"Why I Extra Life" and Catching Up on Previous Year Participation Results

I was going through the blog on my phone this morning, and I realized I never recapped last year's Extra Life experience.  I started thinking to myself now is as good a time as any to do that, but I wanted to add some additional context to the recap.  I am going to do my best to set the stage for this year while explaining how we got to this point over the years.

This year's Extra Life details

In the beginning ...

Our first year of Extra Life was in 2012.  It is kind of funny to think of that as a significant amount of time ago, but to put it in perspective I had two kids in 2012, and I currently have four kids.  A lot can change in a few years!

Our Extra Life experience started when my wife Amy challenged me to do something more meaningful with my favorite hobby, gaming, rather than simply engaging in that pastime alone.  She wanted me to make a difference, which I understood.  After considering what that should mean, I decided to jump on the internet and search for something, anything that stuck out to me with regards to gaming for good.  I found Child's Play and Extra Life.

Another wonderful gaming focused charity

For people who do not know about Child's Play, it is a charity that has been around for about a decade.  Child's Play aims to bring toys, books, and games to children in hospitals and domestic violence shelters.  The focus of this post is more about our personal investment in Extra Life, but we absolutely support Child's Play as well and encourage people to visit their website to learn more about them.

As for Extra Life, I started reading about how the charity began, about Victoria Enmon, about how many kids enter Children's Miracle Network hospitals today, and about how people like Jeromy "Doc" Adams just wanted to make a difference.  There it was, people making a difference by playing games and raising money as a community for kids in need to receive the treatment and care they need at these hospitals.  The pitch resonated with me, and I was in.

The story so far ...

People might read this and say great, you like the charity, but what have you done about it since then?  Here is where our progress report comes in.  In the first year I convinced a couple of my cousins to join the cause.  We had never done legitimate timed marathons but did not think tackling 24 hours straight would be hard.  As any video or board gamer can attest, we were not strangers to pulling all nighters with friends, and that gave us a false over confidence with what our limits were.  As a result our organization was distracted.  I focused on trivial problems like what games we should play and how to communicate while playing as opposed to getting our sponsorship pages updated with a consistent message and preparing for a healthy, shareable marathon.  In the end we had three different pages, all supporting the same hospital, and, due to my lack of experience with YouTube and Twitch publishing, not many videos or pictures from the original event.  The good news is we managed to raise $590 for the kids in Children's Medical Center that year, which was not half bad at all.  To the kids who made use of that money, the difference we made counted, and that is what mattered the most.

The second year we took time to digest lessons learned from year one.  In 2013 we supported two hospitals, Children's Medical and Our Lady of the Lake, across the two states where all our donors resided, Texas and Louisiana.  Our team all met in one location and played the marathon in person for the first time as well to provide direct support to one another.  Our pages were clean and customized with event details and personal notes.  Aside from me failing to archive our Twitch footage from the event (whoops), things went pretty smoothly.  In fact we took a step forward in donations, raising $658 for Children's and $208 for Our Lady of the Lake.  Rather than split our donations and raise less for both hospitals, we ended up growing with the event year to year.  Our team was overwhelmed with the response.

Finally, last year we got more engaged.  I joined the local Street Team and began meeting with fellow participants and official hospital representatives in late 2013 and took a more in depth role in 2014.  We helped with recruitment ideas, and we socialized the charity more proactively with our network of family, friends, and the businesses we support.  Our numbers stayed flat for the most part.  We raised $590 for Children's (coincidentally matching the first year total) and $270 for Our Lady of the Lake, but we gained new participants for the hospitals and a much more tightly knit relationship with them.

I want to sincerely thank each and every donor again at this point because without you we never raise over $1,800 for Children's Medical or almost $500 for Our Lady of the Lake.  It just does not happen without the support and commitment from our sponsors.  Thank you, thank you, thank you.  To give you some insight into the charity as a whole, Doc Adams tweeted this month that Extra Life is on pace to possibly (possibly being a keyword, so temper that unbridled emotion and save it for meeting the goal!) raise more this year than in the past seven years combined.  Combined.  Wow.

