The streaming service on which the competition took place
(Mirror Daily, United States) – Video games, despite some contrary opinions, can be an extremely helpful and productive way to spend your time. Without noting the health and mental benefits stemming from gaming, here is how cancer prevention got over $1 million from Awesome Games Done Quick.
For a bit of context, Awesome Games Done Quick is a Twitch streaming service that that focuses on video game speed runs, or completing the game as fast as possible.
The Prevent Cancer Foundation, which actually received the money raised by gamers, is a nonprofit organization focused stopping cancer before it happens. It has been active for around 30 years, and it invested over $138 million in cancer research, prevention, and community outreach programs.
For a whole week, from the 3rd to 10th of January, a large number of gamers performed a large number of speed runs with only one goal – to raise money for charity.
The money was gathered in the form of donations, as hundreds of thousands of viewers watched the channel, and some donated as much as they wanted to or could afford.
The average of 100,000 viewers for the whole week (with one day actually reaching 220,000 simultaneous viewers) managed to donate a total sum of $1.213.407, which went directly to the nonprofit cancer organization.
Out of the 30,581 viewers who donated, the average donation stood at about $39.68. With no minimum or maximum donation being set, some donated a couple of dollars, while on particular individual gave $18,255 to the charity.
Some classic favorites, as well as some more modern titles were played during the entire week, with gamers doing their best to beat the best high score or the best time they could.
With games like Bloodborne, Super Metroid, Final Fantasy IV, The Legend of Zelda, Resident Evil, Super Mario 64, Diablo, Half-Life2, and many, many more, scores of gamers competed for a week in order to get the quickest run time, the highest score, or sometimes even both.
There were even events where two players attempted to beat a game while using the same controller, making for a very intense week.
Even several world records were broken, as gamers all over the world competed against each other for charity, glory, recognition, as well as for a slew of prizes.
The prizes offered to the gamers weren’t actually that big, with merchandise, videogames, and a few pieces of hardware.
Image source: Wikimedia