Every year, I look forward to the second week of November because of one amazing thing: Desert Bus For Hope. This event, put on by Canadian streamers and sketch comedians LoadingReadyRun, is a tiny fragment of joy in a dark, cruel world, and it’s one of my favorite things in the world. The gist of it is that a team of funny internet people play the most boring video game ever made for a whole week in order to raise money for children in hospitals and domestic violence shelters.
I could explain how the event works and why it’s so special, but honestly, the About page on the Desert Bus website describes it far better than I ever could:
Started in 2007 by internet sketch comedy group LoadingReadyRun, Desert Bus for Hope combines video games and tedium to benefit charity.
Desert Bus is the world’s longest running internet-based fundraiser and has raised more than $10 million for Child’s Play over its eighteen-year history.
What started as an impromptu event broadcast from a living room is now a professionally organized fundraiser; it takes more than 13 people to plan the event and another 55 dedicated volunteers to keep the whole thing running once it starts.
Our viewers direct the action, talking with us via live chat, challenging us to sing, dance and generally make fools of ourselves in front of thousands of viewers. The Desert Bus Craft-Along allows people from all over the world to help us raise money by donating incredible handmade art and goods for auction.
Desert Bus is a great example of what happens when a huge community of people from all over the world – organizers, volunteers, crafters, sponsors, and viewers – come together to achieve a common goal.
Desert Bus the Game
Desert Bus is a mini-game from the never-released Sega CD game Penn & Teller’s Smoke and Mirrors. Challenging the player to drive a listing, unreliable, virtual bus on an endless, eight-hour-long strip of highway between Tucson, Arizona, and Las Vegas, Nevada, it is widely regarded to be the worst video game ever made.
We play it for as long as donations come in. In order to keep things interesting for our viewers we have live and silent auctions, giveaways and contests, celebrity guests, and a lot of silliness.
Child’s Play – What is Child’s Play?
Child’s Play is a registered charity dedicated to improving the lives of children undergoing treatment in the hospital with toys and games. The charity supports a network of over 180 hospitals worldwide.
Child’s Play also supports domestic violence support facilities and aims to provide opportunities for positive engagement, distraction, and play for children in domestic violence shelters and advocacy centres.
Personally, I’ve been watching Desert Bus since 2012, when I was in college. In fact, while I was taking a class in computer graphics, I made this image as as assignment:
As far as an image made by a twenty-year-old amateur taking a breadth requirement class, I think it’s not too shabby, Alonso! And it shows that my love for this deeply strange event, which has grown like a beautiful pearl around the annoying piece of grit that is one of the world’s worst video games.
If you want to check the stream out and join in the fun, go to desertbus.org! And if you want to chip in with a li’l bit of financial support, I would appreciate it muchly. These are dark times, after all, and if we can provide just a little bit of kindness to children in need, it’ll make the world a little lighter.