Source: Forbes / Paul Tassi
The big Destiny story of the fall will be the release of Rise of Iron, new, transformative DLC that may be the game’s last before the arrival ofDestiny 2 next year. But before that happens, the collective Destinyfanbase has gotten together for a pair of events that are hitting some impressive milestones.
The Destiny Community Convention, or “DestinyCon,” is tomorrow in Tampa, Florida. Ahead of the event itself, the organizers have put on a charity stream that has so far raised $375,000 for St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital, with a goal of $400,000 by the end of the day (Update: the stream actually surpassed $500K in donations by the time it ended). Fans have donated via a rotating collection of 42Destiny streamers over the past week, and the result is the single largest donation St. Jude’s has ever gotten from a gaming-based charity event.
I spoke with King Gothalion, a well-known Destiny streamer, and one of the key organizers of the charity stream and DestinyCon itself, along with Kmagic101 and ProfessorBroman. Gothalion explains how all this is possible, organizing events that require the cooperation of dozens of high-profile streamers and thousands of fans.
“When Professor Broman and I started [playing] Destiny we didn’t know we would be in the position on Twitch that we are,” Gothalion says. “But we sat down when things started going well and had a talk. [We wanted] to never compete with each other. To always promote growing streamers and focus on directory building within a mindset of positivity. Be welcoming and helpful to those who are nice people. Twitch is cutthroat. It was our belief that eliminating that cutthroat nature would help everyone, including ourselves. Others adopted that mindset. That’s how we became tight-knit. That’s how we had a meet-up last year with 1,000 people and 30 content creators.”
Last year’s DestinyCon was practically an improvised event, meant to be a little larger than a normal meet-up, but nothing the size of a full convention. But while 400 were expected to attend, 1,000 showed up, and this year, Gothalion says that they estimate that 3,000 and 4,000 people will be coming to the 2016 event.