I actually like to stream when I play games. I do it so that I can play games with friends and strangers even when I am playing a single player game or sitting at home in my game room all by myself. So doing streaming marathons to raise money for charity just felt right and we plan to continue to do so as long as long as it continues to work.
Perhaps through osmosis, my 7 year old daughter, Pea, also has a love of streaming and Let’s Plays. Initially she was most interested in watching other people play games either on YouTube or Twitch. (Mostly YouTube because we are safer in terms of language and such on that front.) And lately we have found ourselves in a position where she has gone from wanting to be a content consumer to being a content producer. She has started asking to stream more and to have her videos uploaded to YouTube. I’m down for doing that, with some real restrictions. She doesn’t see the chat which she is streaming. I monitor it on the iPad out of her line of sight, she doesn’t get to read comments on YouTube unless they have been checked by me first, and most importantly, we never turn on the camera. I don’t post pictures of my child freely on the internet for safety reasons. Friends and family get to see pictures on Instagram and the like, but that is it. I see this as a way of adding an extra layer of safety to being the child of someone who often finds herself the subject of some scrutiny and we know what that can bring. Some may say that behavior is over-protective at best and paranoid at worst, but when I am considering the safety of my child I am willing to bear those labels proudly. But that really brings us to the point of this post. Philanthropy.
When I was a child, my mother instilled in me the importance of doing philanthropic work. We did food baskets at Christmas, meal delivery, clothes closets, and the like. I think that doing this work early helped me realize at an early age that the people on the receiving end of charitable services were just that, real people. They weren’t numbers or shadowy creatures that just took. They were mothers, fathers, children, or sometimes just people who were all alone. They could be nice (or a little bit surly), but most importantly they were just like everyone else. They had simply fallen on rough times. Some were ill. Some had lost their jobs. Some were working hard, but just couldn’t make ends meet. This was something that I always wanted to make sure that my child understood. Coming from what would probably be considered an upper middle class family, and probably being a bit on the spoiled side because her mom likes toys as much as she does, I have always thought that it was imperative that Pea learn early that not everyone has the same privileges and that it’s important for us as humans to always help others when we can.
For as long as she can remember she has seen me doing charitable work. Things through our church, the Extra Life marathon, charity knitting, you name it. Anything that speaks to the skills that I have and that I can spare a few minutes for. Since she realized what I did for that one day in October every year when I left the house and she could watch me “on TV” (thanks to streaming) playing games she has wanted to participate in the Extra Life marathon. Since I am not actually going to let my kid stay up for 24 hours and play games (or sit around in a room full of sleep deprived gamers shooting zombies and cursing at television screens), this month’s Gaming for Good event was the first time that she has been able to participate in playing games for charity. And she loved it. I had blocked out 2 hours for us to game together and she was so excited to help raise money so that “other mamas could get their boobies smashed” that we actually started streaming early and ran a little late. She was so proud to be helping and it really made me feel like I was doing something right.
Jump forward two weeks. Pea comes home from school with a flyer and envelope for raising money for the Heart Association through a jump roping marathon (we did this last year as well), but this year she wants to add a new layer to her participation. Yep, you guessed it. She wants to stream to bring attention to her jump roping campaign so that she can raise more money. This kid of mine is pretty amazing. She has learned something about the games community that it’s often easy for us to forget. While we know why it’s necessary to police our Twitch chat channels, turn off comments on YouTube videos, and address violence harassment on social media that can seep out into the real world, we have those moments (as fleeting as they may seem) when we see the good in people, in our community, through the eyes of a child. A child who only sees the good in the community. A child who sees people who play games to entertain others or who watch others play games and give to help those who need it. A child who sees this as a community that she wants to be a part of for those reasons…at least for now. This is why I am here. This is why we still fight. I want to see the games community to become more of the space that my child sees it as and less of the space that I feel I have to hide from her.