Still to come ...

This year we are actively committing more time and more energy than ever before on the charity.  As Extra Life has grown so has our family, and we are fortunate as a group to be a part of the local Guild community.  Our entire family attended the kickoff event, and I was extremely blessed to be asked to contribute as part of the leadership team.  Joshua and I attend monthly meetings with a splendid group of people who are all every bit as passionate as we are about helping kids who need help more than anything in the world.  Our team itself has expanded as well, as my nephew is participating for the first time ever and supporting Texas Children's, which again coincidentally is the hospital the charity started with, the one that cared for Victoria Enmon.  The more invested we get in making a difference, the more closely tied to this charity we find ourselves.

In the end ...

Alright, I got carried away with the subheadings.  This year promises to be a huge event, and we have a lot of work to do to push our recruitment and fundraising totals past the limits.  I hope this post served its purpose of explaining why we Extra Life, and I hope it encourages everyone who reads to follow our progress throughout the rest of this year.

To sign up for Extra Life yourself, or to learn more please visit: http://www.extra-life.org/index.cfm?

To support our hospital, Children's Medical Center, visit my donor page and select the "Support Me" button to get started with your secure, tax deductible donation.

Thanks for reading!

- Scott

Extra Life 101: Most Frequently Asked Questions

One of the primary goals of this blog is to help me communicate critical information to people about the Extra Life charity, and one thing I have never done is post an FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) style list of what I am most often asked.  That gets fixed today!  Here are the questions I most often get concerning the Extra Life annual charity and the answers to them.

Extra Life 2015

Q: What is Extra Life?
A: Extra Life is an annual charity event benefiting Children's Miracle Network Hospitals.  The original event was focused on supporting Texas Children's Hospital and was inspired by a young lady named Victoria Enmon who sadly passed away in 2008 following a bout with acute lymphoblastic leukemia.  Details on Tori's story and how the charity has expanded from a local event to an international event can be found here.  The bottom line is the event allows people to play games, similar to how people participate in marathons focused on dancing or running/walking, and ask people to sponsor them with donations.  The donations are submitted through the player page found on the Extra Life website and go directly to the hospital the player has elected to support. 

To sign up visit the registration page today.  Your registration this year is for 2015, and each subsequent year you will need to register again to participate in that particular year; however, with your account you can access data from the previous years you participated in as well as access tools to customize your donation page with text and pictures and contact donors who have provided their contact information to thank them.  Make sure you log in with your existing account each year you sign up.  I used a different email address one year by accident, and that data is separate from my primary account data due to the mix-up.  If you log in and manage your personal information through the same account that should not be a problem.

Q: Am I supporting a specific hospital?
A: Absolutely.  The original event started small and raised over $300,000 for Texas Children's; however, seeing an excellent opportunity to spread the reach of the program, participants can now select from over 170 different hospitals within the Children's Miracle Network.  Last year's event raised millions of dollars across those hospitals, and this year will be even bigger.

When you register to participate in Extra Life, you are asked to select a specific hospital to support.  Some people support a hospital where a family member, friend, or possibly the participant themselves has been treated, while others select their local hospital, which you can search for here if you want to look prior to registration by using your zip code or state.

If you are asking as a donor, check the page of the participant you are helping sponsor.  You will see their hospital listed on the right side of the page along with a tag that reads "Playing in support of."  It will look like the picture below from my personal page.  Your donation goes directly to that hospital that is listed.

Here is what to look for when identifying the specific hospital a player is supporting.

Q: Is my donation tax deductible?
A: Yes, it is 100% tax deductible.  Print a copy of the receipt, or if you were unable to, then reach out to the player you sponsored.  They can view donations and confirm amounts etc. if you need something for your records.  I would recommend printing the confirmation page though for tax purposes, as that is your best record available.

