Child's Play seems to be the go-to charity for gamers, nothing else off the top of my head.

Tracking specific things in-game such as airshots seems messy to me, but of course I have never hosted something like this or anything, so I'm not speaking from experience. But I do think maybe a little round robin tourney of sorts may be a good idea, and people could pledge donations for wins or for one team to win, whatever.

I'm sure you've thought of this already, but looking at past/current other charity gaming events would be a good way to gather ideas.

I can't really contribute much, except maybe art for ads/Twitch banners or something. (Fiddled with Boink's Twitch for example. Aaaand a larger version of the banner.)

Host newbie mixes for a few nights straight in 1 week and have people donate money if they want to.

What about a "This is Team Fortress" themed stream? Each streamer over the course of an hour explains their TF2 story, how they got into it, why they love it, some stories of their adventures or a cast of a game they really enjoyed.

EDIT: Always game for helping a charity stream out.

I actually thought of a pretty neato idea during AGDQ...

Start out with a show match with all the personalities (all the biggest streamers, maybe even some historical personalities if you could get them on for a day of gaming - like reptile) that's some ancient map like 12 v 12 2 fort - play that for some very short period of time. Then viewers donate towards goals - so 300 donated to charity forces seanbud to play with his foot for 20 minutes, etc or lange to play with a guitar hero controller, or truktruk to cast in his "fwag video" voice.

In short, you would slowly whittle down the number of players, playing 9v9 *highlander* 8v8, 7v7, and lastly 6v6 - and you could have that sixes match be a show scrim or something between 2 invite teams with a full on cast HOWEVER if you donate x amount of $$$ you force x player to do something ridiculous or change class or something silly, and if you get a ton of money they'll play on some miserable map using the oldest of prostrats you could do the same for the highlander segment if you could get teams to do it.

You could also do a bidding war to have the highest donator in that category get mentored by x player.

In addition to all of the other ideas, you could also add the obvious "We'll stream an extra 30 minutes for every $100 we get" or something along those lines.

You could probably get people like STAR and Stabby to join you.
(Yeah sure they don't have the greatest rep in comp, but they're undeniably popular and could attract a lot of attention. Hundreds of STAR fanboys, for instance, would pay to see him stream longer.)

Just my two cents

I'm down to shoutcast a valve pub or pretty much whatever people want me to do.

Might be able to set up a bot that counts the numer of airshots when a specific person in chat says "airshot".

I'll be able to talk to stabby about it, maybe get him to review a spy highlander demo or something.

Regardless of what we all do I think it must be structured to a point. Have some sort of rough time schedule so we don't miss anything. Also can't forget to figure out what charity this all will go to, either have a vote or have people explain why whatever charity their backing is the most important.

So far my two cents are that it should be at very least 12 hours long (at most 24), with different streamers running the show at different hours (ie. Sean streams for ~4 hours, Lange streams for ~4 hours, I stream for ~4 hours, etc). I think this might take a little more planning than anticipated. We need to get everyone together that wants to be involved and figure out who is doing what. I guess this thread is a great way to find out what that "what" actually is. After we get all that organized we can set a date and maybe throw up a promo video or something like that.

I'm kind of just ranting so I guess after this conversation develops more we can make a list of what we want to execute during the stream and with that make a list of needs.

I don't have many points to add to this because tired, but when you have more people involved and a more stable schedule, contact Robin to see if he or any others would be willing to join in. One of the biggest viewer draws of MagicalKillaCow's recent charity TF2 stream was the fact that Robin was scheduled to show up at the end of it. I personally had never heard of this guy before and I assume, possibly wrongly but whatever, that not many others knew of him either. Yet because he talked to the right people, he managed to raise a cool £1100/$1800+ from a 12 hour stream with an average of ~150-200 viewers IIRC.

Also, talk to popular EU streamers & players. You easily increase the audience size by bringing in people from around the world and also ease the work burden on yourself. E.g. for a 24h stream you could ask an Australian streamer to cover a few hours while the Americans get a bit of sleep, then they could come back on to wrap things up.

tldr don't rush into this. Take the time to figure out how you can maximize viewer count and keep them entertained. While I was really impressed with what MKC's stream accomplished, I feel like it could have been better if the date were pushed back and they worked on it a little longer.
Oh, and I vote for keeping it all on the tf.tv stream. I think it'd work out better in the long run.

http://www.charitynavigator.org/

From the Reddit front page for non-Redditors, might be useful for choosing a charity.

Very cool idea. I hear a lot of people suggesting very long hours - if you decide to do this, make sure it's split into short and well-defined segments. If it's just a 24 hr stream of people chilling out, viewers will stop by when they have time. If you make it more of an exciting, scheduled-event-type stream, viewers will make the time and plan around it.

Some good ideas so far. I would definitely make it a scheduled event thing and try to do some PR on it beforehand. I was thinking a lot of the actual gameplay could be on the teamfortress.tv pub server. Scrims towards the end might be a good idea. Could have a caster stop by and chill cast it and read "challenges" from donators to the players.

Still looking for more ideas content wise. I have only approached a couple other streamers about this so I'm not sure who all would be interested.

Would doing a map of MvM be a good way to create some sort of challenges?
Surfing?

Interested in the highest donator gets a mentor session idea but that would require finding mentors willing to follow through.

