Before I get into my little story, fire up this link in a tab so that you can go watch them the second you've finished reading.
https://www.twitch.tv/gamesdonequick
Right now they are doing a marathon for Doctors Without Borders by speed running an insane number of games over the course of 5 days. If you read this article after it's finished then don't worry because they do another marathon around January for the Prevent Cancer Foundation called Awesome Games Done Quick. These are fantastic events and you should show your support.
But just how did an event like Games Done Quick help inspire Identity Gaming?
Well a handful of years ago, around the winter time, I wake up super early one morning to find a text on my phone from my mother telling me that my father had passed away. It was a sad time as you would expect, he suffered from Alzheimer's disease so understandably I became interested in Alzheimer's charities and how these organizations help sufferers and their families. Just after that passing of my father, Awesome Games Done Quick started. It was an event that I had watched in previous years and having something like that to enjoy after such a sad period was nice.
When it finished they had raised over a million dollars for the Prevent Cancer Foundation and that had me thinking that maybe I could try to emulate some of the work that they do. Of course, I'm just one guy, a nobody with a blogger site, a stream and a YouTube channel so I knew going in I could never reach that kind of money if I only attempted something like this for 5 or so days. So with that in mind, Identity Gaming was born as a sort of long term project.
Things were shaky at first, as you can see if you watch my early playthroughs and see videos of my early streams but thanks to the help of a number of friends and the people who donate to the Alzheimer's Society keeping me motivated I'm here today, still writing and improving in order to raise money for a charity that's rather close to my heart.
Sure, I'm not raising the million dollars in 5 days like the GDQ guys are but thanks to all the support £3000+ has been raised in a few years and that's fantastic. I really owe it to the GDQ guys for inspiring me like that. I get the feeling I'll be doing this for a long time going forward and it's all thanks to them.
