Console Games,  PC Games

Gaming Charity for Cancer Research

Last year I posted an article about AbleGamers Charity, explaining how helpful video games have proven to be for people affected by disability and thus unable to do even the smallest things in real life. Today I want to talk about Gaming Charity for Cancer Research, since this project has grown quite a lot in the past few years thanks to the most recent technology and social media.

What is Gaming Charity?

A lot of gamers have started a Twitch account to directly stream while playing and interact with their watchers through a chat. Donations are usually given through Paypal using specific links related to the cause and whenever the amount grows the goal automatically updates on screen through a widget.

My friend Ian aka EBoy87 runs a Twitch channel for weekly broadcasts and he recently made his second 24h stream for Cancer Research UK, reason why I decided to ask him a few questions out of curiosity to which he kindly answered in detail:

Q: Is there any specific preparation for your 24h Charity stream? How long does it take to make everything correctly?

A: There was a fair bit of prep for the event actually, luckily I still had a lot of elements from last year that I could use (like my overlay and banners) but I also needed to reach out to TeamEmmmmsie to ask if they’d be willing to help me out, but I’ll explain more about them soon!

Q: As someone who’s already done two Charity broadcasts, how would you describe this kind of experience?

A: Having done 2 of these events I can say that it is personally one of the most tiring, but ultimately rewarding things that I’ve done and I will definitely be making it a yearly tradition! The event is all in aid of Cancer Research UK and was to raise money for the Relay for Life, which is an event both my wife and I have taken part in over the last few years. Cancer is a disease that has affected us all in some way, so it’s great to be able to raise money to help fight it and hopefully cure it as soon as possible!

Q: Did you encounter any difficulty during your streams (tiredness, physical problems, technical issues with games/internet connection/setup, etc)?

A: Honestly no, this year everything held out fine, all the games worked and my internet held up nicely. Triedness did come into play during my 4am till 8am portion of the stream, but luckily I had a few people in the chat who kept me engaged (also coffee is a godsend haha).
As i said earlier I had overlays and banners from last year that I could use after I asked my friend Dana to tweak slightly for me (which she did beautifully), I even got some nice comments about them during the stream so that was nice.

Q: You recently joined a group called TeamEmmmmsie. Is there anything you’d like to say about the people you “work” with for such an important cause (and eventually have specific channel recommendations)?

A: Ok so TeamEmmmmsie, I can honestly say joining this team was an amazing thing to do! They are a community of 3000+ (and growing daily!) streamers and YouTubers that all come together to show support and help people grow their respective channels. When I approached them about this Charity event they were only happy to help put something together. Emma (Emmmmsie herself!) put me in touch with a group of the team admins who really took the reins and setup an amazing event, asking a bunch of other team members if they would like to sign up to do streams for the two days prior to my 24hr stream and raise money on my behalf. The sign up sheet filled up super quick, I think there must have been 50+ streamers who streamed continuously from the Thursday up to my 24 hour stream finale on the Saturday! We raised a staggering £2,520.00 for Cancer Research UK! And I can honestly say without them we wouldn’t have come close to that kind of money! So whilst I can’t mention them all I have to give special recognition to WildieBear, Mei and TheDooth who were the admins who set the whole thing up. There were a number of streamers I dropped in on over the course of the event who I really enjoyed watching, VMajorGaming was one I specifically enjoyed, there are four of them and they all played Mario Kart 8 Deluxe together and the banter between them was hilarious, they really reminded me of the Game Grumps and I loved that!

When I say video games bring people together it’s probably an euphemism, sometimes I can’t even express how amazing the gaming community can be. It is actually better than any other real life environment, an escape we need to hide from our daily battles against life and even serious deseases like cancer.

Mike Mariana, a Destiny player who had to deal with many years of cancer, found comfort in his multiplayer sessions with online friends even when the side effects caused by his chemotherapy forced him to pause the game and put the controller down over and over to keep his sickness under control. You can read the full article about Mike and his Destiny adventure here.

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