Some Portland gamers are getting a big buzz this holiday season because of this image making the rounds of Reddit and George Takei's Facebook page:

PDXLAN: Good work, gamers.
  • PDXLAN: Good work, gamers.

PDXLAN is a thrice-yearly LAN party, where gamers bring in their desktop computers and other gaming devices and play games in the same room with each other for days at a time. It's basement-gaming-party-meets-convention, in the best way. And the PDXLAN folks decided to also make it a charity event. In the 12 years that the party has been running, they say they've raised over $100,000 for charities in addition to their food drive.

And while a charity story tends to require an adorable kitten and/or child to get the media's attention, Matt Conwell, founder of the 12-year-old PDXLAN organization, wrote that they were happy the word is getting out about their charity work, "building awareness that not every story about gamers is bad." And yeah, the big gamer headlines—the ones that aunts and grandmas of Facebook—are about sexism, violence, and which videogames Criminal X and Sociopath Y play at home. And sure, some of those stories (at least the ones about sexism, says the feminist) are on-point and important. But it is nice, in this season of rain and giving, to celebrate the other side.

We applaud you, PDXLAN! Game on!

PDXLAN: backlit by the hum of good works
  • PDXLAN: backlit by the hum of good works