Extra Life/SingSterling: It was tricky to rock a rhyme, but we rocked it

9:12 PM on 10.20.2008   |   Jim Sterling

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This weekend, something incredibly special happened. Sarcastic Gamer hosted the world's first Extra Life event -- a worldwide gaming marathon raising money to fight pediatric cancer. Destructoid was part of the festivities and in the city of Manchester, Wardrox and I invited you to watch a live feed of The SingSterling Challenge -- twelve consecutive hours of SingStar, with a potential further twelve if a target was met.

Sadly, even with money donated from the Damnation/Rise of the Argonauts dev team, we didn't quite the hit the mark. Time was against us -- we came into Extra Life late, and one week of mine was spent in Tokyo so I couldn't promote it. However, we did manage to raise $3000, while Extra Life itself netted over $100,000! Woot!

In other news, SG's Doc tells me that, following the announcement of the SingSterling challenge, other members of the Dtoid readership took part in Extra Life and raised their own funds. As a collective, we probably more than made $5000 together, and that's great.

We are currently working on producing a video package of the event, including some mini-interviews conducted with my slowly dying self throughout the night. That should hit later in the week. Until then, I'd like to share a few words of thanks, so hit the jump for that, if you are so inclined. Oh, and we'll do better next year!

I'd like to thank:

• Wardrox, who not only hosted the event and got the feed working, but helped the evening stay hilarious with some fantastic duets. Honestly, every fucking writer needs a Wardrox, and I mean that.
• Doc and the rest of Sarcastic Gamer for being awesome and setting up a wonderful charity.
• Alcoholic Jesus for walking around half-naked during the night's festivities.
• The guy who gave me the throat sweets. Mucho appreciated.
• The people who spent the time promoting us around the web. VGCats, VG247, GamePolitics, The Media Whore Network, Negative Gamer, Ars Technica and The Official PlayStation Blog all helped raise awareness. Thank you for being good enough to help a good cause. I wish more sites were like you.
• Codemasters for their $1000 sponsorship.
• The supporting CBlogs that all popped up after the event. Very nice to read while I rested up.
• The Dtoid staff members who helped and supported this entire event, especially Niero, Colette and Dyson, who collectively convinced me that a SingStar marathon was the way to go.

Finally, I'd like to thank everyone who watched the live feed and gave running commentary of the evening with such enthusiasm and (that word again) support. At any one time, we had over 100 viewers and I imagine that, with turnover factored into it, we had a lot more watching overall. It was your swaying of cellphones as if they were lighters on webcam, your excited all-caps declarations of "YES" when you heard us selecting a song you wanted, and the story of you all singing along to YMCA either on the feed, in IRC or over Xbox Live that helped make this whole thing what it was.

Wardrox will tell you, at least every five minutes I was checking up on you guys, wanting to know if you were enjoying yourselves. If we couldn't raise the high amount I asked for, then the least we could do was have fun. According to the reports, fun is what you had. I can't say fairer than that. 

Every now and then, in any job, you get doubts. You wonder if you're in the right place. Then a bunch of people get excited about you singing Take On Me after eight hours of SingStar and you realize you have the best job in the world. So thanks for that, too.

Like I said, next year will be even better.