High school students raise money for Child's Play

                Omnithon:Retro began today at 5 p.m. The retro gaming marathon, being held in Kent, Washington, will last until Sunday at 8 p.m.  A group of high school juniors and seniors, led by Kyle Owsen, organized the event with the hopes of raising $2180.27 for Child’s Play.

                The group needs to raise $2180.27 to become gold sponsors of the Child’s Play charity. Currently silver sponsors, the high school students started organizing gaming marathons for Child’s Play in July 2010. The group has hosted 4 events since then, raising a total of $5074.26 for Child’s Play. Owsen said that Omnithon has grown significantly since the first event.

                “When it started, we were four kids sitting in my friend's basement with a homemade microphone taken out of an old phone with a cardboard funnel for amplification, the world's worst webcam, and a ten dollar capture card,” Owsen said. “Now we're roughly ten kids sitting in another friend's basement with some near-professional level microphones, an awesome HD webcam, and still a ten dollar capture card.”

                The first event Owsen organized was a Halo marathon called Halo:Endurance Evolved. The other events all had unique names, but in February 2012, Owsen said he combined all the events into Omnithon, “to attempt to preserve the audience we built during our Fallout 3 marathon.”

                Omnithon:Retro will be focused on retro games like The Legend of Zelda and other NES and N64 games. Owsen said they are trying to reach out to gamers of all ages, not just those who have played the Xbox.

                “Unlike with the somewhat limited age demographic of the Xbox, almost everyone has had some kind of experience with gaming at some time between the NES and N64,” Owsen said. “Plus, I have all these old cartridges just rotting away in my closet. May as well put them to use.”

                Owsen said that the group had a lot of help from Child’s Play organizing their first event. He stayed in close contact with the “always awesome” Kristin Lindsay and Jamie Dillion through E-mail.

                “Child's Play does an unparalleled job at supporting community efforts, and ours was no different,” Owsen said. “Throughout our first marathon, they showed so much support and made us feel like a real part of their team.”

                Jamie Dillion has been working as a project manager at Child’s Play for a little over a year, and works closely with the press and community events.

                “Our community events make a huge impact on our fundraising total annually,” Dillion said.

                The event can be watched live on www.omnithon.com, where viewers can chat with the gamers and watch them play.  Alex Posielski is an Omnithon participant, and is happy to game for Child’s Play.

                “I think that being able to help children while doing something fun with friends is awesome,” Poseilski said.