Want to get rewards in Rift and help kids in hospitals at the same time? Cindy "Abigale" Bowens gives us details on Rift's Extra Life 24-hour gaming marathon event!

UPDATE: Extra Life is over and gamers around the world raised more than $1.1 million! The Trion Worlds team raised more than $34,000.

On Saturday, October 15, gamers across the world will participate in the Extra Life 24-hour marathon event to raise money to help kids at Children's Miracle Network Hospitals. Sounds like a great cause, right? Trion Worlds agreed, which is why they'll be giving out Rift awards like titles and items to players who register for the event and venture into Telara this weekend alongside members of Trion's community and development teams!

Cindy "Abigale" Bowens, Trion's director of community for North America, was kind enough to talk with us about the Rift Extra Life event that kicks off on October 15 at 8 a.m. PDT. You can read the full interview after the jump. If you'd like to join the 2,500 Rift players who have already signed up to help children by playing the game (including yours truly), head over to the Extra Life site and register!

ZAM: How did Trion become involved in the Extra Life event?

Cindy Bowens: Last year, a few people on our team were participating in the Extra Life event. We were still in beta at the time and there wasn’t a lot we could do to support the event in game. But we did promote it and our participating team members on our forums. The response was so positive that we decided we wanted to really do something special this year.

ZAM: Why did you make the decision this year to add rewards for participating?

Bowens: Everyone who participates in the event will get the in-game title “the Charitable.” That’s just a little gift of thanks from us for supporting this great charity. Then we thought that it would be fun to reward people for milestones reached while playing through the event. We’ll be recognizing people for things like highest level reached, highest level of crafting, most artifacts collected and most PvP kills. So there will be many ways to get an award. We thought it would just be a fun little bonus to reward people for reaching significant milestones during the event.

ZAM: How many members of the Trion team will be playing?

Bowens: We still have people signing up to help but right now it looks like we have about 30 people involved. Not everyone can play for the entire event but we have a lot of folks signing on to show up and help for as many hours as they can.

ZAM: How many players do you expect to participate? Will you be opening a new server just for the event?

Bowens: The last time I checked with the folks at Extra Life, we had nearly 2,500 people signed up with Rift accounts and the number has been growing every day! It is thrilling to see our community jumping in to be a part of this great cause! We will be announcing information on the server right before the event but we do already have a backup plan in place if we end up with too many people on one server.

ZAM: Will the awards, such as the title for participating, be account-bound or unique to the newly created characters?

Bowens: They are account bound; so all titles and awards can be used by any character on your account.

ZAM: How will you be verifying who wins the awards for highest levels, most favor, etc? The event is 24 hours; are you looking at time played, for example?

Bowens: We will look at time played. The Rift Extra Life Event officially starts at 8 a.m. Pacific Time. To qualify for any of the rewards, your character must not reach level 2 before the start of the event. Once the event is over, we will be checking our logs to see who made the most progress in each area during their 24 hours of playtime. And yes, we will be checking to make sure people progressed fairly! Be sure to check out the Extra Life Event FAQ on our Rift Community Blog for all of the details on qualifying for the rewards!

ZAM: Do you have any strategies for staying awake, alert and active for 24 hours in Telara?

Bowens: I have never done something like this before so this is all a new experience for me. I am going to give it my best shot but honestly, I am not sure I’ll be able to last the whole 24 hours. But that’s the really nice part about this event. Extra Life specifically states that if you cannot manage 24 hours straight, you can make up the time. In fact, we will give “the Insomniac” title to anyone who completes their 24 hours by Sunday night before midnight.

That being said, I am really going to try to make it through the entire event. I’ll be stocking up on lots of Diet Pepsi, snack foods and will have pizza delivery numbers handy! My husband is also participating in the event so we plan to try to keep each other awake.

ZAM: If this Rift Extra Life marathon is a success, will you consider hosting other in-game charitable events in the future?

Bowens: That’s always a possibility.

ZAM: is there anything else you'd like to add about Extra Life or the marathon event?

Bowens: I am so touched by the response to this event by the Rift community. Our number of participants and the amount of money raised for Children’s Miracle Network continues to grow daily. We are really looking forward to spending our weekend playing Rift side by side with our community members!

Paul "LockeColeMA" Cleveland, Staff Writer