Hi everyone – Matthew here to divert attention away from comics just a little bit and talk to you today about Extra Life.
Extra Life is a 24 hour gaming marathon raising money for Boston Children’s Hospital. Last year my team and I, the Cool Dudes, was able to raise $2095 (105% of our goal) for BCH, while gamers across the country helped raise almost $8 million for the Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals. Heck, since its inception in 2008, Extra Life has over 100,000 annual participants, and has donated over $40 million to Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals to help sick kids across the nation get the care they need — and this year our team plans to continue participating in this charitable cause.
Why gaming, though? Well, since running an actual marathon probably isn’t in the cards any time soon (I’m going to the gym regularly, I swear), a gaming marathon is a way for us to use our “non-athletic talents” to help the greater good while also not collapsing on the side of the road. It’s still a challenge to play games for 24 hours, but hopefully with our streaming the entire thing on Twitch and YouTube so we can provide some entertainment to you as we devolve into madness. This year we’re a lot more organized and have a great list of games we plan to stream, including streams of Jackbox and Mario Party in the morning / afternoon, and Resident Evil 7 in VR during the more spooky hours (that one should be weird and fun). We will literally be live for 24 hours, so you know it’s going to get weird.
This year is going to be slightly different for us as we’re also teaming up with a few streaming partners. Our first partner is the Miss Reaper YouTube Channel. Previously known as Salty Scares, Miss Reaper is hosted by Stevie, where she shares horror narrations / stories, vlogs, gaming videos and more. You can follow her stream on Extra Life Day at youtube.com/saltyscares and twitch.tv/saltystevie, and follow her on Twitter at @missreaper_.
And of course, our second partner is Multiversity Comics. As you all know, Multiversity Comics is a website dedicated to a love of the comic medium, featuring daily news, interviews, reviews, editorials, annotations and more. They are also home to the Multiversity Comics Podcast Network, which hosts a variety of shows that cover an incredible wide range of topics — including Marveling at the Movies, which just launched its second season and features some of the members of the Cool Dudes. You can follow the Multiversity Stream at youtube.com/multiversitycomics, and you can follow Multiversity on Twitter at @multiversitycom.
We’ll also be streaming at twitch.tv/mattisnotarobot, which will be streaming the Fallout 76 BETA tonight as part of the fundraising — which brings me to my overall request that, if you can, please consider donating.
If you would like to help our team reach our fundraising goal, you can donate here. Every contribution matters, even if it’s just $1; heck, if every single person I know donated $1, I’d probably hit my fundraising goal on that alone! I know there are many things our money goes to and not everyone is always able to give, but if you’re curious about Extra Life as an organization, you can find more information here; the Children’s Hospital Network is one of the top-rated charities and all of their finances are online here, if you are curious or skeptical about where the money goes (all money raised through Extra Life goes directly to BCH as an unrestricted fund, which means that the hospital decides where / how to spend the money). I promise it’s legit.
Thank you for your time, and tune in on our various channels this Saturday, November 3rd at 9 AM EST for the stream!
