I sat down with Tyler ‘Ninja’ Blevins, renowned Fortnite and gaming streamer, to talk about an upcoming 24-hour livestream for a worthy cause.

Gaming For Cause is a 24-hour global livestream Fortnite charity event that'll be broadcast across Twitch, YouTube and other global gaming platforms to raise awareness of melanoma prevention. Viewers can donate to fund potentially life-saving mole checks, as well as help spread more awareness around getting check-ups, especially for men who might be less likely to be informed of the dangers and so less likely to be checked.

Tyler has been very public about his own experience finding moles that turned out to be cancerous, and will be using his platform in partnership with skin-care specialist La Roche-Posay to help make a difference.

Speaking about how the Gaming For Cause livestream came about, Tyler said “when we partnered up with La Roche, one of the things that we talked about was doing a charity livestream to raise money and awareness … As we started to spend more time together I traveled to Paris for their 50th anniversary and I stumbled upon their hashtag which was ‘Save Our Skin’, and I immediately got excited about what the theme of the charity was going to be.”

Tyler went on to explain how the link between gaming and skin-cancer awareness was constructed, with the charity livestream focusing on cosmetics and skins found in games such as Fortnite and Marvel Rivals;

“Cosmetics in games have been really huge, just a huge impact and, and they’re an attractive point right? People want to play the game and buy skins.

“You look at Fortnite, even back in the day with H1Z1, skins are really cool and I was like ‘well, I'm going to wear my favorite skins during this live stream’ … I'll also just tie it to, you know, saving your skin from skin cancer. So that's where that idea and that immediate passion came from.”

Fortnite- Credit: Epic Games

As for what viewers have to look forward to with the stream, there’ll be a mix of gameplay from Fortnite and Marvel Rivals, as well as collaborations with other streamers and content creators, including medical professionals to educate on the cause behind the stream. Some real-life cosplays of beloved character skins from those games will also be featured from the community.

When asked if he’ll be taking part in the full 24-hours Tyler humorously stated that 12 hours was going to be all he could manage, with other gamers/streamers stepping in for the other half of the stream. “Luckily it's not a full 24 hours, but 12 hours is still a long time too” Tyler began “I got to make sure I just get good sleep, I'll usually talk with my wife and she'll have a nice meal prepped and planned and stuff like that, so I don't have to worry about food or eating, just some minor planning, but it's 24 hours, dude, I can't do that anymore!

"I'm 34 years old, it's hard, 14 hours in, 16 hours in, my body starts to just shut down, my back starts to hurt, I'm like ‘oh, dude, why am I doing this?’, but I love gaming, I love streaming, it's something that I've been doing for the last 12 or 13 years, I'll be doing this forever and I love doing it.”

Something I particularly curious about going into the interview was the amount of planning that’s needed for an event such as this. Not just in terms of the time commitment but delivering content that’s engaging and gets viewers’ attention that also helps the primary cause, skin-cancer awareness. In my opinion I always think it’s incredible how this serious subject matter can be shared and spoken about through fun charity events such as this but the idea of planning one sounds challenging.

Apparently that’s not really the case, as while it’s definitely something to think about the Gaming For Cause stream was put together pretty seamlessly.

Explaining more, Tyler said “At the end of the day, if you're raising money for something like this, it's always about bad things that you're raising them for, or bad things that happen to people. You always just focus on the goal, which is to bring awareness, get checkups.”

Going on to speak about his own experience he continued “the last thing on my mind when I was, 32, 33 was that I had a melanoma on my foot or one of my moles could be cancer or cancerous, and I think about how there are a lot of people that are in the gaming world of all ages. I got this much younger than most people do. No one's thinking about it.”

Going back to the stream itself Tyler added “It's weird to be like, ‘hey guys, let's be positive and raise money for something that's deadly’, but it’s necessary, it's a necessity. It inspires people to do the right thing and to get checked up and potentially, you know, save their lives.”

Tyler then said that since going public with his own experience with melanoma he’s already received messages from within his community from people who went for a check-up after he spoke out about it, and hopefully the Gaming For Cause stream will create a similar response. “I already know it's going to work,” Tyler added.

“I go into the doctor's office to get my checkups and surgeries and the moles removed and I'm surrounded by a bunch of 70-year olds and 80-year-olds. I'm not supposed to be there, but it happened twice.

“I was like, ‘I know we're gonna talk about this, the question is when’, and we waited until I actually don't even remember. It was something that we knew we were going to do, you have to use your platform for good and I don't think I've ever really used it for anything less, and I know that a lot of people do like to go through those types of things in private but, I don't know, it just felt right, it felt like there wasn't really a choice where I would not tell people about this.”

Tyler then reiterated that he’s confident the stream will do some good, and if it does there’ll always be scope for additional charity streams in the future, which is something he’s more than up for taking part in.

To close things off Tyler let me know how viewers can get involved in the event themselves, using Tiltify as the primary way to donate to the cause. That said Tyler wanted to be clear that there’s no pressure to donate when donations aren’t feasible, saying “as a streamer, I've been doing this for a long time, and a lot of people for some reason sometimes feel guilty if they can't subscribe to a streamer or donate to charity stream. That couldn't be any further from the truth. All you have to do is tune in, like, share, comment, just be there and raise awareness, even telling a friend in person, someone you know who might give $1.”

The Gaming For Cause stream will go live on 19 September, and to keep up-to-date on all the details as well as how to get involved be sure to check out the website.

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