PAX West 2025: An Interview With Travis Erikson, Executive Director at Child’s Play

Video games are important. They transcend space and time to create memories that will last a lifetime with those who are most important to us. After moving across the country, I've religiously spent my Sunday mornings playing online games with my brother so we can keep up with and enjoy the company of each other despite the 2500 mile gap between us. Anyone who has an affinity for gaming can probably attest to something similar, and we feel deep in our bones that this medium truly means something to the world.

When the opportunity came to interview Travis Erikson, Executive Director of the massive charity known as Child's Play, I knew I had to do everything in my power to help the world see the very real, tangible improvements video games can make in the lives of people all across the globe. So, we met in the media room at the Seattle Convention Center during PAX West 2025, and had an amazing conversation about what Child's Play is, where it's going in the future, and how it created an entire occupation never before seen to achieve its goals.

SUPERJUMP

Can you please tell us your name and give us a brief backstory of what Child's Play is, and about your role at the organization?

Travis Erikson

I am Travis Erikson, the Executive director of child's play charity. We were founded in 2003 by Gabe and Tycho – the Penny Arcade guys – one year before PAX. At the time, it was right after GTA III came out, and all of the news, if there was news about video games, was that they're no good and they're murder simulators and look at this, games are horrible and gamers are bad.

Mike and Jerry (aka Gabe and Tycho) felt that it didn't represent us or our fans. A local paper here in the Seattle area ran an editorial that called video games "murder simulators" that were training people to murder. Out of spite, they invited their fans to donate toys to Seattle's Children's Hospital through them, with the goal of "hey, donate enough toys that we can invite the newspaper to the gifting of the toys. That way, they have to acknowledge gamers did a good thing." In a little over 2 weeks, they raised a quarter-million dollars worth of PS2s, GameCubes, Xboxes and Legos, kind of everything. They made a donation, had the newspaper come, got the guy who wrote the editorial to write another one saying, "I guess they're not all bad."

SUPERJUMP

Yeah, you really can't deny that.

Travis Erikson

There's a cool picture at the time that shows them sitting by the in-repair Therapy Pool at the Children's Hospital, full of toys, with the Penny Arcade crew sitting on the edge of the pool after the donation. A very cool visual of a whole pool full of toys.

SUPERJUMP

Child's Play has been going on for over twenty years. How has the charity changed during that time, and how do you see it changing in the future?

Travis Erikson

We've grown from Seattle Children's Hospital to now we're in nearly 200 children's hospitals all across the world. We're in the US and Canada, as well as Germany, England, Scotland, Ireland, even India, Egypt, Australia, and Kenya. I'm missing some, but you know, it's worldwide. So that was a big chunk of Child's Play's early bit, was just growth and finding more partner hospitals.

I joined Child's Play in 2016, and that's when we sort of made a conscious switch, which was part of why they brought me on. In 2015, they noticed that what was really the limiting factor inside hospitals was no longer having access to tech the same way that it was in 2003. We were still just giving games and consoles to hospitals, up to 2015. Every year, "here's a bunch of consoles, here's some games, here's some iPads, here's stuff," and what was noticed was the limiting factor was the understanding of how to use the tech intentionally as a tool inside the hospital. Using the games and tech as part of therapy and procedures wasn't really being done. Gaming was still being treated as just the same kind of distraction as you would with the TV: "Here you are! Turn this on, and I'm going to walk away."

So the first thing that we did was partner with some mental health professionals at UCSD (University of California San Diego) and created a therapeutic video game guide, which you can find at gametherapy.org. The guide breaks down the key components inside games to address pain, anxiety, sadness, cognitive impairment, and then also short-term and long-term boredom. To break this down for someone who isn't a gamer: what do you put in a waiting room? And what do you do for kids who are there for months on end for treatment? For pain, you typically want something that gives cognitive overload. Mario Kart is a great example; there are lights, colors, there's music and objectives. Something is always happening, so I have to be focused on this game, or I'm gonna lose. That can help your brain get locked in and focused on the game, distracting from the pain you're feeling in your body, which reduces the need for medication. It will never eliminate it, but it can reduce it, especially if it's nothing major.

SUPERJUMP

Yeah, it sounds like that isn't the point. It's not to replace, but it's to supplement treatment.

Travis Erikson

Exactly. Sandbox games, for example, are great for anxiety. It's open-ended, there's a lot to go do. Building whatever you want in a Minecraft creative mode, especially a peaceful creative mode, helps a lot. I can build whatever I want, and if I don't like it, I can blow it up and build a new one, and do whatever I want. The game gives you this open, calm, just "go have fun, go do your thing," and both of those are great games that a kid would love.

You aren't going to get a kid who complains when they're handed Mario Kart or Minecraft. If you have a kid who is anxious about an upcoming procedure, "I just have to sit here for a couple of hours before a surgery," or, "I'm getting an MRI, and that sounds kind of scary," whatever the case is, if you hand them Mario Kart, the kid isn't gonna know that this is going to build anxiety, but you are going to sort of unintentionally make it a little bit worse. But if you give them a Minecraft creative mode, they'll play it and have that ability to potentially reduce the anxiety and bring it down.

