January 15 saw the end of the Awesome Games Done Quick 2023 charity marathon, where speedrunners from all over the world raised money for the Prevent Cancer Foundation. A week of non-stop broadcasts, dozens of popular games and several records were set — read about it in the Esports Charts article.
Awesome Games Done Quick is the annual winter equivalent of the Summer Games Done Quick festival. Initially it was supposed to be held it in the LAN format in Florida, but the organizers dropped the idea six months before the event: they explained their concern over the worsening situation with COVID-19 and the increased aggressive rhetoric among political forces in the region against LGBTQ+ representatives. As a result, they decided to hold the event online in the beginning of 2023.
Awesome Games Done Quick 2023 was on air from January 8 to 15 and almost non-stop — streamers played about 150 games, interacted with the audience and raised donations for the Prevent Cancer Foundation. As a result, the marathon participants raised $2,600,000+ for the nonprofit organization in a week. Over 39,000 people donated, and the maximum donation was about $100,000.
@frozenflygone and @corvimae / Photo: twitter.com/GamesDoneQuick
During the Awesome Games Done Quick 2023 speedrunners succeeded in setting new records in various games. The list includes Super Mario Galaxy 2 (2:54:51.33), PowerWash Simulator (33:31.7), Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder's Revenge (56:18) and Steven Seagal Is: The Final Option Prototype (21:44.6).
Viewership Statistics
AGDQ 2023 was broadcast for over 160.5 hours and amassed nearly 10.8 million Hours Watched. The event had 67.2K Average Viewers and 100.8K Peak Viewers. It is interesting that the highest concurrent viewership was recorded on the evening of January 8 at the Castlevania: Symphony of the Night speedrun.
AGDQ 2023 broadcasts were on seven Twitch channels, including the official English-language stream, as well as other language streams. The English broadcast accounted for 86.9% of the total HW. The Japanese broadcast accounted for 5.2% and the French broadcast accounted for 4.6%. The English-language broadcast drew more than 90.3K Peak Viewers. One should also note that there were hundreds of raids on it from other channels almost every broadcast day.
A total of almost 450K messages were sent over the marathon on the main broadcast. The number of active chatters was about 16.5K, and audience engagement was 2.1%.
The channel got 16.6K subs, including 32% of gift subs over the marathon. The channel made $24.5K to almost $42K per stream from subs (depending on the regional subscription prices). Bits revenue was $4.4K, and the maximum donation per message was 10K Bits.
Most Popular Speedruns of the Marathon
A Castlevania: Symphony of the Night game became the most popular part of the AGDQ 2023 marathon. The performance of the speedrunner Dr4gonBlitz was watched by more than 91.1K PV. A slightly smaller audience was gathered by the broadcast of Borderlands: Game of the Year Enhanced run by zzrules21.
Nyk_Style's Dark Souls II speedrun drew 87.8K PV. More than 85K also watched the Super Mario Galaxy 2 and The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past speedruns.
Awesome Games Done Quick 2020 is so far the most popular event in the series with 263K Peak Viewers. Since 2021, the event went online and its audience reach has dropped. The Summer Games Done Quick series, which takes place in the middle of the year, shows a similar trend. However, despite the difficulties in hosting and the coronavirus pandemic, the Games Done Quick events still regularly draw hundreds of thousands of viewers.