LoadingReadyRun

About

LoadingReadyRun is a comedy troupe based in Victoria B.C., Canada. Founded in early 2003 by Graham Stark and Paul Saunders to initially produce weekly sketches for their website, loadingreadyrun.com, they have since shifted towards video production, producing several notable series including Unskippable and Feed Dump for The Escapist magazine and Friday Nights for Wizards of the Coast. The current, main cast consists of Graham stark, Paul Saunders, Kathleen De Vere, James Turner, Brendan “Beej” Dery, Cameron Lauder and Alex Stacey^[1]. They are known for their youtube content, their channel having for then 55,000 subscribers, and their twitch streams, their twitch channel having over 19986 followers.

Online History

LoadingReadyRun’s most viral video,“Nunchuck Jousting” was uploaded in early 2009, and features a faked sequecnce in which Graham injures himself with nunchucks and trips over a skateboard. It was made along with several other videos in an attempt to go viral, with this being the most successful, shared on other websites such as live leak^[2] and even being uploaded to talk show ‘Late Night with Jimmy Fallon’’s website and featured in a segment on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno^[3]. although the original appears to be missing, a version was uploaded to youtube by failblog.org on July 6th 2013, which has since accumulated over 1,500,000 views. LoadingReadyRun is also responsible for the I Have Three PS3s video.

Desert bus

Desert Bus for hope is an annual stream, taking place in around november, presented by the crew to raise money for the charity Child’s play by streaming the famously bad video game ‘Desert Bus’, in which the player drives a bus down a straight, featureless road between Tucson, Arizona and Las Vegas, Nevada in real time, for at least 5 days non-stop. Viewers can donate by just giving money or purchasing items in auctions, including a trip to Las Vegas to see Penn and Teller, provided by the illusionist and game creator himself^[4], which raised $7700, and a Kill La Kill scissor blade, which eventually sold for $8000. Each dollar contributes ‘buying’ an extra hour of streaming time, with subsequent hours cost exponentially more. As of their most recent fundraiser, desert bus for hope 8, the crew has raised over $2 million for the charity^[5], and been interviewed by several notable news outlets including NPR^[6] and the CBC^[7]. the Desert bus for hope twitch channel has over 7700 followers.

Magic: The Gathering

Originally intended to just be a mini-series spinoff to there sitcom series ‘commodoreHUSTLE’, the first episode of Friday Nights was uploaded to youtube on May 17th 2012, and has since received over 300,000 views and 310 comments. Due to the positive response to the short video series, it was eventually picked up by Wizards of the coast, the creators of Magic: The Gathering, to be produced monthly and published directly on their official website. There participation in the magic community has even resulted in some members playing at the Community cup, an annual tournament where a team of Wizards employees plays a team selected from the magic community, with Graham Stark playing in the 2011 community cup^[8] and James Turner in the 2012 cup^[9].