Thursday night is race night for the Penny Arcade iRacing league! It’s like your parents bowling league back in the 80’s except we drive pretend cars around laser scanned virtual race tracks.
You can join us in the Pit Crew over on Twitch starting at 7:30PT this evening. Or, if you’d like to join us out on the track you just need to get a subscription to iRacing and look us up in the league directory. It’s hard to believe but the PA league is coming up on its two year anniversary and we have over 300 registered drivers these days! It’s become a really incredible community with organized races all during the week and an active Discord server.
In addition to the regularly scheduled league races, many of our drivers also form teams to participate in official iRacing events like this weekend's 12 hours of Sebring. This is an endurance race where teams of drivers take turns driving stints in a race that, like the name says lasts 12 fucking hours! The Penny Arcade league will be fielding a few cars for this race and I’ll be on one of the teams taking my turn behind the wheel. Here’s a look at the car I’ll be in on Saturday.
We’re not just racing for fun though we will be participating in Gamers Give Back day and raising money for Child’s Play!
I was in the most recent board of directors meeting for Child’s Play yesterday and I could not be more proud of the work we’re doing thanks to your generous donations. The Gaming and Technology Specialist (Game Tech) position we created in hospitals is growing incredibly fast and there are now over 30 of these specialists in children's hospitals all over the world! After years of doing this we discovered that you can send all the games and technology to these hospitals that you want but if there isn’t someone on their end to spearhead its implementation it can easily just sit in boxes. It is the job of the Game tech to figure out the best way to incorporate games and new technologies in a therapeutic way that reduces fear, pain and stress in the lives of these kids. I would highly encourage everyone to watch the video below and get a better understanding of what your donations to Child's Play are actually doing.
We were the very first gaming focused charity when we started in my garage back in 2003! Today it’s important to recognize that when you donate to Child’s Play you are not just buying video games for a hospital. You might be! But you might also be paying the salary of a new Game Tech position or funding research into ways VR can make a CT Scan less scary or how having games available at the hospital can get kids to show up to their dialysis appointments. We are not just sending an Xbox to a hospital anymore. These days, we (and by we I mean you) are providing the people, the technology and the research needed to improve the lives of sick kids and their families all over the world. So join us this Saturday March 26th at 1PT on Twitch and help us raise some money for a very good cause.
-Gabe out.
