The Extra-Life charity event is a gamer-centric event (though any and all are more than welcome to participate/donate/contribute) where individuals or teams gather and promise to game for 24 hours straight through while blogging/vlogging the experience in a sort of crowd-sourced “telethon” of sorts to raise money and awareness for children who have fallen ill with any variety of terrible, sometimes terminal diseases. Thousands of gamers and hundreds of websites have been created for this event and together have raised MILLIONS of dollars to help treat and even cure these kids. To give them an “Extra Life”. ALL PROCEEDS GO DIRECTLY TO HELPING THE CHILDREN IN THEIR RESPECTIVE HOSPITALS. That’s so important to mention, it had to be capped, bolded, and italicized. A more honorable task, you’ll be hard-pressed to find.

We sometimes forget that as cynical and sarcastic as we, the “nerd/geek/gamer/fanboy” community can be, we also have some of the biggest hearts in the world and I’m constantly in awe of what we can do when our powers combined are given a focused target.

Extra-Life was formed in 2008 by a gentleman known as “Doc” who, during his time as a radio DJ, came to know a young girl named Victoria “Tori” Enmon that had been diagnosed with a rare form of leukemia. At the time, Doc had belonged to a group called the Sarcastic Gamer Community and during one of her hospital stays where she really couldn’t get out, he asked the community to help out by sending her games to raise spirits. They responded better than any could have hoped. Sadly, Tori soon after passed away, but her spirit lit a flame in Doc and the community at large and he dedicated himself to honor her memory by continuing to help children who had become innocent victims to horrible illnesses via the Chlidren’s Miracle Network. Doc has since quit the radio biz and gone on to work full-time for the CMN as their Radio-thon Director.

A video was made better describing this story, please watch: Continue reading →