Game spectatorship: Charity events

During my ongoing literature review I often discover interesting facts about things I’ve never thought about. Sometimes I can connect these facts with my own observations: The result is mostly a completely new idea why things are as they are. Maybe these ideas are new to you, too. Therefore I’ll share my new science based knowledge with you!

This week: This is the eighth part of the video game / e-sport spectator series. This time, I’ll focus on a special use of streaming: creating charity events to support organizations.

As already mentioned in the previous e-sport spectator parts, watching live broadcasts is interesting, attracts many people and works world wide. Interested spectators from all over the world are able to follow the gameplay of one single player.

But live broadcasts aren’t just interesting for spectators that like to follow an expert player. Broadcasters with a high amount of viewers do have the opportunity to take advantage of their attention: they can gain the trust of their viewers and influence them. They can also use their audience to support other projects: they’re able to host charity events.

These events range from marathon gaming sessions [1] to competitions [2] between expert players. The aim of these events is to use the popularity of the broadcaster and the games that are played to attract as much viewers as possible. The attention of the users is used for fundraising for charitable trusts [3] or hospitals with a special focus [4]. Spectators do have the opportunity to donate some money to the particular charity events that goes directly to the supported organization.

In contrast to local fundraising events, gaming charity events do have one major advantage: they’re global. Spectators from all over the world can participate and support the event with a donation.

This can be illustrated with last years Dragon Soul Challenge [5]. Athene [6] had invited four popular and successful World of Warcraft guilds to compete against each other. The goal of each guild was to complete the Dragon Soul raid instance as fast as possible [7].

The charity event was a success [8]: Over 55.000 viewers watched the main stream (400.000 viewers followed the event in total) and over $16.000 were donated during the competition. To better compare the number of viewers: 50.287 fans can be seated in the Yankee Stadium [9].

Although there’ve been only few other big events, the example shows the potential of global charity events using the potential of streaming gameplay.