Please Support the Smile! Charity Album

Now that we're between Bundles I can take the time to highlight other charitable and gaming related stuff, in and out of the ponyverse. I am extremely happy to start with the Smile! Charity Album, working to raise money to help the Children's Cancer Association. I asked them for a copy-paste to share with you all, so please read and spread your generosity to them!

Here is what they have to share:

 

Smile! a Charity Album fundraiser a collaborative project involving the Website Mylittleremix.com, a brony solidarity group otherwise known as Bronies for Good, and a various assortment of MLP:FiM artists, writers, and creative minds. The objective of this collaboration is to raise money for the Children's Cancer Association via the sale of the album to donors. 

(the CCA is an award-winning, reputable charity that lends support to the children of families who suffer from the devastating and degenerative disease of cancer.)

To this effect, the collaboration has crafted a high-quality, diverse album that features 23 different musical tracks of various genres from a number of highly skilled, passionate artists in the brony community, totaling to over 70 minutes of music for the listening. 

In addition to this album, wonderfully creative minds in the community have offered to provide additional prizes to those Bronies who show an display an extra dose of generosity when donating to the CCA. For a full list of additional prizes, album details, and how to donate, hit up the Bronies For Good website here:

http://broniesforgood.org/

So far, the month-long fundraiser has been able to generate over $11,000 for the CCA, which goes to show the wondrous capability of the community, and hopefully, it continues to amplify as the month goes on!

Brohooves to you all, and let's keep working to make Smile! a shining example of the love and altruism that this community breeds on a daily basis!

Cheers Everypony!

-For any questions regarding the event, feel free to email smile.bfg@gmail.com or contact the organizers at Broniesforgood@gmail.com for specific questions.

Humble Indie Bundle #4: the Biggest Bundle Ever!

The gates have closed on Humble Indie Bundle #4, and thanks to all your generosity and Notch's friendly competition the two highest contributions in the history of the Humble Bundle have been placed on the biggest Bundle ever! A total of $2,372,044.68 was raised in the name of charity and independent game developers; THIS is why the Humble Brony Bundle exists!

I wanted to share a few relevant statistics about you, the Humble Brony Bundle donators:

• There have been over 1,000 distinct donators so far. This isn't just a handful of rich bronies making a ruckus; over ONE THOUSAND of you have taken part. Considering the "average brony" is an 18-22 year old starving student that says a lot to me.

• Many of you missed it, but our initial payment on the Humble Indie Bundle #4 raised the average donation size by over a dollar immediately! It settled down a bit afterwards, but our large pooled contribution still helped to keep the average higher than it would have been, increasing the overall revenue of the Humble Indie Bundle #4.
  
  

• $17,375 raised over the course of 35 days is an average of $500 per day!

• The HBB + Notch together makes up over 1% of the total donations on Humble Indie Bundle #4. 1% might not seem like much... but it's 1% of almost 2.4 million dollars. With a figure that large, and 435,000 Bundles sold, a whole percent point is a lot!

This Bundle may have ended, but the Humble Brony Bundle will continue on! It has to; there's already over $150 waiting for the next Humble Indie Bundle!

See, that's the thing: even after we had already "won" against Notch's generosity your contributions continued to come in, and now that this Bundle has closed you are continuing to donate without even knowing when the next Bundle will be announced. You guys continue to amaze me. :D

Notch to Watch My Little Pony

Notch made a little deal that if bronies out-generous him he'll watch several episodes of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic.

Wellllll...

Notch's reply came through a few minutes later:

It seems that not only have your generous donations lead to us being the first contribution to ever exceed $9000 on a Humble Indie Bundle, but you have also forced poor Notch into watching My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic! Will he ever be the same?! Thinking back about how much I loved my first two nights absorbing every episode that had been aired... I'm almost kinda jealous. :D

I'll have a real Bundle Wrap Up later today. For now, keep on donating!! You guys are making me so proud!

Notch Overtakes HBB for Top Contributor

Notch, dastardly creator of Minecraft, has swooped in with a diabolically generous donation of $8542 to the Humble Indie Bundle #4, overtaking the Humble Brony Bundle as not just the top contributor on this bundle, but the holder of the record for top contribution of all time!

