Question for the Devs regarding Donations

[Totz the Plaid]

although from my experience the former is more likely to be found in more urban areas.

And the problem with that is?

I live in a suburb of Detroit and have done volunteer work down in the city, even in some of the more dilapidated areas, and there were no problems. Sure, there's always the risk of one crazed junkie doing something nuts, but that's a risk wherever you are. From my experience, if it's people working to help other people, then most of the locals tend to appreciate it. If it's the government coming in, then there's some worry from them, but if it's just a group of well-meaning citizens, they should be happy to have you.

[Deimos]

although from my experience the former is more likely to be found in more urban areas.

And the problem with that is?

I believe there is no problem as I do not intend to demean anything charitable, because then my own efforts in these matters would have been wasteful as well. All I wanted to portray is that there is simply a difference concerning the availability of volunteer positions in charity organizations and their fields of work when we compare rural and urban areas.

[SirMax]

not all of us are able to donate blood.

Sadly, if you lived in Europe in a whole range of dates, your blood is ineligible due to problems with mad cow disease.

I think that doesn't apply to the whole of Europe. But only to great Britain.

I don't have the list with me, but it includes other places in Europe. I think Britain has the longest period, though.

[Totz the Plaid]

although from my experience the former is more likely to be found in more urban areas.

And the problem with that is?

I believe there is no problem as I do not intend to demean anything charitable, because then my own efforts in these matters would have been wasteful as well. All I wanted to portray is that there is simply a difference concerning the availability of volunteer positions in charity organizations and their fields of work when we compare rural and urban areas.

Sorry for misinterpreting your meaning then. I just get defensive about Detroit since it's got a horrible reputation, one it no longer deserves as the city is much better than it used to be.

[ContinualNaba]

Yeah donating your precious bodily fluids is an excellent way to help healthcare, especially if you happen to have a blood type that's on high demand.

Must admit, didn't think of blood when you mentioned the donation of precious bodily fluids. But I have to get drained every month and a half to deal with overabsorbation of iron. Gets shipped straight to bone marrow transplant people.

*Ahem*

In any case, eat a good diet and donate blood as often as is possible. Cancer patients and accident victims need that stuff bad. Another thing you can do is, easily enough, learn the local sign language. Some people just need someone to talk to, and the money for interpreters ain't too shabby. You're giving them freedom and honest friendship, and that's hard enough to receive as is, much less ask for it in a charity.

Alternatively, if you can do magic tricks or something that would get at least passing mention in a big city talent show, go visit them at the hospital. If you're good at piano, offer to teach a few kids. Same goes for any instrument. If they've gotten into an accident or otherwise suddenly lost something that was once an attachment or sense, teach them a hobby they can practise and focus on, rather than the problems they're already dealing with.

[Bara]

Sadly, if you lived in Europe in a whole range of dates, your blood is ineligible due to problems with mad cow disease.

I think that doesn't apply to the whole of Europe. But only to great Britain.

I don't have the list with me, but it includes other places in Europe. I think Britain has the longest period, though.

I don't know about other time frames, but I've been rejected for blood donation multiple times for possible exposure to "Mad Cow" or Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy while stationed in Germany from 1987-1990. BSE or Creutzfeldt-Jakob as I think it is called in humans is thought to be caused, in simple terms, by mis-folded proteins.
KS has had a team running protein folding simulations on the Stanford University Folding@Home distributed network computing page since July 5 2009. You can donate some electrons to science and medical research with the rest of us.

[Mirage_GSM]

Now how could I forget about that when I read this thread?

[Teclo]

I was thinking about something related to this earlier. I've seen people mention a possible KS OST release, and then the devs refer them to the rules - presumably to the "do not rip elements of the VN" part, but that doesn't make much sense since they were asking for an official release. Anyway, how about an official KS OST release with a minimum payment of $2 and a maximum of INFINITY DOLLARS, payable to a charity that we all vote on? There's a nicely international cross-section of fans, so it would be good if we could get an international charity or at least agree on a non-international one.

[Deimos]

I was thinking about something related to this earlier. I've seen people mention a possible KS OST release, and then the devs refer them to the rules - presumably to the "do not rip elements of the VN" part, but that doesn't make much sense since they were asking for an official release. Anyway, how about an official KS OST release with a minimum payment of $2 and a maximum of INFINITY DOLLARS, payable to a charity that we all vote on? There's a nicely international cross-section of fans, so it would be good if we could get an international charity or at least agree on a non-international one.

The problem of such a distribution method would probably begin with the verification needed, first of all, there would have to be a receipt for the donation in question, that either must be send to the developers or a system that allows for receipt numbers to be used as a download code or could either be exchanged for a download code. Speaking as a layman here, I am confident that many more difficulties could arise using methods as described or similar ones, and that is even when it would be restricted to online donations, a whole new plethora of discussion would arise if a contribution to humanitarian affairs done in real life via cash or through other means was to be considered viable.

One reason I suspect why the issue of an equivalent exchange for Katawa Shoujo was never specified is that the developers would not want to have even more work on their shoulders. Secondly, if I am not mistaken it is written in the FAQ that those who want to pay should instead give whatever amount Katawa Shoujo is worth in their eyes to a charity, which means that people who do not want to pay or donate should also be able to enjoy Katawa Shoujo and related materials that the developers make public.
And lastly, I fancy the thought that the members of Four Leaf Studios trust some of us to be decent human beings and really be inspired by their work to do something charitable out of our own accord.

[Teclo]

All true. But this is taken from the angle that there's a desire for a KS OST. An abstract idea of "I wish to give money to charity" is certainly encapsulated by the issues you outlined in your post, but the specific desire for a KS OST is not. Also speaking as a layman, I know that bands like Radiohead have done a "pay what you want" scheme for at least one of their albums. Then there's all these Cafe Press type sites - where you send them a picture and they put it on a t-shirt or mug. What I'm getting at is that there are many infrastructures in place, tried and tested, for this sort of thing.

I'm not trying to insist that they do it, I'm just trying to say that it's an apparently simple thing to do. Let's say you PM them with your donation amount and PayPal username. Just to reiterate, this isn't a "donate to the KS guys" but a "we want an OST, and we'll pay a charity for it". It sounds like a nice way to continue the "don't give us your fucking money" ideology of 4LS and to give many of the fans what they want at the same time. Just an idea - it's really a fund raising drive mixed up with the apparent desire for an OST, nothing more.

[Deimos]

All true. But this is taken from the angle that there's a desire for a KS OST. An abstract idea of "I wish to give money to charity" is certainly encapsulated by the issues you outlined in your post, but the specific desire for a KS OST is not. Also speaking as a layman, I know that bands like Radiohead have done a "pay what you want" scheme for at least one of their albums. Then there's all these Cafe Press type sites - where you send them a picture and they put it on a t-shirt or mug. What I'm getting at is that there are many infrastructures in place, tried and tested, for this sort of thing.

The fact that you are even aware of the existence of such mechanisms automatically makes me more of layperson than you are.

However, the specific desire for a soundtrack to the game is understandable, if probably one that will be left unsatisfied. The FAQ expressly states that there will be no release of the game's music apart from the game and a recent thread further emphasizes that this policy is still in place. In light of these two indicators the prospects of obtaining the OST are not exactly looking optimistically even if one would like to pay for it.

And although it is somewhat off-topic, let me please say that the relationship between game creators and players is truly asymmetrical in this case, but it is them who have built the foundations for establishing this relationship in the first place by beginning to make the game and and by allowing us to discuss it here and amuse or distract them through our behaviour and utterances (and, considering some blog posts, also to let them spectate some fairly fascinating sociological phenomena) - so, if it's their rule not to make the soundtrack available for distribution, then we should accept it and just appreciate what else they have freely rendered unto us.

[Aura]

Putting a Radiohead-like scheme in place is not in accordance with our stance of keeping money out of this project. We have just as little desire to start handling money that'd go somewhere else than handling money that'd go to us. The reasons we currently don't want to even think about stuff like soundtracks and whatnot are our own, we might change our minds or not, but if we do, I doubt we'd do anything like suggested there.

[Teclo]

I understand your reasons and I'm not trying to tell you what you do. It's just that it's pretty obvious that the tracks are going to get ripped and then released via torrent sites and DDL sites anyway, it seems like it would be good to at least make the most of that situation by doing an official release that at least points people in the direction of various charities on the download page. You don't even have to be the middlemen; you can just offer it for free download and say "Rather than a pay-what-you-think-it's-worth scheme, instead you might like to pay that amount to one of the following charities..." Just a thought but, as always, it's your project and all we can do is offer suggestions or ideas.

[Guest]

We don't have a favourite charity. One with high efficiency ratio would be the best I suppose.

Regarding charities, GiveWell is doing a great job on doing actual research (and has a lot of good good information) on which charities are efficient and useful. VillageReach is one of the most efficient ones, preventing at least one infant death for every $1000 in donations. As far as anyone can tell it seems to be the best one. If one wants to focus on a specific issue GiveWell has a top list for many of them as well.

In most cases doing your job and donating money is more efficient than volunteering wrt benefits to recipients because that's where your comparative advantage lies (e.g. a typical middle-class professional's salary can help hire many unemployed people to a soup kitchen but only be a single person helping there) but volunteering as a selfish "hobby" is often very beneficial for one's mental health and still has a positive overall effect.

Organizations working on speculative future issues such as Lifeboat Foundation, Future of Humanity Institute and Singularity Institute are potentially orders of magnitude more "efficient" but there's also orders of magnitude more uncertainty on their benefits.

[Yukimi]

About the blood donating in Europe, I think it isn't restricted in Spain because of personal experience but I think that's because we were barely affected by the mad cow dissease. Reading an article on this topic, the Red Cross stipulated that they had prohibited to accept blood from people residing in GB during 6 months+ from the periods of 1980-1996 to preserve the still dissease-free USA from it (a loable effect) but it was hard because USA had less blood donators than it should (I'm very proud of my country, we get a lot of blood and organ donators ) and they were also considering adding other countries like France. I guess this article is outdated since I read it a good while back.