Q: How do I get more involved?
A: As the Extra Life program grows, the original organizers have found a creative way to enlist volunteers who are invested in their local hospital.  That is called the Guild program.  An Extra Life Guild directory and basic description can be found here.  If you're hospital does not yet have a Guild, then join the Extra Life community forums to talk to people and find ways to help.  You may find other folks local to your area who want to help as well in similar ways.  We attend events like video game, board game, and comic or pop culture conventions as well as smaller scale events that provide an opportunity to expand the reach to new supporters. 

At the most basic level, wearing Extra Life t-shirts and starting conversations with people you already know is a great way to spread the news.  You can get Extra Life gear by being a Platinum participant and raising $200 (see below for more details on "Platinum" registration) or participating in the Miracle Band program.  These are excellent conversation starters, and I get more people to participate through enthusiastic conversations than by any other means.

Q: Can you explain how teams work?
A: Sure, when you join or even after you join you can select a team of other players or even choose to create your own.  Joining a team is a good way to help foster support among people you know.  A team has a roster of individual participants, all of whom may choose a specific hospital to support, and allows for accumulating team totals and badges.  To state that another way, you can support a different hospital from other folks in your team.  My team, Super Game Boys, is supporting hospitals in Dallas, Houston, and Baton Rouge this year as an example.  It's a great way to build camaraderie with the people you recruited or were recruited by.

Q: If I join, do I really have to play a 24 hour marathon?  Does it have to be on the specific "game day" listed?
A: No, this may be the most asked question.  Not everyone is in a position to play games of any kind for 24 hours straight, and it may even be unhealthy for some people to attempt.  There are a few keys to keep in mind to help alleviate the concerns here:

• You can play any type of game you want, from video games, smart device games, or web based browser games to board and card games to sports and outdoor games.  One year my oldest son had a soccer game on our planned event day, so we counted that as part of the marathon and played on our Nintendo 3DS handhelds and smart phones in the car when driving back and forth from our house to the field!  I would suggest at minimum playing one active or physical game during your marathon, if you choose to do a marathon, which leads me to point #2 ...

• There is no hard record of your marathon, and it is fully understood and accepted that some folks will not play a full 24 hours straight.  Want to play two hours per weekend for a month?  Awesome.  Want to just sum up anytime spent playing games from your regular schedule?  Great.  How and when you game is up to you.  The general guideline is that everyone is asked to try their best to raise $100 dollars minimum.  However you do that is your choice.

• Regardless of how you play, your own health and safety is paramount.  Drink lots of water (not soda or sugar filled energy drinks, water), eat healthy food, rest when you feel tired, and be sure to stretch and rest your eyes periodically.  Visit here for a similar summary of best practices.

Q: What are the different participant levels in registration?  In other words, what is a Platinum registrant?
A: This gets overlooked a lot, but it is an easy element of the program to get confused on specific to people participating.  When you register you have the option to play for free (noted as "Classic" registration) or join as a Platinum participant for $15.  Platinum membership means you are basically enlisting in the rewards program tied to the event.  You are eligible for event related gear once you hit certain tiers of fundraising (listed below).  Raised more money than expected and want to swap to Platinum?  No problem.  Visit here for details.

• $200 raised: the Platinum t-shirt for the year (design varies year to year)
• $500 raised: silver medal with the Extra Life logo
• $1000 raised: gold medal with the Extra Life logo

Q: Do you recommend any resources to generate enthusiasm on social networks?
A: I do!  Twitch is a big partner with Extra Life, and anyone can setup an account and start streaming games with some basic equipment and software.  Twitch even provides the option to list your game as "Extra Life" to clearly identify the community as we undertake our game days.  Modern consoles allow direct to Twitch streaming out of the gate too. 

Children's Miracle Network Hospitals also has a great set of inspiring videos on YouTube.  I love sharing these because of how well done they are.  Alternatively, share your game day pictures and videos and requests for donations with your existing social networks whether it be on Twitter, Facebook, etc.  The easiest way to get donations is to ask people, and the easiest people to ask are typically in your existing social network of friends.
 
