blog dot cameronbanga dot com

If you're checking this blog post out, you've probably noticed that this is no longer "www.cameronbanga.com." I've decided to do a little bit of an update and you can now see that the site has become a bit more plain and basic. I really just wanted the homepage to do a better job of explaining who I am and what I do.

I'll still keep this blog here at blog.cameronbanga.com, so this site won't change much at all. It just won't be located at the same address as it used to be.

If you have comments or suggestions about the new look, send me an e-mail to Cameron@CameronBanga.com.
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I've been receiving a bunch of IMs/Wall Posts/Tweets about when the next Four48 event will take place, so I figured it would make a bunch of sense to write a little post on the current status of the team and why you haven't seen any events as of late.

The lack of action on the Four48 front has nothing to do with a lack of desire among the team or should it indicate that we will never throw another event. It's just that any game marathon event takes up an unbelievable amount of time and resources which we don't have right now.

I really hate making it sound like we don't love doing Four48 events, because I think I can speak for anyone who has helped out with an event when I say that we enjoy it pretty much more than anything in the world. Who wouldn't like playing video games with friends for unbelievable amounts of hours while raising money for charity? It's tough when I get asked often as to when the next event is going to be and I don't have a solid answer because I feel as if it seems that I don't care.

I guess I just want to go into a bit of depth as to what is involved in a Four48 event which will hopefully give a bit of insight as to why these things are so hard to organize.

First, you need a bunch of people. Most importantly, two or three people need to be above average gamers to get through 48 hours worth of game play. While we usually play through the Zelda series, which isn't always an exceptionally difficult, real simple puzzles and bosses become extraordinarily tough after 20-30 hours without sleep. I usually spend my entire time during a marathon watching the computer and technically set up and interacting with viewers. Add a person to help keep people awake and make Taco Bell runs and you can see how you pretty much need a full staff on hand throughout the entirety of any game marathon.

Next, you need adequate space with reliable internet. We typically broadcast using only my Macbook and Justin.tv, which is pretty bare minimum. We would love to have better cameras, microphones, etc, but then you add a lot of cost and technically mess. In addition to my computer sucking as much bandwidth as possible through ethernet cable, we also tend to have two more laptops and maybe an iPod Touch or two surfing the web to keep up with Skype calls, viewer e-mail, blog responses, Digg comments, chatrooms, and the like. As you can only imagine, internet reliability is a must. We also need a location where people don't mind 5-10 somewhat loud college kids roaming around for two straight days. It works great when we're all at school together and can use dorm rooms, but not so much when we're outside Valpo. We had our last event at my house and my family was great about it, but to a point it gets tough to live your ordinary life of going to work and living around the house when you have a team of college kids running around trying to beat Zelda games without sleep. I thank my parents and brother for their tolerance, but don't feel like I should throw that kind of lifestyle upon them at home.

Which leads into the next big problem, the only time that most of us have to do this kind of event is when we're at home on break and spread hundreds or even thousands of miles apart from other Four48 team members. I know personally that my life is crazy right now, with most days lasting from 9am to 1am with class, homework, or work filling in all the time in between those hours. Add on an internship and homework on the weekends and it becomes increasingly difficult to find two days to set aside for a marathon. I know everyone else on the team is in a similar position, which makes it real hard to get the necessary team of 5-6 people to have a successful event. The crazy thing is, even if you find the time for one of these events, a majority of the work comes before and after you're ever on camera. We spend tons of hours working before a marathon to prep those who will be playing games, send e-mails to promote the event, answering e-mails after the event, and talking to media outlets in the case of our more successful events. To give you guys a bit of an idea, I spent at least a half hour conducting interviews with about 10 newspapers, radio stations, websites, podcasters, etc after our first marathon in 2007. It all just adds up to be an unmanageable amount of time.

So with that, I just wanted to give a bit of insight as to why you haven't seen a Four48 event in the last couple of months. We're not "broken up" or anything, but we don't have an immediate plans for the near future either. Fear not my friends, we will one day rise again like a phoenix and save the world from a lack of charitable gaming marathons. It just won't happen next weekend haha.

Special thanks to the couple dozen of you who have contacted me in the last month or so via IM, Facebook, Twitter, E-mail, or even in person to ask about Four48 and what's going on. We really appreciate your continued support more than we could ever let you know. It's crazy that we're a over a year removed from our initial marathon and people still seem to care about what we're up to. As an apology of sorts, I know that there are a couple of you who often contact me and don't get a response. It's not that I'm ever ignoring you or anything, it's just that I often get a significant amount of messages or IMs and don't get time to catch up. I'll try to get better at it, promise.

Hope this answers all the questions I've been getting. If I didn't get to your specific question, hit me up on Facebook or e-mail me at Cameron@CameronBanga.com.

-CB
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