Gaming for Good

The Washington College Esports Club will be raising money for the Johns Hopkins Children’s Center through a livestreamed 16-hour gaming marathon as part of Children’s Miracle Network’s Extra Life program.

While the Washington College Esports Club was down to just a handful of members a couple of years ago, it has come roaring back this academic year, and this coming Saturday, they will use their newfound energy and renewed membership to raise money for pediatric care through a 16-hour gaming marathon.

Now boasting a roster of 82 members, 19 of whom are on competitive Esports teams with a collective record of 11-4 so far this semester, the Esports Club has become a vibrant locus for students and its leadership wanted to engage the larger community.

“I was extremely excited at the idea of Esports doing a fundraiser through streaming some of the games we play,” club events coordinator Elizabeth McCormick-Fischer ’28 said. “I have seen so much good news relating to Extra Life that I felt it was an amazing idea for the charity we could support.”

Since the Extra Life program was created in 2008 as a campaign to raise money for pediatric healthcare through gaming, it has raised more than $140 million for children’s hospitals throughout the United States and Canada, becoming part of the Children’s Miracle Network in 2010. Money raised by gamers goes to their local pediatric hospital, and the Washington College Esports Club’s effort will support the Johns Hopkins Children’s Center in Baltimore.

Members of the Washington College community can watch the livestream of the event on Twitch or YouTube and follow the fundraiser’s progress and make donations on Tiltify.

“By organizing and participating in the event, students take an active role in serving others while developing leadership and teamwork skills,” said Steve Kaneshiki, the College’s coordinator of campus recreation and advisor to the Esports Club. “The livestream brings together students, alumni, professors and an online audience around a shared charitable goal, demonstrating how digital platforms can be used for philanthropy and advocacy. Through fundraising and spreading awareness, the event allows students to contribute to a meaningful cause while strengthening the campus culture of community involvement.”

The charity livestream will run from 10 a.m. on Saturday, March 21 until 2 a.m. Sunday and feature different events and challenges in different games each hour, often with special guests. Math professor Emerald Andrews will undertake a gold rush in Stardew Valley early in the stream, seeing how much gold she can stockpile from 11 a.m. to noon. Computer science professor Heather Switzer will host an hour of Ultimate Chicken Horse at 2 p.m. And psychology professor Dan Kochli will lead students from his first-year seminar class Mindsets and Multikills as they attempt to reach the summit in PEAK from 4 to 5 p.m.

Anyone watching the stream from 10 to 11 p.m. can play along with Jackbox, an online party game with a variety of comedic minigames. Other hours throughout the event will feature Esports Club members playing favorite games, including two of the three in which they compete: Marvel Rivals (7-8 p.m.) and Super Smash Bros Ultimate (8-9 p.m.).  

“There’s something irreplicable about being part of a team. You’re with a group of wonderful people for multiple hours a week every week, trying to achieve the same goal, trying to better yourself, trying to better each other. And you’re all brought together by doing something you love.”

—Solomon Bradley ’29, Super Smash Bros

The third team, largely made up of Washington College soccer players, have gone undefeated so far this season in Rocket League, best described as soccer with rally cars, and will be competing in the playoffs of the Eastern College Athletic Conference (ECAC Esports). Both the Marvel Rivals and Super Smash Bros Ultimate teams can make the playoffs with one more win in their last two games of the season.

The secretary of the Esports Club (and Smash Bros competitor) Karlis Povisils ’26 encouraged any Washington College students with even a casual interest in the games the club plays competitively to give it a try. He initially joined for on-campus events like Smash Bros and Mario Kart tournaments and grew into a competitive player in his junior year.  

Povisils also said that the club can meet student interest in new games and stay competitive in their conference thanks to support from the Student Government Association, which recently funded upgrades to the computers the club needed (and then upgrades to the electrical system in Goldstein Hall because the new computers were so powerful they kept tripping breakers).  

Whether competing against other schools online from their dedicated space in Goldstein or against fellow Washington College students in the Goose Nest for a casual tournament, Esports Club members find connection through their shared love of games.

“After not being able to find a place outside of what was within the bounds of my English program and the Writers’ Union, Esports gave me an extracurricular where I could thrive and socialize,” Povisils said. “Plus, winning felt rewarding. (Not to knock losing, though. Learning is important, and I learned A LOT early on).”

— Mark Jolly-Van Bodegraven