The annual Games Done Quick Summer festival, where streamers competed in speedrunning the games, was held on July 4-11th. Just like the three previous events, this event took place online, and all the money raised from donations and activities will be donated to charity. Streams Charts describes how the event went and how many viewers it managed to gather.
What is Games Done Quick?
Games Done Quick is a series of charity speedrun video game marathons run by the Speed Demos Archive and Speedruns Live communities twice a year in the United States, starting from 2010. The funds raised at the marathons go to two organizations: the Prevent Cancer Foundation and the international humanitarian organization Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders).
How did Summer Games Done Quick 2021 go?
Summer Games Done Quick 2021 (SGDQ 2021) was the fourth event from the organizers to take place online. The previous three were Corona Relief Done Quick (April 2020), Summer Games Done Quick (August 2020), and Awesome Games Done Quick 2021 (January 2021).
The event featured the best speedrunners from around the world playing various games, including Dragon Age: Inquisition, Psychonauts, The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Ages, Ghostrunner, and many others. The official Games Done Quick YouTube channel contains various highlights of the event. For example, here speedrunners mitchflowerpower and TheHaxor are completing Super Mario Bros. 3 in an hour and 20 minutes:
During the week, viewers managed to raise $2,897,704 for the Doctors Without Borders organization – the highest amount among all the Games Done Quick online events. The all-time record for the series belongs to the offline event Awesome Games Done Quick 2020 (January 2020), where $3,155,969 was raised for the Prevent Cancer Foundation.
What of the event’s viewability?
Overall, Summer Games Done Quick 2021 amassed 12.24M Hours Watched over 160.9 hours of Air Time. Compared to last year's Summer Festival, the growth of the event’s Hours Watched was less than 4%. That being said, on some days Summer Games Done Quick 2020 gathered more Hours Watched than the 2021 event:
The Average Viewers indicator remained almost unchanged: 75,640 in 2021 against 74,168 in 2020, while the Peak Viewers indicator grew by 705 people: 122,176 in 2021 against 121,471 in 2020. As expected, the official /gamesdonequick Twitch channel became the most popular one.
When it comes to the categories, Golden Sun: The Lost Age became the most viewed one, despite the Hours Watched of the game’s speedruns amounted to merely 4% of the festival’s total Hours Watched. Plexa became the title’s fastest speedrunner, completing the game within 30 minutes and 18 seconds.
The next event from the Games Done Quick lineup will take place on this year’s August 15-21st under the name Flame Fatales – with only female speedrunners being admitted by the organizers.
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Header image: Shacknews