Except, you know what? In the few hours since he made his donation bronies have donated over $800 to the cause, pushing us from $7000 to $7850, over halfway to overtaking Notch's tremendous contribution!

EDIT:  We're now up to $8050 for Humble Indie Bundle #4, less than $500 away from out-generous-ing Notch!!

Now is the time to really spread the word, to reach out to every brony you know who likes to give to charity, who likes gaming, or just likes to do something good. This is the best kind of competition: friendly competition where every dollar spent and every ounce of effort goes to people who deserve it! I don't know about you, but that makes me feel really, really competitive.

We CAN do this! We WILL do this! But not without your help! And with our total across both Bundles now in excess of $9000 the lofty goal of $10,000 total raised is within our grasp... In the immortal words of Rarity Unicorn... It. Is. ON.

Humble Indie Bundle #4 Reaches $2,000,000!

The Humble Indie Bundle #4 has just become the second Bundle to reach $2,000,000 and is on track to be the biggest ever! Congratulations go out to the Humble Bundle, Inc. staff and volunteers, as well as the developers of the excellent games being offered!


Meanwhile, we've broken over $8000 raised in the Humble Brony Bundle since starting in November, and are just a little short of being able to raise our contribution to $7000 on the Humble Indie Bundle #4! Congratulations go out to... you guys. <3

Let me take this moment to wish all of you a wonderful weekend, be it Christmas-flavored or not! I hope you all get what you're wishing for!

HBB Named the Largest Contributor Ever!

The Humble Indie Bundle's official Twitter account, @humble, announced earlier today that our $6500 contribution now makes us the largest contributor in the history of Humble Bundles!!

... I'm kind of speechless, really. By now I think you all know how I feel about you and your generosity, so I'll resist the urge to drone on and on about it. I will repeat one thing though: I love you guys!

In other news, earlier today the Humble Bundle added five of the games from Humble Indie Bundle #3 to Bundle #4, free for anyone who purchased before today or anyone who buys Bundle #4 above the average. Now would be a GREAT time to buy some above-the-average gift keys for the gamers in your life. Between all 12 of those games AND all those soundtracks there's literally something for everypony!

And on a personal gamer note, I picked up Sequence yesterday and played it for hours straight. It's a Rhythm RPG; here's some gameplay on Hard mode (which I'm nowhere near attempting yet). I hope it ends up in a Humble Bundle someday, because it deserves loads of attention!

Now at $6500 and Still Rising!

Seriously guys, I thought things were going to slow down. I thought to myself, "Hay, after a few days most of the donating will taper off and I'll only update maybe twice in the last week."

Pffft. Yeah right.

Instead we're up to $6500 on the Humble Indie Bundle #4 and our total amount raised is inching in close to $8000! I'm so proud of you guys!

Another Great Weekend for Humble Bundles!

This weekend your generous donations allowed us to reach $6000 contributed to the Humble Indie Bundle #4! This also puts us dangerously close to $7500 raised since the beginning of the Humble Brony Bundle... which, if you guys didn't realize, was less than a month ago! This has all happened across only 25 days, which is around $300 donated per day!! It's pretty amazing, guys. You're pretty amazing...

At the same time, Humble Indie Bundle #4 has surpassed the $1.5 Million mark, making it fairly certain that this will be the biggest Bundle so far! The recently added soundtracks to all of the games for contributors to download, so be sure to grab those and listen at your leisure. I love Cave Story's soundtrack so much. <3

There are still almost 9 days left in the current Bundle. Dare we try to reach $10,000 total contributions before it ends? I have this sneaking suspicion that it's possible...

Wired mentions the Humble Brony Bundle! Over $5000 contributed to HIB#4

Underwire, the blog for Wired magazine, has posted up a sneak preview of the next episode of Friendship is Magic, but in the process also gave a mention of the Humble Brony Bundle! A big THANK YOU to Underwire blogger Angela Watercutter and to Wired!

There was also an entire article about the Humble Brony Bundle posted on VideoGameWriters.com that I'd like to thank Kristen Maxwell for writing!

And to follow up that up, I'm honored to say that we've been able to raise our contribution to the Humble Indie Bundle #4 up to $5250! Your generous donations continue to come in, so I have no way to know where the ceiling is... but whatever it is, you've already proven it's much higher than anyone except bronies could have possibly expected!

HIB#4 breaks $1M; Almost $5000 contributed

The Humble Indie Bundle #4 broke $1,000,000 in under 24 hours, by far a new record! So far the Humble Bundles have raised over $3 Million for charities, let alone money for the developers of the indie games!

Meanwhile, our contribution continues to grow, currently sitting at $4750. Currently we need almost another $150 to be able to increase our donation to $5000, a beautifully round and properly climactic number. But without your help we can't get there, so we need another push from everypony to get the word out and to gather new donations! Every bit helps, so please do what you can. Thank you!!

Humble Indie Bundle #4: Night of the First Day

Yes, Fluttershy, it HAS been a great day!

• We're up to $4000 $4250 $4500 donated to the Humble Indie Bundle #4!
  
• The official @Humble Twitter account has given us another shout-out. Thanks guys; we love you, too!
  
• Sethisto was kind enough to mention us on Equestria Daily again. Thank you, Seth!
  
• There are folks coming in from Twitter, EqD, Reddit, Neogaf, the Penny Arcade forums, Facebook, and more. Hi guys!

It's been a whirlwind day overall and I'm filled with endless gratitude and pride. Thank you guys, so, sooo much. I am torn between celebrating with some gaming or getting proper sleep... Just kidding. Gaming it is!

Humble Indie Bundle #4 launches!

The Humble Indie Bundle #4 has launched! The leak turned out to be correct and that incredible selection of games is available right now.

As you can see on their site, I've made our donation: $3500, which is $1050 each for Child's Play and the American Red Cross, as well as another $1050 for the developers of those excellent games that make this whole thing possible.

When I first shared the Humble Brony Bundle idea I just wanted to get into the top ten the first time, to build up a head of steam and be able to do really well this time around. Well, you guys blew that idea away, and we're currently the top contributor of the biggest, best Humble Indie Bundle ever. Where is there to go from here?

UPWARD! How much can we raise? How much can we, by working together, collect for sick children and people suffering from disasters? I don't know! Another $1000? A total of $7500? Could we hit $10,000 total donations across both bundles? As more donations come in they will be added to the current donation. I'm not holding anything back for the next bundle: this is the big one!

Please, donate! Spread the word! Donate to us AND to the Humble Indie Bundle! Remember: you've gotta share and you've gotta care. It's the right thing to do!

Contents of Humble Indie Bundle #4 leaked!

Thanks to our fish'n'chips nibbling friends over at RockPaperShotgun I've got the list of the upcoming games of Humble Indie Bundle #4:

Super Meat Boy
BIT.TRIP.RUNNER
Jamestown (excellent with gamepads and some friends)
Nightsky
Shank

And as if that wasn't enough, here are the "Donate Above the Average" additions coming down the pipe:

Cave Story+ (!!!)
Gratuitous Space Battles

Cave Story is my favorite indie game of all time. I've spent dozens and dozens of hours in Terraria, and built some great stuff in Minecraft, but Cave Story is just pure Metroid-meets-Mega-Man-with-a-story bliss.

You definitely want to grab this Bundle when it launches!

So, What Now? Part Two

The current Humble Indie Bundle has ended. Sadly, no new challengers appeared! I was honestly hoping for some healthy competition to benefit charity.

So, what now?

When the next Humble Indie Bundle opens we get to drop a healthy wallop of over $3500 immediately. That's over $1000 EACH for Child's Play and the EFF! I'm giddy just thinking about it. 9_6

(In case you're confused about the math, let me remind you that the Total on the right sidebar there is ALL donations, including the $1250 already donated to the Humble Introversion Bundle that just ended.)

None of this would have been possible without you guys, so jeez... give yourselves a huge pat on the back! Also, I hope you bought the Humble Indie Bundle yourselves so you can play these games! Dungeons of Dredmor is my personal favorite of the lot, but Aquaria is beautiful and sounds amazing, Darwinia is classic cool indie gaming, Defcon and Uplink... yup. Good stuff there. Next Bundle I'm definitely going to go into more detail about each game.

In the meantime, please continue to mention the Humble Brony Bundle to anyone and everyone you think might be interested. Donations remain open, and will of course be saved for the next Humble Indie Bundle.

Ponies at Play Contest ends; A winner is them!

The Ponies at Play contest has ended, and our ten winners have surfaced. Congratulations to 8, 14, 17, 19, 25, 29, 32, 33, 35, and 38! The race for the top ten was pretty heated; the difference between 9th and 11th was only 5 votes out of 1600!

As promised, each of the ten will receive a gift code provided graciously by the Humble Indie Bundle themselves. A big thank you to them, all of you who voted, and to everypony who submitted a picture!

Vote on Ponies at Play Contest!

You can now vote on the Ponies at Play Contest, hosted by Equestria Daily and made possible thanks to the Humble Indie Bundle graciously providing us 10 gift keys in gratitude for all the money you've raised!

Vote on the Poll in the Right Sidebar!

You can review the entries by clicking here!

And just a note: Sethisto asked if we could host the poll here, for the sake of Equestria Daily's sidebar not getting mangled by a 38 entry poll. I didn't ask to host the poll, but I'm glad to be able to help by doing so!

Ponies at Play Art Contest Entries

Here are the entrants for the Ponies at Play Art Contest! The theme was "ponies playing video games," but some people took liberties with it... Personally, I'm glad they did!

Voting on the top ten, who each receive a Humble Indie Bundle gift code, will start on Equestria Daily soon!

Contributions now over $4200!

I need to get some rest guys. Counting up all 4256 dollars of donations so far has put me right out. Jeez, good job guys! Your generosity and spirit continue to amaze...

I have around 40 entries for the Ponies at Play art contest that I will make into a post tomorrow, to try to save Seth a bunch of work. But for now... sleep. Thank you for your patience, everypony, and goodnight!

Ponies at Play Art Contest; Contributions exceed $3500!

In gratitude and recognition for the money bronies have raised for charity and indie gaming the Humble Indie Bundle has reached out to us with some free goodies! So, announcing...

The Equestria Daily "Ponies at Play" Art Contest!
Submit new art of ponies playing video games to cuppitycupcakes@gmail.com with "Ponies at Play" in the subject by Friday, December 2nd at 9PM EST / 6PM PST! Make sure to include a "Source" link if you want a link back to your art gallery of choice!

All of the pictures will be put up on Equestria Daily for voting over the weekend and the top ten will each receive a key to the current bundle in "gift" form. This means that even if you've purchased the bundle you can gift it to a friend!

BIG thanks to both the Humble Indie Bundle for providing us the keys and Sethisto and the other blogponies at Equestria Daily for hosting the event!

In additionally glorious news, we have now gathered over $3500 for charity and indie gaming! No healthy competition has arisen on the Humble Indie Bundle top contributors so it looks like we're going to have a really good running start on the next Bundle with an immediate donation of over $2300. Way to go, guys, way to go! :D

Humble Brony Bundle on Twitter + contributions exceed $3000!

At the very sound recommendations of some intelligent individuals the Humble Brony Bundle now has a Twitter account, and that account has been used as the name for our contribution on the Humble Indie Bundle site. This should make it easier for people to find out what we're all about.

And, my first Twitter announcement was to mention the wonderful news that we're now over $3000 in donations! As of this moment we're just over $3059 in donations!

Just a quick, awesome note: if you Google Humble Brony Bundle you can already see all the many places that people have taken the time to mention us, and I can see in the site traffic that it makes a difference. Yes, Equestria Daily is the single biggest referral point, but everyone else adds up to LOTS of traffic, so thank you! Keep it up!

Lastly, I've been in some communication with a friendly face at the Humble Bundle and they've given us a boon in honor of all the efforts you've put forth. I'll have more news on that as it develops...

Humble Indie Bundle Twitter shout-out!

The official Twitter news feed for the Humble Indie Bundle has given a shout-out to all of you, the bronies who have been donating your money and effort to make this little idea grow into a rousing success! And he's right to thank you; that little idea would have been nothing without all of you, so you have my thanks as well!

