There's Money To Be Made From Playing Games.

you can help raise millions of dollars for sick children by sitting on the sofa and playing video games. Just like the weekend athletes who collect donations from family and friends for every mile they race in a charity run, thousands of gamers will be enlisting their networks to support them in a marathon of a completely different sort. This novel fund raising idea is sponsored by Extra Life, which is now a part of the nonprofit Children's Miracle Network Hospitals. Players can sign up to play for this charity at any time throughout the year. But November 2 is Extra Life's annual game day. And because this year the day ends with clocks falling back an hour, they have upped the challenge from a 24- to a 25-hour marathon of gaming. Would anyone really support gamers spending an entire day just playing? And would gamers sign up for such a thing? Even Extra Life founder Jeromy Adams was unsure. Back in 2007, he reached out to a gaming community called Sarcastic Gamer to see whether they would donate a few games to Tori Enmon, a young girl who was going through cancer treatment in his local hospital. He received such an overwhelming response from gamers all over the world that he and Tori had to spend the next few months trying to find enough hospitalized kids to take all the games. Adams says he realized that gamers were the ideal audience for a good cause. Here, he thought, is a group that loves trying to save the day and be the hero. "Gamers are not the stereotype of the angry pale kid in mom and dad's basement," he said. "They are more likely to be the mom and the dad. "We are some of the most connected people on the planet. We communicate more efficiently, and we want to make a difference. Despite these expert qualifications, nobody really asks us for our help." Tori succumbed to her cancer in 2008, and Adams started Extra Life that year in her honor. Since then, his faith in gamers has been more than proven. Every year thousands of new players sign up, and to date they have raised more than $4 million.