That guide was our first step into that, and then when we were doing these hospital tours, we realized that along with being that education resource, the piece that was missing in the hospital was anyone whose job it was to focus on the games and tech that we were putting there. I had done hospital visits where you go in and the hospital goes, "the Xboxes are broken, they're in each room, but they aren't working." Broken ended up meaning that the controllers in room 1 ended up in room 5, and you know I hit the button with "X" on it, and it turns on. I'm in room 5, hitting the button, but it's not synced, so it doesn't work. That means they tell everyone, "This Xbox is broken, I know it's in the room, but I'm sorry you can't play it." We really started to try to be an educational resource for the hospitals that we support. At the end of 2016, we met at CS Mott, and they had a child-life specialist named JJ, and he ended up becoming just their gaming and technology guy. The child-life director of Children's Hospital of Denver asked, "How do I get a JJ? What I need is a guy who is in my hospital who can manage all my gaming consoles."

SUPERJUMP

Kind of like a gaming IT guy.

Travis Erikson

Right, he said, the child-life team has to do it, they don't know how to. Hospital IT won't come take care of an Xbox; IT is taking care of hospital infrastructure and security, and all of that stuff. They don't have time to deal with the Xboxes not talking to the TV. That's child-life's role, but they're not gamers. I describe child-life to people who haven't been in hospitals before as your favorite second or third grade teacher, who you might give a VR headset to and say "Hey, when you're doing that study on Egypt you can turn this VR headset on and take the kids to the base of the pyramids and they can look around and actually see the Sphinx and everything else." They may be excited about it, but when you come back later it's in the corner collecting dust. They don't have the capacity, knowledge, or time to go set it up and do it. They love the idea, it sounds amazing, but they probably won't get to it.

So we told Colorado to write a grant; you need a person, we've got funds, write a grant, we will pay for the person's salary and benefits, and see how it works. We needed to see if JJ was a unicorn that couldn't be reproduced. To date, since 2017, we've done grants for 55 or 56 positions inside hospitals. Their role is to be that person who is managing the games, thinking about how to use all the emergent tech and gaming, playing games bedside with kids, teaching the staff how to reconnect controllers and do basic maintenance, because now there's someone to ask for the problem.

We've been essentially creating a whole new career inside children's hospitals since 2017. In continuing to be the educational resource for them, we have a certificate course they can take that helps create a baseline for these game tech positions. There are no degree programs for it or anything else. We're actually running out a fourth set of those cohorts right now. We base them around PAX East and PAX West, and by the end of this, we'll have fifty game techs certified by Child's Play. There are maybe 65 to 70 people total in the world doing these roles.

We do a symposium every year with Children's Colorado as our partner, it's a two-day virtual symposium where we bring in doctors and game techs, people in the pediatric medical space, using games and tech to try and help other hospitals see what is being done down the road. Children's hospitals often have to be very reactive, and it's difficult to think about "what do I do with a PS5?" until the PS5 is dropped in their laps. We try to create a roadmap to show how the hospitals that are really on the cutting edge of games and tech, here's how they're using it. Start thinking about how to get there, and then reach out to us. We're their resource for getting to the next level.

SUPERJUMP

That's definitely an unforeseen issue. For people who play games, "my PlayStation controller isn't connecting" isn't exactly a novel problem, but if you're a nurse, you have 100,000 other things you have to take care of before you worry about "is the HDMI in the wrong place."

Travis Erikson

Exactly. What if someone unplugs the console to plug their thing in, and now they've checked out of the room? If you're a nurse, and all you've ever done to get it working is hit a button on the TV, and now it doesn't work, it can be really confusing.

SUPERJUMP

It's really cool that you've essentially created a new career out of this, and I imagine there are probably tons of people who would be willing to fix game consoles for children's hospitals. That sounds about as rewarding as you can get as a gamer.

Travis Erikson

Yeah, it is great. Part of the class, we do a conclave where we have the class, but we also have a bunch of game techs who just come to PAX West, as there's no conference for them. There's no professional anything. So this is kind of the place to gather, for the new ones to hear from the ones who have been doing it for a long time. To hear concerns, tips, all that stuff, and it's always amazing to hear them share their stories and the impact they have. How do they know they're doing the right thing? A lot of them are potentially the only ones doing it in their state, and in some instances, they're the only ones doing it in their country. We have a tech in Glasgow, Scotland; we have one person in a children's hospital in Kenya; we have two people in Sydney, Australia, and then we have two in Germany. In those spots, they're the only people in their respective countries doing this, and for the guy in Kenya, he's the only one on the continent doing it.

SUPERJUMP

It's probably difficult to connect with people on your occupational level when you're the only person who does this for thousands of miles.

Travis Erikson

Yeah, so there are a lot of conversations in Slack about things like, "someone asked me to do this," and someone responds, "Oh yeah, someone already asked me to do this. Here's a procedural document; you may have to change it for your hospital, but you're 80% there." There's a lot of communication.

