Game Marathon for Charity

Azisien · 09-08-2011, 08:05 PM

Mod Note: I wasn't 100% sure where to post this. While it is game-related, this is more about the concept of online marathon charities and logistics and brainstorming than it is about actual video games.

The Backstory

Years ago I was a wee sparkle-eyed lad visiting a friend's house. While in his living room he handed me an Xbox 360 controller and told me to play a game. "I don't know what this game is!" He nodded towards the TV. "It's Mass Effect, of course!"

Here I am in the present day. That light in my eyes is long gone now, dimmed by the weight of nihilism, spiced rum, and M Night Shyamalan. I do look forward to some things though, like Mass Effect 3 for instance. Several discussions with my other Mass Effect loving friends evolved into talk of a marathon, or race, around the launch date of Mass Effect 3. We could take the week off work and play all three games, timing our vacation with Mass Effect 3's release date! And then it dawned on me.

I'm a selfish, asshole, non-contributing zero that essentially wastes perfectly good oxygen and fixed carbon. Wouldn't it be better if we had some sort of cause for our immature gaming adventures? Thus the tentative title was born: Three Massive Effects on Cancer.

The Idea/Point of this Thread

Because I'm a dickhead, I don't know the first thing about even donating to a charity, much less running, and much much less running an online one. In fact, the only thing I vaguely know how to do is stream a game. And I don't even really know how to do that, I was lying just now! Demonspawn!

Since I'm completely out of my element, I thought I would bring this idea to the wise minds working the cogs of NPF. There are approximately five of us, myself and four friends, currently involved in the brainstorming phase. Literally almost everything is flexible right now. Here are some things we've come up with:

-Using Paypal or ChipIn or both to fuel donations
-Charity target currently leaning towards Cancer. No specific one at the moment, or place. We want to avoid "Big Name" charities if possible, or even donate direct to research centers. Assholish as we may be, we're well aware of "administration fees" that sap a lot of charitable donations.
-Running a Mass Effect 1 & 2 marathon with sufficient time to beat the games by the release date of Mass Effect 3, and then marathon that as well.
-Three to four simultaneous streams. One Paragon, One Renegade, One Player's Choice, One Viewer's Choice.

-Someone in our initial brainstorm was quick to point out there's at least an outside chance of experiencing heart failure, especially if the goal is a Completionist run of THREE Mass Effect games, in one or more of the players. I disagreed, my cardiovascular system, however, did not. That spawned our idea for donations.

-Donations by Torture. Our idea here is that each player has to beat Mass Effect 1 in one sitting, and at which point, the player is entitled to 8 hours rest. People can pay money to the charity fund to force players to do side quests or achievements, thus prolonging their playthrough. Or everyone starts on Easy difficulty and viewers can to increase the difficulty. Viewers can donate additional money to reduce their sleep entitlement, either to zero or some non-life-threatening minimum. For example, every $100 donated reduces one player's sleep entitlement by 30 minutes. It would take $1600 to wipe out their sleep entitlement completely. We torture because we LOVE. Aside from the torture angle, viewers could of course donate just to donate.

I guess...that's actually the jist of a lot of it. Obvious ideal deadline for this project is March 2012, which is a while, but there are many logistics involved. Like getting past brainstorm and/or giving up, to things like creating a website or something.

What do you all think? Worthwhile idea? Should I just enjoy Mass Effect without additional effort and let people keep dying painfully of cancer [myself included, in however many years it takes me to get it]? Any ideas to contribute, or criticisms to our thoughts so far?

Would you like to help in some way?

MildShow · 09-09-2011, 07:25 AM

One thing you may want to consider is waiting until Mass Effect 3 actually comes out to start playing Mass Effect 1, or maybe even longer. The thing is, plenty of people probably wouldn't be willing to watch a stream of ME 3 until they've had a chance to play through it themselves, and if you wait even just a couple days, you're giving them a chance to get at least some playing time in. This will also let them know which sidequests exist/are a pain to complete to help with your donation plan.

Great idea, though. I'm looking forward to see how it ends up being executed.

Krylo · 09-09-2011, 08:34 AM

How much do I have to donate to force you to run through ME1 with Kaiden as a permanent squadmate?

**Revising Ocelot** · 09-09-2011, 08:49 AM

Might just want to skip ME3 entirely. It's not coming out until next year (but your projected time is March anyway *shrug*), people won't want to really see playthroughs within a month or two if they're planning to get the game, and, er, there's quite a lot of speculation that ME3 will be another Dragon Age 2 fiasco*.

Also, there's a lot of sidequests, especially in ME1. Whether or not you do them could add many more hours to a continous session and amplify the risk of Insomnia Insanity. Might be an idea to have a rotation of eg. 2 playthroughs (one paragon + one renegade) with 2 players each so one can get some rest at some point.

*Please don't kill me for saying that, it's just what a sizeable proportion of other people are speculating at the moment and in no way my personal opinion. I'll still wait for reviews, though.