Q: I love this charity, and I think my company would be open to helping as well.  Are there corporate sponsorship opportunities?
A: Yes, but this is harder to lock down in a single FAQ post.  My recommendation would be to visit the Guild page listed above or the forums and request a specific contact.  Alternatively, there is a form on the main site that allows people to inquire about partnership and corporate sponsor opportunities.  Visit here.

Q: You type too much, is there a shorter FAQ?
A: Fine, here. 

For family, friends, and participants who are reading this, I encourage you to reach out to me directly if you want to know more.  I love talking about Extra Life, and thankfully I have access to helpful information due to my participation in the local Guild.  I'll even come talk at an event if you have one!  Just ask.

- Scott

2013 Charity Wrap-up

I meant to post this sooner than I am (especially since our team finished Extra Life duties this year in November), but now is a great time to reflect on how successful our Extra Life campaign was this year.  As always we owe a huge debt of gratitude to our friends and families who donated to both Children's Medical Center and Our Lady of the Lake this year.  Our team does the fun stuff (play video games, bug people on social networks, etc.), but the real heroes are all of you who make sure the children we support are receiving much needed funds.  From the bottom of our hearts, thank you.

Now on to the numbers!

This year we took a different approach to the marathon.  For starters we supported two hospitals, since the majority of our donors are split across two states.  Secondly we had the entire team play from one location.  Both of these were meant to directly address some lessons learned from last year.  We still have some things to tweak (see lessons learned 2013 at the bottom of this post), but a lot went really well.

Last year (2012) we raised $590 for Children's Medical Center.  We had three team members all playing for the one hospital.  This year (2013) we raised $866 with a breakdown of $658 for Children's Medical Center and $208 for Our Lady of the Lake.  The really encouraging part about those numbers is that we did not sacrifice donors to Children's Medical Center in favor of Our Lady of the Lake.  We beat our total last year and were able to give to an additional hospital.  I cannot tell you how rewarding this is.  We initially had a goal set for $1,200, but a few avenues for donations that we pursued outside of our family and friend circle never really panned out.  I reduced the goal to $800, but luckily we were able to surpass that lowered goal.  We are slowly climbing towards $1,000 in a given year.

Our year over year total for donations rose $276 or roughly 147% of last year's total.  If we just look at Children's Medical Center, we increased our donations by $68 or 112% of last year's total.  Our Lady of the Lake has no comparison point, since it was a new hospital for us this year.  For now, thanks to all of you, we have raised a grand total of $1,456 over two years for the hospitals.

Next year we are considering a Spring marathon to support either Extra Life or additional charities.  I am still evaluating this.  I do not want to burn people out and lose donations for any one cause, but if we can manage two major events per year and raise money for both Extra Life and additional charities such as Child's Play or Operation Supply Drop, I would really love that.  I encourage everyone reading this to learn more about any of these great causes.

Last but not least we have this year's lessons learned.  For starters I have to apologize.  I was unaware of Twitch's archiving policy, and I did not cut any highlights from our live stream before the videos were removed.  The first big lesson learned is if we live stream on Twitch in the future, then I need to do a better job of moving some of the footage to YouTube or my local storage.  Luckily we also took a lot of pictures and some live video and shared to Facebook, but I know some people were hoping to see highlights from the stream.

Another lesson learned is make sure all games work as expected in advance.  I thought John and I could start up a local Left 4 Dead 2 multi-player session with minimal effort, but I was sorely mistaken.  It is a convoluted and confusing process to get multi-player for that game working on PC.  Sadly some of you may have seen a few minutes of angry streaming on Twitch as John and I were testing things.  Next year we will have to plan more suitable games that are also stream-able.  We also had to drag an old CRT TV into my office for the retro streams of Custom Robo and Super Mario Advance.  The TV was only outputting in black and white for us, but it worked.  I have a new monitor though for next year to assist in dual screening gameplay captured off of legacy systems.  We will try to make this a much bigger part of future marathons because everyone loved it (including the players).

