Awesome Games Done Quick 2023 ran over the last week, the annual event featuring 150 speedruns and four broken records, with a hefty sum raised for the Prevent Cancer Foundation. $2.6 million was raised over the week, and that’s despite the lack of a live venue, following the decision to cancel its Florida event due to…well, Florida.
Games Done Quick, apart from being a monstrous attack against good grammar and adverbs, is the fantastic organization that combines people playing games really quickly (see, quickly) with raising astonishing amounts of money for good causes.
January’s annual “Awesome” incarnation hasn’t had a live home for three years now, following two years of Covid, and then this year’s choice to abandon plans for a Florida event given that Florida has become unsafe for just about everyone. (I’m British and only watch from afar, but as far as I can tell it’s now the law in Florida that if you’re not permanently draped in a Confederate flag while firing at least two guns into the air Yosemite Sam-style, you can be legally murdered in the street.)
Last year saw the same event raise an eye-watering $3.4 million, but given the cost of living crises around the world, $2.6 million in 2023 remains stunning. This came from viewers who enjoyed an excellent array of speedruns, including—as our sister site down under reports—four world records. They were a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turles: Shredder’s Revenge co-op, Super Mario Galaxy 2, er, Steven Seagal Is: The Final Option, and—yay—PowerWash Simulator. The latter, which has taken me approximately 348 weeks to get halfway through, lasted just 33:31. Watch it!
You can watch the rest of the runs via GDQ’s YouTube channel. Like Mysteries Of Sith in 26 minutes!
The Summer Games Done Quick(ly) dates have been announced as May 28 to June 4.