Azisien · 09-09-2011, 11:52 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by MildShow

One thing you may want to consider is waiting until Mass Effect 3 actually comes out to start playing Mass Effect 1, or maybe even longer. The thing is, plenty of people probably wouldn't be willing to watch a stream of ME 3 until they've had a chance to play through it themselves, and if you wait even just a couple days, you're giving them a chance to get at least some playing time in. This will also let them know which sidequests exist/are a pain to complete to help with your donation plan.

Great idea, though. I'm looking forward to see how it ends up being executed.

This is a good point, I'm on the fence about it myself. I think traffic might be higher because it's happening at the peak of Mass Effect 3 hype/excitement. The reason this point is good, though, is giving us research time to figure out what would be good donation ideas for the third game.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Krylo

How much do I have to donate to force you to run through ME1 with Kaiden as a permanent squadmate?

Another suggestion we had was not just torturous donations, but coming up with Renegade Donations and Paragon Donations. The players essentially become puppets, and people can inflict hurt or love on us. I imagine there would be many more Renegade than Paragon, but hey, options are fun.

Kaiden as a squadmate is probably the most expensive Renegade action, because fuck.

One issue I foresee with the "viewers paying for X/Y/Z quests/mates/achievements/difficulties" is redundant donations. If two people pay for one of us to play on Insane Difficulty, what do we do? We could refund, or contact them and allow them to re-allocate their funds.

Quote:

Originally Posted by RO

Also, there's a lot of sidequests, especially in ME1. Whether or not you do them could add many more hours to a continous session and amplify the risk of Insomnia Insanity. Might be an idea to have a rotation of eg. 2 playthroughs (one paragon + one renegade) with 2 players each so one can get some rest at some point.

Yup. That's the whole point really. Suffer for science! But to add many hours to a session, viewers have to donate, and/or reach certain milestones. Otherwise we players can just run through the game nice and quick (a "quick" 20 hours). We are going to be doing research runs, to see how short and long the game can become. And we will work out just how potentially dangerous it would be, if at all, and add failsafes as needed. I think my longest ME1 playthrough with total completion was about 50 hours, which I could probably do, as long as viewers pay out the ass!

Krylo · 09-09-2011, 05:21 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Azisien

Kaiden as a squadmate is probably the most expensive Renegade action, because fuck

Also: ME2 insanity run with Samara and Jacob as squadmates.

Aldurin · 09-10-2011, 01:43 AM

Oh man, paying for someone to torture themselves in ME while helping cure cancer at the same time.

This is the mother of all charity events so far. Actually, what you should also do is a run of Oblivion, where the more that's donated, the more incoherent the stat build is (Female Altmer, Sign of the Atronach, combat focus, personality and luck stat focus, then major skills in speechcraft, mercantile, light armor, heavy armor, acrobatics, block and blunt for the higher end donation goal).

E: change blunt to alchemy just to remove any hope of combat.

Azisien · 09-10-2011, 10:37 AM

No way in hell we're doing Oblivion. Though if this is at all successful, maybe we could do Skyrim as a future game.

I looked into making a non-profit organization with the CRA, and it's a pretty hassle filled process, considering the benefits would only be 1-2% fees saved on Paypal if we end up using that as a donation pool. I'm not going to give up entirely on the NPO route, but it also looks to be a 12-18 month application process, and that's already after we plan to do this. And here I thought I was planning early!

Aldurin · 09-10-2011, 12:36 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Azisien

No way in hell we're doing Oblivion. Though if this is at all successful, maybe we could do Skyrim as a future game.

Come on, how else are you supposed to drive cheap assholes into driving up their charity budget by 10000%?

