Extra Life 2024 September Update

Hi everyone and welcome! Time is flying ever so fast as we find ourselves quickly racing to the big Extra Life Marathon in November. In fact for most gamers, there is little more then a month left to bring the kids the help we can! It's getting to crunch time!

Now if you don't know what Extra Life is, allow me to explain. Gaming is a massive hobby around the world with gamers taking to their favorite past time on the regular. But what if you could do some good with that controller in your hand? No, I'm not belittling the hobby we all share: in fact we are elevating it with Extra Life. In essence, much as you would sponsor a runner in something like the world-famous Boston Marathon to help them raise money for a cause close to them, we now do the same with gaming. Extra Life is in fact doing just that by letting gamers raise donations for their local children's hospitals to help sick kids in their area. I personally have had the honor of doing this since it began some 15 years ago, and it truly is an amazing experience.

If the idea of playing games to help sick kids sounds good to you now's the time to get involved. Follow the link and sign up! The 24-hour marathon you are looking for donations to play in is on November 4th when we will globally take over the web to show the world what we can do! Of course not all of us can do it on this day... life can get in the way. I myself have family events around the same time which makes my own available time kinda iffy, so I speak as someone who uses the rain-date (the next weekend) every year and will likely do the same this year. This is not an issue since we are still all playing for the same goals: helping these sick kids. So if you need to schedule a little different, don't even give that a second though.

But still, some people are more interested in donating to help these kids rather then play themselves, and that's ok too! I mean, without you we wouldn't be able to do this. And if you wish to help us here at the Red Sector out, let me take this moment to thank who deeply and humbly.. as well as make it a little easier to find. In addition to the link in the pages list of this blog, you can also follow the link below to reach our team page. It's just a few clicks to help us help kids (basically picking which player you want to donate under since we all play for our own local hospitals).

Thank you again for all your help. We are almost there. Lets see what we can do to help these kids out.

Extra Life Update

Hi everyone. Time to check up on how we are doing for Extra Life! Now if you do not know what Extra Life is, I can explain it easily enough. In fact it started in 2008 to honor the life of a young lady who lost her fight to cancer. Back then it was a single gaming website (and perhaps the only site I ever saw as my online home) who's efforts all went to the hospital that had taken care of her and her story in full can be seen in a video on the site for the event. Doc, who ran the site, is a personal friend of the family and was absolutely devastated. I still remember listening to the podcast on my way into work that week, and it wasn't easy to hear him break down.

In her honor,  a day was chosen where the site would get together and run a 24-hour gaming marathon, the goal of which was to raise money to help these sick kids. How could I say no? I am still honored to have been there from the beginning, to support the cause, to be a part of this community coming together, and just to be part of that moment.

But that would just be the beginning, for everyone wanted to continue this work, and so we did. Long after the site was gone, we continue as a gaming community to come together every year to help these kids, and help we do. Since my last update we finally have the final numbers for the 2020 marathon, and despite everyone staying home and even the number of jobs lost because of of the pandemic, we still managed to break records and raise $17,400,000 to help! We still have yet to have a year that didn't break a record for the previous one. You can see a complete breakdown that's been shown off on Facebook here.

And so here we are again, moving froward to the next big marathon in November, my team included. For my own, we have managed $220 already, and while that isn't impressive compared to some of the big numbers out there, we are humbled to bring anything to the table, and we ask you to help as well. If you are inclined there are two major ways you can.

First and perhaps most important at this point is to get involved. Get over to the Extra-Life website and sign up! Once a part of the event, you can directly help your local hospitals and the kids within by the donations you can bring in. The site even has ways to suggest to get the word out. If you think you will be busy on the big weekend, it's always an option to pick another as many gamers do. And any help you bring will be appreciated by all of us. If your gaming is less video and more physical, that works too. True it may be a bit more difficult to get going in these times because people can't really get together yet, but that doesn't mean it's impossible... and gaming isn't just of the video nature.

But if you don't really game or would like to help out in another way, then just like I'm suggesting those who sign up do, we are looking to bring in donations to help the children in our local hospitals as well. Any help you send our way is more then humbling. We are all here to help these kids. The following link will take you to our team page where you can donate to anyone on the team. https://www.extra-life.org/team/RedSectorShutdown. Thank you again and lets see if we can help even more kids with another record breaker this year!

Extra Life 2020 Recap

 Well, we did it. Another year for books, though perhaps the most tragically unique year we have had to date. With 2020 being hard on just about everyone, that was to be expected. If anything I was looking forward to this event this year even more then normal as it followed a Halloween no one was going out to celebrate and a night that still dominates our news cycle as I write this. Knowing these were coming, my focus over the past week was right: the one moment assured to be a positive one.

