On November 12, I woke up at 7:30 am, I got some drinks and snacks together, and I sat on the couch and played video games for 24 hours straight. That’s right, I was a no good, time wasting, lazy, stereotypical millennial that helped raise over $850,000 for Children’s Hospitals across the country; and that's just the unofficial number. I just took part in Extra Life, a 24-hour charity event that provides equipment and games for hospitals in the Children’s Miracle Network. I’ve been taking part in this event for the past four years and I love it every single year. I love the challenge of the full 24 (or sometimes 25) hours. I love watching the entire world come together and help benefit a great cause. I love the community that gets involved. More so this year I love how we put aside all the bad things in the world to focus on the good.

I first got involved with Extra Life when my team, Rooster Teeth, announced that they were doing it. At that time, I was still in high school and, unfortunately, unemployed so I couldn’t do much in the way of donating so I spread the word by posting on social media, talking to people in the chat groups, and posting links to their donate page. Since then I have done my best to be a more active force in the event. It pleases me to see that over the years many others took up the same mentality. Our community has grown just as exponentially has our donation total does each year. So, what makes the Rooster Teeth Extra Life event so special? What keeps us coming back and donating more and more money each year? Well, dearie, I know you don’t have the patience to read about each year, so I’ll just summarize this year’s.

The stream started off with a pre-recorded video that showed what the funds from previous years went to pay for at their hospital (Dell Children’s). They also went to show that they were raising money this year to refurbish a wing of the hospital that will be made into a behavioral center that will help improve children’s mental health and find correlations that affect their physical conditions. After the video they introduced themselves and that there were new things this year, such as new groups that were going to switch throughout the night and the new raffle system that was put in place that used specific donation amounts that equated to buying a ticket in order to win a certain perk or prize. Once all of the housekeeping was out of the way, Extra Life truly began. Which is to say the torment began.

Extra Life donation pages offer preset donate amounts such as $15, $25, $50, and so on. There is a preset amount, known as an elite donation, worth $1,337. The folks over at Rooster Teeth brought back the Wheel of Destiny, (or Density depending on the person’s alcoholic consumption at the time) which was spun whenever an elite donation or higher was made. I didn’t keep a tally of how many times that was done, but I do know at the “TND” hour of the stream, there were 48 donations of $1,337 or higher amount. In the past, they would start with a few hours of gaming and put on a sort of podcast until more viewers tuned in. this year, they had enough special treats to where they started with it. Such as dyeing the hair of the newer employees and staff, exercises to perform, dance offs, and professional improv actors. All of these were incredibly fun to watch and take part in at home. As for the Wheel of Destiny spins throughout the early morning there was a box fan that got karate stomped, dramatic readings of fan fiction written about them, and the paintball firing squad, which was revisited throughout the night.

Despite all of this, everything was tame until the later groups, starting out with, as they called themselves, the RainBros; employees that planned their segment around the game Rainbow Six Siege. Not only did their colorful personalities show, they had also brought along costume pieces like a Wario hat, cheap leather vest, sunglasses, and a fishnet shirt that replaced its wearer’s actual shirt. This is one of the things I love most about Extra Life: the main team members will make absolute fools of themselves on the internet where it will remain, somewhere in cyberspace, forever. But it’s all for the kids. The day finished with a multitude of fun and shenanigans. There were dance parties, beard glittering, and other bad decisions laced with good intentions.

The nighttime began with the crowd favorites Michael Jones and Gavin Free, also known as Team Nice Dynamite that I mentioned earlier. The boys decided to attempt the Century Club which is a drinking challenge that requires the drinker to take a shot every minute for 100 minutes. Michael took beer as his drink and Gavin took different flavors of milk as his. If you are at all familiar with the Gallon Challenge, you already know that Gavin did not fare well. This is the time of the night when the community unleashed their wrath. Elite donation after donation came in just so the Wheel of Destiny would be spun to punish the boys. Markus Persson, the creator of the incredibly popular video game “Minecraft”, also sent some heavy donations leaving $17,778 by the end of the night before reaching his Paypal spending limit. Aside from the donations, Gavin was being thrown as far as his coworkers could manage to throw him, which didn’t rest well with his belly full of milk. Barbara Dunkelman got tied up with bubble wrap and rolled around the stage. Old and embarrassing photos were shown from a few of the RT employees. However, by far the best part of the night, was the news from Michael Jones that he and his wife, Lindsay, are expecting a child in June. I was watching social media at this time and the posts went absolutely wild with congratulations and shock calling it the announcement that “singlehandedly saved all of 2016.” Even with the excitement and overall attitude of the charity event, the night took a darker turn.

The night proceeded to the Bob Ross painting session. There are no words available to explain to you that these sane men and women painted either the same picture as the video they were watching or horrible atrocities. There was no in between. Quickly following that was the #2Spooky segment. This was the part of the night that does not get brought up as advertising for the event. Most of them are drunk and sleep deprived which makes for a very interesting scene, which, apparently, involves a plastic skull in a hood, Pokemon onesies, and suspiciously wet dildos. After a few hours of playing Werewolves, drunk wrestling, and the consumption of preserved arachnids and reptiles, daylight was on the return. The stream was sent over to the west coast in the care of Funhaus, another branch of the Let’s Play family. They entertained with gameplay and costumes to go along with and compliment them. After raising an additional $20,000 to the total, the stream was returned to the home base of Austin, Texas to finish of the rest of the morning.

In the wee hours of the morning, after the rampage of the #2Spooky crew, the animators came into work and took over the cameras to play a few games that involved the viewers directly. During, they sang Disney songs and told stories about the shows they are working on. You could tell that they are the backbones that don’t get on camera often, but that doesn’t stop them from being entertaining. The former CEO of the company, Matt Hullum, for the last 30 minutes pledged to match all donations up to $30,000, a goal that got reached effortlessly. There we were at 8 am. A full 24 hours of chaos and blessings. After a brief, and teary, message from our team captains, Jack Pattillo and Caiti Ward, the crew and viewers were treated to a cover of the late Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” by Mr. Hullum, and thus ended the Rooster Teeth Extra Life charity livestream for 2016. Our crazy adventure for the day had come to a close. Our battle cries of “For the kids” had turned into whimpers of “For the kids” before making the next foolish choice and back into a battle cry once more.

I wrote a brief passage on my personal Facebook page thanking the RT Community, as well as the donors that sent money to my sponsored hospital, for their incredible generosity. As I was writing this simple post, I burst into tears. Our team alone raised almost $900,000 in donations and charitable shirt and poster sales. For the first time in… I couldn’t say, I felt pride in the human race. Despite our peers heckling us for being a part of the video game communities, despite the great distances that separate us all from each other, despite the cultural, social, and political conflicts and upsets that are happening in the United States now, we did not lose our humanity. We banded together as a family of sorts and did every single thing in our power to better the lives of those who are not as fortunate. For that 24 hours, we were the world that so many artists, poets, and other capturers of beauty see us as.

I am tremendously proud of everyone involved and I can’t wait until next year when we break one million dollars in donations alone. Take care, my friends.

DISCLAIMER: I do not own any of the photos that were used throughout this article. They can be found on tumblr.com and using the search term "RTExtraLife". All photo credits go to their respective owners.