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David Braben named VP of charity SpecialEffect

Frontier founder and his team have already raised over £46,000 for the organisation

SpecialEffect has announced it has recruited long-running games developer David Braben as its new vice president.

The charity, which specialises in enabling disabled children to play video games, revealed the appointment via its Facebook page, praising the previous collaborations between its own team and Braben's studio, Frontier Developments.

Frontier is currently best known for Elite Dangerous, a modern follow-up to the original Elite with which Braben made his name. The community management team behind Elite Dangerous has already "embraced SpecialEffect... and rallied to the cause", according to the charity.

Back in December, Frontier also hosted a charity livestream in which the Elite Commanders were joined by members of the Planet Coaster community - another of the studio's titles - and raised more than £46,000 for SpecialEffect.

These funds have already been used to help the son of a community member as recently as this week.

"SpecialEffect is a great charity," said Braben. "It is wonderful to see the delighted expression on the faces of the people being able to play games for possibly the first time. I love games as they enable you to enter a parallel world, and I would hope with many it will be a great positive in their lives."