Humble Brony Bundle on Facebook; Totals now visible

There is now a Humble Brony Bundle Facebook page for all you happy Facebookers to go and Like vigorously! There's also a little Like button here on the site below the Donate button.

And beneath THAT you can now see a running total of donations and when that number was last updated. Keep in mind that this is manually updated, so you can't watch it trickle up as people donate; sorry!

Also, please note that this is the TOTAL contributed, not current remaining funds in the account. $1250 of the visible number has already been paid to the Humble Indie Bundle to keep us at our current number one spot. The "Current Total" area is just so you can see how much we could donate all at once if we had to, in order to stay the top contributor on the list. Remember, all leftover funds will be retained for the next Bundle!

So, what now? TLDR: Keep donating! Keep spreading the news!

Now that we're Number One on the Top Contributors on the Humble Indie Bundle site... what now?

You might be wondering if we should stop raising funds now. The answer is an emphatic eeNOPE! And why not?

• When someone like Notch (developer of Minecraft) shows up and drops a $4096 donation it's going to mean that we need another $1500 than we currently have available to stay on top.

• This was just our first go at the Humble Indie Bundle. In all honesty, I was expecting to get in the top five if we were lucky, and we could build up some publicity and make a real stab at the top next time. You guys blew that idea away in less than a day. I love you guys... So, what this means is we'll make ~$250 incremental donations to stay at the top as necessary, but all left over funds are going to be used in the next Humble Indie Bundle. And supposedly the next one is the next BIG one, the  "Humble Indie Bundle #4," which will have a lot more developers and even more buzz hanging around it than this one did.

• And, of course, don't forget where all this money is going, to the good causes that the Humble Indie Bundle supports. That's what's most important, and that's where your donations go, so now isn't the time to stop!

So keep it up, everypony! Remember, we're still not even a full day into the real meat of the campaign... Let's see what we can really do at full steam ahead!

The Morning After...

You all may be interested to know that when I woke up the total contributions had reached...

(pause for dramatic effect...)

$2548.92!

As you can imagine I've been smiling ever since. I hate to sound like a broken record, but all of you generous souls have earned my endless gratitude. Thank you, thank you, thank you! :D

So where are we now?

A) I've placed our initial payment of $1250 on the Humble Indie Bundle, putting us at the current top contributor!

B) We can continue to increase this donation as necessary to remain at the top.

Thank you very much to Humble Indie Bundle chat support member Johannes for bringing this functionality to my attention!

Answering some important questions!

EDIT 3: Updated the first question; there IS no deadline now!

EDIT 2: We just broke $700! Yes, that's right, over $700 raised for incredibly worthy causes! I'm beyond thrilled, you guys... I'm so grateful to be part of such an incredible fandom!

EDIT: We've almost hit $500 in just 90 minutes of being announced on EqD thanks to all of you!! Thank you so much!


I'd like to answer two very important questions!

Q: What is the deadline?

A: EDIT: Due to the fact that we can update the current donation on the Humble Indie Bundle site there IS no deadline! The current bundle ends on December 6, but all left over funds will be used on the NEXT Humble Indie Bundle so at the very least the "deadline" is the end of the next Humble Indie Bundle IF that ends up being our last.


Q: What's the current total / How much more to go / What are the chances this is going to work?

A: Considering we just broke $200 it's not a matter of IF this is going to work, but a question of how much we together can raise for charity, DRM-free indie gaming, and the Humble Indie Bundle itself! If enough of us can work together we can actually burst through into the top five, or top three... What the hay, let's shoot for number one!

Humble Brony Bundle featured on Equestria Daily!

The Humble Brony Bundle would like to thank the blog ponies for featuring us on Equestria Daily! Specifically, I want to express my personal gratitude to Cereal Velocity for taking the time to check us out and give a kind word specifically stating that we're a worthy cause!

Not only that, but we want to thank the generous readers of EqD who have already reached out to support our cause! For those of you who are unable to donate... it's okay! Not everyone can. Instead, if you could please take just a few minutes to spread the word you'll be doing a lot of good. Thank you for your time and generosity!