09-08-2011, 08:05 PM	#1
Azisien wat Join Date: Jan 2005 Posts: 7,177	Game Marathon for Charity Mod Note: I wasn't 100% sure where to post this. While it is game-related, this is more about the concept of online marathon charities and logistics and brainstorming than it is about actual video games. The Backstory Years ago I was a wee sparkle-eyed lad visiting a friend's house. While in his living room he handed me an Xbox 360 controller and told me to play a game. "I don't know what this game is!" He nodded towards the TV. "It's Mass Effect, of course!" Here I am in the present day. That light in my eyes is long gone now, dimmed by the weight of nihilism, spiced rum, and M Night Shyamalan. I do look forward to some things though, like Mass Effect 3 for instance. Several discussions with my other Mass Effect loving friends evolved into talk of a marathon, or race, around the launch date of Mass Effect 3. We could take the week off work and play all three games, timing our vacation with Mass Effect 3's release date! And then it dawned on me. I'm a selfish, asshole, non-contributing zero that essentially wastes perfectly good oxygen and fixed carbon. Wouldn't it be better if we had some sort of cause for our immature gaming adventures? Thus the tentative title was born: Three Massive Effects on Cancer. The Idea/Point of this Thread Because I'm a dickhead, I don't know the first thing about even donating to a charity, much less running, and much much less running an online one. In fact, the only thing I vaguely know how to do is stream a game. And I don't even really know how to do that, I was lying just now! Demonspawn! Since I'm completely out of my element, I thought I would bring this idea to the wise minds working the cogs of NPF. There are approximately five of us, myself and four friends, currently involved in the brainstorming phase. Literally almost everything is flexible right now. Here are some things we've come up with: -Using Paypal or ChipIn or both to fuel donations -Charity target currently leaning towards Cancer. No specific one at the moment, or place. We want to avoid "Big Name" charities if possible, or even donate direct to research centers. Assholish as we may be, we're well aware of "administration fees" that sap a lot of charitable donations. -Running a Mass Effect 1 & 2 marathon with sufficient time to beat the games by the release date of Mass Effect 3, and then marathon that as well. -Three to four simultaneous streams. One Paragon, One Renegade, One Player's Choice, One Viewer's Choice. -Someone in our initial brainstorm was quick to point out there's at least an outside chance of experiencing heart failure, especially if the goal is a Completionist run of THREE Mass Effect games, in one or more of the players. I disagreed, my cardiovascular system, however, did not. That spawned our idea for donations. -Donations by Torture. Our idea here is that each player has to beat Mass Effect 1 in one sitting, and at which point, the player is entitled to 8 hours rest. People can pay money to the charity fund to force players to do side quests or achievements, thus prolonging their playthrough. Or everyone starts on Easy difficulty and viewers can to increase the difficulty. Viewers can donate additional money to reduce their sleep entitlement, either to zero or some non-life-threatening minimum. For example, every $100 donated reduces one player's sleep entitlement by 30 minutes. It would take $1600 to wipe out their sleep entitlement completely. We torture because we LOVE. Aside from the torture angle, viewers could of course donate just to donate. I guess...that's actually the jist of a lot of it. Obvious ideal deadline for this project is March 2012, which is a while, but there are many logistics involved. Like getting past brainstorm and/or giving up, to things like creating a website or something. What do you all think? Worthwhile idea? Should I just enjoy Mass Effect without additional effort and let people keep dying painfully of cancer [myself included, in however many years it takes me to get it]? Any ideas to contribute, or criticisms to our thoughts so far? Would you like to help in some way? Last edited by Azisien; 09-08-2011 at 08:15 PM.

09-09-2011, 08:34 AM	#3
Krylo The Straightest Shota Join Date: Nov 2003 Location: It's a secret to everybody. Posts: 17,789	How much do I have to donate to force you to run through ME1 with Kaiden as a permanent squadmate? __________________ I am very tired.

09-09-2011, 08:49 AM	#4
Revising Ocelot Douchebag Join Date: Sep 2008 Location: Probably somewhere in England. Posts: 1,897	Might just want to skip ME3 entirely. It's not coming out until next year (but your projected time is March anyway shrug), people won't want to really see playthroughs within a month or two if they're planning to get the game, and, er, there's quite a lot of speculation that ME3 will be another Dragon Age 2 fiasco. Also, there's a lot of sidequests, especially in ME1. Whether or not you do them could add many more hours to a continous session and amplify the risk of Insomnia Insanity. Might be an idea to have a rotation of eg. 2 playthroughs (one paragon + one renegade) with 2 players each so one can get some rest at some point. Please don't kill me for saying that, it's just what a sizeable proportion of other people are speculating at the moment and in no way my personal opinion. I'll still wait for reviews, though. __________________ magic sucks

09-09-2011, 07:25 AM	#2
MildShow Goomba Join Date: Mar 2011 Posts: 9	One thing you may want to consider is waiting until Mass Effect 3 actually comes out to start playing Mass Effect 1, or maybe even longer. The thing is, plenty of people probably wouldn't be willing to watch a stream of ME 3 until they've had a chance to play through it themselves, and if you wait even just a couple days, you're giving them a chance to get at least some playing time in. This will also let them know which sidequests exist/are a pain to complete to help with your donation plan. Great idea, though. I'm looking forward to see how it ends up being executed.

09-10-2011, 01:43 AM	#7
Aldurin Lakitu Join Date: Feb 2010 Posts: 4,648	Oh man, paying for someone to torture themselves in ME while helping cure cancer at the same time. This is the mother of all charity events so far. Actually, what you should also do is a run of Oblivion, where the more that's donated, the more incoherent the stat build is (Female Altmer, Sign of the Atronach, combat focus, personality and luck stat focus, then major skills in speechcraft, mercantile, light armor, heavy armor, acrobatics, block and blunt for the higher end donation goal). E: change blunt to alchemy just to remove any hope of combat.

09-10-2011, 10:37 AM	#8
Azisien wat Join Date: Jan 2005 Posts: 7,177	No way in hell we're doing Oblivion. Though if this is at all successful, maybe we could do Skyrim as a future game. I looked into making a non-profit organization with the CRA, and it's a pretty hassle filled process, considering the benefits would only be 1-2% fees saved on Paypal if we end up using that as a donation pool. I'm not going to give up entirely on the NPO route, but it also looks to be a 12-18 month application process, and that's already after we plan to do this. And here I thought I was planning early!