Not very often do I come across events that allow me to do great things with my passion for videogames. Sure, I have a lot of fun with them, they inspire me and create memorable moments; but they never quite let me help someone in need. My top-score in Tetris isn't going to build a homeless man a house and leading my team in kills and base captures in Battlefield 3 isn't going to cure cancer. What would you say if I could offer you a way to make a difference for someone through playing games for 24 hours?
Sounds a bit ridiculous, but extra-life.org has provided an avenue to make your 24 hour binge of gaming benefit charity. Extra-life is a project that was started by the Sarcastic Gamer Community back in 2008 because of a little girl named Victoria Enmon. Victoria was battling acute lymphoblastic leukemia and the some of the SGC's gamers decided to donated several games to her to help keep her in high spirits through the encounter. Unfortunately, Victoria passed away in January of 2008, but the gamers involved with helping her felt inspired to continue aiding children faced with severe illness. They came up with extra-life, a 24 hour gaming marathon in order to raise money for their local Children's Miracle Network. In 2008 and 2009, they were able to raise $302,000 through their event for the Texas Children's Hospital. Now, in 2011, the event has grown for you to choose the hospital you are giving too and support Children's Hospitals that are local to you. All your asked to do is sign up on their website, choose your charity, and then try to minimally get 4 people to sponsor you $1 for each hour you play (so $24). The event is on October 15th, beginning at 8am and ending on 8am October 16th.
It's a really great opportunity in my opinion, I personally have done a lot of volunteering in my life and frankly I've gone through some rather boring events to help great causes. This is a chance to do something I love to do with my personal time and turn it into a way to really make a difference in a few young peoples lives. I'd love to start up a team for the MAGD department to get behind here in Whitewater (and ideally the whole campus) to try and make a significant contribution to the Children's Hospital of Wisconsin. Hopefully some of you reading this would like to get behind me and promote the event, if I can't I will for sure be registering for the event under my own name. The site provides a multimedia kit to easily print off fliers and posters to promote the event with little hassle and I could really use the help setting the program up with such short notice. Sound off below on extra-life, ways you use games to help people, or unique ideas to make games a way to contribute to good causes!
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