Holkins is a co-founder of PAX (originally called the Penny Arcade Expo) a series of gaming festivals that began in 2004 and has been held around the world.

He is also a co-founder of Child's Play, a multimillion-dollar charity which organizes toy drives for children's hospitals.

The magazine did not accept them but the creators sought other places to publish them, and worked with a site called looneygames.com to create what would become Penny Arcade.

[9][10] Holkins, along with Krahulik and their business manager Robert Khoo, founded the charity Child's Play in 2003.

PAX is held annually in Seattle, Boston, Philadelphia, and San Antonio in the United States; and Melbourne in Australia.

PAX was originally created in 2004 by Holkins and Krahulik because they wanted to attend a show exclusively for gaming.

[12] Holkins wrote The Lookouts, a comic which imagines a Boy Scouts-like group in a fantasy setting.

[15] Holkins wrote a book of poetry called Lexcalibur, featuring poems about D&D-style adventuring with illustrations by Krahulik.

It rapidly grew in size as Penny Arcade fans joined in expanding the parody to describe the non-existent books, spinoffs, and life of the author.