At Sprites and Dice, we’re very fortunate to have a chance to do what we do. Writing about games in our spare time, organizing events, going to conventions… it’s something that we are incredibly grateful to be able to do. Starting last summer, we started trying to send some of that gratefulness back out into the world by supporting charities through streaming marathons and events.
To celebrate Pride Month this year, we’re here to support The Trevor Project.
What Is The Trevor Project?
The Trevor Project is a charity started by the director and filmmakers behind the 1994 short film Trevor, which follows the story of a 13-year-old boy as goes through a series of difficult events. In the spirit of the movie, The Trevor Project is focused on mental health, providing crisis intervention and suicide prevention services for LGBTQ youth under the age of 25.
Writing this as a straight man, I can’t possibly fully understand the personal journey of discovering your self-identity, then coming out in a society where many are actively antagonistic towards you just for who you are. I can, however, appreciate how much good mental health support can do to help someone through their formative years in the 10s and 20s. The Trevor Project is an incredibly valuable resource to help those who feel alone, helping LGBTQ youth find others to connect with who understand their struggle. As a group, we wanted to highlight this great cause and show our solidarity.
If you are LGBTQ, under the age of 25, and struggling with your current situation, please check out The Trevor Project for many resources, including texting and instant messaging with counsellors, as well as the ability to join an online peer-to-peer community network for LGBTQ youth. If you are in crisis, they have a Lifeline you can always call at 866-488-7386.
Our Fundraising Goals And Streaming Events
To try and help out in our small way, we have created a Tiltify campaign with the goal of raising $1,000 dollars during the month of June. In the past, we’ve usually just done one large streaming weekend, but we’re hoping to try out a full month format.
Below is our list of events for June, as well as a list of rewards we will be offering through our Tiltify project. Check back to this article as we add in more events and collaborators!
Streaming Weekend June 5th/6th
Starting off with a standard streaming weekend, we’re streaming for 12 hours total.
June 5th, 7-11 PM EST: Longtime friend of Sprites and Dice, Brian French will be playing Shovel Knight! Check out his own Twitch channel if you like his work.
June 6th, 1-5 PM EST: I will be playing XCOM: Chimera Squad. During our first streaming marathon, the audience somehow became enamored with agent Claymore as a character, and hence, we hope to bring some of that energy back.
No seriously - we have no idea why this became a thing, but we aren't complaining.
June 6th, 5-9 PM EST: Eric will be playing Mega Man X4! His obsession with platformers intimidates me. Come check out how many times he’s going to die during his quest to save the world.
As an added bonus, any subscriptions or bits that we receive to our twitch channel that we receive for the month of June we will match as donations to the Tiltify campaign!
Rewards and Milestones
We’ve gathered some rewards to give away! We know many of these are relatively small, but we’re hoping it will be an incentive to help donate to such a great cause.
Every $100 dollars raised: We will give away a free steam code! We’ve been collecting steam codes for a wide array of games, so every time we reach another $100 benchmark, we will randomly choose someone in our twitch channel to choose from a list a free game.
Every $250 dollars raised: We are a gaming review site, so might as well put that to good use! When we hit these milestones, we will randomly choose someone in our twitch channel to ask them what game they want us to review: board game, video game, or ttrpg! Please note we do have final approval to review that game, so keep it civil. Choose a game you actually like or are interested in!
Don't worry, we'll already be reviewing Chimera Squad... once we finish it of course!
At our $1,000 goal: As per tradition by this point, our head writer Eric will dye his hair if we hit $1,000 dollars! The color is picked from a poll that we put out soon after the month is over.
If you donate $50 directly: We will reach out to you to let you pick a steam game from our game code list!
If you donate $100 directly: We will let you choose a game for us to review!
We have some ideas about additional rewards that we will add when we surpass our first $1,000 goal, and we’ll add them here once we start getting close to hitting that first big milestone!
Watch Some Games, Support A Good Cause
We’re very excited to be hosting this campaign, and we hope many out there will enjoy hanging out with us as we do it. As a team, we are hoping to do more events towards the end of the month – including some we haven’t done before – but we’ll reveal those as we figure out the logistics of them.
Please check out our Tiltify campaign to keep up to date with how we are doing in our campaign. If you have the spare money to donate, we appreciate you. If you just want to show support by hanging out in twitch chat and keeping the energy going, we appreciate you. If you want to collaborate or join the cause, please feel free to reach out to us by E-mail or social media.
Thank you for caring and believing in a good cause.
