BY CAROLINE BUNNELL
pc: Stonehillgaming
The Stonehill Gaming Club hosted their annual 24-hour charity livestream from April 15 at 12 pm, until April 16 at 12 pm where they raised $4,340 for the Parkinsons Foundation.
“The livestream went far better than I could have possibly expected. We raised far more money than we were expecting. The new room we were in, worked fantastically and the energy was high throughout the stream,” Evan Hamlin, eboard member of Gaming Club, and producer of the stream said.
The Gaming Club has worked with the Parkinson’s Foundation for multiple years which is a non-profit that works to improve quality of life for people with Parkinsons through advancing research. The club has worked with the charity for multiple years, McEnaney said.
Hamlin said that the logistics of the event were the most difficult part of making the stream happen.
“Filling 24 hours of content is a difficult task, so we had to plan far in advance,” Hamlin said.
There were around forty people involved in the stream including students, club alumni, Father Tim and President Father John Denning, as well as countless viewers who helped donate and supported the stream, Hamlin said.
Members of the eboard broke down the livestream into segments, to make it easier for members to participate. They reached out to game developers to see if they could work with the club on the livestream, Hamlin said.
Once the schedule for the event was made, they had club members sign up based on segments they wanted to host, and what times they were available.
“We started filling in the time slots, starting with sponsored segments, and then onto segments that we knew would yield high viewership and interaction, and then focused on getting as many different people and events as possible into the rest of the available time,” Hamlin said.
The club used the streaming platform, Twitch, to stream the event for the 24 hours. The link to donate to the charity also appeared regularly on the stream for people to donate.
A variety of resources were used to make the stream happen such as the gaming laptop purchased through SGA, and equipment to Professor Katie Shannon and the Digital Media Production Department.
“I tested everything to make sure it all worked the day before, and I had the room set up for the way that I wanted, so that the next day I could come in and just plug everything in quickly to get it set up,” Hamlin said.
The Gaming Club hopes to keep this event going for years to come, McEnaney said.
“The charity livestream is a tradition within the Gaming Club and has been around for the last four or five years. We wanted to do these types of streams every year to help give to those in need, and now it has turned into one of our largest events annually,” Gaming Club President, John McEnaney said.