I’ll be quite honest, I didn’t think we would. I had always hoped, but it was some target for us to meet.

Having recovered from attempting to reset my body clock post the arduous twenty-four hour gaming marathon I partook, I would like to say thank you.

On October 15, just over a day ago, along with the rest of Team MediaKick, we set off on a day-long journey of video game playing to help raise money for our local Children’s Miracle Network Hospital. I’m not going to lie, it was difficult. Even though playing video games is something I love to do on a regular basis for both enjoyment and now work, playing it for an entire day was hard work. Hell, even staying up that long when not fueled by a mixture of Red Bull and Jägermeister was hard enough. As the sun began to rise in the morning, I was inches away from my eyes forcing themselves shut, but I powered through and now, here we are.

We did it! We played games for twenty-four hours for charity. That’s not the big news however, the big news is that we managed to hit our target donation amount already! That’s right, we have already raised over $1000. Can you believe it? I certainly can’t. Last year I managed to raise a personal target of $200, and this year I’ve already shattered that having reached over $460. You can still donate as well, donations are open for a few more weeks, but if you want to be entered into one of our many prize draws as well, then make sure to have your donations in by the end of October, as we’ll be making draws on November 1.

If that wasn’t impressive enough, the entire marathon has raised over… $1,000,000. That’s no typo; one million dollars. That’s quite frankly an insane amount of money and when you consider the previous three years combined totalled at just over three-quarters of a million, it makes it even more impressive.

So this is our thank you. Thank you to everyone who donated, to everyone who took part, even to those that just cheered us on. Special thanks to my other half Linda for all of her assistance throughout the day.

Thank you to Dave, who, like a madman, played Dark Souls for the entirety of the marathon:

“Firstly, I apologise to people for the lack of visibility. Dark Souls has a rather nasty habit of booting people out of the game if they party up, so was only allowed to communicate via Private Chat. I did comment a fair bit on Facebook, but not a lot more than that.

I managed to get to Blight-town in 24 hours, which I have now seen as probably the hardest segment yet. To get this far in 24 hours is a real achievement, despite the lack of unlocks! A huge thanks to Bravster (Stephen Chatfield) for pointing out that shooting the dragon’s tail with a bow and arrow 20 times yields a rather nice sword. This sword has gotten me through some tough segments, and instantly kills the Elite Knights I seemed to be struggling against for so long. While he was financially unable to contribute, helping make the experience easier was equally as good.

A huge thanks to those who donated/have pledged to donate, with special mentions to my family for putting up with my abuse hurling at the TV, and to my better half Charlie Dormer, who despite working in the evening took some time out to do what I probably should have been doing!

It’s certainly been an adventurous 24 hours and as it turns out a monumental one. So many thanks to everyone involved and hope to count on you next year.”

Thank you to Ryan:

“I’d just like to say a huge thank you to everyone who donated and helped us reach our goal of $1000. It means an awful lot to us that we managed beat our rather optimistic target and contribute towards the staggering $1 million raised by Extra Life.”

Thank you to Phil:

“Have to say a big thanks to all who donated to us. I was worried that I wouldn’t even get to my goal of $100, but to smash it and get $140+ was just amazing. Not to mention our team reaching its $1000 goal, which is beyond belief. I’m nothing short of proud and totally humbled over people’s generosity. To be a part of such an amazing event and to have contributed, no matter how small it seems in comparison to the amazing total of over $1.1 million, feels fantastic.

A massive thanks to everybody and a hearty congrats to everyone else on Team MediaKick, who are all fantastic guys, who I’m equally proud of. Amazing job!

Now, bring on next year!”

Thank you to Liam:

“Would like to say thank you to all those who donated and those who joined in for a few games.”

and also to Harry, who despite not being part of our Extra Life team, was there to game with the whole time.

I am personally extremely proud of this team who are some of the nicest guys around, and I am proud to be part of this community, this industry.

So thank you. All of you.