Popular YouTuber Jirard The Completionist is doing a 36 hour live stream to raise money for dementia research over at twitch.tv/thecompletionist. The stream features only games developed by independent game devs with companies like Yacht Club Games, Devolver Digital, Retroid, and a slew of other wonderful names in the industry. This is the second year that the Indie Land stream has happened, following the first huge success where they smashed their initial goal of $25,000, eventually making over $50,000.
Jirard and his father started the Open Hand Foundation in 2003 after his mother passed away due to dementia. Jirard is very open with how much his mother has influenced him over the years and how supportive she was of his life goals. In 2018, two of Jirard’s colleagues and closest friends, Micheal Barryte and Frazier Perez-Yadon approached Jirard about their desire to do charity work and that they wanted to give to the Open Hand Foundation.
Although Jirard is the host of Indie Land, there is no doubt that it would not be possible without his amazing team at That One Video Gamer. Because of people like
- Micheal Barryte
- Frazier Perez-Yadon
- Brett Bayyone
- Alex Faciance
- Amanda Flagg
- Eric Zipper
- Jacque Khalil
- @LoadingPat
- @RealYoshiller
- @JetPackBraggin
- Micheal Santell
- and many, many other fantastic people. (Apologies to the people who were left out and to those I could not find their full name).
There has also been a plethora of guests that have appeared during the stream so far, including
- Members of Did You Know Gaming including Shane Gill
- Forrest Lee, producer of Normal Boots
- Barry from Barryisstreaming
- Ross O’Donovan from Game Grumps
- Grant Kirkhope, the famous composer for games like Banjo Kazooie and Yooka Laylee
- Jesse Cox
- Sisgo
- Ian Hecox, Courtney Miller and Shayne Topp from Smosh
- Professional Smash player CLG VoiD
- Terry Farrel from Star Trek
- Developers from Wide Right Games
- Developers from Sabotage
- Developers from Yacht Club Games
- Trisha Hershberger
- Jace Hall
- Voice actor and YouTuber, Anna Brisbin
- Former IGN Executive Producer, Naomi Kyle
- Developers from WayForward
- And many more amazing people.
To add even more incentives to donate, everyone who is participating is subject to fun punishments/games like eating bugs, getting their hair waxed, getting their face painted and getting shocked by a shock collar. Jirard and Alex Faciane even filled their glorious beards with glitter. Plus, anyone who donated at least $10 is entered to win 1 of over 500 codes of the games that are being played on the stream which have been provided by the game developers. Even companies like Nintendo and Bandai Namco have graciously donated codes of some of their games.
Besides just donating directly on the stream, you can also buy an Indie Land T-shirt where all the proceeds will be donated. There is also a link on their Twitch page for Tab For A Cause, which is a free browser extension that literally donates a dollar to the Open Hand Foundation just for downloading it. All of the Bits that are donated as well as the Twitch Prime subscriptions (which you get for free if you have Amazon Prime) will be added to the total donations at the end of the 36 hour stream.
Now, go show Jirard and his wonderful team some love by watching this fantastic charity stream. Go see some wonderful indie games played by fantastic people and if you can, give some money to a great cause. Thank you to everyone involved and I’m very sorry for all the people who are involved on and off camera that I did not mention. If I did, this article would be 10 pages longer but you are all just as important and doing something great.
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