Ah, it's that time of year again. The leaves are changing, the air is crisp, and we're staying up all night like lunatics, streaming video games for 24 hours straight to help sick kids. That's right, Extra Life is back! We've been getting more and more involved every year with this annual online fundraiser that benefits local children's hospitals, and after we hit our goal four times over last year with the ludicrous total of $122,972, we knew we had to go even harder in 2014. So that's what we're doing.

Feel free to donate at any time via this link!

Please watch this hype video from the shadowy cabal known as the Hamster Alliance in order to get, you know, hyped.

After the rousing success of our 48-hour double whammy last year, we're adding not one but two more days of streaming to the schedule, for a total of four straight days of games and silliness and raising money for sick kids and exhaustion. For the sake of clarification, that's

NINETY-SIX (96) mostly CONSECUTIVE HOURS OF LIVE STREAMING

the schedule of which is as follows.

THURSDAY at 7AM PACIFIC Patrick, Dave Lang, some combination of other Iron Galaxy employees, and who knows which other Chi-town knuckleheads will kick off the festivities from the windy city with a full 24 hours.

Following a short two-hour break, FRIDAY at 9AM PACIFIC intrepid producer Jason A. Striker will be joined by his wife and various Friends of Giant Bomb in the San Francisco studio for some manner of hijinks. I predict there will be fighting games.

Directly following Jason's stream, SATURDAY at 9AM PACIFIC I'll commence my now-annual solo stream from home, probably joined here and there by friends like Daily Dota luminary Crispy and Extra Life team captain Matt Pascual. Otherwise, there will only be a huge stack of games and the chat to keep me awake in the wee hours. Will I finally pick that Dark Souls character back up? Can I keep the Dota to a minimum? Will the piggies make an appearance? Find out!

Finally, SUNDAY at 9AM PACIFIC, just as I'm about to collapse, Drew and dead-to-us former colleague Alexis Gallisa will roll into the office and probably play a scary amount of Halo (and maybe some other games?) to see us through until the stream finally concludes on Monday morning. That's assuming Drew makes it back alive from Vietnam or wherever he is at this point. We haven't heard from that guy in like two weeks.

All of the live action will take place in the usual venue, and you won't need to do anything every day when one stream rolls over to the next. As always, it's the more the merrier with this thing; if you'd like to create an account and join the Giant Bomb team to stream along with us, head over to our Extra Life team page for more details on how to sign up. The Giant Bomb staff and friends will be accepting donations here on our user page, or feel free to donate to anyone else who's part of the team. (Fans of the site will see a few familiar faces on the roster.)

This year we've set the WHOPPING and yet TOTALLY ATTAINABLE goal of $175,000, one-seventh of which we've already cleared before the main event has even begun. But we're not there yet. So get donating! Get streaming! Get nuts!