Gaming speedrunners raise more than $1.2 million for Doctors Without Borders at SGDQ
The annual speedrunning charity event Summer Games Done Quick finished up late Saturday night, raising just less than $1.3 million to be donated to Doctors Without Borders. All week, some of gaming's fastest players gathered in Minneapolis and streamed their attempts to beat games as quickly as possible while encouraging donations.
Over the years, Games Done Quick has raised about $3.5 million through SGDQ, which is its second speedrunning charity event. The original one, Awesome Games Done Quick, happens every winter.
SGDQ 2016 played host to a bunch of great games, kicking off the 24/7 week of gaming with Super Mario Sunshine and winding through a long list of games. Some were popular titles like Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, Fallout 4 and Halo. But some of the most fun playthroughs were of obscure, bad and funny games, like the 2006 Sonic the Hedgehog, Super Amazing Wagon Adventure and Pepsiman, complete with a costumed commentator.
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Chris Grant, a speedrunner and organizer for Games Done Quick, told Mashable that the Pepsiman costume presented its own challenges. The person wearing it, who goes by Frozentrually, couldn't see out of the costume.
"In order to get him on stream I had to carefully navigate him onto the couch, and do it again to get him off the couch and make sure he wasn't tripping over any cables," Grant said. "This also made his commentary based purely off context clues and knowledge of the game, but it worked out!"
The community that comes together every year at SGDQ is part of what keeps the event going, Grant said, and it has grown significantly since it started.
"SGDQ used to take place in a speedrunner's house, with about 20 attendees," he said. "Our last attendee count was at about 1400."
It has also grown in viewership, reaching more than 160,000 views on Twitch.
The next Games Done Quick event starts Jan. 8, 2017 in Henderson, Virginia.
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