Originally published on Trevor Trove on November 27/28, 2015
Extra Life Marathon
Because I’m not as young as I once was, a 24-hour marathon of gaming has seemed slightly daunting since I made the commitment a couple months ago. As such, I postponed my initial plan of playing on the November 7th Game Day in lieu of playing on Black Friday, when I’d have a little more time to recover at the end of the weekend before returning to work on Monday.
When: Right Now (assuming you’re reading this as I posted it). Friday, November 27th at 7:00pm through Saturday, November 28th at 7:00pm (all times – Arizona time).
Where: If all goes according to plan, you can watch me stream from my PlayStation Camera over on twitch.tv/tstarkey0810.
What (I’m Playing): Planning on starting with a full playthrough of The Last of Us Remastered. Special thanks to Nathan McKinney – @troll_speaks – for providing me with the code for this stream! After TLOU, I’ll play through Telltale’s Game of Thrones Season One. I played through the first couple of episodes when they came out so I’ll either be diving in with Episode 3 or restart from the beginning if I decide I just don’t remember enough of what was going on. And there might be the occasional LEGO Dimensions as a palate-cleanser. Assuming our dog Elphie isn’t out and about and trying to eat all of the pieces. And Catherine might even join me for that one.
Who (I’m Playing For): The Phoenix Children’s Hospital.
Why: Because I’m trying to reach my goal of $500. I donated $100 myself to kick off the campaign and another generous friend has matched me. So I hope you’ll stop by and consider donating as well!
Extra Life – The Aftermath
As I write this, it is now 8:15pm following my 7pm to 7pm 24-hour stream. Shortly after wrapping up the stream, I had dinner (leftover Thanksgiving ham and potatoes), making up for the undernourishment during the stream itself. During the stream, I had a small ham sandwich on a dinner roll, a few slices of pizza, and roughly 3 liters of Pepsi. Next year, I will plan my meals during the stream better.
Overall, I’m glad I did this stream. I purposely delayed it from the original Game Day to give myself more recovery time before work, but also to separate myself from the throngs of other people streaming that day. Despite regularly tweeting out game updates, I had limited traffic watching my stream. With usually just one other person in the chat, if anyone at all, much of my playtime was just the game audio itself. Additionally, the limited traffic also amount to zero new contributions to my Extra Life campaign. Disappointing but to be expected. Anyone who came by my stream was more likely to have given a few weeks ago directly to the Kinda Funny stream.
Gamewise, I was really proud of the fact that I finished both The Last of Us Remastered and Game of Thrones, with about fifteen minutes left for LEGO Dimensions. During the early morning hours of The Last of Us Remastered, I felt like it was taking longer than I had anticipated. Fortunately, the two hours per episode of Game of Thrones allotment wound up being overprojected. So I finished off the stream with just enough time to play through the opening cinematic/tutorial of LEGO Dimensions and a minute bit of the first level. In particular Game of Thrones was a game I wanted to tackle for Game of the Year thoughts so I’m glad this afforded me the opportunity.
Technologically, my stream from the PS4 cut out far more than I would have liked, especially considering I had just upgraded to the premium internet service yesterday morning. The stream would sporadically just stop broadcasting citing a loss of connection. But I was usually able to hit the Share button and go right back to broadcasting. I didn’t have enough of an audience to where it really caused any major headaches but it was still very disappointing and I imagine if I stream in the future, I’ll run a long ethernet cable across the house instead of relying on the WiFi.
All in all, a great first run. I look forward to building upon these lessons in the future.
If you’d like to make a tax-deductible contribution to support my Extra Life campaign, you can still give here until December 31, 2015. All proceeds will support the Phoenix Children’s Hospital.