I managed to finish my NaNoWriMo pages for today, but between bursts of writing, I needed a distraction. Because it was another day when I couldn’t be bothered I ended up watching a game more than I played it. It turns out I’m actually pretty good at that.

Although World of Tanks is a free game, it makes its money by selling special tanks, premium time that lets you earn more in game “money” and experience when you play, “garage” slots so you can acquire more tanks without having to get rid of any and “gold” which lets you buy other special tanks and special equipment.

Every now and then, as a way to improve their viewership, game streamers will giveaway gold, or premium time or special tanks to their followers. On the days I can’t be bothered to play, I’ve had good luck winning some of those special things. In order to win you usually only have to make a comment or type a certain code and you are entered in the drawing.

Over the past several months I’ve won two special tanks, “gold”, premium time, a garage slot and a t-shirt.

Faced with that luck, over the past 24 hours I watched snippets of Tanking for the Troops which is an occasional game streaming “telethon” that helps raise money for Operation Supply Drop. which sends crates of games and game related items to deployed service people and those in veterans’ hospitals so that they might enjoy a bit of distraction from the brutal reality around them. My cousin (a U.S. Marine) told me about how World of Warcraft was his distraction in Afghanistan between work, bouts of boredom, and random threat alarms.

I, of course, was in this for myself. By merely commenting I was automatically entered in drawings and won “gold” and a special tank. All this for being snarky a couple times an hour.

Once I had mine, er, after winning, I made a small donation to Operation Supply Drop.

The trouble is, to use any of this free stuff, I’ll actually have to be bothered to play the game. Not an easy thing to do with exams coming up. Maybe I’ll just watch more streams and see what I can win.