I just watched the Extra Life GameSpot 50 (72) Hour Global Stream, and I don’t think I have had that much fun on a gaming website in a long time! The main reason I had such a blast was because everything felt very real, nothing felt like an argument or a hustle. The GameSpot staff played whatever games they wanted and the chat room all complied. While I did donate to the cause, I however did not participate in the Twitch chat room. I think the main reason I didn’t participate is because I was afraid to. I was afraid because for the past several years, there has been a disconnect between myself and the current gaming community and how unnecessarily aggressive and offensive it has been towards any news, reviews, or general gaming articles. But while I watched the stream happen, I started to feel a sense of nostalgia overwhelm me.
I felt like I was back in the GameSpot community I started with when I was a teenager in the early 2000’s. I first started visiting GameSpot in 2004, but I only started posting in the forums around 2007 about time alteration possibilities in the Prince of Persia series or good job class optimizations in Final Fantasy Tactics and who knows what else. But I haven’t really experienced those good idle chats I used to have in the forums lately. Now I’ll just post on an article I’m passionate about every now and then and I just hope to god someone doesn’t take it out of context and threaten to murder my unborn children. But that wasn’t the case with the Extra Life marathon. Everyone is talking about games with a good disposition, rather than raging about which new console is better than the other, or what highly rated game has too low of a score, just good old fashioned game talk. Since this was my first time observing Twitch chat, I was wondering how things were so well managed. One of the primary elements being the strict moderating done by the ever vigilant Moobot and several other moderators, including some of the GameSpot staff members, but I also think a lot of credit should go towards the community being so positive the whole time. The community also had a really big shining moment with the amazing work done in Minecraft. I personally don’t play Minecraft myself, so to see all of the work done in the Fenlig server was absolutely incredible. And of course it was an absolutely amazing sight to see donation drive reach over 100% of its $20k goal!
There’s also a big kudos that goes towards the GameSpot staff. Lately the site has felt a little stale, mostly because coverage on the next-gen consoles have been dominating the news, so it’s only appropriate that things feel a little redundant. The big shining part of GameSpot for me has been the new shows like Reality Check, Skyrim Mods, House of Horrors, GTA Diaries, etc. These shows have felt like a genuine break away from all the constant news updates on the most insignificant things, like what Phil Fish is doing on Twitter or what type of charcoal black the Xbox One is. But I don’t blame GameSpot for the coverage at all, it is your job, and you gotta eat. But then I hear about this Extra Life thing. So, GameSpot is going give me three straight days of aimless video game streaming? Then f*** yeah! As I watched the stream more and more, I started to feel like I was back in my freshman and sophomore years of college when I used to play LAN parties with all my friends, playing into the late hours of the night and early morning reeking of body odor and surviving on the cheapest junk food from the local store. We would play whatever game we felt like, and when Danny said “We can do whatever the f*** we want, to be honest” on the stream, it felt like I was back in the college dorms.
One more thing I want to add is I thought it was very amusing that aside from the end of the stream with Jess being the largest influx of donations, a lot of money was raised when playing GTA V. So a game that has been called by some non-gaming critics as one of the most violent and deplorable games of our generation helped people feel charitable enough to donate massive amounts of money to a good cause. How very ironic! This was a massive effort by everyone who contributed to this, so I congratulate everyone on GameSpot staff and community for coming together and raising over $20k for Oakland Children’s Hospital and Research Center. I remember when I was a teenager viewing everything on GameSpot, it made me want to have a career in the gaming news industry, my life took to a career in architecture instead, but here I am writing this wanting to be a staff member on GameSpot again! So if you guys at GameSpot ever need someone with a background in architecture, just give me a call! Otherwise, I will see you all in the Twitch streams for all the fun GameSpot shows, and I can’t wait to save up more money to donate next year for Extra Life!
Congratulations and thank you GS!
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