But how was the event itself? Well it spanned the expectation gambit. With everyone working at home, our star player was not able to make this year a record breaker like the last two. So we didn't break four digits this time, bringing in a total of $450. And while this is disappointing, I can't say the same about the total event. Once again in total we are just absolutely SMASHING records, hitting almost $12,500,000 before the big weekend ended. To put this into perspective, last year at this time we were just shy of $10,000,000 and we are right now easily in striking distance of the $15,000,000 total of last year. Everyone involved should  be proud of themselves. But if you read this far, you probably want to know the details. So, read on, my friend... read on.

Extra Life Update

On Nov 2nd, gamers from around the world will begin what has become a decade long tradition: a 24-hour marathon where outside of food or bathroom, there are no breaks. Just keep playing! For those brave enough and in areas that use Daylight Savings, it's going to be 25 hours, another tradition!

But this also means we are starting to reach the wire as we are just a few scant weeks from the final month before the big event, and we need your help to make it an even bigger year then last. And I mean that for me, my team, and the entire event. We have huge shoes to fill since as noted at the beginning of the year, we managed to bring in over $1000 as a team to help sick kids, and over $13,000,000 as an event. As always www.extra-life.org will have counts going during the marathon itself and with your help we can break both records.

So far we have managed to bring $225 to the table, no small feat in it's own, but we are are far from hitting the records we did before. We want to break those. After all, we do this every year to help really sick kids and have some fun doing it. But as I said, we need your help to do so.

If you would like to help us, you can do so by either clicking the "Make a Donation" button on the thermometer icon or clicking "donate" on our team page. As always, Extra Life is run by the Children's Miracle Network and everything goes to the cause. So thank you in advance, and see you out in the games.

Extra Life 2018 recap

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…

Extra Life Marathon report Part 1

And as Sunday morning rolled in, the Extra Life main marathon drew to a close. I must apologize now for not updating right away, but between schedules and finally needing to sleep, I simply was incapable of writing. Still, it was a great time to be had and I simply hope you enjoyed yourselves as much as we did… oh yeah… and the BIG important news of the night:

As of now, Extra Life has brought in $3,600,211!!!!!

A big congratulations are in order for all the gamers who participated. For a more detailed report of the night, please read on:

It’s EXTRA LIFE TIME!

While this entry is being posted a few days early, we have BIG news for the event! First, and foremost, we are still using our UStream page to broadcast our gaming, but we will be showing the video here as well! We have other details to reveal which should improve your viewing greatly from last year, so please, feel free to click and read more!

Weekly News Roundup

Greetings and welcome to a new feature we will be hosting at the Red Sector. Once a week, we will be gathering a bunch of gaming news for our readers to see in one place. We will try to make this a Wednesday article, but for now, the this being a new feature, the date may not be finalized just yet.

In any case, welcome to the news and commentary. Enjoy!

Extra Life begins!

Friends and readers, the time is now! We have come together as a community to raise what we can for the kids, and now it is time to get to the fun part… and play! Obviously if we have some late donors, we are more then happy to accommodate. After all, this what it’s about… helping the kids by doing what we love.

But for now, we can focus on the gaming at hand, and to that end, we have a UStream Channel setup just for this event. If you want to see how we game, then please, follow the link below to it…. and on behalf of every gamer in this marathon, every hospital to be helped by this marathon, and every child we are reaching out to through them and the event… thank you… thank you so much for your support.

You can watch us game at http://www.ustream.tv/channel/red-sector

You can watch many others listed at http://blog.extra-life.org/2012/10/the-extra-life-live-stream-directory.html

One Week till Extra Life

The time is coming, my friends. We are about 1 week away from the Extra Life, things are looking great, but that doesn’t mean we can relax yet. It’s crunch time to bring as much in for the kids as possible. But it’s also time to reveal how we are doing here at the Red Sector. Read on to see a special message, a preview of what to expect, as well as links to participate/donate.

Interested? Read on…..

PSA: Extra Life… Progress and News

Hello, my friends. It’s time to reveal the full plans for the event known as Extra Life. For those of you who do not remember, Extra Life is a yearly gaming marathon that raises money to help kids with illnesses in the same line as cancer. I am personally honored to have been a part of this since the first year, but now, I have the honor of inviting you all to join in. When we start playing on Oct. 20th, it would mean a lot to a lot of kids as well as myself if you were there. How do you get involved? Read on….

BIG GAME coming

There will be more news to follow, but for now, all I can say is FTG is about to host a 24 hour gaming Marathon... they will tell us more as things move along, but for now click here to read about it from their own words.