Finally both John and I hit a wall of severe fatigue around 2AM - 3AM again this year, and frankly gunning caffeine is not sufficient to bust through it (nor is it very healthy).  Next year we are planning to pause the marathon at 2AM, sleep for several hours, and resume the marathon around 8AM following sleep.  That would mean we start at 8AM Saturday and roll until 2AM Sunday.  We then pick things back up at 8AM Sunday and roll until 2PM Sunday afternoon.  This would keep the players sane and much more healthy through the weekend.  It is fun to pull all-nighters, but it is also a chore to grind through the quiet hours of the night.

Thanks for reading through our 2013 marathon highlights.  We appreciate everyone who makes each marathon for charity such a wonderful experience and success, and we wish everyone a safe, relaxing, and happy holiday season.

See you in 2014.
- Scott

Blog Re-branding, Twitch Debut, Extra Life 2013

Lots of updates to throw at everyone tonight.

First off, John and I have officially signed up for Extra Life 2013 under a new team name.  My son asked us to go with something a little more positive this year, and after some deliberation our team name is now Super Game Boys inspired largely by Nintendo's Super Game Boy cartridge and the original Game Boy and Game Boy Advance devices.  You can locate our team page on the Extra Life site here.

We are supporting two regional hospitals this year.  Please see the donation links below.  Remember your donations go straight to the hospital listed, and all donations are tax deductible.  Click the "Support me!" button on the player pages and follow the instructions to submit a donation.  Thanks for everyone's support!

To donate to Children's Medical Center in Dallas, TX, visit this page here.

To donate to Our Lady of the Lake Children's Hospital in Baton Rouge, LA, visit this page here.

In line with our Extra Life efforts this year, I started playing with the open source recording program Open Broadcaster Software.  John and I tested it tonight, and, despite our audio and comedic timing needing extensive work, it went pretty well.  We will do occasional live streams on our freshly opened Twitch page.  Delayed uploads and the occasional offline recordings can be found at my existing YouTube page here.

We are planning marathons on August 15th/16th from 9PM to 1AM and throughout the international marathon on November 2nd/3rd.  We look forward to everyone visiting our pages and hopefully enjoying some of the content.  Suggestions welcomed!

- Scott

Extra Life 2012 Review, A Huge Success

Our team wanted to take this opportunity to again thank all of our family and friends for the support through encouragement and donations for last week's Extra Life 2012 marathon.

Stats from the Event

Originally we had set our goal low because we did not know what to expect.  We had a goal of $250 to start with, which I increased when Nick joined the team to $325.  When the dust settled after the event we had a total of $590 in donations.  This is great for a couple of reasons.  For one we were overwhelmed by how strong our circle of friends and family supported Children's Medical Center.  For two it gives us a solid goal to set next year.  We have a baseline now, and we know what to shoot for in the future (and believe me we plan on doing better than $590 next year for sure).

To put some context to the number, the coordinators at Extra Life told us that each registered participant brings in an average of $100.  That is a good number considering we had over 15,000 registered participants this year, so hopefully that statistic held up.  Based on some rough math and the last number communicated to the teams, the event raised over $1,930,000 across over 15,000 gamers, which is a little over $120 per participant.  Amazingly an estimated half of registered participants may never raise a dollar due to various reasons, so that average is even higher if $0 participants are factored out.

On our team we started three individual fund raising pages.  Right now we sit at $590, so split that by three to get an average of $196.67 per participant, well above the average.  We were also 3 out of 132 participants to play for Children's Medical Center.  Those 132 (or more if more joined after hospital data was provided) pushed Children's Medical Center into the top 25 hospitals by funds raised.  Out of over 2,300 teams, our team ranks in the top 650, which is pretty good for a first attempt.

