X3O hosts all night Game-A-Thon
By Joe Coffman on 2006-01-24
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(From left to right) Winner Elionex Rodriguez and runner up Lee Fleishman pose with their prizes. --

Video games all night long?caffeinated drinks being chugged down?wearily punching buttons the next morning?eyes growing heavy...X-Box 360's. This is what could be found last weekend at X3O Gaming Center when they hosted their first ever Game-A-Thon.

The object of the contest was to stay awake and occupied by playing video games longer than every other contestant. All gamers were competing for the grand prize of an X-Box 360 Platinum System package. Even second place would be awarded an X-Box 360 Core system package for their efforts.

X3O Gaming Center has only been open for seven months and thought this would be a great way to attract gamers, consumers and media attention to their site. "Nobody has X-Box 360's and we have them and we thought it would be a great way to get awareness about the store," said X3O employee Michael Feldman.

This proved to be a great way to gain attention and publicity. FOX 5 did a live broadcast from X3O and The Washington Post wrote a Sunday article about the festivities. Other local newspapers covered the event as well. That's only dealing with the media though; the gamers themselves were a whole different story. X3O received around 1500 applications for entry into the contest, but only took 27.

D Solutions was the marketing firm responsible for putting the Game-A-Thon together. "We wanted to create awareness and make sure that X3O was known to the public?we thought that this would be the best way to do it," said Dawn Mixon of D Solutions. Circuit City, Red Bull, Sports Authority, Tower Records, and Papa Johns all wanted a piece of the action and participated by donating prizes.

Some gamers were in the Game-A-Thon because they truly enjoyed gaming, and others entered for the pure sport of competition. "I kind of grew out of [gaming]?right now I'm just doing this for the competition of it," said contestant Darren Jarquin. Gamer Chris Lyle, however, felt the exact opposite. "I love gaming all around, it's my life," said Lyle.

The contest started at 5pm. At the kickoff most contestants felt confident with their chances to win. They all had their own strategies, but the most used was drinking energy and caffeine filled beverages to stay awake. However, after the first 24 hours of the Game-A-Thon, despite the participant's game plans, only 16 gamers were left battling their drowsiness and boredom.

As the contest went on, the playing field continued to shrink. In fact seven minutes into Monday there were only three gamers still playing away. Come 2am Elionex Rodriguez was finally crowned the winner. He was able to outplay all the other gamers to earn himself a brand new Xbox 360 Platinum System package. The runner up was Lee Fleishman, who was awarded the Xbox 360 Core package.