Howdy! It's been a solid amount of time since I've posted, but so much has happened! Saxxon and I have volunteered to help at a handful of furry conventions, which has generated tremendous amounts of revenue for the charitable organizations that are sponsored by those conventions. Spending time with people of a similar mindset is a great way to relax and feel 'in your element', but helping charities (in the case of furry conventions, many different organizations that support animals!) makes it all the more worth it.
I always wondered 'well, how can I volunteer, but also make it fun and relaxing?', considering my previous volunteer experiences weren't all that great, but then I was introduced to the furry fandom and found that I could help the convention, help attendees feel welcomed and safe, and also support animal shelters - very much wins on all fronts! For the forseeable future, this is something that I plan to continue doing, and I think I'm going to really enjoy it! Now, I bet you're asking.. what the absolute hell does the furry fandom have to do with video games? Well, recently I was introduced to another fun form of volunteering - streaming! Watching streamers has become a big hobby of mine, and I just recently found that groups of people have been banding together to take donations during their streams, sending those donations to various worthy causes. That really struck me as something super neat! Much like a typical game stream, the streamers have times they're trying to beat, objectives they need to complete, and so forth, but the neat thing about these charity streams is that, more often than not, the viewers can vote for certain events or challenges with their MONEY!
Now, it's one thing for streamers to generate revenue, viewers, and whatnot, but an ENTIRELY DIFFERENT thing to host events for charity! In a way, it actually gets the audience a bit more involved - not only does the audience get a chance to donate to charity, but often times they can win prizes, vote for characters to be named a certain thing, to complete or not complete certain game objectives, but ALSO to win prizes! The point of this is... video gaming can be used as a charitable tool to create good in the world, while entertaining thousands of viewers and engaging everyone who participates. This is such a win-win for everyone involved! The charities obviously receive much-needed donations, the actual participants in these group events gain notoriety for their personal streams, it's a fun time for everyone (perhaps even a vacation!), the donors who view from home get to see their favorite games streamed, and it's live entertainment for everyone involved. That all sounds like such an awesome experience to me!
I think it would be really neat to participate in a charity stream at some point... maybe even host one! Of course, existing charity marathons such as Extra Lives, Summer/Awesome Games Done Quick, etc, already have a huge base, but who knows! Maybe ZHP could do something like this someday! Maybe we could practice really, really hard and participate in some of the same marathons! The point of it all is... volunteering and being charitable CAN be really, really fun, and can involve your hobbies. In my case, I love to attend furry conventions, staff them, and be a super sponsor (a higher tier of entry that gets more swag, but also donates more to charity). That stuff I'm already doing! It would be really neat to, perhaps, get a group of us ZHPers together with our strong games and see if we can make something fun and awesome for a good cause, too! Maybe Mr. Bond and I can go head-to-head in Mario Kart Wii, maybe he can crush Battletoads, maybe Saxxon could destroy rhythm games.. who knows! This is all fun stuff I'd love to explore in the future.
Readers, what do you think? Would you like to see us escape the realm of audio and broadcast games? Mr. Bond does this on his personal stream (check him out!) and it's really entertaining! As always, thanks for reading.