Lessons Learned

I also wanted to talk about some of the lessons we learned this year, since it was our first try at gaming for charity.  One thing I certainly want to do next year is diversify our hospitals.  We have a lot of relatives and friends in Louisiana, and our hospital was in Texas.  The Louisiana folks still supported heavily, but local community is always easier to rally around.  Expect to see several hospital options from our team next year.

We also had three separate pages for the same hospital.  Even though we had three people actively seeking donations, I want to simplify that next year.  Look for one page per hospital we support.  Our team will discuss that next year when we prep for the event.

We also learned plenty of lessons about playing games for 24 hours.  Surprisingly we did not even come close to our planned games list.  24 hours is not as long as you might suspect when playing engaging games.  We'll simplify our list next year.  Out of my personal list, we played Skylanders, Lego Batman 2, Mario Kart, Sonic the Hedgehog 4 Episode II, Shatter, Halo Reach, Left 4 Dead, Crazy Taxi, and Red Dead Redemption, along with a few Android games Joshua played.  That is roughly 2 and a half hours per game, with the most played games being Lego Batman 2 and Halo Reach. Additionally we learned that the entire team hit a wall at the exact same time (from about 2:30 AM to 3:30AM was when that wall hit for each of us).  We may look to rotate in at that point or take snack breaks or something.  That wall was vicious.

I think one positive I will try to maintain next year was the types of updates I provided via Facebook and Twitter.  I tried not to inundate everyone with random game details, but instead focus simply on what games we were playing at the time and the people who were playing them.  Any feedback on the updates would be welcome, but everything I have heard was pretty positive.

Finally look for a higher goal next year.  We shot low and hit high this year, but we do not want to make it easy on ourselves.  We expect to match and surpass our totals next year.

Final Thoughts

Finally I wanted to let everyone know the donation pages will still be active for a few days more.  We will no longer be actively seeking donations, since our planned event has passed.  However, if you would like to donate feel free to visit our team page here: Shoot Many Bad Guys.  The page will be taken down prior to end of the year for various reasons by the event coordinators.  The slate needs to be cleaned prior to any 2013 events for various tax and reporting reasons.

Thanks again everyone for the support.  In the meantime we plan to utilize this blog to cover video games our team is currently playing.  If you want to read any reviews from our team, feel free to check this space.

Until next time.
- Scott

Game Time!

We are live and underway with Extra Life 2012!  Follow this space today or any of our players' Facebook or Twitter feeds to get all the details.

There is still time to donate.  Head over to our team page and select any of our participants to donate to Children's Medical Center of Dallas.

-Scott

The Cornucopia Approach to Marathon Gaming

We are just two days away from this year's Extra Life Gaming Marathon!  The Shoot Many Bad Guys team will kick things off just before 8AM on Saturday Oct 20 this weekend.  I wanted to communicate our plans for the big event to our friends and family, since you all have been the ones supporting us as we do our best to bring in donations to the Children's Medical Center.

A lot of other Extra Life participants are very focused in their gaming goals this weekend.  I have heard a lot of teams are streaming games or will be attempting to play through individual games during their marathons.  All of that sounds exciting, but as first timers our team was looking for some variety in our marathon.  What we decided to do was play a plethora of different titles across Microsoft's XBOX 360, Sony's PlayStation 3 (and possibly PS2), Nintendo's Wii and 3DS, PC, and even Google's Android OS for smartphones.  Needless to say that gives us plenty to choose from, and if I feel the need I can always play Sega's swan song system the Dreamcast or hunt down my Neo Geo Pocket.  If anything we will need to be careful not to spread ourselves thin!

I will be tackling some family friendly games during the day with Joshua, including Skylanders for Wii, Lego Batman 2 for XBOX 360, Sonic the Hedgehog 4 Episodes 1 and 2 on Steam, and even some Pokemon for 3DS.  Look for us to crank up the online multi-player at night with games like Gears of War and Halo Reach.  It would not be October without a little Halloween influence, so in the early morning hours we are planning on some darker titles like Dead Space 2, Limbo, and Left 4 Dead.  Obviously the titles we actually get to play are subject to how our timing with the marathon is going and whether we can keep our eyes open for that long!  This sample list is just to show everyone we have a lot in store for this weekend's event.

