Twice a year, they gather for one sole purpose. One singular mission. Playing video games 24 hours to help raise money to go the Extra Life charity to help sick kids in Children’s Hospital. This would be the 7th year of Nexev manager Cody Howard hosting the events, one that already took place on April 16th, and then the past one that took place November 7th. He has been largely successful with the events he has had, and this year, he once again smashed it out of the ballpark.
If you are wondering what usually happens during the events, he invites a number of people to come play video games in person as he hosts a stream online on his Twitch channel. People can join in online as well and interact with the people playing. There is a whole wide range of games that are played from shooters, puzzle games, fighting games, and silly games. The favorite this year due to its recent release was Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 which is a first person shooter pitting you against enemy combatants to see who can get the most kills.
During the day, Jessica Zoric and Joshua Hartz of God Hates Unicorns came to visit for their first time, and here is her perspective of the event:
“I was lucky enough to participate in the Nexev 24-hour stream for the incredible charity, Extra Life. Now
you may be thinking, goodness Jessica, you stayed awake for 24 hours? I did not. In fact, I was there for
2 hours, and then went home to take a nap. That’s why we need people like Demo Demon to run these
events. (Also, his beautiful wife Erica, who can break phones if she wants to. )
To fill you in, I’m not a gamer. I don’t know what’s happening most of the time with most of the things.
One thing that I felt confident in my ability to do though, was make toast. This was the day that I learned
that I was incorrect, and my confidence in the matter was shattered. I played a game at this event called
I Am Bread. In the game, you are bread, and your goal is to be toast. Seems easy, right? WRONG. It’s not
at all easy to be a sentient slice of loaf, squiggling your way across the room to get to a heating
apparatus suitable for toasting. The poor audience witnessed as I risked life and limb and crust to get to
my desired destination, only to end up hurling myself into a litter box of doom.
Well at least I did better than Joshua Hartz, who ended up on the floor before the action even began. It
is too bad that he did such a bad job at video games, and too bad he isn’t present to have input on my
write-up. Thankfully, the event was donation based and not performance based. They ended up with
over 1,200 for Children’s Miracle Network!!”
During the event, Demo did the One Chip Challenge of eating the hottest chip known to man. He braved the scalding temperatures as he devoured the chip whole in one sitting, and ended up completing the challenge relatively unscathed. It was all for a good cause, and as Jessica mentioned, not only did he meet his goal of reaching 1K raised for the year, he completely smashed the goal. By doing this, he would get a gold medal to display with a t-shirt from Extra Life, and this would be his second time of being awarded that medal.
All in all, it is a fun time and it is all for a good cause. Keep an eye out the next years 24 hour charity stream dates to be announced, and to keep up with everything Nexev is doing ,check out their official website