Get in the Game - LIVE @ GivePanel's Social Fundraising Summit #SFS2022
The live recording and written talk have some minor differences due to ad-lib remarks but bulk and spirit are the same.
Hello and welcome to my session on how to get in the game; video games that is! My name is Alyssa Sweetman and I’ll be your guide for this historical journey of gaming for good. Up until Feb of this year, I was the Director of Social Impact at Twitch. Currently, I’m the Director of Strategy and Social Impact at a marketing services agency called Player 2 and the founder of a social impact resource called Influencing Good. I started my journey with video games basically in the womb. My father was really excited about technology so for as long as I can remember I was playing arcade games, the sega game gear, sega CD and so on.
My personal journey into gaming for good started when I was in college. A friend introduced me to Twitch and thought I could be a successful influencer… you know… given my charming and bubbly personality. Joke’s on them though, after 3 months of fumbling around to learn Twitch I discovered a gaming group that was using gaming to create a safe space for veterans and civilians to game together. Help veterans get integrated into online communities. They also were live streaming together to raise funds for charity. I was intrigued… you were telling me that I could sit on my bum, play video games, and raise money for causes I cared about? SOLD!
When I get excited about things, I really get excited about them. Like really excited. From that moment on I became an expert on all things live streaming, gaming and how they intersected with charity. I poured hours into learning everything I could about it… which wasn’t much at the time. Not too long after I got excited I took over the charitable operations for that gaming community. And about a year and half later I went off to start my own gaming community.
During this time, I graduated college and went on to become a second grade teacher. Now every Monday myself and the other second grade teachers would huddle to discuss what we did over the weekend. And most weekends, I’d share about time spent gaming and fundraising for charity. Nobody “got it” — when I was recruited by Twitch in 2017 to join and help level up their charitable work – our lead teacher shared her confusion around why I’d leave to go do things in video games. All she had in her mind’s eye was a very static stereotype of who a gamer was.
I think that’s a great place to start our journey today. We’re going to kick this off with a little game I like to call, everybody is secretly a gamer. Now, raise your hand if you think that you’re a gamer.
Okay okay, now put your hands down. Now I’m going to list off some video games and if you’ve ever played the game just once raise your hand.. Okay ready?
Pacman, Tetris, galaga, Space Invaders, Pong, Sonic the hedgehog, Mario, snake, candy crush, farmville, clash of clans, fortnite, pokemon go or wordle.
Great! Take a look around… now wave to your fellow gamers and then you can put your hands down!
There are almost 3 billion gamers around the world or roughly 40 percent of the world’s population.
When folks think of the word gamer, they usually think of a really specific idea. Somebody who plays shooters on consoles or maybe somebody that spends several hours a day playing video games. You might also think of gamers as younger people with little to no spending power – but you would certainly be surprised.
2.2 trillion dollars
That’s the revenue of the global entertainment and media industry in 2021. Which includes tv, video, film, books publishing, music, and of course, video games. Now the video game industry itself had a 14.4 percent increase in revenue last year ending the year with $178.7 billion. Ten years ago the revenue from the video game industry was only $70.6 billion. That’s just over a 100 billion increase in 10 years. And who knows where we could end up with the metaverse, web3, and cloud gaming services.
Some of the earliest examples of charity live streaming pre-date the existence of Twitch and started on a service called Ustream.
In 2007, Desert Bus kicked off their first live stream fundraising events and raised just over $22 thousand dollars for Child’s Play to date they have raised over $7 million for Child’s Play.
In 2009, Zeldathon kicked off their event series raising $301 dollars for Child’s Play and to date has raised over $3 million for charity..
In 2010, Games Done Quick had their first event raising just over $10 thousand dollars for CARE. Games Done Quick is one of the most notable charity live stream events having raised over $34 million for charity to date.
And each year more live streaming charity events kick off and as their audience grows so does their fundraising power.
In Europe, we have the European Speedrunner Assembly or ESA which raised just over 2,500 euros in 2012 and has gone on to raise over 650 thousand euros to date.
In December 2011, Yogscast, a UK month-long gaming fundraiser kicked off on YouTube VOD, later grew to include livestreaming on Twitch. It’s first fundraiser raised just over $100,000 and has raised over $25 million for charity to date.
In 2016, a French Twitch partner launched an event called The Z Event. It raised just over 150 thousand euros and has gone on to raise over 21 million euros to date for charity and is the largest gaming focused fundraising event led by gaming influencers.
If you’re feeling excited about the possibility of gamers, do me a favor and clap twice! These are just a handful of events that focus on gamers that also create content. One thing these events all have in common is that they are built as a community event.
Many charities dive into the gaming community and immediately target one of the events I’ve mentioned or one of the mega gaming influencers who have been mentioned in the press. Since each charity diving into this space starts there they often find themselves at a loss of how to get started.
But you should know the average individual gaming influencer raises about $2500 dollars or just over 2 thousand euros. To understand the potential here, multiply that by the eight million unique influencers that go live on Twitch each month or the forty million active gaming channels on YouTube. Note Twitch doesn’t share how many of the 8 million influencers that go live are gaming influencers but I’d bet it’s over 70 percent.
During my nearly five years at Twitch, I saw the community raise over $300 million for charities globally.
Working with gaming influencers does come with some considerations. Your relationship is with the fundraiser and not the donor. This will certainly take some time to shift the mindset here… but the really exciting part is that as an influencer grows so does their fundraising power. So relationships with influencers of all sizes have value for your organization.
