Another year of gaming to help sick kids is coming to a close, and another marathon to push and celebrate it wrapped up for many gamers this weekend. Everyone who played their Extra Life marathon on the official gameday started at 8 or 9 in the morning (local time) on Saturday and finished around the same time on Sunday. We here at the RedSector were no different. But every group’s goal is to do as much good as they can, and with the results we are seeing, I have to think we pulled it off.
Last year, Extra Life was able to raise over $11 million before December ended, and with the total as of the end of this marathon already toping $8.5 million with one more major weekend (the usual choice for rain day when gamers cant make the main marathon) next weekend and a whole 2 months before it has to close for December, it should be no surprise to anyone that I think we will again, break records like we have every year before.
However, I can happily report records have already been broken more locally. In 2016 we hit our personal record of raising $600 as a team for local hospitals to us. This year we blew this number out of the water bringing in over $1,000 during the marathon itself and reaching $1,100 at the time of writing! If we break another barrier, we will officially have doubled our record since forming the team!
But I believe if you’ve read this far, you are probably interested in how the event went. Please read on…
As has become my tradition for this weekend, I took Friday off from work to get ready for the big event. Over the past few years, the others in the team have taken up the duty of hosting, so instead of preparing my place for others to play here, I take the time to disassemble my machines, pack them and a change of clothes, and drive out of state to join them. This year proved a little more complicated then most due to two events. First my condo association was planning to have the boiler in my basement inspected, so I was trying to wait so I could let the inspector in and lock up before I would be gone for a few days. Time went on without word until it was just cancelled, delaying my leave to their place for hours.
However, a much more risky issue happened while packing Abraxas. With the system downstairs, my cat decided it was a seat, and I put his monitor on top of the PC to dissuade this, but in the cat’s mind, apparently there was only room for one. So while getting the keyboard and mouse for the machine, I heard a CRASH downstairs and found the monitor snapped off it’s base and on the floor. Thankfully the base was just popped off and not broken off, and the monitor still worked, so after buying a few pillows and towels to pack up, I was off!
It was dark by the time I arrived, but this was not important. What was important is we quickly got everything in place like a well oiled machine and before long had a table with all 5 machines (my own setup was a combo-job where the MPC (my media center) and Abraxas (my gaming rig) shared a monitor, headset and keyboard and mouse) and were ready for the next morning….
…and at 8 that morning, we began! No special messages, no immediate concerns. Just game! For me, the first mission of the day was to finish one of the two games I was reaching the end of during the 100 Days of gaming, Overlord: Raising Hell. Since I was already at the Wizard and only really needed to gather some minions before facing off with him, I only had this and one last level from the expansion pack before the game would be over a few short hours later. With a machine-swap and only a little time given to the other game I was trying to finish (Titan Quest: Anniversary Edition), I was informed our two team members NOT physically there were ready, so it was time to play Heroes of the Storm.
First of all, we had a good laugh at how low level I was since I literally had not played in years (and in fact only keep it installed for events like this and if my buddies want to play), but playing against the computer, we had a lot of fun. I returned to my original favorite character (the Deamon hunter from Diablo 3) for this, but all did not work great. This was the first time I ever ran a game with Skype on the same PC, and I was not impressed. It may have been the version I used (the one shipped as part of Windows 10), but it seemed to almost completely silence the game while we were playing, making me think there was something wrong with the game (or worse, my gaming rig). We pressed on through to lunch, at which point I went back to Titan Quest, which thankfully ran at normal volumes. As another note, I was also hitting an issue where if I had to click where the “small window” for Skype was under the game, the game would minimize for it. Suffice it to say I was not impressed.
Titan Quest would take me personally till the later hours of the day, proving that even through I had already started the final act, it had a lot more life left in it then I honestly began to imagine. But well before the end of the marathon, Hades was dead at my feet and the game was over.
Which left me to pick my next game I would start… the Wolf Among Us. This is a title from the recently collapses Tell Tale Games which plays a lot more like their later ones, making it as much interactive movie as it is an actual game. In this case, we follow up with Bigby Wolf, aka the Big Bad Wolf of fables. He and the others from these stories are doing their best to blend in with the normal humans of this world, and he’s trying to turn over a new leaf as a “good guy” taking the role of Sherriff for the group… and the first of the five episodes we will play opens up a serial killer case we will be following though. It was surprisingly meaty for an episodic game, taking several hours and leaving me with a scant 1 and a half to finish the marathon.
And what would we play? Observer_. I cant say a lot about this game, but I was also by this point REALLY running down, so a game about being a cyber-detective of sorts which has to find clues in 3 different vision modes was not going to lead to a lot of progress… still this one is cool and I can’t wait to sink my teeth into it.
But with the marathon over, it was time to get some sleep and call it a day. Only side note I can give is I am going to REALLY press my friends to stop using skype and switch to Discord for our online chat program. The sheer usability around fullscreen gaming alone (and in my case, the audio of the game not being reduced to almost nothing) make this switch a no brainer. Add to this once everyone’s been invited to the same “server” it’s literally a group chat with no invites required, and this is THE software for this. Hands down. (Testing commenced before shutting down and disassembling the gaming setups to go home).
So thank you for joining me in my experience this year. It was a great time and I cant wait to hear the reports from the rest of my team (since we all didn’t play the same games, obviously).
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