We will do our best to post frequently to Facebook and YouTube and encourage everyone to keep an eye out for some fun updates throughout the weekend.  Originally we were considering some self-deprecating updates, but we never got much feedback on those.  Some people think more donors will show up if humiliation is involved, but I guess that depends on who is donating.  We'll see if we can work some humor into our updates, but most importantly we will do our best to convey how grateful we are to all the support we have.  Hopefully our participation, and the event itself, continues to grow and develop year to year.

We are almost ready for game time!
-Scott

Extra Life Wants You ... To Play Games!

John and I had the privilege of participating in a conference call yesterday with the Extra Life event coordinators from Children's Miracle Network as well as some of the folks involved in the event this year.  We heard some interesting facts, and we are excited to share some of the details.

One of the really interesting focal points of the discussion was that Extra Life needs more people.  The coordinators know that a lot of effort is focused on sponsorship and requesting donations, but they wanted to encourage all of us to recruit more gamers to the cause as well.  Once you average out the total sponsorships per participant, it comes out to about $100 per gamer.  Considering that we are over 9,600 gamers strong with 15 days to go, that is a lot of money for the kids!  The goal this year is to find 12,000 gamers by the October 20th event date.

Here's how you can participate.  If you would like to play games for kids in need on October 20th (or any date, more on that in a minute), then all you have to do is create a sponsorship page on the Extra Life website.  The coordinators gave us some great tools to help you get started.  To do a fast registration, follow this link here.  This is the quick registration form that allows you to get started and complete registration when you have more time.  You will receive an email at the address you enter with details on finalizing your sponsorship page.  If you have time to fully register right away, just go to the main page registration flow found here.  If you are looking for a team to join, feel free to join John and I with "Shoot Many Bad Guys."  We are open for anyone who would like to join us, and you can select any hospital in the Children's Miracle Network as your charity (i.e. it does not have to match the rest of the team).  Just select "Shoot Many Bad Guys" from the team list during registration if you need a team, or feel free to start a new team or join another team if you know someone else involved.

Here are some notes on event registration.  The coordinators made sure to emphasize this is an inclusive event.  The core purpose of Extra Life is to generate funds for children in need in the Children's Miracle Network hospitals.  They need everyone's help, and no one will be turned away from supporting the event.  This means that the 24 hour marathon does not have to be 24 full hours if you cannot commit to that.  Some people are not able to commit to that amount of time, whereas some people actually play longer (some folks mentioned full weekend long marathons during the conference call).  Any game can be played for any amount of time, this include board games with your family.  The whole idea is to bring gamers together for a great cause, and any amount of time spent playing games with friends and family for kids in need is welcomed.  The coordinators also made sure to reiterate that if October 20th is not good for you, then pick a different day.  October 20th is the national event and the target sponsorship date, but there is some flexibility.  The sponsorship pages will be available for some time after, but the goal date is October 20th.

If you have any questions feel free to get in touch with me, or, more importantly, if you or someone else wants to get involved, then share the information and encourage them to get started!

- Scott

How to Donate

I clicked through the donation process last night on the Extra Life website, and I realized some people may have questions or concerns.  It is not entirely trivial, so this blog serves as our "how do I donate?" FAQ.

Q) I really want to support Children's Medical Center.  How do I sponsor your team?
A) Right now we are looking for donations, plain and simple.  We need financial support leading up to marathon day October 20th.  Here is how to access the donation pages.

Scott has a donation page here: Scott's Page
John has a donation page here: John's Page

On either of these pages, you will see a big blue button that says "SUPPORT ME!"  One is found on the right of the screen and one in the middle.  A sample image of the button is below.  When you find this button on our pages, click it to get started.

