Last month, we told you about a charity event held by the Triple Speed Runners, a group of gamers that hold marathon gaming sessions for charity. Since 2009, the group has held many events, and raised over $10,000 for various charities. This time around, the group played a marathon session of Zelda titles that spanned the entirety of the series, as well as spin-offs. The leader of the Triple Speed Runners, Matthew Clark, was kind enough to chat with us about why his group started doing this, and where the Triple Speed Runners hope to go from here.
Nintendojo: First off, congratulations on what sounds like a pretty successful event! How much were you guys able to raise for charity?
Matthew Clark: We were able to raise $2,415 for Child’s Play Charity through 140 very generous individual donations! This has been one of our most successful marathons to date.
ND: That’s fantastic to hear. Where did the initial idea come from to have marathon game sessions for charity? How did this evolve from (presumably) a passion to something that you guys realized you could do to help others?
MC: The initial idea came from watching other groups host marathons, honestly. My friends and I have always been big into gaming and we decided to try it out. We felt we had a worthy cause to donate towards because my brother was dealing with getting diagnosed with a very rare blood and bone marrow failure disease called Dyskeratosis Congenita. We wanted to raise money for a charity dealing specifically with that disease.
ND: Was the current group of gamers all there together at the outset? Or did you guys start bringing in new people as you guys started to do more marathons?
MC: We’ve all known each other for years and years. The vast majority of the group has been here from the very beginning. The amount of amazing people we’ve met over the last four years has been something truly special to us. We’ve made many, many new friends from our followers and peers in the marathon community and it has been an incredible experience. Some of those friends who started off as viewers met up with us and eventually became a part of the group.
ND: What’s the gameplan from here? Have you guys settled on another marathon to follow-up the Zelda event? Or perhaps which charity you’ll be sponsoring next?
MC: Last year around Halloween time we had a Horror Marathon. We plan to have another Horror Marathon towards the end of October. It was a lot of fun to play a bunch of scary games we’ve never played before and the viewers really enjoyed watching us suffer. We’re not sure if we will be supporting a charity this time or if we will do this one just for fun but there will be at least one more charity marathon before the end of the year.
ND: I really love the idea of a horror themed marathon. It has to be a cool experience for the viewer to see the reactions of people who have never played before. Something like Eternal Darkness would be perfect for that. I’m sure you guys could find a worthwhile charity that would be seasonally appropriate, if you chose to do that again this year.
What makes you decide whether or not a marathon would be right to use for a charity event, or just for fun?
MC: I would say there are two factors we look at when deciding to do a marathon for charity or just for fun. The first one we look at is the time between marathons. If it’s only been a month or so between marathons we don’t feel right asking our viewers for more donations right away. We also look at how long the marathon is going to last. If we plan on doing a 24 hour or 48 hour marathon, we will probably just do it for fun. We also look at if we’re going to have donation incentives such as prizes. If we don’t have any incentives planned, we are more likely to do the marathon just for fun. It really just boils down to what feels right and appropriate for each particular marathon.
ND: Where do the incentives come from? Do you guys contribute those on your own, or have you guys picked up some sponsors along the way?
MC: Everything we buy comes out of our own pocket. We have had some sponsors in the past but 95% of everything we give away and the equipment we buy comes from us. It’s not too bad though considering we split it 10 or 11 ways. People are sometimes concerned that we handle the donations for the marathons but this is not the case. 100% of all donations for our marathons go directly to the charity.
We started making Let’s Plays on our YouTube channel back in March. We upload one to two videos every day playing a wide variety of games as well as many Nintendo classics. We started the channel with the hopes of becoming partnered and generating some ad revenue to help pay for these marathons. About a month ago we became partnered with a fantastic gaming network and we are now fully partnered with YouTube generating some ad revenue. All of that will go towards putting together bigger and better marathons with better equipment, more prizes, and more games! We’d love for people to check it out as we’ve done lots of classic Nintendo games such as Super Mario World, A Link to the Past, Mario Party, Donkey Kong Country Returns, Super Smash Bros., Kirby Super Star, and Mario Kart just to name a few. There’s also plenty of modern stuff and other consoles but everything is generally clean comedy and we hope people enjoy it. The link for that is www.youtube.com/triplespeedrunners.
ND: Matthew, that’s about all I have for you today. Thank you so much for taking the time to talk with us!
If you enjoyed today’s interview, be sure to check out Matthew and his team over at www.triplespeedrunners.com and at www.youtube.com/triplespeedrunners! Stay tuned to Nintendojo where we’ll continue to cover their exploits for charity and for fun! As always, let us know what you think in the comments below!