SUPERJUMP

Are there any particular instances that stand out for you? Maybe when you saw the very real impact that Child's Play has on the kids who are a part of it?

Travis Erikson

Honestly, it's creating this role. It was not even on my radar when I came over. I was a teacher prior, and I've been friends with the Penny Arcade guys for a long time. When this role opened up, they brought me over after the game guide had started. There was a little bit of "maybe you can direct some of the education aspects", but this role was not on the radar at all. Seeing that take off, and at this point, when we do get a grant, we cover salary and benefits for two years, and we are sitting at virtually 100% retention.

We have a couple of hospitals where we've had someone decide the role wasn't right for them and have moved on, but the hospital is actively looking to fill it. So even once they've run off the grant funding, they've seen the impact of what they do. The child-life team is able to get so much more time back and working with the kids on their caseload because they're not troubleshooting tech. Having the tech available for the kids is huge. We've seen things like VR being used in place of sedation. So, instead of needing to have all the stuff that comes with sedation, which for a kid is a 24 hour cycle of "you can't eat, we're going to sedate you, we're going to do a procedure that may only be a few minutes long, but you can't move, and then we have to monitor you coming out of sedation," now we can throw you in VR, get you fully distracted, do this procedure, pull you right out, and now it's back to a 5 minute procedure.

SUPERJUMP

That's huge, because sedation is a big decision, especially for kids.

Travis Erikson

I actually just got back from a quick trip to Victoria BC, where the children at the hospital there at Victoria General used Child's Play funds to partner with one of the engineering universities on campus to create a life-size MRI practice simulator. Kids can go in, lay down, get to see it, get slid into the tunnel, hear the really loud noises, get pulled back out of the tunnel, and can practice over and over going into an MRI. It's one of those "you can't move, and if you move you gotta restart" so almost all kids get sedated. However, with practice and repetition, kids can get through the MRI without it.

Victoria General is an adult and children's hospital; there's a children's wing, so they don't have a dedicated pediatrics MRI. They aren't able to go practice on the real thing, and this MRI that they built is not just a full-sized MRI for practice. It breaks down to fit in a closet because they don't have a space to set it and leave it permanently. It was amazing what those engineering students did, just so it's designed to roll through the hospital, break down into a closet, be tucked away, and when needed, it can be pulled out and put together by two people.

SUPERJUMP

Donations are always fantastic, and a sure-fire way to support charities like Child's Play. That being said, money isn't always an option for people to give at all times. Aside from monetary donations, what are some actionable steps people can take to be a part of Child's Play?

Travis Erikson

One of the things you can always do is run a stream and run a fundraiser. Anyone can put a fundraiser on these days with a Tiltify page or a Streamlabs page. We're on there, and they can do that. Just sharing the word of Child's Play with friends, sharing the therapy guide is a great way to sneak in something to people who don't know about Child's Play. Just like, look at this cool tool about how to think about games. Maybe you have a friend who's dealing with some anxiety, you can give them that and let them see a big list of games to play that can help reduce some of that anxiety. That can give the natural curiosity to look into Child's Play.

Also, you can always reach out to us. People always ask us about volunteering opportunities, and unfortunately, we don't have a ton about Child's Play as a whole, but we can help get you connected with your local children's hospital. There's not a cookie-cutter piece where we can say "oh they're ready for this", but helping get them connected is a big deal. They always need someone to come reset game systems. If you get enough volunteering in and get them to a point where they're comfortable having someone play bedside with a kid and fix their systems, is outstanding. If it's someone who actually knows games and can challenge the kids at games, it's so much better than asking your third-grade teacher to sit down and play Mario Kart with you. That may not always be the most fun. Those kinds of volunteer opportunities vary based on the hospital, but we can always help at least make that initial connection to the volunteer service group.

SUPERJUMP

Is there anything specific you want to say to finish things off?

Travis Erikson

You can find more at childsplaycharity.org. Feel free to email us if you've got questions. We're always happy to chat. If you know a hospital that isn't a Child's Play partner, you can always connect them to us. If the game tech job sounds interesting, keep an eye on Child's Play's socials. When hospitals post these positions, that's where we blast it back out to say, "Hey, these roles are open."

SUPERJUMP

That's fantastic. Thank you so much for sitting down with me and for doing what you do.

And thus, my coverage of PAX West 2025 comes to an end. I thought it would be important to end my coverage with this piece, more than a demo review or a developer commentary, because one of the things I overwhelmingly felt while traversing through the crowds this year was this: video games are important. Every year I go to PAX, I see more and more people from all different walks of life crowding around indie booths and watching esports tournaments and just existing within this massive community of dorks and nerds who are unabashedly in love with their favorite pastime. Talking to Travis really brought home this idea that we all instinctively know but rarely get to see, that games really do make a huge difference in people's lives. I hope everyone who read through my coverage this year enjoyed it. So, until next year!

Child's Play is the longest-running charity in the games industry, which brings heaps of normalcy to kids who need it most. I want to give a massive thanks to Travis for taking the time to sit down and chat with me, and a huge thank you to the people at PAX for allowing me to meet all the wonderful individuals I did and play all the incredible games I played.