You may have also noticed we have a team tracking page here: Shoot Many Bad Guys .  This page is a tracking page for how John and I are doing.  If you want to donate from this page, click on John's name or my name at the bottom of the tracking page.  Do not click "Join Team" unless you plan on gaming with us for 24 straight hours in October. =P

Q) Okay I clicked "SUPPORT ME!"  Is the rest of the process difficult?
A) It is not too difficult from here.  You will see some suggested guidelines on donating for our charity.  There are options to give a one time gift or to give monthly gifts for a set number of months.  You are welcome to choose either.  Also you do not have to choose from the preset $12, $25, $50, and $100 levels.  There is a free form, text entry option as well to donate whatever you can at the bottom of the amount list.

You can allow people to see your email/info if you want to be recognized or remain anonymous if you prefer.  You can also select to leave a message to the fundraiser or any donors viewing our pages.  Those options are up to you.

Once you have set your donation and recognition details, all you have to do is enter your billing information.  Children's Miracle Network stands by its website as a secure place to donate funds.  They utilize https protocol and have a privacy policy; both good things.  You may choose to donate via PayPal or any major credit card vendor.  If you choose PayPal, it will prompt you to access PayPal and confirm the funds.  For credit cards simply enter your info on the page.  When you are done click through to the Next Step.

Q) What else do I need to know?  Is this donation tax deductible?
A) Yes, once you enter your details and click through to confirm your donation, you will be given a receipt.  I believe the receipt will go to your email address or you can print the confirmation screen.  Either way use this during tax time if you would like to claim the charitable donation then.

At that point you are done, and we are extremely thankful for your generosity.  If you have any other questions feel free to contact me.  I have comments enabled on this blog post for folks to ask questions here or find me via whatever channel you usually get in touch with me through.

Thanks.
- Scott

What's in a Name, the Introduction

Welcome to the blog!

I decided to set this blog up to follow the Shoot Many Bad Guys team as we work towards raising money for charity and performing in gaming marathons.  I am excited about bringing content to our friends, including YouTube clips, games we are currently playing, and most importantly how to donate to the causes we support.

For the introductory blog, I wanted to talk about our name.  Our name is a pretty cool mash-up of two things that make me smile, video games and my son.  My wife deserves credit for helping me put two and two together.  A favorite game of mine to play is Shoot Many Robots for PC by developer Demiurge Studios.  Now my son is pretty fond of robots, so he prefers shooting just the "bad guys" as he puts it.  In fact my son was playing Pew Pew 2 from developer Jean-François Geyelin on my HTC One X when he shouted "SHOOT THE BAD GUYS!"  My wife looked at me after that and said "hey what about Shoot Many Bad Guys for a team name."  I called John to tell him, and we both agreed it was perfect.

Our objective as a team is to raise money for charity.  More specifically in the near term we want to raise money for the Extra Life 24 hour gaming marathon this October 20th.  All proceeds go to Children's Miracle Network Hospitals, and our funds in particular will go to Children's Medical Center in Dallas, TX (http://www.childrens.com/).

To donate, navigate to either of our donor pages or the team page on the Extra Life website as seen below, click the blue "SUPPORT ME!" button on the page, and follow the donor instructions:

My Team (Scott, Joshua) - http://www.extra-life.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=donorDrive.participant&participantID=34293
John's Team (John, Pat) - http://www.extra-life.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=donorDrive.participant&participantID=34302
Shoot Many Bad Guys Home tracking page - http://www.extra-life.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=donorDrive.team&teamID=9160

Donating is secured by the foundation, and again all proceeds go to the hospitals in need.  Gaming is fun alone, but it is even better when for a great cause.

As we approach October 20th (1 month away!) I will post information on the games we plan on playing as well as our stretch goals.  Our team goal right now is $250 overall, but I know we can do better than that.  If we do better than that, John's team and my team might do some goofy stuff in front of a camera for YouTube.  Everyone likes a laugh right?  Well help us beat our goal!

Until next time.
- Scott