By Joshua Needham | Observer Contributor
During a 25-hour video game marathon on the weekend of November 5th, team YeahDude Gamers (lead by yours truly) raised $730 to support Boston Children’s Hospital. The game day event is held every year by the Extra Life charity organization through extra-life.org. Gamers from around the country dedicate themselves to playing video games to help raise money for Children’s Miracle Network hospitals.
Many people in the Gardner and surrounding areas are familiar with the annual Relay for Life, a multi-day walk to raise money for cancer research, and Extra Life runs in a similar manner. Instead of walking to show their support, people from all over play video games for a full day. Some people will live-stream their gameplay to services such as Twitch.tv – a partner of the Extra Life charity and the top-dog when it comes to video game streaming services – while others will just play in the comfort of their own home and spread the word through social media.
The funds raised through Extra Life get distributed from the teams or individuals that raised them directly to the Children’s Miracle Network Hospital of their choosing. The Extra Life website states that the funds are gifted to the hospitals as ‘unrestricted funds,’ meaning that the hospitals will decide how and where to spend the money to make the biggest impact in the lives of the kids they treat.
Throughout the year, Team YeahDude was posting on social media to help gain awareness of the coming event, but hadn’t pulled in any donations prior to one week before Game Day. At 8am, the event started off with a total of $75 having been donated to the cause and got to work setting up live-streaming services across platforms, preparing to broadcast events simultaneously on Twitch.tv and YouTube. After several hours of initial trouble-shooting the charity event was under way.
With a total of six televisions, and more than twelve game consoles to work with the team of gamers (eight officially with guests in and out throughout the day) set to work spreading the word and entertaining online audiences. For many of their broadcasts, the YeahDude team used an overlay, much like a picture frame for video, which showed viewers the Extra Life name along with how much they had raised so far and where to donate.
YeahDude did several special broadcasts to help bring in an audience during the event. For one hour, a live talk show was hosted, to talk with people about the best and worst of video game to film adaptations. Another of their gimmickier ideas had the players fighting games against each other while wearing remote-controlled dog shock collars, being shocked whenever one of them took damage.
With other crew members helping by broadcasting gameplay to their own, personal Twitch.tv accounts to reach a bigger audience, as well as actively spreading the word on social media to family and friends, the event was able to raise over $700 to help sick kids and while having a great time doing it.
“’Child-sized coffin’ is probably the saddest combination of words…” said Joe Blay, a member of YeahDude and host of the DreadPirateJables channel on Twitch.tv. Even though all involved were having a good time, the team knew the weight of the matter and was very serious about making sure that people knew the driving cause behind the day.
Even though Extra Life Game Day has come and gone for this year, the YeahDude team is still able to take donations until the end of the calendar year and will likely be hosting more events in the coming months, looking to try something similar to raise funds for the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation (JDRF). Even the team doesn’t know what the future will hold for their productions, but the one thing that can be agreed on is the love doing charity work, and that next year will be even better.
For more information about Extra Life, visit extra-life.org. To help support Team YeahDude Gamers, check out their team page at bit.ly/YDGExtraLife, or to see their antics from Game Day check out youtube.com/yeahdudegamers.
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