Chances are, if you are on a social network and follow more than 5 gamers, you heard chatter about Extra-Life.org’s gaming marathon, which took place this weekend. Gamers around the country put aside 25 hours of their lives to play games and raise money for kids getting care or treatment in a Children’s Miracle Network hospital.
Even with several site outages during the event (allegedly 4 DDoS attacks were levied against the site), gamers managed to bring in over $3.4 million so far for this single event, making it the largest charity gaming event in history. This amount was also an increase of 62% over last year’s $2.1 million (a total that accounts for the entire calendar year). Not only did the dollar amount increase, but the number of participating gamers also went up, reaching nearly 30,000 this year: an increase of 76% over last year.
Three hospitals also won big this year. Blizzard (specifically the Diablo 3 team) donated $120,000 to Extra Life, and every hospital that was a part of Extra Life had a chance at a portion of the money. Gamers raising money for the hospitals would dictate which ones won in the categories of Top Overall Fundraising ($60,000 prize), Top Fundraising per Capita ($40,000 prize), and Most Improved Fundraising ($20,000 prize). The winners of the Diablo 3 Extra Life challenge were Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center (Most Improved), Children’s Hospital and Research Center Oakland (Top Overall) and Children’s Hospital on Illinois (Top per Capita).
On a more personal note, I saw an increase of about 50% over last year’s fundraising, so it seems that people were just more generous this year… or we’re all just getting better at asking for money. I’ve personally seen an increase in the frequency of charitable events that target gamers in my Twitter feed this year, so it seems that word is getting out about how giving our group can be when asked. Here’s hoping that this generosity continues to evolve naturally, and doesn’t become tainted by an influx of companies looking to capitalize on this trend.
Did anyone see or hear of any fun Extra Life livestreams? Did you win anything in the many giveaways that folks were doing for charity?
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