The world of video games is large, encompassing people from all walks of life and all around the globe. Video games can be powerful tools, from making learning easier for kids to helping raise millions of dollars for charity every year. Video games, and by extension, the gamers who play them, prove that gaming can bring people together in miraculous ways.

Gaming Community Expo (GCX) Co-Founder Ben Bowman (AKA Professor Broman on Twitch) and Rare Drop's (the company that supports GCX) Mindy Gentry recently spoke with Game Rant about how the event and its surrounding activities have been a catalyst for good, helping raise millions of dollars for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. GCX is an annual gaming event that has been growing ever since its inception back in 2016, bringing more and more gamers together while raising money for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.

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Q: Ben, could you start with an introduction of your role in GCX and what responsibilities that entails?

A: Ben: My official role at GCX is Charity Director. I am also one of the Co-Founders of the event. My responsibility for many years was to be in charge of putting together the charity marathon, making sure the charity marathon ran, making sure everybody knew how to do all of their alerts. So, I was the planning, production, scheduling, and marketing team all in one person for a long time, thankfully it’s not like that anymore, we have folks that are working on everything so there is not so much falling on individuals in the founding group, who ran the event for three years with just a small team.

My Responsibility for bringing this together for St. Jude is best answered by the story of how we got started. Our first year when we did the charity marathon, it was just sort of something that I thought would be interesting and fun to try and we decided on St. Jude because of all the wonderful charities we researched, St. Jude had these special things about it that made it make sense as a charity that gamers would rally behind, they have an international mission; they are trying to eradicate childhood cancer; they distribute all of their research for free; they use cutting edge research; they have patients from all over the world, so they truly are an international charity with a goal that benefits all of mankind.

That was a necessity when we were selecting a charity. Twitch has a global audience, and I didn’t want to take all this attention and point it somewhere where some people who were watching were left out. I wanted anyone from anywhere in the world to tune in and be like ‘Wow, I’m helping cure cancer for everybody on the planet’. St. Jude had the chops, they had the history, they had the research team, so we went with St Jude. I grabbed their PayPal link off of their main website and I dropped that into StreamElements and that was our donation button.

St. Jude had no idea we were doing it. They didn’t understand where all the money was coming from on their front page. I think it was around Thursday of the week we started the marathon, so about 5 days in, somebody clued in Zach who is now I believe, the Director at St. Jude Play Live. Post-event, St. Jude got on a call with us and asked why we didn’t ask for help and I told them I didn’t want to ask them for anything until we proved we were valuable to them. Then we raised half a million dollars that year and that’s what started our relationship.

Q: With the event last year being canceled, how did that shape this year’s event?

A: Ben: Obviously, our event got canceled but so did every other event, the entire events industry got messed up, the whole industry shut down. That was really intense and, in the beginning, when we were planning for this year, when quarantine hit, we were like, we’re canceling the 2020 event. We knew we were canceling it, but we had to wait until all the other events were canceled. While that was happening, we were planning for this year and we were planning three different events, in-person, with a full vaccinated crowd because some miracle happened, a semi-live event where we would have a smaller number of attendees on-site with an AR integration or something like that to bring in the rest of the people, or a fully virtual event which is what we ended up going with.

In a time when none of us could connect, because we were all inside trying to be safe and healthy, trying to help the world heal, the connection was at an all-time low. It is really hard to not be able to see your friends. Playing games online is awesome, and that’s what connects us, but GCX has taught us, all of our events have taught us, that the people we meet online are our real friends and we want to see them, we want to have fun with them, hug them, and know what they look like.

When we were planning the virtual event, we wanted it to be something where you actually felt present in the digital world. There are a lot of options out there for how live events are constructed. We’ve seen a lot of different approaches, but when we found the team at GENXP and we were looking at, ‘wow this is a fully customizable Unreal environment’, we realized we could build a super custom experience that would feel like you were somewhere else but still with your friends. It has taken us a long time to get videos out for people to see it because it sounds so ethereal in your head, you’re like ‘ok sure its like Grand Theft Auto, but a convention, in space’, that was the best I could describe it but that doesn’t do justice like the preview stream we put up where you could see and feel the gravity of the space, you can see how it will feel when you’re present. You can customize your character, it’s going to feel like an MMO, you’re going to go in there and hang out with your friends.

The audio in the entire area is proximity-based, so it’s going to feel like you’re walking through a convention hall because things are going to be coming in and out of audio focus. We really wanted to make it feel like you are actually there and then take that surreal environment of being in a space station, and use that to amplify all the really wonderful partners that we work with, amplify the messaging of St. Jude.

