Local Gaming Group Games for Good

For a local tabletop gaming group, what was once only an outlet to get together and have fun, has now developed into so much more: DFW Gaming Village is making life better for children.

Matt Sprague, founder of the club, first created DFW Gaming Village as a Facebook group in 2013. Inspired by playing board games at lunch with a co-worker, Matt realized how fun it was to socialize and game, so he created a community for fellow enthusiasts. He hosted game nights at his home and as the group developed, other members did, too.

“It turned into this huge tabletop gaming network,” Matt said.

A few years later, Matt signed up for online dating and met his now wife, Tori Sprague, who he initially pursued because an affinity for board games was listed on her profile. Tori eventually joined DFW Gaming Village.

The club had grown since its start, and one day, Tori told Matt, “With this huge group, we should be doing some kind of fundraising, too.” She and another member were familiar with a program called Extra Life. Extra Life is a fundraising program through Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals designed to encourage gamers, both video and tabletop, to play to raise money for their local CMN Hospital.

In 2017, DFW Gaming Village became more than a gaming group, they became advocates for Children’s Health℠.

Every fall, DFW Gaming Village participates in Extra Life Game Day, where thousands of Extra Life community members play video games, board games and make art to fundraise for their local CMN Hospital. Since the Extra Life fundraising platform is open year-round, DFW Gaming Village also created their own unofficial Extra, Extra Life Game Day in the spring to double their fundraising efforts for the year.

During the pandemic, DFW Gaming Village also donated many kid-friendly board games to Children’s Health for patients and their families to play and keep.

Matt, a technical consultant, and Tori, a middle school science teacher, said they fundraise because they want to bring fun and distraction to patients and families while in the hospital.  

“And we also get to play games as we help,” Tori said.

Tori has always been into some type of gaming. As a teenager, she played board games like Dungeons & Dragons and Munchkin, and video games on classic consoles like Sega Genesis and Nintendo 64. For Tori, gaming was always around, but she didn’t realize the community it would build. She’d go over to her friends’ houses to play games, but it was more about hanging out and connecting with other people. Today, a lot of people are into gaming, and she hopes to bring awareness to more gamers about Extra Life so they can enjoy one of their favorite hobbies while changing patients’ lives for the better.

Seriously committed to making life better for children, Tori and Matt recently got married and one of their wedding registry requests was donations to Extra Life.

To date, DFW Gaming Village has raised over $9,300 for Children’s Health.

Philanthropic gifts from donors like DFW Gaming Village will continue to be essential in affording our hospital system the ability to expand cutting-edge treatments and care programs to meet the unique and wide-ranging needs of families we serve now and in the future.

“Gaming is fun on its own, but it doesn’t have an overarching meaning or foundation where you can build onto it – it’s something that’s done leisurely,” Matt said.

If you want to introduce meaning to your gaming, Matt recommends signing up for Extra Life or finding a local gaming group on Facebook and see if Extra Life is something they’d be interested in.

“And that’s a way you can add meaning to your leisure,” he said.

Extra Life’s Tabletop Appreciation Weekend is coming up on Aug. 19-20. You can “game for good” by signing up for Extra Life here.