Hi there!

I’m Alex. I work in an office in York for Macmillan Cancer Support. There’s a whole lot of info further down about Macmillan but I’m sure most of you know that they’re a totally excellent charity who help thousands of people.

When I’m not wearing a shirt and answering phones, a lot of my down time is spent playing video games. And here’s the thing; there’s this game I play called Guild Wars 2. Dragons, wizards and so forth. Every year for nigh on the last decade, there’s an event called Pink Day In L.A. LA is a city called Lion’s Arch and everyone from all over the world gets together to dance, race, go on scavenger hunts – none of this is provided in game, it’s all put together by the playing community. The only slight downside to their marvellous work is that all the charities that they support are based in Canada and the US. It’s the same with other gamer-based charities too, guys like Extra Life and Gamers Giving Back. There's going to be some awesome links to great gaming charity sites at the bottom for you to check out to see what we've done in the past.

Contrary to popular belief that us gamers are a bunch of narcissistic shut ins, we care about people. Waiting for someone's name to light up as 'online' after being diagnosed but probably never will is not cool. 1 in 3 of us will get cancer at some point in our lives, and there are over 2 million people in the UK alone who are affected by it. 

I wanted to do something for charities in the UK with something I'm deeply passionate about and that I'm not completely terrible at.

So here’s the deal.

Come 23rd August  from 9am until 9am the following day, I will be livestreaming on www.twitch.tv/ashenrohk 24 solid hours of video games. I’ll be getting help from my totally awesome guild mates as well as other streamers and YouTubers to raise money for Macmillan. If you have friends who want to livestream for the cause on the day, even for a few hours, we did for Operation Supply Drop back in 2013 spearheaded by Bethesda Enterntainment, responsible among other things for Fallout 3, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and Wolfenstein: The New Order.

Also, we’re gonna have stretch goals and challenges, partly set by me and partly set by you guys. Tell me what you want to see me suffer through at 4am. Tell me what games you want to see me play. The most important thing – DONATE and help us kick cancer’s ass.

Some people run, some people shave their head. I'm here to drink tea and blow stuff up. And I've just finished my tea.

Sites that are awesome and you should check out:

http://www.macmillan.org.uk/ (obviously)

https://www.facebook.com/macmillancancer (also, pretty obvious)

http://www.childsplaycharity.org/

http://www.extra-life.org/

http://www.gamergivingback.com/

http://www.operationsupplydrop.org/