From Friday last week to yesterday, I joined an awesome group of people in a 48-hour gaming marathon to raise money for an even more amazing organisation. SpecialEffect is a charity that creates custom controllers and solutions for people with disabilities—gamers just like all of us—so that they can enjoy the videogames that we take for granted. SpecialEffect brings happiness to everyone they help, something that is clear in the pure and radiating smiles you see in their videos.
So how could I not join Gamely Giving? It meant that I could help SpecialEffect change someone else’s life, bring happiness to them, help them realise that as long as they want it, achieving their goals and dreams is possible, that having disabilities doesn’t mean they won’t enjoy what other people take for granted. They will, because there are phenomenal people out there, people lke those in SpecialEffect, dedicated to helping them make it so.
I want to thank the 1001Up crew for inviting me to be part of Gamely Giving this year, I really appreciate it and helping out and streaming for Gamely Giving was an honour, a privilege and a pleasure. In particular, I’d like to thank Phil & Kim, without them the event wouldn’t have been possible. Kim went full steam ahead and got us working together, gave us goals, responsibilities, schedules and made sure that we had everything we needed to make our shifts in the marathon as fun and smooth as possible. Phil, along with working out the various details with Kim, took care of all the tech parts of the process, configuring the many bots we used. He gave us quotes, automated messages and prize raffles, tweets and much more.
For that, my hat off to you guys. You are awesome!
Of course, I also want to thank the rest of the streamers in the team! I had a blast with your broadcasts and chatting with you, particularly my good buddies Nathan and Timlah!
We started on Friday at 1pm GMT and played until Sunday 1pm GMT, when we ended it all with a fantastic game of Quiplash. Because Ethan was there—1001Up’s 8yo Sunday streamer—we had to keep it clean and so it became Quiplash PG-13. It was a challenge to be funny and age-appropriate as well, and sadly Phil became the butt of many a joke, but he took it in stride and very good humour!
Our goal was to raise £1000, and while it’s not over yet, and there’s still time to help us raise more money, we sadly didn’t reach the goal during the marathon, reaching 51% of the total. But as I said, there’s still time to help. And even if we didn’t reach the goal this weekend, we had a lot of fun, spoke and joked with amazing people, made new friends and spread the joy with hourly giveaways. In this regard, I’d like to thank all the developers and publishers who contributed to our participation, your games helped us draw people in, get them to talk to us long enough for them to see how amazing the cause was and inspire them to donate some of their money to SpecialEffect.
The marathon may have ended and we may all be struggling to stay awake even now, but I think I can speak for all of us when I say it was a blast to play our games for this amazing charity, and I’m excited to hear what our fearless leader has in store for us for next year.
But as I said earlier, there is still time to donate. There is still time to help us reach that £1000 goal. Please, take a look at SpecialEffect, see the things they do and help us out, we’ll take anything you can give. As Kim is fond of saying, help us and feel warm and fuzzy inside!
