While the notion of being in the year of our lord 2021 seems like an impossibility as we all anxiously await election results, other parts of the universe are still moving as intended. Including some very good ones, like Awesome Games Done Quick. The charity stream has officially unveiled its schedule for next year’s speed-running event, which will be taking a note from this year’s Summer Games Done Quick stream by going digital in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic.
[via the Games Done Quick website]
Out of an abundance of caution for the safety of the community, Games Done Quick has made the difficult decision to move AGDQ 2021 to an entirely online format and will not feature a live venue. Similar to SGDQ 2020, we will broadcast the event from our studio, with runners participating from the safety of their homes. The broadcast dates will remain the same, with AGDQ 2021 showcasing some of the best speedrunners in the world from January 3rd — 10th, 2021.
The event will feature speedruns for includes some relatively recent hits like Star Wars: Jedi Fallen Order and Hades to classics like the original Metroid and Final Fantasy VII. Some of these seem super impressive just based on the game they’re playing alone, like a 25-minute long run of Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice. A more surprising one is a one-hour run of the cutscenes of Zelda: Wand of Gamelon, widely considered to be one of the worst games of all-time, and certainly at the bottom of the Legend of Zelda ladder. But even bad games can make good speedrun content. The full schedule has been posted on the Games Done Quick website, and currently lists games for a total runtime of 147 hours and four minutes. Event organizers do acknowledge that the list of games and schedule may change if players have to drop out for any reason between now and the first week of January, but as long as everything goes according to plan, these games are what you can expect to see played through on stream in two month’s time.
In other news:
- GameStop Asks Employees to Dance for Black Friday Work Hours
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- There’s an election happening right now and video games seem extremely dumb and trivial at this moment but here we are.
All money raised during the weeklong event will go toward the Prevent Cancer Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to early detection of cancer. Last year, Awesome Games Done Quick raised over $3 million, which was a record for the event over its ten year history. As of last year, Awesome Games Done Quick has raised over $14 million for the Prevent Cancer Foundation.
Conversely, Summer Games Done Quick takes donations for Doctors Without Borders, an organization working toward providing health care to areas in need. While the actual SGDC was delayed due to the coronavirus pandemic, it did ultimately raise over $2 million for the cause when it eventually went down this past August.
