The History of PWN: Part 3

In part 1 of this series I told you about how the 2old2playHalo clan came up with the idea for the Pwnathon.  In part 2 I took you through the clan’s planning process up to the start of the first Pwnathon in 2008.  Now, I want to talk about the actual events last year which will hopefully better show you what to expect this year.

The first thing we did was kick off the event with a big introduction.  Challenges were big part of the first fundraiser we did inside the clan (see part 1) so we planned to focus the Pwnathon on them as well.  The challenges were definitely a hit, but to be honest they didn't go over as well as we expected.  We had envisioned members challenging their clanmates and other clans to all sorts of crazy stuns and having donations roll in from them.  We did get some participation, and we'll definitely do it again, but our Pwnathon's success was actually found elsewhere.

The second part of 2old2playHalo's first fundraiser was services.  Members bought custom sigs and avatars for a small donation.  It wasn't a huge donation maker but it worked.  We tried a Pwnathon Service thread, but it looked like it was going to completely flop at first.  That is, until two 2old2play members stepped up and made some big offers.  Caesar offered a custom sig up for auction.  The Pwnathon's biggest success came from Dahji though.  He offered up a custom keychain for groups to bid on.  In the end, the two top bidders both got keychains from Dahji and the Pwnathon exploded over the goal amount.

We had a multitude of other events going on at the same time.  There was the Ladies Night, some open gaming room nights, the PMS clan joined in one night, and a Halo Forge Contest.  Really, the best explanation of last year's Pwnathon can be found in the Finale and Awards announcement.   In case you can't tell from the various links, we were making it up as we went along.  That is really the beauty of the Pwnathon though.  It's just a bunch of gamers doing what gamers do.  The only difference for this event was that we were doing it for a cause.  The $1500+ that we raised may seem like a relatively small amount but remember how it started.  We couldn't find anywhere that an online fundraiser like this had ever been before.  For the first shot, it was a huge success.

This year, we are taking what we learned last year and going even bigger.  Last year we focused on Halo.  This year, the 2old2playHalo and the Halo game will play a big part in the event but it is now the 2old2play.com Pwnathon.  The planning crew has their own forum and is comprised of members that have stepped up to the challenge from all over the site.  We are including most of the major titles played by 2o2p'ers.  Also, remember this year we're raising funds for Child's Play.  The 2old2play LAN crew is also planning to include Child's Play as their benefactor so it truly is a site-wide goal to help out this worthy cause.

Get ready folks.  July 2009.  get pwned.