Hi there

Nice Face Games is raising money for a wonderful charity called SpecialEffect whose aim is simple - to help everyone with a disability level the playing field and find a way to play the games they love.

To do this, they travel around the country with their specialist gaming equipment, demonstrating it to people and then setting up meetings with individuals, creating controllers specific to their personal needs, thus allowing them to play all the games that we take for granted.

Their equipment is as varied as the people who need it and includes some incredible bits of kit like controllers that can be manipulated easily by elbows and chins, for amputations and other conditions, and sensors that track the retinas of the human eye, allowing people with little or no muscle control to play games using only their vision.

I could go on, but this short introductory video will explain it better than I:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hKLNrCivOzw

 

What are we going to do?

Being a charity for gamers, and us being people who make video games, we want to do a sponsored 'gaming marathon'. Gaming marathons often take the shape of playing through very long games in a single stint or many games in a series, such as playing through all the Zelda games in two days, for example. We want to take it one step further though and complete a real sporting event in a video game. We've chosen the 24hrs of Silverstone.

This means we'll be competing in a virtual equivalent of the 24-hour endurance race around Silverstone - one of the biggest race car events of the year.

During the race we'll see both the real and virtual sunset and sunrise, competing against 23 AI cars in a BMW Z4 GT3, totalling probably around 600-700 laps and around 3000 miles of the 3.6 mile circuit - no small feat!

We'll be doing this on Project CARS, a racing simulator being produced by a team in London.

 

The drivers:

Sean - Driver no1. Isn't very good at driving.

Joe - Makes coffee and talks about coffee. But mostly talks about coffee.

Niall - The thinking man's... man. Has actually made video games that mostly work.

Josh - Resident Lad(tm). Many things will be described as 'decent'.

Alan - Has more competence with horses than with cars. Laugh at the accent.

 

Why should you sponsor us?

Because it's a great charity! The kind of help these guys are giving people all around the country is a truly beautiful thing to see and for us to play a small part in that is a great honour.

In addition to that though we're gonna be doing some cool stuff as part of the event:

Technology allowing, we're going to be streaming the whole 24hrs online for free, both from the perspective of the virtual car and of the room we'll be doing it in. Anyone can tune in whenever they like!

Also for any support we get we're pledging to put your name on the car! Any named donation, personal, business, or otherwise, will get a space on the BMW's livery. Hopefully this means we'll have a car completely covered in the names of generous people!

 

Thanks for reading this far. We're all really excited about raising some money and doing some good for people who have sadly not had the brilliant and emotional experiences with video games that we all take for granted. So dig deep!

Donating through JustGiving is simple, fast and totally secure. Your details are safe – they’ll never sell them on or send unwanted emails. Once you donate, they’ll send your money directly to the charity, so it’s the most efficient way to donate; saving time and cutting costs for the charity.

 

You can follow the development of the event at these various hip social media hangouts:

http://nicefacegames.tumblr.com/

https://twitter.com/NiceFaceGames

 

Thanks again!

- Sean and Nice Face Games

 

Additional info:

http://www.specialeffect.org.uk/

http://www.wmdportal.com/projects/cars/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silverstone_Britcar_24-Hour

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silverstone_Circuit