Now Recruiting! Be a Part of the Extra Life 2017 Team for Charity!

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Extra Life website | Extra Life GWJ Team Page | GWJ Twitch Channel | GWJ Curse Server
GWJ Twitch Community | Streaming Calendar


Hello and, for some of you, welcome back! I'll be trying to lead the Extra Life team again for 2017, but I will be needing help! With Amoebic's help we had our most successful year, bringing in $4,078.46 before January 1st. 2017. All of that money was distributed throughout the Children's Miracle Network Hospitals of North America, arming the medical industry with more funds to help children and families suffering a wide variety of ailments and conditions.

If you're not familiar, Extra Life is a charity dedicated to Children's Hospitals. The big draw is that, instead of seeking sponsorship for a running or biking marathon, you'll instead be seeking sponsorship to play video games for 24-hours straight on "Game Day". In 2017, Game Day is officially November 4th (and, falling on daylight savings time, means you can optionally challenge yourself to play for 25-hours straight instead). However, you don't have to adhere to this day or timeframe. Many players with families or busy schedules not only choose alternate days, but also divide the work across multiple days.


For 2017, I'd like to better plan out the streaming schedule for game day, community games, and handling communication between streamers.

In addition, I'd also like to see if we could have rotating members of the community do regular streaming events on the GamersWithJobs Twitch channel to better interact with the community, increase community awareness and involvement, and perhaps find more recruits. It could also build opportunities for different streamers and team members that don't often communicate much to develop a better rapport that will make Game Day both more comfortable and entertaining.

This thread is for brainstorming, advice seeking, advice giving, and gauging interest in select multiplayer games. Feel free to post any ideas, suggestions, or questions.

I won't be able to take part this year sadly, I will be on a plane to America on the 5th of November (The day I would be doing it due to time zone magic). That is assuming there is no scheduling issues, which may very well happen.

Maybe I can do 24 hours of gaming while flying

Keep in mind that even if you cannot do game day with us, you can still take part. Or, alternatively, we can set our own date if there's a more convenient one for participants. Simultaneously, by trying to do things year-round, there's also still a possibility to be involved even if you cannot be involved on Game Day.

Basically: OPTIONS! Yaaaay!

Missed out last year, but I'm interested in doing it again this year! I'll favourite and confirm myself a bit nearer the time.

I'll likely be in this year, barring something terribly unfortunate happening.

Thanks for the invite! I'd love to do some streaming if you're still looking for volunteers. I'm not a great player but I will do my best to be entertaining.

I'm in a bit of a quandary. I'm pretty sure GamerParent Network is doing its own team this year, but we can collaborate, right?

sometimesdee wrote:

I'm in a bit of a quandary. I'm pretty sure GamerParent Network is doing its own team this year, but we can collaborate, right?

Of course! I have no problems working with another team made up of GWJers

I'd love to do some streaming for the crew if possible! My new house finally has 10 upload so I should be able to hack it!

The game I'm thinking would fit would be a game of Rimworld featuring donors/streamers/chat members as characters in the game.

I'm interested in both participating in Extra Life and dipping my toe into the GWJ stream on Twitch. Does Extra Life 2017 start on November 4?

Technically it started on January 1st. That's basically how they roll.

Glad there are streamers interested. I'm still trying to figure out exactly how I want to go about trying it. As I said, I like the idea of a rotating schedule so no one player is forced to commit more than is reasonable, and I like trying to organize group games as well. So next Overwatch event should allow for plenty of opportunities, or for example the Splatoon 2 Global Testfire on Nintendo Switch.

Part of it is a matter of coming up with a day of the week people think would be viable. Would a week night be a better option? Or a time in the weekend? People that stream more might be a better choice for that. Personally I feel like Sunday night would work best for me, but would that work for others? Or would it be easier to just play it by ear and have folks schedule a time they'd like to play and just get the word out on social media?

I'll also contact the powers-that-be about getting select streams up on the GWJ Plays YouTube channel.

Some buddies and I play Heroes of the Storm every Thursday night. I just checked with them, and they'd be okay with streaming. We are not very good, but I think we're pretty entertaining.

Another buddy of mine is interested in streaming Bloodborne co-op with me. We could probably be fairly flexible with when we'd run that, but I'd be cool with making it a regularly scheduled thing for folks to follow along with.

I'm in to solo the 25 hour day this year again. It was super fun last year. My Italy location means I can be of use during some weaker US times. Keep the streamers pumped up!

Also I stream most evenings (2000-2300 CET / 2-4 PM EST).

Also I'm down to do whatever stream events people want to do. It's fun!

I'm still trying to think on how we should go about this, have some people scheduled for regular nights such as Doogiemac's HotS night, or have one night a week and keep a rotating schedule (so first Friday goes to Doogiemac, second to Squee, etc.) My fear of doing a regular thing like HotS every week is that I want to make sure this is also about Extra Life, with a chance to remind people what it is every stream and to check the forum, and if you're doing that every week for HotS it could get tiresome for any regular viewers.

It helps get the practice and interest up in checking the 24 hour stream, but it feels like it would be more a broad GWJ community thing. Granted, the Overlords gave me the all-clear, so...

How often do you guys stream new games you purchase? How often do you have other people on your streams to chat and converse?

Thinking about it more, I think that one-off streams are probably the most manageable for everyone involved. It'll allow us to dip our toes into the process, see how we think it's going, and iterate as we go. If after a while it becomes clear that some streams would warrant a recurring slot, I'd say that'll be a good problem to solve.

Can confirm. Bloodborne FTW. I'm also much better at Bloodborne than I am HotS.

