Alumni play in Super Mario marathon for charity
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With the help of a small Italian plumber, three Purdue alumni raised more than $11,000 for a children's charity during a three-day video game marathon.
And thousands of people got to see them do it on a live webcast.
"We never thought it'd be so hard to play video games," said John Groth, a network administrator in the College of Technology who participated in the marathon.
The Mario Marathon followed the trials of the three gamers as they played seven Super Mario games from the afternoon of June 27 to early June 30. As they played, fascinated viewers watched, chatted, made fanart and donated money to the Child's Play charity, which buys toys and video games for children in hospitals.
The marathon started when Brian Brinegar, a senior in the College of Technology and a web services coordinator for the Engineering Computer Network, had the idea to play video games for a weekend with his former college roommates and Purdue alumni Groth and Dan May. It started as a recreational event, but then Brinegar decided to use the marathon to raise money for Child's Play.
Groth and May agreed to participate in the marathon, not expecting the overwhelming outcome.
At first, the players had several hundred viewers witnessing their attempts to save Princess Peach. However, after popular Web site kotaku.com posted news of their marathon, viewership jumped to more than 3,000. As more Web sites covered the event, more viewers tuned in - and the donations increased, too.
Groth thinks the marathon's popularity was helped by the fact that the camera was focused on the gamers rather than the game itself, creating human interest in the interactions of the gamers.
"Some of the viewers made comments like, ÔThis is the best reality show ever,'" said Groth.
The show consisted of three guys in Brinegar's living room, wearing Mario and Luigi attire and playing games nonstop, as well as appearances from Brinegar's wife, child and dog.
"It was totally letting a hundred thousand people into my life for a whole weekend," said Brinegar.
As fans grew engrossed in the drama of the gaming, they came up with nicknames for Brinegar, Groth and May: "shirt guy," "couch guy," and "chair guy," respectively. They composed haiku and ballads and created fanart, which can be seen on the marathon's Web site, www.mariomarathon.com.
"My dog now has a Facebook group with like 200 friends, and they call her Ôcouch dog,'" Brinegar said.
The gaming trio took turns responding to the people in the chat, who provided support for the marathon. The players also took short naps, but the excitement kept them awake.
"We were supposed to have a set sleeping schedule, but that derailed because it was so frenetic," Groth said.
The emotion of the event made Groth and Brinegar take an extra task: unlocking Luigi in Super Mario Galaxy, which took another eight to nine hours after they'd finished all seven games. After the show was over, the gamers continued to interact with fans from across the world, who kept on donating to Child's Play.
The makers of the popular webcomic "Penny Arcade," which focuses on the video game subculture, created the charity in response to negative press about violent video games. Child's Play seeks to reverse the negative images of gamers by raising money for children.
"We do more than play video games and sit on the couch," Groth said. "Even though that's what we did to try and raise money."
To learn more about Child's Play, visit www.childsplaycharity.org.