Rocking Out for Extra Life
Last weekend, Wooga was proud to host a very special event organised by Wooga employee, Jamie Butler, for charity. Here’s Jamie’s take on the event itself.
This past weekend I took part in the annual global phenomenon that is Extra Life, by coordinating and participating in a 24 hour Rock Band 4 marathon. We went live on YouTube from 5pm Saturday Nov 5th and played all the way through to 5pm the next day. I also invited anyone and everyone at Wooga (and their +1’s) to join in for as much or as little of the weekend as they wished.
To give a little background, Extra Life is a charitable donation platform that enables games content streamers to raise money for Children’s Miracle Network hospitals through the joy of play. These hospitals help sick and injured children get the treatments they need regardless of their ability to pay. I have known about the charity and event for some years now, but it wasn’t until I moved to Berlin for Wooga that I have now had the resources necessary to pull off my grandiose plans for participating.
All in all, I’m happy to say the event was a resounding success, with many Woogas showing their support by playing the game, bringing home made foods, watching the live streams online, and most importantly: sponsoring us with their donations. Wooga also added an extra challenge, promising to donate an extra $10 every time someone hit all the notes of a song. Over the course of the event, we achieved this 36 times, which, combined with our online and cash donations, brought us to over $1000.
After catching up on a little sleep, I had the privilege of summarising the event in the company all-hands on Monday morning, upon which time Wooga graciously agreed to double our total.
The highlights of the event were definitely getting to see so many Woogas from different departments coming in to lend support and everyone’s willingness to have a go - even Wooga CEO, Jens Begemann, dropped by with his sons to see what Rock Band is all about.
I couldn’t possibly name everyone who helped over the course of planning and the event itself, but a special thank you to Nick, Etiene, Marcin, Iga and Michael for sticking with me through the whole night and not leaving until the next troupe arrived at breakfast time. There was a point about six hours into the event when all the instruments started to backfire, so for a few hours Rock Band night turned into Karaoke night, with the microphones staying strong.
After numerous new batteries wouldn’t solve our dilemma, it became clear that there was some sort of problem with the way the hardware was handling bluetooth that led to the freeze, but once again Michael was my hero by working out a way to solve the issue.
Towards the end of the event I was exhausted, but riding the high of adrenaline for the finish line, as well as so many new faces turning up to cheer me on for the final hour, we rounded off the set with two of my favourites songs by Gorillaz and Paramore - I was almost tempted to submit to the demands of an encore...almost!
Many stayed to help clean up and pack away at the office and even help carry the equipment back to my apartment. I am so humbled and grateful to work in such a caring and supportive environment, and a huge extra thanks to Ulf from IT for helping mastermind the logistics of the setup and streaming.
We made a thing of taking band selfies every time we scored 100% before writing those songs on cards to add to the donation pool.
The official Rock Band twitter account were also kind enough to repost and reply to my summary tweet of the event, which was the icing on the cake for me (because if playing the game for 24 hours straight wasn’t enough of a giveaway, I’m a bit of a Rock Band advocate).
Thanks again to all who supported, all who donated and to Wooga for its generosity. Hopefully the money raised can go some way to improving the quality of life of those in need. I can’t wait to do something for Extra Life next year and to hopefully top this year’s total, but until then I’ll be catching up on some sleep...