Our main stage area has six statues you’ll get to learn more about. Those are all inspired by St. Jude patients and the heroes that they are. That’s the kind of thing we couldn’t do in person. We're not going to be able to throw up a large bronze statue let alone six of them. Things like that, things like creating a tavern for people to go play Dungeons and Dragons together, these ideas came together because once we accepted we weren’t going to see everyone in person, we wanted to create a space that was as close to that as possible. I am really proud of what we have accomplished and put together as a team with our partners at GENXP.

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Q: After the event is over, is there a way we can preserve these statues?

A: Ben: Anything in relation to St. Jude, they are very involved in helping us create and distribute, when it comes to things like the statues, any of the redistribution or anything like that, I imagine St. Jude will take these really beautiful assets and find other ways to put them out into the world. There are a lot of complicated things when it comes to working with charities, but I would love to do something like a 3D model print of these statues.

The celebration of the patients as heroes is a huge focus, like the heart of St. Jude. These are patients who are fighting some of the toughest or rarest forms of cancer in the world and they are onsite for years at a time. As much research and as much good work as St. Jude does, it does not happen without patients being there and willing to fight the fight that they are fighting, alongside all the Doctors, the Nurses, the family life specialists, researchers, and everyone who is there. The kids at St. Jude really are heroes and they will be forever, making sure that we honor them in such a way is very important.

Q: Could you explain some of the intricacies of building the GCX Space Station?

A: Ben: What we do every year is what I like to call interdisciplinary production, that’s what you’re doing on a large scale with live streams, you have AV, you’re working with API’s, all the traditional movie and media production stuff, and now you’re adding software, hardware, and all this other stuff. So, you take that mentality and overlay it, basically creating a small-scale video game, that’s what the space ends up being. Our team did an incredible job doing creative design concepting and laying out their vision for how the space would look and feel, with lots of creative sessions as a team. Taking the concepting to our partners at GENXP, Mindy can speak more to the back and forth and how that process went over time.

Mindy: The thing that you have to define with a project like this is who is going to do what, who are your experts, really defining roles and responsibilities. That is something that our team did from the beginning, and I think we did it really well. One of the things that we were up against was time, the time it takes to coordinate all of your venders, content creators, partners, and take all of their branding, style guides, logos, assets, and ensuring that you are creating something that visually represents them correctly, while also building out this incredible experience. There has been a lot of testing in development, a lot of backend API integration. Our Partners over at Tiltify have been phenomenal in helping us connect a backend donation platform for the Space station and Charity Marathon. It's been a real labor of love, we have weekly meetings, a discord where we're always chatting with our partners over at GENXP to make sure everybody has the details that they need, while also coordinating all the approvals with our partners to make sure that we are representing their brands appropriately.

Q: How long has the virtual GCX 2021 event been in planning?

A: Ben: A year ago last June we were still planning three separate events. We were still figuring out which one of these three frameworks was going to be the one we moved forward with. It was difficult with all the different things happening at once. We were dealing with the pandemic, high levels of uncertainty about whether next year could happen. Do we bet on if vaccines will be out and try to have a full physical event? We were still dealing with all that, but the idea of how we virtualize the entire experience was always part of the discussion and part of the creative approach going into 2021.

Working specifically on this project, Unreal Engine was initiated shortly after we started. It took us time to find the virtual folks to do this, what is the right approach, what looks right? Now there are a lot of options. Back then it was sort of like Zoom meetings and a wasteland of weird, almost complete ideas, that didn’t really feel like it matched our event. There were lots of looking around and then we found how GENXP approached everything and thought ‘this is what’s really going to match up to our audience’. Definitely a year of figuring out how we make this event virtual.

Mindy: We saw the opportunity for a virtual event and that somebody who was not able to attend our live event in Orlando, can still enjoy GCX, not as a Zoom meeting, but as a video game, you’re getting to play a video game as your expo. Right around November 2020, we started working with GENXP and by January, we hit the ground running, building out everything that you’ll see at the event.

Q: Can you elaborate on how vendors will work at the event? How will the transactions take place?

A: Mindy: It is set up based on how the vendor sets it up. Vendors will have their products set up and you would go there and click on a product and then it links out to their website. Some vendors will have a direct integration with Shopify, others will have a choice to direct link out to their website. The user experience is pretty simple and fluid. Say you are going up to a booth and you’re wanting to see some new products they have placed there, walking up, you’re clicking, you’re viewing, and then if you’re wanting to purchase anything it will take you out to their site. Every vendor’s experience will be a little bit different based on the integration that they have with their products and services on their backend.

Q: Are there any charity goals this year?