How best could we use tf2 items?

Thanks for the ideas!

So I won the gunblade from AGDQ (though I'm not going to believe it until I get the thing in the mail, kinda ridiculous thing to win), and I've been thinking the best thing to do with something won unexpectedly from a charity drive is to reuse it for charity.
Assuming I do get the thing, I'd like to use this as a possible raffle prize of some sort during this stream. Maybe with a minimum donation of some sort required to be entered and a minimum total amount raised required for it to be given away (apparently it's worth around $1000, from what I have heard, not confirmed, so if less than that was raised it would make more sense to sell it and donate the charity). I'll keep you guys posted. Any feedback would be appreciated on the idea.

As to the event as a whole, I think there should diffidently be a planned schedule well ahead of time, with advertising/hype building. Approaching people from different parts of the community is key - get the popular streamers, high level players, community figures/casters, youtubers, and maybe even someone from Valve for a short appearance if possible (worth trying a few emails). And definitely keep it on one stream. It's going to be hard to keep viewers and keep a constant stream of action if the event is being moved around.

This would be awesome. I think it'd be cool to have some viewer contests of some sort. Maybe they can donate to play with some of the streamers in a mix or something like that? Or they can donate, and have a game of prophunt, winner gets a signed weapon or hat or something.

As far as how to use items, when I was pubbing a lot on SourceOP they started running raffles to fund their servers. If people have any sweet items you donate said item, pay 5$ you get a raffle ticket towards x item (they stuck to unusuals, and weird medals) donating increasing increments of 5$ gives you more chances to win.

As far as the gunblade you could do the same thing just attach it to a certain $ amount so as to make it such that it won't be entered into the raffle unless the total donations pass x amount.

The main reason I suggested reducing the number of players per timing was because of the difficulty in getting people together.

Stuff to do ideas beyond exhibition matches:

Talk to the surfer and jumper types. Sort out a map and speed run it with people donating towards certain circumstances - no regen, surfing with ultra high sensitivity, etc, etc. You could race too.

If you shoot for a very long marathon (24 hour) I think MVM would definitely fit the bill - and folks could donate towards seeing some super unorthodox load out like all scouts or something.

You could also go another route and design stacked punishment games. For example, if x streamer doesn't top frag in some random saxton hale mod server (assuming requisite donations), he is forced to do some x incredibly upsetting and painful thing (not like sal hitting himself in the head with a pan, but I guess if you want to). Like having to sing a stupid song, reenact a "meet the video" as a one man play - anything that sounds embarrassing or funny.

Having a S. Direct Hit with the air shot counter would simplify finding the total.

Edit: Willing to donate one if needed.

Please don't.

I love the TF2 community because there are always high-level people willing to help out newbies and lower-levelled players like me improve. Bl4nk's demo reviews, Newbie Mixes, MGE, seanbud's map reviews, etc. are all fueled by their own willingness to contribute. We shouldn't monetize that and end up with a system where people will help one person over others only for money. All the other ideas sound awesome, though.

Well the money is going to charity not the particular player it's a good cause and stuff ;)

I think using the TF.tv server is an awesome idea. A caster to interact with the viewers more would be fantastic too. Perhaps they or a second caster could relay questions to the players, making everybody feel more involved.

I personally wouldn't be interested in watching surfing/jump maps or MvM. I think the former wouldn't go over as well with not-so-competitive players, and we want to reach out to as much of the community as we can to bring everybody together for fun/common cause. The latter may interest people on both ends of the spectrum though.

I like Marxist's and Vanilla's ideas on prop hunt with viewers and cash-entry raffles.

Another option with higher-ticket items is to sell them for cash to put back into the charity.

Bubble Bobbler (or.. whatever his name is) approached me with a Robin Walker signed item to use with fully charged. Instead of having me give it out, he wanted it to be auctioned, or used in some way to benefit a charity. This seems like something he'd like to do with it, I'll make sure he sees this thread.

I can't speak for all of the TFTV dudes but I'm down to help however I can.

Using DH most airshots would be killed from the crit anyways, so to get a close idea you could just use the strange part.

I'd be up for gathering some gift wraps and stranges for the casters to sign and then either auction them off, or give them away randomly to viewers/people that did donate

I have some Dota keys you guys can raffle off and a server I could help you use lobbies/pugs on. Let me know.

bump. We are going to have a meeting on Tuesday, Feb 5th at 7pm cst to discuss a rough schedule and gather more ideas. Anyone interested in helping out feel free to attend. TFTV Mumble: 173.208.239.18, 64738

Also it was mentioned earlier in the thread but anyone who would be willing to donate strange weapons(mostly competitive 6v6/highlander weapons) and gift wraps/description/name tags just add me on steam.

1. What Marxist said.
2. Even if we were paying money to the players themselves, that would not force a shift in how people are mentored in general.
3. This could be a really effective way to raise money. There are so many new players to the scene that would probably be willing to donate to charity in order to get a high level mentor.
4. Imagine how much people would "bid" to have b4nny mentor them!

that would require enough players willing to do mentoring. so... any players IM/invite willing to help with mentoring sessions as a potential donation drive thing post here or contact me.

bump. Meeting is at 7cst tonight(1 hr 45 min).