What is this marathon about?

IGGMarathon is about encouraging people to donate to Child’s Play while generating exposure for independently developed games. We’re going to run a live stream of us playing indie games, and we’ll keep playing for as long as people keep donating. Unlike other gaming marathons, which only play a predetermined list of games, the games we play during IGGMarathon will be determined by requests from our donors, so our viewers will be directly involved in the experience. Last year, we played for 79 hours and raised $6816.40 for Child's Play.

Who are you guys?

We call ourselves the Cloudboat Armada. We’re a bunch of friends who love to play games and wanted do something positive with that. Inspired by the example of other charity gaming marathons like Desert Bus and Mario Marathon, we realized that there was a way for us to share our love of indie games with the world, to promote the hard work of independent game developers, and to raise money for a worthy cause all at the same time. From that realization was born the Indie Games for Good Marathon.

What's Child's Play?

Child’s Play Charity provides Children’s Hospitals around the world with a variety of games, toys, books, and other entertainment so that sick children will find their stays in the hospital easier to bear. Child’s Play was founded in 2003 by Mike Krahulik and Jerry Holkins, the creators of the popular gaming webcomic Penny Arcade. Since its creation, Child’s Play has raised over 12 million dollars worth of donations to over 70 hospitals worldwide.

How can I help?

You can help us out by donating! Your donation will be used to make sick children happier and make us play indie games for that much longer. Not only that, but you get to pick what game we’ll play in the time your donation adds to the clock. In addition to donating, you can also help out by spreading the word about IGGMarathon!

How do I know it's all going to the right place?

The money you donate never actually touches our hands. All donations made through our system go directly to Child’s Play’s PayPal account: donate@childsplaycharity.org.

I don’t really know much about indie games. Can I still help?

Sure! Simply make a donation and don’t worry about allocating the points to anything; we promise to pick awesome games to play in the time you’ve given us.

What are points? How do they work?

You get points when you make a donation. The number of points your donation gets you is based on how much money we’ve raised, so the earlier you donate, the more points you get. You can allocate your points towards any game on our list and, once a game has accumulated at least a half an hour’s worth of points, it'll get on our stream.

Why make an account on the site?

Making an account will let you keep track of your points so that you don’t have to allocate them immediately, as well as allowing you to reallocate points if you change your mind about what game you want. Plus, having an account means that in addition to getting you points, your donation will ALSO get you an equivalent number of raffle tickets. Not only that, but on top of your donation getting you both points and tickets, you’ll be able to put your donation towards challenges. Finally, having an account lets you set up notifications to tell you when your favorite games are being played. Basically, having an account lets you do all kinds of cool stuff!

How do raffles work?

We’ve wrangled up a ton of indie game codes and prizes, and we’re going to raffle them off! To enter a raffle, simply log in to your IGG account and go to the Raffles page. From there, you can see what raffles are coming up and use your tickets to enter any active raffle.

How do challenges work?

Challenges are things that our donors can make us do in addition to just playing games. A challenge can be something like [that really impressive thing in Super Meat Boy], or [something silly and possibly embarrassing], or whatever else you can think of (as long as it’s PG). Just log in and go to the Challenges page to see all challenges that are open for donations, or to propose your own!

The game I want isn't listed! Can I get it added to the list?

We're more than happy to take recommendations, so feel free tell us about the games you want through the suggestion box on the Games page. Make sure to include information like who made the game and where we can find it. We'll try to get back to you ASAP about your request.

Do you guys have a press release?

We do! Download it here! Feel free to distribute it.

I’m an indie game developer. How can I help?

We want to hear from you! Email contact@iggmarathon.com and let us know about your game. If we don’t already have everything needd to play it, or it's not released yet, we will work with you to get it on our marathon. The biggest thing you can do to help, though, is to spread the word! Let your fans know about the event, and that they can donate to help get more of your game on the stream!

I’ve got a question that you didn’t answer.

Send any questions, suggestions, or comments to contact@iggmarathon.com, and we’ll do our best to get back to you.