We understand that charity is difficult when times are hard – but we need your help

April Stallings is the charitable gaming and creators community manager for the charity Make-A-Wish International.

Video games can be remarkably powerful for children with critical illnesses, often acting as a lifeline that keeps them connected to the world when diagnosis turns their wonder to fear, anxiety, and isolation.

Particularly in the online era, the ability to join friends and family in games offers remarkable escapism and respite. Frequently, those games also offer a level playing field, where critical illness doesn’t hold anyone back – and that can be tremendously empowering when a child feels their life is defined by their illness.

Games bring a lot of fun, and that is far from trivial – especially when life can feel overwhelmingly heavy and serious.

Games have a base ability to do incredible things for young people with critical illnesses

They are also a remarkably powerful medium for charities to harness. Their ability to captivate, engage, and inform players makes them a remarkable tool for driving fundraising, awareness, and education.

All that considered, games have a base ability to do incredible things for young people with critical illnesses.

Since our founding in 1980, we’ve been creating life-changing wishes for children with critical illnesses. Every child diagnosed with a critical illness may be eligible for a wish, and we’ve granted over 615,000 to date.

Increasingly, game-oriented wishes are becoming a more significant part of our work. And yet support from the industry isn’t quite meeting demand.

The power of play

There’s the potential for games to deliver profound experiences to children with critical illnesses.

For example, there was a child we supported very recently who could not travel, but he was able to dial in virtually and spend hours with the development team of his favourite game from their studio in Stockholm. He was even able to invite friends along, making the experience one that gave him a chance to feel like he was lifting his peers up, with the dev team absolutely going all in on granting the wish.

When another wish child longed for a unique new skin for his favourite MOBA character, he didn’t just see his dreams made real in his favourite game – the cosmetic raised millions for Make-A-Wish and several other charities.

Gaming is unquestionably the fastest growing category of wish among the overall increasing number of wishes we see requested across all regions. And while it’s amazing to see studio visits, or even kids getting to shape the games they adore, sometimes much simpler wishes can have an equally powerful impact.

Kamahri, a bright and curious nine year-old from Canada, offers a perfect example. Inspired by his father and brother, he has developed an enthusiastic passion for technology, and video games and computing are deeply important to him. He has dreams like many of you who work in games may have had when you were young.

Aged just two, however, he was diagnosed with leukemia. Beyond the impacts on his physical health, the intense treatments and chemotherapy sessions took a toll on his social life. Holding onto dreams of the future grew beyond hard.

Now in remission, Kamahri is embracing life and his love for technology with renewed energy. To celebrate his recovery, he fulfilled a cherished wish; creating his own video game corner in his bedroom.

For Kamahri, that was a dream that felt impossibly beyond reach. His father, Nestor, recalls the moment Kamahri saw his new setup – complete with LED lights and gaming gear – and stayed awake all night, overwhelmed with joy. “It was a great moment for the whole family,” Nestor said, “to see him so happy and hear him say his dream came true thanks to his courage.”

To feel happy and hopeful repositioned Kamahri and his ambitions. It’s a remarkable reminder of what games can do.

An opportunity for more

Despite all that – and regardless of the will to give support from the game companies that we speak to – fulfilling gaming wishes has proved to be a challenging task. It comes down to two things that seem to be holding game-makers back, regardless of their enthusiasm to be generous.

The first is the reality of modern production cycles. The race to meet development milestones can often leave little room for engaging charitable ideas and opportunities – and we absolutely understand that.

Secondly, industry volatility right now is reducing confidence. The eyes of investors, consumers, and even governments are on gaming, and maintaining success is famously challenging here in 2025.

With all that going on, becoming involved with a cause is a brave step. It means allocating resources – access, staff, money, and time – in an era that’s very uncertain. That’s something else we understand.

However, working with a charitable brand can have profound positive impacts for developers and publishers. It can engage and invigorate your community, bring significant PR opportunities, boost the morale and activity of your team, and even spawn new creative ideas that could become central to what you offer all your consumers. And with all our experience, we can do plenty to facilitate wish granting that doesn’t knock your production off track.

Personally, I would love to see a global network of games industry supporters who can help us to scale up our wish granting through financial support, in-kind support, and access for children who love games.

The games industry is one of the essential groups we need to help us reach our target of granting 30,000 wishes a year by 2030. And I see us as one of the few children’s charities that work at the same global level as the games industry.

We’ve recently partnered with game and tech PR agency Raptor PR to help draw attention to our efforts in gaming – and we’d love to speak to you, if you’re interested in getting involved. Do reach out, even if you’re not entirely sure you have the capacity to help.

The power of gaming to help at the most challenging times in a child’s life is remarkable. And it’s a power your industry has created.