So it’s times like this where I really enjoy my job. I got to spend 24 hours gaming and taking part in silly activities. My gosh it was so much fun!
The SpecialEffect charity were running their GameBlast 2015 event and Jagex were running the live stream for part of the event. Lots of other games studios, companies and individuals were taking part too in their own separate events and streams.
I was helping with the Alan vs. Dean challenges that were going on every hour or so on the live stream. I was on Dean’s team. In between these challenges, I was also mostly gaming – trying to get a Diablo 3 character to as high a level as possible in hardcore mode alongside Danni, James and Paul.
Our first challenge started at about 1pm, an hour into the stream. Our task was to colour each other in as much as we could using marker pens. I reckon my team was at a disadvantage because red doesn’t show up as much as blue, but despite our valiant efforts we were pipped to the post by Alan’s team.
Our second challenge was to make smoothies out of various horrible and not so horrible ingredients, and then one poor team member had to down the resulting concoction as quickly as possible. Each team member picked a number randomly from a bag, and this corresponded to an ingredient. I think ours ended up with marmite, tuna and peanut butter? Something gross like that. We just lost out on this challenge too. Apparently the problem was not the ingredients, more the sheer amount of ice in the smoothies giving brain freeze!
The third challenge was the boiled egg challenge. Myself vs. Lucy. Girl on Girl. We had to smash randomly chosen eggs against our foreheads. Some were hard boiled, others were raw. I really excelled at this one, and only found one raw egg. Poor Lucy was covered by the end of the challenge.
We had a large gap after the egg challenge providing me with time to prepare for the fire walk. Yeah, that’s right, I walked bare-foot across hot coals for charity. It was an amazing experience. As part of the preparation, to help us conquer fear, I broken an arrow against my neck. Basically the guy teaching us held up a wooden block and placed the base of the arrow on it, and then I place the sharp end on the bottom of my throat. With a quick lurch forwards (after a couple of attempts), the arrow snapped right in half and I wasn’t impaled by it. Amazing.
After a nice long break we had the epic challenge that was the chair race. A relay race around the ground floor of the office, using office chairs! This was so competitive, and the other team were cheating far too much, but it was fun too. Our team lost – I was very slow and poor Shaun had his relay equipment stolen – but Dean more than made up for it by blasting around the office. Clearly he has had lots of office chair practice! You can see a highlight video of this below. It’s well worth the watch.
At around midnight we lined up for the food identification challenge. We were blindfolded and had to identify the various foods that our team were feeding us. We had things like hot dogs, rice pudding and fish. Not gross to eat, but I imagine they weren’t pleasant to look at. We won that round, no worries. My poor adversary was not pleased with what he was being fed and might have had a small melt down on stream. I couldn’t tell if he was faking it or he was actually that upset.
At about 2am the next challenge started and it enabled me to find a previously unknown talent: cereal box limbo. We all took turns trying to pick up a cereal box using only our mouths. After each person the box was cut that little bit smaller. I didn’t think I had the flexibility for this, but clearly I did. The technique helped too, I think, gave me more balance and reach.
One of the viewers of the stream made a little gif to celebrate my achievements. You can see a collection of the other gifs he made on NotSilas’s imgur.
The seventh challenge was an absolute failure on my part. We had to put together some paper-craft masks. Not as easy as it sounds. I’m not sure if I was so exhausted that my brain wasn’t working (it was around 8am in the morning) or if it was just my inability to see how the mask worked, but I didn’t even put together one piece of it. Oh well.
There was another fairly big gap here, so was going to take some time out to game, but I was so hungry that I just couldn’t do anything.
Breakfast was due at about 9am and my gosh was I ready for it. We’d queued for ages and I remember getting frustrated that there was no sign of the bacon. When it did arrive I was in heaven. My little face when I first tasted the bacon was a combination of shear joy mixed with relief. I’d never been so ready for a bacon bap.
Our final challenge involved team members dressing up in sumo outfits and tackling each other to the ground. We’d already lost by this point, but it was a matter of principal that we try anyway. Poor Martin tried so hard, but couldn’t get us another point.
For losing, we all had cream pies smooshed into our faces. They tasted really good, actually. Custard and squirty cream is a nice combination! A devil to get out of your hair though, when it’s already been pre-soaked in raw egg.
To finish the stream we all piled into the stream room for the final farewell and thank you to the viewers. In the end we raised £50,000 which is a huge amount and I’m so proud of everyone who took part.
You can see a highlight real of the whole stream below.