GameChanger: Charity Event
On October 2nd, 2016, I had the opportunity to cover the first ever Games and Music Festival in Dana Point, California. This event benefited GameChanger Charity, an organization with a goal to positively impact the lives of children and families suffering from life-threatening illnesses in Southern California through video games, innovation, and compassion. Jim Carol, the founder of GameChanger, started this organization after witnessing the impact video games had on his son Taylor during a 5 year battle with Leukemia. Please visit their website to find out more here: http://www.gamechangercharity.org/
A Look into the Gaming Festival:
The mission of this festival was to highlight the impact games can have on children with life-threatening illnesses by showcasing top YouTube and gaming stars, virtual reality demos, 150 PCs to play games on, and over 35 gaming companies showcasing new games at their booths, as seen in the recap video above.
VideoGameRapBattles: Special Guest
VideoGameRapBattles, a Youtube channel with over 100,000 subscribers and 37 million views (as of October 3rd, 2016), was one of the many special guests to appear at this event. Cam (featured on the right), created this channel to make music, sketches, and rap battles that feature popular video games. At the festival, Cam, along with his close friend Jack, started the entertainment for the day with rap battles full of wardrobe changes, dancing, and energy to get the festival going. Check out his channel here: VideoGameRapBattles
Geoff Ramsey: Icon of the Industry
Geoff Ramsey (featured on the left) was one of the many icons of the industry to attend the Gameing festival. Geoff is the co-founder of Rooster Teeth, an American production company that started with the web series Red vs. Blue, which was created in 2003 and is still in production, making it the longest-running web series of all time. Besides this, they are well known for their comedic game play with their branch Achievement Hunter (member Jack Pattillo featured on the right), live action shorts and series, and full time animated productions such as RWBY. This company also focuses on video game development, reality shows, entertainment news programs, and podcasts. Their primary channel Rooster Teeth has over 8.7 million subscribers (as of October 2016), and with the many other channels the company has, they maintain over 27 million subscribers over all their channels. At the festival, Geoff, along with Jack Pattillo and Gavin Free (member of Achievement Hunter and The Slow Mo Guys), entertained the audience with live game play and humorous reactions.
Markiplier: YouTube Gamer
With over 14.5 million subscribers, Mark Fischbach, otherwise known by his YouTube name "Markiplier," was the highlight of the Gaming Festival for many. Markiplier is known for Let's Play game play commentary videos of indie and horror games, as well as original comedy sketches and more. Mark often hosts charity live-streams on Twitch and his channel, where he plays games for a certain amount of time to raise money with his community for charities. On May 18th, 2013, Mark and his community raised $20,000 for the "American Cancer Society" charity in under 9 hours. In another live-stream in July of 2014, Mark and his fans raised over $81,000 over the course of 12 hours for the "Best Friends Animal Society." More recently in August of 2016, Mark, along with his friend Bob Muyskens (known as Muyskerm on YouTube), raised over $61,000 for "MusAid" charity, which you can still donate to here. At the festival, Mark was joined by fellow gaming YouTuber Wade Barnes (known as LordMinion777 on YouTube), to entertain fans with live gaming, followed by a meet and greet and signing.
Full Gallery:
