guys should do this!

That's pretty remarkable!! (Not the Gauntlet of Pain, but the dollar amount they've raised.) Fun gimmick, too.

That's what more websites looking for donations should do (or something like that): Offer some kind of something in exchange for the money -- especially something fun. It could be something like a new download for each milestone, or give each contributor credit on the site, or something to make donators have something to point to (other than the site itself.)

That said -- I'd still really have to believe in a site (like this one) and trust the people running it to contribute.

Well, Penny Aracde started a trend by offering everyone who donates a custom wallpaper (not custom for each person, duh). Other donation sites have since taken up that idea (the GIA is doing that too) and other like it. Free T-Shirts for those who give $20, stuff like that.

I think the donation thing for these homebrew sites is a good idea, but I think they need to follow the PA/GIA method of showing exactly how much they've made through donations and T-shirt sales and stuff.

I mean, they're giving you stuff for free, you should pay if you feel like it's worth it. And you should know whether they're starving or doing allright, so they don't play a guilt trip on you while they're raking in the dough.

Hell, we tip bartenders, and they're charging us $4 for a freakin' draught beer! And we don't even get a real 20 oz. pint like in Europe, we get a pussy 16 oz American pint.

I'm not too surprised at the dollar amount. The GIA is a great site. They garner and deserve a lot of support. Their review of the Gameboy Zelda games recently released which can be put together to get a third adventure was fantastic. You had to read both and then concatenate URLs to get the review of the third piece. It was creative (and easy, no one should have been frustrated by it) and it made it fun to read about the games.

They also had some of the best E3 coverage of console games this year.

--Dave

"Tom, Mark, you guys should do this!"

Our traffic's too small and begging's only a short-term solution. Penny Arcade's seen their donation amounts fall each month. Once every site is asking for donations, no one will want to pay anymore. If you see a panhandler once every few weeks, you might dig up a buck for him. If you see a panhandler every day, you ignore them all.

I don't think it's a bad model to help defray costs, but I don't think it's a good model for running a profitable business.

Oh, I don't mean you should start a regular donation thing - I mean you should set up a gauntlet of pain whereby we can pay to watch you suffer (and write about it)! =)

Think of it as a Virtual Game Journalism Dunking Booth. "John Romero's Virtual Game Journalism Dunking Booth" if that helps.