When I started doing Extra Life in 2011, it was because I saw a few games press people doing it and thought it would be a fun thing for kicks. It was just me alone in my apartment for 24 hours with some donations from co-workers. No live streaming, no stretch goals, no guild I was helping run.
How times have changed.
This year, not only did the Ottawa Extra Life Guild attend almost every geek convention in the city, not only did I have more stretch goals that had the backing of several indie game developers, I organised and live streamed a nearly 20 person LAN party at my work with what I thought was a very high initial goal of raising $2,000USD for CHEO. Not only was it some of the most fun I’ve had in years but that $2,000 goal was completely shattered and we’ve now raised a monumental $4,615USD at time of writing! The total has flown past even my wildest dreams of what we could achieve in our first year as a team and I couldn’t be happier or more proud.
As of now, my own fundraising is at $1,320, which is certainly nothing to sneeze at but it’s also under last year’s total of $1,685. There’s a few reasons for that (more on that later) but there’s still time to donate because Extra Life takes donations until the end of the year! We’ve already crossed one stretch goal, which was my $1,000 one where I now have to play through Syndrome in one live-streamed sitting. It will also be recorded for YouTube but trust me, you’ll want to be there live. That’s probably going to have to wait until December, when my girlfriend will be back in the country and can look after the dog while I’m doing it. Follow @PXAMedia on Twitter or watch this space and I will announce when I have a firm date. I’m very close to my $1,500 stretch goal where I also have to play through Ziggurat in one sitting and we still have tons of time to reach that! With your help, I still can and maybe even surpass last year’s total and if I’m real lucky, get the Grade A IT All-Stars to $5,000! I also have to co-op System Shock 2 with Devon Payette for one of his stretch goals too.
When I put out the call to turn one of our regular LAN parties at my work into a 24 hour marathon for charity, I wasn’t sure what response I’d get. I thought maybe we’d get 10 people interested and we got close to 20. Grade A is a special place. It’s a company full of proud, hardcore nerds, even by the standards of IT companies. However, it’s also a tight-knit group, many of whom are friends outside the office. I see more of that here than I’ve seen at any other place I’ve worked. It’s a culture that’s encouraged and fostered by the management and it’s what makes the place work so well compared to many of its counterparts in the industry. It’s something I’ve always respected but I never understood just how powerful and important it is until I saw this crew playing together to support a great cause, with Devon and his friend from CHEO at our side like they were part of the crew, even though they only met most of us that day. It was almost surreal and something that gave me pause several times.
There are so many people to thank. Aside from every member of the team, I wanted to give shoutouts to some extra awesome individuals. Monica, one of our finance people–who’s only been with Grade A for a few months–was not only on the team and raised a ton of money but she and her chef fiancé offered to feed us for the entire day if we just gave her $20 each for the materials. And this wasn’t the kind of crappy food you normally would eat at a LAN party, it was top shelf stuff for breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks. We were fed like kings and it made the marathon so much easier to get through. We would have made it through either way but she went way above and beyond and she’s a hero for that.
I also wanted to thank Kevin, one of our network people, for donating his GoPro Hero 3, which allowed us to have a continuous shot of the room on the live stream. That really helped convey how much of a group effort it was.
Michaela, our wonderful marketing person, also deserves major props. She not only pushed our event hard on the company’s social media, she gave me control of Grade A’s Twitter account for the whole event to keep the stream promoted. I never asked her to do that, she just offered it to me. To trust me, a guy who hasn’t even been there a year, with something so valuable to the corporate brand was a great compliment and it was a great help to our efforts.
I also wanted to give a shout out to our various co-workers who weren’t registered with the team but still came by and hung out. Some brought their PCs and played with us for a while, some just came in and shot the breeze with us. One of the owners also came by with his kids and they seemed really amazed by the whole thing. It was really cool to see these people who weren’t doing the event still take the time to come in, hang out and give us a morale boost. Like I said, Grade A is a special place.
Last but not least, I want to thank my various cohorts from the Ottawa Extra Life Guild and Olenka Bastian, our wonderful representative at the CHEO Foundation. This was the second year of the guild and boy, how far we’ve come. The first year, we were trying to find our feet and kind of flailing around a bit. This year, we had more people involved, attended nearly every geek show in the city, signed up a pile of new players, did a second Extra Life marathon on the CHEO Telethon set, had a segment on a major local morning show and helped give Devon a gaming PC. It was an enormous achievement and while we still have more to do, we are off to a great start and are doing it with a great team. It’s been my honour and privilege to help start this guild with you all and I hope we can continue it for a long time yet.
Every year, I also vent a couple of criticisms about how the event went for me and while they are few this year, they’re still worth airing. I was very disappointed how just like Twitch and YouTube do, the official Extra Life communications only promoted events that were already massively popular and had easy ways to reach a large audience. These places didn’t need the help and meanwhile, smaller events like ours were begging just for retweets and never got them. Promoting what’s already popular is backwards and not how you get sustainable growth. I’ve already told them this and they claim they’re passing it on which is something.
I’m also really disappointed in several media outlets I contacted, particularly the CBC. CTV Ottawa has been a big supporter of us, between the telethon and our segment on their morning show. However, I sent numerous e-mails and tweets to the CBC and various personalities about Extra Life, as it’s the perfect kind of local charity event they like to cover. I got zero response. Not even one declining because they thought CTV had it covered, silence. For a public broadcaster (one I’ve vocally defended for years) to completely shun a local charity like this is profoundly disappointing. I’ve had some real issues–particularly in the last year–with the direction of some of CBC’s programming and how they’re devoting an incredible amount of attention to a narrow set of issues, at the expense of everything else. I have to say, I’m really reconsidering how much I advocate for that organisation in the future.
I had a similar thing happen with several local businesses I approached for support. These are companies that either myself, Grade A, or both, have brought a lot of business to and I wasn’t some random person, they knew who I was. Once again, I got nothing from them, not even a no. Donating to charity is a personal choice and I wouldn’t fault anyone for deciding that Extra Life wasn’t something they wanted to back. But at least send a response saying you’re not interested, don’t just ignore people who reached out. Maybe I’m too old school with how I think communication should be handled but this really got under my skin. Thankfully, we did great without them.
Beyond these things that are fairly minor in the grand scheme, almost everything about Extra Life this year vastly exceeded my expectations. I’m so proud of what the Grade A IT All-Stars accomplished and it was an honour and a privilege to have had the chance to do this with everyone.
We sadly live in a time where the mainstream media and in particular, the gaming press that’s supposed to advocate for us, have made a business model out of telling gamers how they’re bad, hateful, exclusionary people because of the actions of a few. I wonder how many of the so-called “journalists” that are poisoning the enthusiast press raised for sick kids this weekend because gamers like us, we collectively raised millions. If I’m to choose between those people or a bunch of third-rate bloggers who have made a business out of outrage when asking who did more good for the world, I think that choice is plainly obvious.
I’m a very introverted person who has few friends and doesn’t make new ones easily or often. I’ve only been at Grade A since March but it feels like somewhere I’ve been for years and it’s because of the people there. As the company continues to grow like wildfire, hold onto that culture with both hands and don’t ever lose sight of what makes that place amazing. It’s the single biggest asset the place has. Those people, they aren’t just my co-workers, they’re my friends and it’s an incredible thing to be able to do so much good with them.
Grade A’s a special place.