Now that I’ve had a chance to sleep… Â I figured I’d write a little about my experiences yesterday with the Extra-Life charity event.
First off, to everyone that participated or donated… Thank You! Â The initial results according to the Extra-Life website, are that $3.4 Million was raised yesterday…that’s a whole lot of money donated to a very good cause.
At a more personal level, this is the first year I’ve participated in the Extra Life marathon…and it was fun!
I want to thank all the friends, family, and people from the MechWarrior community that supported me in this year’s event. Â Whether it was via donation, stopping by the stream to say “Hi”, or chatting about it in game.. it was great to get that support.
I especially want to thank Niko Snow, and the rest of the Infinite Games Publishing team, for allowing me to stream MechWarrior Tactics, and for coming to play MechWarrior Online, and MechWarrior Tactics with me. Â It was fun hanging on TeamSpeak with Niko and talking MechWarrior stuff (Dude has a fun job, and really enjoys it!). Â They gave some beta keys for MWT away while we were streaming, and helped promote the event via their Facebook and Twitter feeds.
If you want to view the MWT streams, they’re archived on my twitch page, and as soon as I can figure out how to get twitch to upload them to YouTube, I’ll get them posted on YouTube as well. Â Here’s the direct links to those videos:
http://www.twitch.tv/bigdamnheroes/b/475917176
http://www.twitch.tv/bigdamnheroes/b/476070793
The rest of the games I streamed are up there too, but I figure most people would be interested in the MWT streams.
A couple of more lessons learned this year, that I need to remember to take into account for next year:
1) My headphones hurt after 4 or 5 hours (and they’re decent Logitech ones too).
2) Less structure is probably better.. I thought it was a good idea to schedule every game I wanted to play that day.. I think outside of the MechWarrior stuff (due to MWT’s NDA), I probably should have just left it open so that I didn’t feel the need to keep an eye on the clock too.
3) Streaming is harder than I thought. Â With little/no interaction coming from viewers via chat.. it was hard to find things to talk about.. so there are huge chunks of time I didn’t say anything on my stream. Â I think the best bits were while I was on TeamSpeak with Niko, since there is more interaction that way (and when I was playing SWTOR with my son). Â So, have people to talk to/interact with…it’ll help!
4) Maybe every game doesn’t need to be streamed..25 hours is a long time for one person to try and keep a stream entertaining.. taking shifts and swapping with other streamers might be a better way to do things. Â At least, until I become some big famous streamer making tons of money doing it. :P
5) Some people are jerks. Â Whoever DDoS’d the Extra-Life site (4 times!) should feel bad… this was a charity event to raise money to help sick kids… not cool people…not cool.
All in all, it was fun, and I’ll probably try and participate again next year. Â I can think of worse ways to spend a Saturday after all…