Desert Bus for Hope has reached its destination, with participants raising a record-setting $677,864 for a children’s charity after playing the “world’s most boring video game” for six days and 15 hours.
“You guys are my heroes,” said guest LeVar Burton of Star Trek: The Next Generation fame, applauding gamers for bringing the ninth annual international gaming marathon’s take to more than $3 million to date.
Sleep-deprived volunteers who had been at the wheel since Nov. 14 at 10 a.m. in a studio at 838 Fort St. finally screeched to a halt at 1 a.m. Nov. 21.
Thousands of gamers from around the world donated and interacted during the international fundraiser launched in 2007 by LoadingReadyRun.
The Victoria-based Internet comedy troupe’s aim was to raise funds for the Seattle-based charity Child’s Play.
The cause is close to the hearts of local gamers, since the charity improves the lives of children in hospitals and domestic-violence shelters through donations of toys and games.
“You’re making a difference in the world, and you’re doing it through gaming, which I think is the coolest s--t going,” said Burton.
“It’s such an incredible event,” said Jamie Dillion, Child’s Play program and development co-ordinator. “It exemplifies the spirit and generosity of the gaming community.”
Teammates sang, danced and traded wisecracks around the clock while a “driver” played the unreleased 1995 video game created by illusionists Penn & Teller.
The tongue-in-cheek Sega game challenges players to drive a virtual bus from Tucson to Las Vegas in eight boredom-inducing hours.
Crazy challenges were fulfilled and collectibles auctioned off during a virtual road trip devoid of twists, turns or scenery. If you crash, the bus is towed back to Tuscon. If not, you win a single point.
“Hmmm. We have seven points and seven crashes. What idiots do you have doing this?” said Penn Jillette when he connected via his Penn’s Sunday School podcast at the 27-hour mark.
The bespectacled magician recalled a trip to Dallas to interview video-game-industry titans including Gearbox Software’s Randy Pitchford, Oculus Rift creator Palmer Luckey and Assassin’s Creed creator Patrice Desilets for a documentary.
“Every one of these brilliant gamers took me aside and said, ‘Do you know about these Canadian guys who do this Desert Bus thing?” Jillette said.
After Jillette signed off, an ensemble of local gamers spent 14 minutes singing 99 Bottles of Beer in his honour.
While Desert Bus is reputedly the world’s worst video game, Jillette said their real purpose in creating it was political.
“The Clinton administration was always anti-video games,” he said, recalling how Hillary Clinton once asked why designers couldn’t create video games that were like real life, and could prepare people for real jobs.
“Desert Bus was an attempt to show video gamers what it would be like to have a real job,” he said, noting there are people who get paid to drive a bus from Tucson to Las Vegas.
LoadingReadyRun co-founder Graham Stark admits even he was surprised Desert Bus rolled as long as it did this year.
“We say this every year, that we don’t think we’ll raise more than the previous year, but by 6 p.m. Friday we were preparing for the first time not to, and then there was a really big push at the end,” he said.
Last year, the marathon raised $643,000.
Some big home-stretch prizes helped boost that this year, including a package from Max Temkin, a co-founder of Cards Against Humanity, the satirical “party game for horrible people.”
Temkin called in Friday to give away an advance copy of his new board game as well as “everything Cards Against Humanity has ever made” and match donations.
That alone raised $27,000, while Victoria-based comic book author and illustrator Ken Steacy raised $41,000 during his annual appearance.
“Pretty darned good for a ragtag bunch of geeky young gamers, huh?” said Steacy. “There’s this wonderful community of gamers coming together in the real world, but they’re still connected in this virtual world.”
While many volunteers are local, some travelled from afar, including one who flew in from England.
Complementing the technical team that keeps the website and broadcast running smoothly, volunteers handle duties including promotion, on-site catering, and swiftly packaging and shipping prizes.
“It’s the circle of giving — I love it,” said Burton after a supporter dubbed Lord_Hosk parlayed a perk he earned by supporting Burton’s Kickstarter campaign for Reading Rainbow into a benefit for Desert Bus.
He asked that Burton Skype the busers instead of calling just him.
Said Stark: “The intangible ways the Desert Bus community support us is astronomical.”