I'm keen to help out throughout the year for sure! I usually play with the L4D2 Goodjers on the weekends vs games, so I can do some streaming of that.

Some Dark Souls II streaming could be really fun during the Return to Drangleic event, February 25 - March 11. I'd totally be down for that, and I think cthos would as well.

I'd like to participate this year if possible. Need me to sign up somewhere?

Hobear wrote:

I'd like to participate this year if possible. Need me to sign up somewhere?

Sign up here then join the team here.

doogiemac that event sounds like a perfect thing to Stream. I'll see about figuring out days as I wanted to try Breath of the Wild on weekend of its release.

What days do folks typically stream normally?

I'm all signed up, and I'm happy to do the full 24 hours! I'll try to find some things to do nearer the time, not sure on the format, but being in the U.K., I'm happy be one of the people who will kick us off. Two things I'd like to do are getting a few of the European gwj people to play a few games at the start and also see if I can get an eu4 multiplayer game going.

Alright, so my thought is we do something like three or four set days out of the week to stream and in specific timeslots that people might already be playing games during. For example, for me, I aim to do Sunday night around 8 or 9pm. Squee and other Europeans may be able to do a Saturday morning/afternoon timeframe.

What I think is most important is keeping a rotating cycle so we have a variety of personalities and games, collaboration between each other, related teams (such as GamerParent's Magic Hour), and guests, and to keep a consistent schedule. So there will always be a Sunday stream at 8pm exactly.

Right now, I know I'd like to do a stream of Breath of the Wild on Sunday, March 5th, and I'll probably start doing Sunday streams at 8pm regularly. The question then becomes what other nights we should try. Friday and Saturday are gonna be prime time, but how many folks would be available for a Wednesday night?

None of this has to be finalized at once. I figure we can start with maybe one day a week and as people figure out their schedules and plans and ideas, we can add in the others. I would love to put together a schedule on Google Calendar as well so anyone interested can check it and see open dates where they might be able to stream something (old or new) or where community members can see what we're streaming.

OR we can ditch the idea of it being on a consistent, weekly schedule altogether and instead do one or two streams a month where we do something as a group or bring in a special guest like a developer or highlight a game. The latter of which would probably be the most simple.

I'm used to over-thinking things so if this sounds like a lot of bullsh*t, it probably is, hence bouncing it off of all of you guys. Either way, I hope to reach out to indie devs I've gotten to know, members of the conference call, and even members of the community (you can bet I want to do an Overwatch PS4 stream again).

ccesarano wrote:

(you can bet I want to do an Overwatch PS4 stream again

Up for that again. I'm wondering if differing daylight savings help out this time.

Happy to help out and be a +1 through the year where possible, a few hurdles permitting...

In the UK... So timezones. But saying that usually only get to game quite late in the eve (after about 22.30pm GMT for an hour or two). One random weekend night might get a full evening in. Scheduling anything too far in advance tricky basically.

On Mac, no PC so for this am PS4 only.

Multiplayer games owned could get involved with... Overwatch, The Division and thinking about picking up For Honor when price drops. Happy to pick up a MP game to get involved if not on the pile (if the price is right).

Cheers.

This all sounds good to me. I think the best thing is to start doing it and then stay in communication about how it's all going, figure out what's working and what's not, etc. Would a Google spreadsheet or doc be a good place to start coordinating stream schedules and blocking out scheduled streams?

Alright, so... I think that this link will open the Google Calendar that I've modified to include Extra Life stream schedules. Right now I've only added two in March, one for me streaming Zelda on the 5th and one for me streaming Bloodborne on the 12th.

If anyone knows of a better calendar tool for a community feel free to share it because I feel like Google Calendar is not intended to be a shared calendar. It feels more like it's supposed to be an exclusively personal thing.

If people are comfortable with this, then I wouldn't mind coming up with some community game nights to schedule as well. I also had an idea for one that could encourage us to donate to each other's campaigns, but as real money would be involved I wasn't sure about putting it forward or not.

If anyone wants to join me in Bloodborne, by the way, feel free. It'll be my first time playing and it might be a regular Sunday thing after all, so playing the same game week after week might still be an option.

It looks like the calendar only shows free/busy, not the actual event details. I think you should be able to allow visibility of event details without full calendar access.

I'll ping my buddies about scheduling some nights for us to stream.

I couldn't find a way to do that without dropping in everyone's e-mails, and I don't wanna do it that way since I want anyone on GWJ to be able to see the calendar.

Does this link work? It's a website called TeamUp that has a free option that should fit our needs, assuming the Calendar settings are correct (which I'm hoping so).

EDIT: Updated the link to what I THINK is Correct. JOY. Why can't anything be simple?

TeamUp looks like it'll work!!!

I think I can set up different links for Modifying the calendar and Read-Only access. See if you can add something in there and then we can start contemplating more events. We should definitely have a group streamers night where we're all together playing something and chatting, but I know we're also scattered across platforms.

Seeing as Rocket League has PS4 to PC multiplayer capability that might be the best option.

So being new to streaming, how much would I need to talk to the audience? I'd love to stream a Warhammer Total War game but I'm afraid I can't talk that much at night so as to not disturb the kiddo once he's asleep.

It's all about your style. I think more people would enjoy hearing your thought process behind your decisions as you're making them, or other stuff about your life. The benefit and the joy of streaming is the live interaction, so people expect some degree of that.

That said, it's the internet, so there are plenty of people around who are down to chill and watch some Warhammer with a few intense whispers.

Depends on what the purpose of the GWJ channel is. Do we have a mission? A vision? A purpose? Are we a collection of people explaining games? Or just a collection of the community keeping content going on the channel?

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