The 12 Days of Indie has striven to bring streamers, developers, publishers, and viewers together to attempt to raise $12,000 USD for Toys For Tots each year since December 2013. Our goal goes beyond merely raising money. In addition to charity fundraising, the 12 Days of Indie also wants to bring awareness to indie game developers and publishers to a wide variety of international audiences. This year is no different. A variety of developers and some publishers will be involved during a few casters’ streams, sometimes throwing out giveaways of their own!

This year (2022), the 12DOI will take place from November 2nd (Pre-show at 8PM EST the night before) to November 13th ending at 11:59PM EST. To stream for the 12 Days of Indie, there will be some rules and guidelines to keep in mind, and here’s the list, presented in convenient bullet point form right below!

Remember that our stream title during the event will almost always be as follows:

Tenth Annual 12 Days of Indie charity drive hosted by @TDrastikMeasure

• Games are limited to an age rating of 16+. Anything rated as Mature or the like should be avoided, as it would not line up with the charity and the aims of same.
  • Special ruling when it comes to the Binding of Isaac in this case – you may stream it, but skip story cinematics and between-floor loadscreens. Those frequently involve bullying/harming children and are contradictory to what we’ll be doing.

• In furtherance of the previous rule, try to stay classy as well. We won’t bite your head off for the occasional swear or curse word, but let’s keep our words as close to PG13 as possible. Also, try to avoid making statements about throwing live kittens into ovens, eating dead babies, or anything else of the sort. That just ain’t 12 Days, folks.

• Also for acting classy – if you intend to use your webcam, keep that in mind. If you want to stream topless, be our guest, but in that case, DO NOT USE YOUR CAMERA. If you show yourself, show yourself looking awesome and clothed. That includes your surroundings as well. If a bomb went off in your room and it would be visible, just stick to voice only.

• Lastly on this general subject – Please try your best to keep politics out of the stream, While 12 Days holds in our hearts that everyone has the right to political views, these topics especially in 2020 and beyond have become a very touchy subject and should be avoided so as to avoid hurt feelings or unneeded agitation. Further on this: while there are a lot of movements in pursuit of equal representation and accountability, these should also be avoided for much the same reason as politics. Again, not because 12 Days doesn’t support these topics, but like politics, they can become divisive and we need to keep the focus on fun!

• As a part of this event, we want everyone to be able to see what you are doing in-game. Therefore, we are enacting a rule to stream at 720p / 30 fps @ 2000kbps minimum. However, if you have the capability, remember that you’ll be on a partnered channel, so 1080p / 60 fps @ 6000kbps is possible. Like we said, we want you to look your best, so this is your chance to crank up your settings.

• As you may be aware, Twitch and music labels have been coming down on the use of copyrighted music in streams so we encourage people to avoid any unnecessary music use. If you absolutely must use some sort of music please ensure it is Royalty-free/Copyright-free music such as items from Here, Here, Here, Here, Here and Here 

• English is our primary language of choice. However, we do have streamers who are multilingual. If you are one such streamer, and want to allow conversation in other languages as well, that’s your choice, and is allowed. Just remember that English remains the main choice, and a multi-language stream would always be [ENG/(other language here)].

• Try to have a person along for the ride who can take care of reading donations. Unless you want to do that yourself and include it in your form of stream entertainment, this’ll allow you to stay focused on what you’re doing, and you can let donations etc. be handled by someone else. (Not a hard rule though, you CAN do it yourself if you want.)

• We are running this event for a charity, so you might want to try to think up some way of incentivizing donations. For example, Kouen had some rather inspired incentives a previous year involving being forced to play with his controller held upside down, etc. It’s not mandatory, but if you do think of something, that’d be cool. We are trying to raise over $12000 USD for kids, after all.
  • However, when it comes to food incentives, please keep in mind limitations. No overdosing on lethal amounts of salt, soy sauce, etc. If you are diabetic, no sugar incentives. If you are lactose intolerant, no dairy incentives.
    
    – FURTHERMORE, Powdered Substances Are Absolutely Forbidden. We will NOT have you coughing up or choking on powders. Please add “Ketchup…” as one of your social media profiles.

• Ultimately, we’d love to raise more than $12000 USD for Toys For Tots. However, we will do so in three parts. The first goal will be set at $5000. Second at $8000. Final at $12000. This will be done via Tiltify, so no need to worry about doing anything yourselves.

• Of course, we’ll also be promoting our discord server during the event, for which you can find the URL HERE.

• We’ll also have an audio ad, which you can play during lulls or if you need a quick break. You can find it here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/z25r9yabohh0anp/First%20Annual%2012%20Days%20Of%20Indie%20-%20Intro%20to%20Our%20Cause%20Audio%20Ad.mp3?dl=0

• Finally, there are the alerts for donations and the like, which you can find in the discord! If you haven’t already received the discord role for streamers, please get it! Add “… and fries” to the end of Ketchup in your social media profile.
  

• If you are a personal friend of the 12DOI administration, part of the IAST, or part of TDM, the admins reserve the right to request an incentive from you during your stream.

• In addition, if you want to stream for the event when on your own channel, YOU CAN! We encourage you to do so. (Especially if you don’t think you can handle not letting out F-bombs on the promoted channel!) However, you MUST use our donation link (http://bit.ly/12DOI2022donate) and overlay (get it from the discord!). This way, all the money goes toward our goal and everyone gets that sweet satisfaction of seeing crazy incentives being done for those milestones! All the main giveaways will be done on the promoted channel, though, so make sure to send those who want to win our way when you’re done streaming!

• All giveaways on the promoted channel (https://twitch.tv/indie) will be done by dedicated mods and 12DOI Staff. (No more giveaway confusion!)

Good luck streaming for your time slots, and enjoy the ride! To go ahead and sign up for a slot, you can just click here.