I swear, whoever is in charge of setting up sales at Steam keeps an eye on our chatter here, because the past several PC co-op nights we've announced were accompanied by a Steam sale for the same game. Perhaps it's just coincidence, since Steam is always having sales, but I like to think we have some influence on the industry.

For February's Co-Optimus Community Voice, we want to hear what you have to say about all the console hubbub. What do you think about all the rumors circulating the web? What about your predictions? What will the consoles be named and what features/specs are we going to see? What features will help advance co-op gaming? Which console will be the most co-op friendly?

Master Chief and Co-Optimus Co-Op Nights have one thing in common, they were MIA for far too long. There’s good news though, they’re both making a return with Halo 4. Co-Optimus and Xbox Live have teamed up to bring you a Halo 4 Co-Op Night on February 7th, starting at 8PM Eastern. We’ll be playing through the campaign and/or the new co-op mode named Spartan Ops. There’s an event thread in our forums where you should post your gamertag and what you’re interested in playing. Plan on revisiting the thread on February 7th to find people to meet up with.

Last weekend, our Extra Life team endured a 24 hour gaming marathon, and raised $2,188.75
for Children's Miracle Network Hospitals. Those donations are going straight to the Children's Hospitals we each chose, to help kids in need. This was our first year organizing a team, and we blew away our goal of $1,000. As someone who has personally spent months visiting my child in the hospital, that makes me very proud. On behalf of the Co-Optimus staff, our Co-Optimus Extra Life team, and parents everywhere, I'd like to thank each of you who donated, participated, or helped spread the word. It means alot to me, and it literally means the world to kids fighting diseases, disabilities, and prematurity.

Our Extra Life marathon starts tomorrow morning, and we're pumped. We've met our fundraising goal, planned our day, and we're ready to go. This group of Co-Optimus staff and community members couldn't be more excited. We have one more thing to ask of you before we start tomorrow: please donate! Even though we've met our team goal, the kids still need our donations. We're all very passionate about this charity. We want to help. Here are our team members with excerpts from their pages:

By now you must have heard that we're gearing up for Extra Life, a 24 hour gaming marathon for charity. We're raising money for Children's Miracle Network Hospitals. If you have 24 hours to spare this weekend, you can still join our team, and help us bring in donations. If not, you can still join in on the fun. We're inviting everyone to join us this weekend, whenever you can, playing whatever game we happen to be playing at the time. We've started a tentative schedule which you can view below, or on our Extra Life 2012 page.

Extra Life is ten days away, so it's time to step up our efforts, and pull in more donations. We've made some good progress this week, but we still have a long way to go. So far, our ten members have raised $296 for Children's Miracle Network Hospitals. That's a good chunk of money, but we can do better.

Every October, Extra Life hosts "the biggest gaming charity event of the year" and they're not kidding. Extra Life is huge, and since 2008, they've raised over $2 million for Children's Miracle Network Hospitals. That cash helped pay for treatments for sick kids who are suffering from illnesses like cancer and cystic fibrosis. These hospitals give kids a chance to live, grow up, and experience the world. This year, Co-Optimus is joining the effort.

For this month's Co-Optimus Community Voice, I asked you, the community, to show off your creations. Two of you answered the call and showed off some pretty cool creations. Both entries are from first-time bloggers, so props to them for starting off strong.

Borderlands 2 will be in our living rooms in just four days. It's time to say farewell to Borderlands, and hello to the new hotness that is Borderlands 2. To do so, we're hosting two co-op nights. As we've mentioned before, we're playing Borderlands tonight, starting at 9 PM Eastern, on all platforms (PC, Xbox 360, and PS3). Head on over to the event thread for more details. Let's give Borderlands the farewell party it deserves.

For September's Co-Optimus Community Voice, we want to see your in-game creations. Fire up your blog, start your blog post's title with "CCV", and tell us all about your creations. It doesn't necessarily have to be from Minecraft, or even a co-op game, but a co-op tie-in is always a plus. Snap screenshots, record a video, and throw down a few paragraphs describing your creations. Tell us about all the effort you put into it, and who helped you.

Ever since I joined Co-Optimus back in '09, I've always been amazed at how genuine and nice everyone is here. This community is by far the best online community I've been a part of. This month's Co-Optimus Community Voice topic brought out the best of us. We asked "Who's In Your Crew?" and there were some excellent responses. 

Most people, myself included, have a group of friends who really click and spend the most game time together. I like to call this group "my crew" because, well, they're by my side through thick and thin. They're the guys or gals that churn fun times out of terrible games, and create smiling-so-hard-your-cheeks-hurt moments out of great games.

Some of my fondest co-op memories are from my high school and college days, when some good friends and I fired up Serious Sam and played all night until the crack of dawn. Serious Sam games have always had the ability to make entire nights disappear. The frantic action paired with ridiculous over-the-top enemies is perfect for keeping a group of co-op buddies laughing for hours. This is why we think Serious Sam 3: BFE should make for a perfect co-op night.

Ghost Recon Future Soldier is right around the corner, but you need a Ghost Recon refresher. We're inviting you to a Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2 co-op night on to make sure you're ready. The event will take place on Xbox Live, starting at 8 PM CDT on Wednesday, May 16th. Make sure you head on over to the event's thread on the forums for more details. Leave your gamertag in the thread and find other people to meet up with there. Staff members will be sending out invites, so keep an eye out for us.