Lara's Summer Vacation Marathon Raising Money for Help Hope Live Interview with Matt of Tomb Raider Marathon

The team behind Tomb Raider Marathon is at it again this month with a special 72 hour livestream called Lara's Summer Vacation. This time they're doing something different and playing some of their favourite non-Tomb Raider titles. Like with all of their previous marathons, all the money raised goes to charity, and this year they're raising money for Help Hope Live.

So far the team has raised an incredible total of $4476 for Help Hope Live and Direct Relief in the seventeen months they've been running the charity marathons. We recently spoke to its Executive Director, Matt, about their latest livestream, Lara's Summer Vacation, taking place on August 24th 2018 at 5:30pm BST.

Tomb Raider Marathon began in April 2017,  raising a phenomenal $830 for Direct Relief in its first run. Initial inspiration for the project came from another well-known charity marathon. "I was watching another gaming charity marathon called Zeldathon (https://zeldathon.net/) over the 2016 Christmas holidays and thought 'I could probably do this,'" explains Matt, creator of Tomb Raider Marathon. "After a quick Google I found that no one had done a similar thing for Tomb Raider, and so here we are!"

For the project, there needed to be a team, and Matt got to work inviting some colleagues and friends to be part of the panel of hosts. For some of them it was the first time they had delved into the Tomb Raider series, allowing viewers to experience the titles for the first time vicariously through them. "All but two of the team members are current or former colleagues of mine who have a passion for gaming. Up until the first Tomb Raider Marathon most of them hadn't played a Tomb Raider game in their life, but I think they're secretly enjoying them now! The other team members are ExpressLemming and Beckski93. ExpressLemming watched a ridiculous amount of the first marathon and helped out a lot with puzzles and stuff, so we invited him to be part of the team. Beckski93 is a passionate speedrunner of Tomb Raider (1996) and has been featured at SGDQ [Summer Games Done Quick]!"

"This upcoming marathon is really a bit of a special mini marathon for us," Matt explains. "We're doing this over a public holiday weekend in the UK that is in the summer, hence the name of 'Lara's Summer Vacation'. The entire premise is that Lara is on her summer vacation and so we've had to ask around the team what their favourite games are instead of playing Tomb Raider. There were a few rules that the team had to follow for this: Nothing that can be considered NSFW/inappropriate, and must be less than 6 hours long.That was about it. People picked some great games off the bat and so it was an easy choice to get the schedule together." Among the list of schedule games are Shadow of the Colossus, Super Mario Odyssey, Dark Souls, Doom, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe and more. "I'm really excited for the games that we've got and I think everyone will be happy with the final schedule that gets revealed very soon!"

With any massive undertaking such as running a live charity marathon which is going to have an international reach, there's always going to be challenges and rewards. "There's many of both," Matt explains. "The rewards are that you feel like you've truly accomplished something great when you get to the end of the marathon and see the total amount that you have raised over the five day period. The challenges are finding enough attendees to cover all 120 hours of the livestream, keeping it running, dealing with on the fly technical problems, getting enough sleep and making sure you're as entertaining as possible for the entire marathon." Sleep deprivation is a common issue that many hosts of charity marathons face, that even gaming events like Loading Ready Run's Desert Bus for Hope, which has continued for over a decade, constantly has to update and revise their shifts and sleeping schedule so that livestream hosts don't crash or burn out.

For the team behind Lara's Summer Vacation, they approach their marathons with equal dedication and careful planning, as Matt describes. "There's a lot of prep that goes in for many months before each marathon. We're basically planning the next marathon as soon as the previous one ends. Lots of research, testing hardware, and hoping for the best. We make sure to confirm our attendees at least a month before each event so we have a good idea on who can cover what shifts when and many more things. Then it's just a case of turning up and doing your shift when the marathon is on, and getting as much sleep as you can! There's not really anything special you can do to prepare for this, however this will be slightly easier for us because we're used to doing 120 hours! "

The focus throughout all the planning, preparation and livestreaming is the cause that they're raising money for. In my emails with Matt, he spoke about the charity that he selected for Lara's Summer Vacation; the importance of the money raised and how it can help rebuild lives which have been impacted by sudden and unpredictable medical costs. "We're actually raising for Help Hope Live (https://helphopelive.org/) for the entire of 2018, not just for LSV [Lara's Summer Vacation]. I chose this charity as it is a charity that hits close to home for me. Help Hope Live helps families in a medical crisis to secure life changing care through fundraising. Throughout my life I have had to go through a lot of very complicated medical procedures to still be around today, and luckily since I'm in the UK I've had the NHS to handle this for me. Those over in the US aren't so lucky though and getting life changing/saving medical comes at a hefty price for them. Anything that we can do to help them via HHL is wonderful."

A huge thank you to Matt for taking the time to answer our questions, and to him and his team for the amazing work they continue to do with Tomb Raider Marathon. They are such a wonderful group of people, and I highly recommend checking out and supporting their upcoming livestream starting this Friday (24th August).

"You can join us from 24th-27th August 2018 for 72 hours of gaming, all streamed LIVE on tombraidermarathon.com. This is the fourth marathon we're doing now, and will have one more before the year is over. We're still just as hyped, if not more, than we were when we did the very first marathon back in April 2017. We've raised $4,476.00 since then and I am sure we will hit over the $5,000 mark with Lara's Summer Vacation."