It’s important to sign-up and have your organization available on a service that gaming influencers use such as Justgiving in the UK, betterplace in Germany or the more specific gaming influencer focused services such as Streamlabs Charity and Tiltify; both of which are global.
And as many of you are thinking how you might convince your leadership or board of directors to get involved, consider this — when somebody fundraises for your organization on Facebook or Instagram you don’t worry about the potential of a person having posted things that do not align with your organization's values… gaming influencers should be looked at in the same vein.
Only officially partner with or market influencers that align with your organization.
Gaming influencers are just one avenue into the gaming market. If you’ve followed any of Fortnite’s journey you’ve seen other popular culture IPs join take their place in the game.
In 2018, Blizzard and the Breast Cancer Research Foundation partnered together at the height of Overwatch’s popularity to do a commercial co-venture agreement with an in-game item sold with proceeds going to BCRF. It raised over $12 million in just two weeks. From what I understand nobody expected it to do more than a million at best. That was a bit of a shock wasn’t it?
In 2020 Riot raised $6 million and in 2021 over $7 million for charity with a League of Legends Skin for their corporate impact fund. The vast majority of League of Legends players are men between the ages of 18 - 24. Fun fact gamers between the ages of 18 to 24 make the most in-game purchases. In 2019, Fortnite users spent an average of $82 in micro-transactions.
They targeted a fandom of dedicated gamers broadly, not just gaming influencers.
Now, I do want to take a moment to temper expectations around how much of a lighting in a bottle moment the blizzard fundraiser was. Blizzard is a very popular game maker with huge fanfare for everything they do and Blizzard collectibles are a big thing for that fan group – and Overwatch was only two years old and was extremely popular for a few years.
League of Legends is one of the most played games in the world with over 110 million players and has a hardcore dedicated fan base. There’s a global popular esports event and now even an animated tv series on Netflix. If you haven’t watched it – highly recommend it, it’s quite good.
One important thing to consider before reaching out to a developer to do a commercial co-venture with an in-game item is that it will take at least 6 months and up to a year from initial conversation to going live.
Now in some rare cases world events cause everybody including those part of the gaming industry to mobilize to support those in need. And the reason I say “rare” is because there are events every single day that need support but most do not garner the attention or support of those that can.
In 2017, there was a tsunami, two earthquakes, and a gaggle of hurricanes — the Twitch community came together to raise just over $2 million USD in disaster relief effort.
In 2020, the gaming community globally raised money for Australian wildfires, Covid and Black Lives Matter — those three combined raised around $30 million USD.
This year we are watching the desecration of a people and the world has not stood by — the gaming community is no different having raised over $64 million USD through various game bundles, game developer donations, and gaming focused live-streams. This includes the bundles from on Itch dot eye oh, humble bundle, and the recent $36 million raised through Fortnite in 24 hours.
Each and every time disaster strikes gaming influencers scramble the best way to support charities responding. So it’s best to dive into gaming now before your organization is inundated and responding to a crisis.
Now so far we have really only discussed games that are primarily popular on desktop computers. However, 51 percent of games are played on smartphones or tablets, 28 percent on consoles, and 22 percent on desktop computers. And it’s worth noting that 85 percent of the industry revenue came from free to play games and micro-transactions.
Let's talk about the misconception that video games are for men. Women gamers make up 45 percent of the world's gaming population. There was a great expose on how gaming became perceived as for young boys by Polygon that came out in 2013. It’s a long but fantastic read, it’s called “No Girls Allowed”.
Shifting gears a little here, let’s look at esports. Which is not the official name of gaming as the DailyMail indicated. The esports market was valued at a little over a billion dollars in 2021. So just a small portion of the $178.7 billion of the total video game industry.
Esports events are not effective fundraising drivers.
I’m going to say that again, esports events are not effective fundraising drivers. Fundraising during an esports event is the equivalent of having an announcer during a futbol game trying to convince fans to donate during the game. It’s not going to work. The fans are focused on the competitive back and forth. Their emotional connection is tied up in what happens in the game.
You may have seen esports events with a charitable component but those events have a sponsor that’s underwriting the event and donating a predetermined amount.
Esports events are costly to put on and anybody can put one on. Unless you have popular players and teams participating the likelihood of seeing high viewership is low.
We’ve covered gaming influencers, game makers and publishers, and esports. There are two more avenues into the gaming industry.
The first is to build partnerships with gaming adjacent brands and be a part of their social impact strategy or through your existing corporate partners that have an interest in getting into the gaming industry. As web3 and NFTs expand you can expect to see web3 games become an avenue to connect with potential new donors.
Some key takeaways are:
Gamers makeup nearly 40 percent of the world's population
It’s a massive industry that grows exponentially each year
Gamers are men, women, old, young, parents, college students, kids and nearly all gamers have spending power.
Gaming is a viable and growing avenue to connect with new younger donors. The last report I read on average donor age said that the average global donor age is over 65. It’s time for organizations to become more flexible in how they approach fundraising or risk losing market awareness and struggle to raise funds.
Today we talked about why it’s important to consider how your organization might enter the gaming industry. To get started you will need to do these three things:
Get your organization on a fundraising service that gamers and influencers are using.
Create an influencer kit - same time of information you’d provide your brand partners but more succinct and easier to reference.
Let your current supporters know that influencers can fundraise for you on XYZ fundraising services. Chances are among your current supporters there are already influencers or somebody who knows one.
