This is the third post in my "Can Video Games Make The World A Better Place" series. Part 1 focused on how Folding@home and the game Re-Mission are trying to help fight cancer and make the world a bit more enjoyable for kids with that disease. Part 2 focused on how games are starting to allow gamers to use their own creativity rather than just mindlessly mowing down hoards of enemies. Today's post focuses on video game based charities, and the good they are trying to do for everyone, not just the game community.

If you asked most people to write down their opinion's of the average gamer is, the word charitable would probably not be on that list. Well, it should be because now video game based charities are popping up every day and the amount of money being donated is far from insignificant.

For an idea of how widespread video game charities are becoming all you need to do is look toward Google. A search for the phrase 'video game charity' brings back 19,100,000 results.

While many of these hits are articles much like this one, one need look no further than this very site to see solid evidence of how pervasive video game based charities are becoming.

After the recent earthquake in Haiti the gaming world took notice. The staff of Bitmob.com did not just sit on the sidelines. They sprang into action and hosted a night of online Halo deathmatching (due to the recent site remodel this link is currently inactive) that helped raise money for that struggling nation.

But not all video game charities have sprung forth recently. The Penny Arcade founded Child's Play organization is probably the most well known video game charity in existence. The Child's Play website boasts that they have had over five million dollars worth of games, cash and toys donated to help sick children since their inception in 2003. $1,780,870.40 of that came from 2009 alone!

Not to be outdone, the big three publishers --Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft-- all have charitable organizations or outreach programs as well. The ESA (Entertainment Software Association) has also been hosting their Nite to Unite dinners which have raised over ten million dollars for a variety of charitable organizations.

Not to be outdone by their corporate overseers, video game developers have also taken up the banner of charity. Last year a Bioware teamed up with Facebook for the game Gift of the Yeti, and donated a penny to the Child's Play organization every time someone played the game. Blizzard helped raise a million dollars for the Make-A-Wish Foundation by offering up a virtual pet for sale and the publisher OneBigGame was recently set-up to allow developers to publish games which are not-for-profit vehicles of donating charity to a variety of organizations like Make-A-Wish.

You don't have to be one of the big three or part of a major organization to be a chairitable gamer either. Just look at these videos from Youtube.com for further proof of how video games are being used to further charities in both a personal and organized fashion.

Truly, you do not have to look far to find proof that gamers are not just content to sit on their couch eating Cheetos and jacking cars on GTA. The stereotypical image of a gamer might not be of a person who cares deeply about their fellow man, but if gamers are good at one thing it is betraying the stereotypes that people like to place on them. While there are probably a thousand Xbox Live racists and gaming site trolls for every gamer who has ever donated to a video game based charitable organization, the fact that they exist at all proves that gamers should not be identified solely by the stereotypes attatched to them.