A: Ben: There were a lot of ideas that we threw around in the beginning and time ended up being a restriction. I like the surprises that we have in store now. I think everyone will enjoy that. As far as milestones, last year, during our entire calendar year of fundraising, which runs from August to August, we raised around 8 million dollars. This year we are shooting for 10 million. We will see how that manifests itself in the marathon and all the community efforts across the year with the folks from the grassroots community that do fundraising all the way to our sponsors. Our goal at GCX, and my goal personally, for the project, and what we're doing with St, Jude, I want, eventually, the gaming space to provide 10% of the annual funding for St. Jude. I know we can and it's something that is important. St. Jude is a relatively older charity, and it is of crucial need that charities, as they grow and as they age, that they meet new audiences and that those new audiences pick up that torch. None of us live forever so the longer a charity is around, the more people they need to continue to introduce to their message.

Our goal is to make St. Jude a charity of choice for gamers worldwide. As we grow, this year, if we could raise 10 million dollars, that would be so exciting, I would love that. Me as the very large vision casting person I am, my ultimate goal is to get to about 10 times that. I do not know how that happens, but I say it over and over again because I believe it is going to happen. What we are doing this year, what we are doing with our partners, and as we continuously innovate in the space, the goal is to continue to create something that is just so fun, enjoyable, engaging, and positive, that it is a natural generative force for St. Jude. We get to that number eventually just by creating, creating more new things, more interesting things, and bringing more people together for fundraising.

On the Charity marathon side, running from June 13 to June 20, from games that people play perspective, it is absolutely the most diverse lineup of content creator home bases. Everything from sports games, which we have not really had in the marathon, to people who are going to be playing the Sims this year. It is all stuff that’s going to be new to the marathon and I’m very excited to meet these new communities and introduce them to St. Jude, GCX, and everything we do to make St. Jude the charity of choice for gamers regardless of what their favorite thing to play is.

I’m incredibly grateful. The Destiny community is where this all started a long time ago, which is surreal to me. We're always grateful for that. Gaming has never had enough positive press. Everyone always said that gamers can’t do good things, which is fundamentally not true. Gamers are people, gamers and gaming does good, that’s why that’s our hashtag. But there wasn’t something that people could go out and say, ‘Oh this is what we're doing that is good.’.

My deep desire when we did the charity marathon the first year was just to create something that people could be proud of. What has been incredible to me is watching the charity fundraising, and everybody who has joined with us for GCX, go from the Destiny community, to begin to embrace all of these other communities. Whether you are fundraising with us or any other charity, you’re out there with your boys proving with action that gaming does good, which is what matters.

To me, it's very humbling and I’m very honored to have created something that has inspired other people and encourages them to have a voice and realize that they can do good in this world even if it's with something that everybody else doesn’t think is important like video games, which was basically my life as a kid. It's very heartwarming to me to see how GCX has inspired others.

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Q: What kind of tickets or bundle offers will be available to people wanting to go to GCX 2021?

A: Mindy: We have got two different tickets this year and anyone who bought a ticket for last years event, we wanted to say thank you and honor their ticket, so they are getting into the Space Station free of charge as part of holding their ticket that is being moved to 2022. We also have standard admission, but we did not want to do our standard tiers. We typically have 3 to 4 different tiers, one big pass for either Saturday or Sunday, a Premier pass, VIP passes, and Premier Plus passes.

What we wanted to make sure this year was that it was simple and easy because it is a virtual event so there is the Standard Admission at $55 with a $5 donation to St. Jude, and the Premier Pass is $100 with a $10 donation. The Premier Pass will have the Swag bag, some in-game avatar skins that are customized to your level, and some other goodies. With the purchase of your ticket this year, we are automatically donating a piece of that to St. Jude to increase the fundraising as well.

Next year’s event for 2022 is already being planned and we're going to go back to our standard four ticket levels, opening up some really cool prizing at the different levels. Anyone who was a ticket holder for last year’s 2020 event, we had hoped for an in-person event, we wanted to make sure we honored that, so we transferred their tickets over to 2022 and they also get entry to our 2021 event in Unreal Engine.

Ben: We believe in doing right by people and that was the right thing to do.

Q: Earlier you mentioned having AR or VR, what were some things that prevented either of those experiences at this event?

A: Ben: We worked really hard to try to bring some of those things to the experience this year, ultimately it was a time situation that prevented those things from getting done. Looking towards the future, it's very obvious that Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality are clumsy to get into the home space. We're starting to see mass adoption of AR with Pokémon Go so AR has become more of a commonplace. Economically, the companies have learned the best practices for AR, so it is trickling down and become easier to reproduce.

