Hello everyone and welcome back to the Extra-Life updates. As we rush towards November and the big event, things have been, well... rather hectic here at the RedSector. Some reasons very happy... others, well... let's just say it's also been a very rough month over here.
But I am getting ahead of myself. If you are first hearing about Extra-Life with this post, all I can say is "Welcome in!" At the most basic level, this is a yearly run charity event where gamers gather, pick a children's hospital to play for, and all donations made in their name go specifically to there. Run by the Children's Miracle Network, we do our best to use our hobbies and help these kids throughout the year, and yes I said hobbies. Most of us use video games, but there are table-tops and board games. Card games and RPG games around a table with buddies. Basically if you can imagine it being a nerd's playtime, it probably fits in here.
However, the big day we all look forward to is in November when we get to celebrate with the major push with a 24/25 hour gaming marathon! I'll be honest, it's one of the big days I personally look forward to each year since the event began, and every year it has only gotten better each time. From it's it's humble beginnings drawn from a rather simple appeal to do something in the name of a young lady who lost her life to cancer, to the absolute behemoth of an event, I've had the absolute honor of watching this event grow to what it is from the inside. But I'm not exactly the best to explain that story. I leave that to the team at their site.
Still to focus on the past few months we have definitely had some personal highs and lows which have limited what I can do to draw to it... perhaps more extreme then I have ever seen happen for me. I have not been able to do the streaming I wished to for this event this month due to both medical and family reasons: My family tends to take one week a year to go on vacation, which limits a lot of what I can do streaming wise that week, but so does being sick to the point of going to the emergency room. (No I am not about to give details. to that, but having been there a few times this month, my schedule was pretty much killed.) I am still recovering some as I write this, but yes, I am ok and hoping to get back to my usual schedule soon... kinda.
I have every intention of continuing our adventure through the Phantasy Star series as soon as I can get back to it and on our usual schedule, but I may be increasing the rate at which I stream for this event before we get there, and not just through a random game of the week. While that was fun, I would like to share the adventure of what I'm playing with you all on my own, and to do that, streaming may become more of a "when I'm playing, we're here" like I used to do. This may be a development in progress, but we will see how things go. But the confirmed schedule is as follows as soon as I can get back to it:
- Wednesday - Phantasy Star Day: As much as I love this series, I think my experiment to try to push it into Saturday as well wasn't flying so well for me... so I think we are returning to a weekly adventure here. We are still working on Phantasy Star 4 and in fact very early in the game, but we will let the game breath a bit more between runs. Generally this will be an evening stream around 7 PM Eastern, but as of right now I don't want to set an exact time while everything settles.
- Drop in at Random: I wish I had more I can say, but where I plan to stream pretty much "whenever" I don't think a plan for Saturday is going to work any longer. Rather what I am hoping to do is to pop on the stream when I'm playing so people can just "join in" if they think what I'm playing is interesting. At the moment I am getting ready to start Shadowgate 2014: Not a new game for me, but I haven't played since it launched and I know it has had a LOT of updates since. If you want to join in the fun, please feel free to do so.
- Become a participant! As always, the best way to help these sick kids is to step into the ring and play yourself! And it couldn't be easier to do. On the Extra-Life website, there is a sign up button which will guide you through the process, including the ability to pick which hospital you are playing for or even the team you want to join up with if you choose. From there it's a matter of collecting donations, and the site has ideas for that as well! The only detail after this is gameday itself, but we will get to that in a moment.
- Donate in the name of your favorite player! If you don't think you can play or just want to back someone else playing, that is important to. After all, if it wasn't for donations made in the name of these players, we wouldn't be able to do what we have over the past 16 years and still will do again! Here you will also have a few choices.
- If you are looking to support a different gamer's efforts, you can find them easily enough with the search on the header of the Extra Life page. Whether an individual or a team page, there will be a donate button right there that will make the process easy.
- However, if you want to help us directly, I have to personally thank you for much the same reason. The process is the same, but I can supply you with a direct link to the Red Sector Team Page below. (We also have a link in the about section of my streams)
