Two gamers might be in for a karmic winning streak after their acts of charitable goodwill.
Kathleen Henkel of New Jersey and Laura Rich of Cardiff, Wales, are teaming up Tuesday with PopCap Games to raise money for charity and simultaneously attempt to break a Guinness World Record.
Henkel is camping in Manhattan and Rich is in London, attempting the 30-hour gaming extravaganza that, if successful, will earn them the glory of holding the mark for "Longest Videogames Marathon Playing a Card Game." The two are playing PopCap's online game "Solitaire Blitz."
Henkel and Rich are working together in hopes of raising $90,000 together, according to a press release. These donations, combined with the $5,000 per player that PopCap has promised to contribute, will be entrusted to the nonprofit organization charity: water, which seeks to provide wells to the 800 million people who lack access to clean water.
"The Guinness World Records Gamer's Edition is packed full of gamers doing amazing things," Gaz Deaves, Gaming Editor for Guinness World Records, explains in the release, "…it will be an incredible achievement if they make it to the end."
Henkel and Rich aren't the first humanitarians who have set out to top existing world records for a good cause.
Last April, people came to Naugatuck, Conn., from as far as Atlanta to participate in the longest kickball marathon to date -- a game that lasted 54 hours and raised over $45,000 for cancer research.
Additionally, three Englishmen raised over $23,000 for the British Red Cross while breaking not one, but two world records. Their 32,000-mile journey, during which they stopped at the base camp below Mount Everest, allowed them to claim the records for longest and highest taxi cab rides of all time.