I believe that as we go forward, continuing to integrate AR and VR experiences into our event will allow international access similar to this virtual event that we are doing. The virtual event, anyone can attend from anywhere in the world, you don’t have to buy a hotel or plane ticket. We see tremendous value in that, and we want to consider these new digital spaces as we move forward doing what we’re doing.

These digital spaces are where we live, we live on both sides of the fence with our physical event and our digital event. AR and VR are becoming gathering grounds and ways to deepen the interaction that people have with the event. Whether that’s allowing individuals to pop up unique information about booths and things, or perhaps embodying the statues that we have by allowing you to scan some things around the Rosen Shingle Creek to a VR experience where we might be able to do something really clever and VR map the entire convention hall so you could walk through it at home if you wanted to.

There's so much technology that’s being developed right now that we are watching. I am a huge fan of innovating and I really like getting there first, that’s when you get to play around and have the most fun and potentially the largest benefit for the charity. So being able to bring people from all over the world to this GCX experience with AR or VR, is something that I can confidently say is something that we are going to work towards making happen in the future.

We come from the digital space where the convention hall (Twitch Chat), can fit infinite people. That is one of the most powerful things about Twitch, where else can you have half a million people with a live chat room watching one person where everyone is heard, everyone is comfortable, and everyone is in their own dynamic, in their own space at home. That is so powerful. When we have the physical event, the thing that I noticed first the first year we did it, was how left out the people who couldn’t travel felt. It is something that I’ve been sensitive to ever since our first event and so now that we have these technologies coming out, it allows us to again open up the ‘convention hall’ so that it can fit as many people as it needs.

I see technology moving in that direction. The real restriction, however, is always time. As technology gets better, the time it takes to do projects like mapping the space and building out the walkable space, will decrease and become something that we can consider doing each year. That’s just one example of how we could implement a couple of things I have been researching lately. Don’t hold me to that as what we’re going to do, but it is certainly exciting.

I’m not making any promises that these things are what we are going to do because a lot of these projections depend on other people developing technology that we are not directing developing.

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Q: How will people access this digital GCX 2021 event?

A: After purchasing a ticket, attendees will receive an email prior to the event, inviting them to download the launcher. If they cannot use the launcher, they will be able to access the Space Station through a web browser as well, however, optimal performance will be through the launcher.

Q: GCX will have a Dead Ghost hunt similar to that of hunting Dead Ghosts in Destiny. What had to happen to make that possible?

A: Ben: We have a very good working relationship with Bungie, it has been a part of the event since it started, and it has believed in us the whole time, so we have a wonderful working relationship with Bungie. Each year they have marathon blocks, they raise so much money, they make exclusive emblems, they have really helped lead the way and show other game devs that this is how you can get involved in the charity space and be incredibly powerful and effective. So, when we approached Bungie and started talking about our plans for this year and our virtual space in this space station, we kind of pitched the idea of a Bungie thing that we could do in the space station that makes sense in the context of the space, Dead Ghosts just felt right. It was really just a part of the normal conversation that we have around planning this event each year with Bungie as a partner, which is incredible to say out loud.

Q: Is there anything attached to finding these Dead Ghosts, similar to how Dead Ghosts traditionally have Grimoire Cards or Lore attached to them?

A: Ben: If you collect all of them you will get an emblem for Destiny 2.

Q: There are many incentives for attendees that require exact dollar donation amounts, can you elaborate on why it is exact dollar amounts?

A: Ben: Working with Bungie this year, we have two incentives from it that will be live the entire marathon. For an exact $50 donation, donators will get an exclusive in-game Destiny 2 emblem. For an exact $70 donation, people will have a chance to win 1 of 7 Destiny 2 Eris Morn statues signed by Morla Gorrondona, the voice actress. We do it this way because that is how Bungie does data collection and it just makes it possible for Bungie to distribute things the way needs to.

Q: Is there anything else that you would like to add that we may not have covered today?

A: Mindy: I think we covered everything, just inviting everyone out, getting people to come and enjoy spending time with their friends, to get to know St. Jude. We have a killer St. Jude booth, it's awesome. People will have the opportunity to go and interact with our team from St. Jude Play Live that we are partnered with. We love that team. Working with them has been a really great experience because they are so highly engaged in everything that we are doing, and they are a really good support to what we’re doing.

I would definitely encourage people to check out the Charity Marathon, check out the blocks we have posted so far, come join their favorite Content Creators and find new Content Creators that may not have known about. The Charity Marathon itself is so much fun and very engaging. I think it is going to be a lot of fun. There are surprises that people will get to enjoy. We're already planning 2022 to get a head start on next year's event and we're rocking and rolling, excited to share this year’s and next year’s events with everybody.

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