Minneapolis video game livestream raises $250K for rent aid during ICE surge
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When podcaster Ben Hanson left the corporate-owned video game magazine Game Informer, he named his new independent company “MinnMax.” It’s a gaming term for optimizing your character, with the extra “n” tying his new venture to his home state.
He hosts podcasts and livestreams about games and the gaming industry from Minneapolis, where he and the crowd-funded company are based. As the immigration crackdown "Operation Metro Surge” unfolded in the Twin Cities, Hanson said he wanted to leverage his platform to raise money for impacted Minnesotans.
“I think it's absurd to pretend that this is not happening outside of our windows in the houses where we record this stuff about video games,” he said.
So at the end of January, he collaborated with another gaming media company, Giant Bomb, to do a charity livestream that raised money for immigrants and others scared to leave their homes due to the activities of ICE in the Twin Cities. The money would go to VEAP, a Bloomington-based food pantry.
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Before the eight-hour gaming livestream began, Hanson and his fellow streamers weren’t sure how much money to aim for. He suggested $50,000, which was in line with what their previous charity streams have raised.
“I was like, ‘Yeah, we'll probably hit that, but let's play it safe,’” Dan Ryckert, a co-owner of Giant Bomb, said. “Let's put down $30,000, and then if we hit that, we can always bump it up.”
Within 15 minutes, they raised $58,000. Within an hour, $100,000. By the end of their “ICE Out” livestream, the group had raised more than a quarter of a million dollars by playing video games.
“It was unlike anything I've ever seen before,” Hanson said. “We couldn't even keep up with the donation (messages) if we wanted to. It was just self-propelling based on people's will to affect some change here in Minneapolis.”
“Afraid to Leave Their Homes”
People are having trouble paying for rent because of ICE, according to Jennifer Harrison, a vice president at VEAP, which calls itself the “Twin Cities’ largest food pantry.”
“Almost half of our participants are Latino, Latina, and they're just afraid,” she said. “They're afraid to leave their homes, they're afraid to go to work, and therefore they're not getting the income that they typically rely on.”
VEAP distributes food through partner food banks and home delivery. In the last few months, though, Harrison said they’ve seen a large increase in requests for helping pay rent and utility bills. But there’s not enough money to go around.
“We have a backlog of people that are just waiting, because we have more calls for help than we had money to support,” she said.
The livestream took place on Jan. 30, giving the group a natural sales pitch.
“Rent is due on February 1st, let’s get these people some money,” Hanson said. “Your money is directly impacting immigrants who need your help right now in Minneapolis.”
“It really lit a fire under a lot of people to have that direct line — ‘for every little bit that we donate, it can save families,’” he added.
Politics and games media
Hanson formed MinnMax after a round of layoffs at Game Informer, the video game magazine that was, at the time, owned by GameStop. He wasn’t himself laid off, but didn’t want to wait around until he was, he said. He said that decision gave him the freedom and agility to do things like the livestream.
“Being able to say what we want to say, and then also just being able to turn stuff around quickly,” he said. “I think you need the flexibility of independent outlets to make that happen.”
Giant Bomb’s Dan Ryckert, who also worked at Game Informer, said working at corporate outlets makes it hard to take a stand.
“We've all worked for companies that in the face of things like this they don't want to take sides, they don't want to risk alienating an audience by making any sort of strong statement,” he said.
For example, in 2021, gaming news website IGN — a subsidiary of Ziff Davis Inc. — posted an article that included links to charities and organizations in Palestine. The company deleted it, and, after backlash, uploaded an edited version of the article to replace it.
“Giant Bomb and MinnMax are both completely independent,” Ryckert, who is also based in Minneapolis, said. “It is just the staff that matters, and the staff of both are completely aligned on this. So there's absolutely no one telling us ‘Whoa, tread lightly here.’ We can say with our full chest, ‘This is how we feel. This is where we stand on the issue.’”
Ryckert said he’s not worried about alienating the audience because Giant Bomb has cultivated a community that aligns with its creators.
“I cannot imagine someone that supports ICE or is a huge MAGA person or something, watching our stuff and being like, ‘These are my guys,’” he said. “Because it's pretty clear we're not on that side of the fence.”
In early January, Hanson created a compilation of clips from Operation Metro Surge — including video of the lead-up and aftermath of the killings of Renee Macklin Good and Alex Pretti by immigration enforcement agents — and posted it on MinnMax’s channel. It has no commentary, but is bookended with clips of former Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura decrying ICE’s presence and actions in the Twin Cities.
Hanson said it, like the livestream, received a mostly-positive response from his community, specifically because there’s a “pent-up frustration.”
“They tune in for an escape, and I completely understand that,” he said. “So we try to pick our shots when we dive into the world of ‘politics,’ which I want to talk about to have an impact.”
“We're not just doing it to remind people of the real world, to bum them out,” he added. “The goal is to … actually point people towards something that can have a positive impact.”
Harrison said the money will allow VEAP to help hundreds of people in the Twin Cities pay for rent.
