Milo reports on a gaming-oriented charity deciding to expand its focus:
Operation Supply Drop, a well-respected charity established to help veterans ease back into civilian life using video games, and which provided active personnel with care packages featuring consoles and the latest games, is being torn apart. Insiders allege that this is happening at least in part thanks to negative portrayals of games and gamers in the media.
OSD is in crisis after its founder and many senior staff departed this month, citing the incumbent chief executive’s desire to refocus the charity away from video games, using money raised from gamers to fund a shift into mainstream, non-gaming activism.
Ex-Army veteran Captain Stephen Machuga, known online as Shanghai Six, started OSD on November 1, 2010. The charity claims to have raised $8 million since, but Machuga left on 1 November this year after disagreements about the direction of the organisation, and has pledged to launch a new charity called Stack-Up.Org, which will cleave to the original design and spirit of Operation Supply Drop more closely.
Sources close to Operation Supply Drop allege that its chief executive, Glenn Banton, is manoeuvering the charity away from video games, at least in part because recent negative press and a Law & Order: Special Victims Unit episode dramatising poor treatment of women in the game industry might make corporate fundraising for gaming-focused programmes difficult, given Banton’s grand ambitions for the charity.
Banton denies this, telling Breitbart that he is “frustrated with this concept of gamer-only water fountains and a trend of not letting non-gamers participate in gaming activities.”
Whatever else this is, it is remarkably stupid. Does Banton think the big breast cancer charities would raise more money if they turned their focus away from breast cancer in the interests of being more inclusive? Without its gaming component, Operation Supply Drop become just another veteran’s charity. As a general rule, expanding your focus is a very good way to miss the target.
I have no idea of Banton is an SJW or not, but this does certainly smack of entryism.