Just my kneejerk reaction to the suggestion of refocusing, but for some reason the notion of CoH's "Real World Heroes" community efforts comes to mind. Wouldn't it be cool to expand things from the virtual world into our own a bit?
Mind you, this is coming from someone who is really only a tangential participant in the community (and mostly solo'ed in the game) and I have no idea what the interest level or logistics of trying to make things a more community/volunteer oriented website/organization/structure would take, but for the idea of going from playing heroes to "being" heroes- in some means- seems like a worthy venture to undertake. Perhaps connected to the "social networking" idea that has been floated in this thread?
I am also more of a "tangential" participant, as I noted above, but something like this, if it were to become rather more engaging, would certainly help pull my interest back in a bit. When CoH was around, I didn't necessarily have a lot of money to donate. But now that I'm more inclined to donate (I mean, I still don't have $, but I've decided a few small bits here and there are good) I would be more liable to participate.
However, there are two issues, both stemming from a lack of participation.
Issue 1: By having the Real World Hero event tied specifically to a game that no longer exists, you don't get much participation, not only from people donating, but also from the boost in donations that word-of-mouth gives you. If you go to the website (
http://realworldhero.com/) you can see that the 2013 drive brought in 9 donors (assuming no donors gave to multiple charities) and $185. Compared to the almost $30,000 it raised in its first three years.
Solution: Tie Real World Hero into any superhero MMO - perhaps any superhero game. This keeps the theme of "hero" relevant, as well as the group's origins in the gaming community (Obviously a charity need not be defined as or limited to "superhero gamers" but if you go too broad in scope, you just become United Way). Now, I did find a thread in the CO forums about the 2012 event, with no replies. So the solution is only as good as the people from other gaming communities let it be. To be sure, a concerted effort by the people that run RWH in the form of a media blitz, and really pushing knowledge of the charity, could help, but if we believe our own hype about the CoH community there may not be much support, even with an expanded scope. Even so, I think it's worth a shot.
Issue 2: Because the RWH charity was tied to a yearly donation drive, this limits the scope to a specific time frame, and to people that have money they are willing to donate. I understand that this is an issue any charity will face, but when you combine this with the limits of the first issue (being tied to a dead game) you get a charity event that is not going to draw much money or participation.
Solution Idea 1: Following the expansion of RWH's scope to any and all super powered games (MMO and otherwise), put out a call for people who want their worthy causes donated to. This could be someone from DCUO who works for a charity and asks for it to be part of RWH, or it could be someone who plays Arkham Asylum that got hit by a car and wants help with the bills. Regardless, community-suggested things are probably likely to gain more interest from people in that community. So you have monthly (or whatever interval) drives, rotating among communities. So ideally, you get people from CO donating a bit more when the CO cause comes up, and DCUO people donating when the DCUO issue comes up - and then the high rollers donating a little bit for
every cause, regardless of originating community. More participation, more people, more money for charity.
Solution Idea 2 (This is a grand idea and I think it's super keen): Hopefully RWH gets up and running as a source of charitable donations again. But even if it doesn't, I think there's a real good potential for a community of actual "Real World Heroes" - people who dress up as heroes for charitable events and causes. I did some Googling, and there's not a lot out there, as far as large, pan-community groups (I found a DC specific one (
http://justiceleaguehq.com/) and a national running event, which is just a one-time thing in the cities it visits (
http://thesuperrun.com/)).
So here's my thinking: using the existing Real World Hero page, we gather groups of like-minded volunteers across the nation / world, and help them create groups of charitable costumed crusaders, appearing at various events or places to help raise money / spread inspiration for those events. Additionally, we would ideally expand from appearances by volunteer fans to helping coordinate charity appearances from actors who portray heroes in movies / tv shows. Simple google searches involving the words "charity" and "hero" tend to bring up the Chris Pratt / Chris Evans events; this is the sort of thing I'm thinking of - not just from celebrities, but also from the volunteers.
Now, if you look at the Justice League HQ page, and their flagship group JL Arizona, you can see that they're (ostensibly) DC-only, and the national group is not even necessarily charity-only. Their charter is based on the 501st Legion charter, which makes a certain amount of sense - it provides structure, and membership requirements, and a certain standard of costuming. I envision a group with similar activity and quality requirements, that focuses solely on charity events and appearances by
any superhero. This would be best done through local member groups, overseen by national organizers, but could also have an "All-Star" squad that participates in the form of a non-profit, going throughout the country to appear at events.
So not only would you have regular charitable donations, in the form of money or super-hero toys, but you would also have
literal "Real World Heroes" going around supporting worthy causes.
Of course, all of this is just be spit-balling ideas. I don't know who's in charge of the Real World Hero site, or if they would want to expand from being a CoH charity drive to something with an expanded scope. Additionally, because RWH is already a separate site, I wonder how much it would actually be incorporated into the Titan Network.
