Exclusive Q&A with Chris Cook as he embarks on his record breaking gaming feat!

Records are meant to be broken and that’s exactly what Chris Cook plans to do in the next few weeks…all whilst earning a shed load of money for Special Effect.

We first heard about Chris and his marathon FIFA 15 game session from the man himself a few months back. Since the initial idea, Chris has come up with a place, a plan and a will to make money for Special Effect – The Gamers Charity. He’ll aim to take part in ‘The Longest Video Game Marathon On a Football Game’ between the 5th-8th November 2014 at the Loading Bar in London, UK, beating the current record of 48 hours 5 minutes.

It seems to be a mammoth task that we just had to hear even more about – oh, and hopefully this article will tempt you in to giving Chris and Special Effect a little donation!

So, tell us a bit more about yourself…Who are you and what do you do?

Hi guys, Well I’m Chris and I’m the Community Manager/Content Creator for GamePointsNow.com and GameKeysNow.com , an online retailer of PC Games, Xbox Live subscriptions etc. I’ve been in my role just under a year but before that I was a writer for a number of enthusiast sites

Tell us a bit about this World Record bid? How easy has it been to set up? Have you had much help from Guinness over what should and shouldn’t be done in order to make sure you set a valid record?

I’ll admit it’s been a little more work than I was expecting to be honest, and I expected a lot. There’s a lot of paperwork for starters and as you can imagine Guinness are pretty busy so it’s not always easy to get a quick answer from them. Luckily I was able to set aside work time to trawl through the stacks of documents and guidelines in order to try and ensure everything is done according to their very strict rules.

The hardest part however has probably been setting up my support team. This is absolutely vital for the event but as you can imagine finding people who are able to give up their free time to help some buffoon play fifa in a London pub for 3 days isn’t easy, but luckily I’ve found a small crew who are going above and beyond by helping me out.

Three days of gaming is going to take its toll. Been in training much?

I hope I don’t die lol. I used to work night shifts before I got this job so staying up for long periods came quite easily, however since I moved to 9-5 in a comfy office I struggle to stay up past 9pm so I’m really relying on the support of people to fire me through.

As for practice I’ve played a lot of Fifa but I’m not sure that counts, and I’m still not great at it but luckily that’s not a requirement of the record.

What do you expect to be the most challenging part of the record breaking bid? What’s the plan for when things start getting tough?

While I don’t expect any of it it to be easy I think the second day (hours 36+) will probably be the hardest. Guinness do allow you to take breaks for health & safety reasons but I want to try and get through it in a few sessions as possible. If I need to stop at any point it will hopefully not be for any extended periods.

Why FIFA 15? Did you ever think about a different game or was EA’s finest always at the top of your list?

I’m a huge Fifa fan so it was always going be one of the games I considered, plus it offers a number of different game modes to kind of offer some variety. It’s also pretty popular on Youtube etc so hopefully it can bring in some of that audience and help make the event as big as possible

From a more personal standpoint however Fifa 09 is a game I credit for getting me though one of the tougher periods of my life. Around it’s release I was housebound for an extended period and lost pretty much everything as I was unable to work, Fifa and a couple of other games became my only lifeline into the outside world as it allowed me to play with the group of friends I had online. I honestly believe that without those days and nights of playing pro clubs when I was feeling down I may not have been around to make this attempt.

I’ve also just realised I’ve never told anyone that before.

And what will you be playing on? Are we looking at Microsoft’s best console to keep you busy?

Yes I’ll be playing on the Xbox One. I did query Guinness about possibly switching platforms at certain points but they couldn’t give me a definitive answer so I stuck to the platform I already owned the game on. So if you have an Xbox One copy and fancy playing a few games online during the event hit me up and maybe you can get involved.

Tell us a bit more about Special Effect. Why have you chosen them as your charity?

Special Effect are an award winning UK based charity who help disabled gamers of all ages enjoy some of the games that most of us take for granted on a daily basis. I’ve been fortunate enough to witness the work they do first hand and it’s truly inspiring.

I implore anyone to check them out and even if you can’t support our event help them out in any way you can, even something as small as a tweet can make all the difference sometimes.

And can we donate? If so, where and how much do you hope to raise?

You can donate in a number of ways. Either visit my JustGiving page over at https://www.justgiving.com/FifaWR or you can text GPNF55 and the amount (from £1 upwards) to 70070. All the money goes direct to the charity and you can even select Gift Aid to maximise your donation. We’ll also be accepting donations at the event should you be able to attend.

Initially I set my fundraising target quite low but I want to raise as much as possible for such an incredible cause

We’ve seen you chatting about your support team. Want to give them a shout out?

Most definitely, I wouldn’t be able to do this without them and I hope they all know how grateful I am for them giving up their time to support me. Hopefully I can find a way to reward them.

The Team are:

John Pinnick (@ProtoFoe) from GameSkinny & The Companion Cube Podcast (@TCC_Podcast)
Tony Powell
Rahul Parkar (@LOLPwnedxD)
Rich Smith (@Smidgey87)
Stacey Powell

And finally, can we watch your record attempt anywhere? Either by popping down or via a stream?

OF COURSE!! The event is taking place at the popular gaming themed Loading Bar in Dalston, London so if you’re in the area please feel free to drop in and say hi, and maybe play a few games too.

If you’re not able to attend the event we’ll be streaming as much as we possibly can (internet permitting) via our Twitch channel over at Twitch.tv/GamePointsNow so come join in and tell your friends 🙂

We’ve also got a ton of giveaways to do throughout thanks to our supporters at companies like EA, InsertCoin, Hauppauge PVR’s, Qwertee and many more

I’ll also be (hopefully) doing a video diary throughout which might not be shit lol.

Many thanks go out to Chris for taking the time to not only answer a few of our questions but to also support a charity that deserves the recognition. If you like what you’ve read and would like to get involved, email him at [email protected]. We’re sure he’d love to hear from you.

Good luck to Chris from all us here at TheXboxHub, and we hope you can find the time to throw a little cash his way via the Just Giving links. It may just keep him sane throughout the 8-0 losses!