Every year members of the streaming community on Twitch join together to spend the entire month of December celebrating games from the era of MS-DOS on the personal computer and promoting each other's channels.
Additionally, each year, we create a unique T-shirt to sell in celebration of the event. All profits from the T-shirts and other merch are put into a money pool while we take the month to find something nice to do with it for one of the members of the Retro PC community on Twitch. In previous years we have used the money to do things ranging from gifting subs to newly affiliated streamers to buying a Roland Sound Canvas 55 MKII and a custom printed hard-mpu card for a streamer who creates original midi music.
ArtyomHavok - Original Event Coordinator
FractalMindMike - T-shirt Designer & Co-Coordinator
Teklynk - Web Design
sakkra_ - Discord Moderator & Official Cheerleader
Emmxyzzy - Social Media Coordinator
Dosember got its humble little start on Twitch in December 2020 over on ArtyomHavok’s channel where he was quickly joined by OldSkoolJay who liked the idea of spending the month of December playing MS-DOS games. The Dosember logo was created by Havok's close friend Rhunyc. There was a simple t-shirt just for fun that featured all the games that were going to be played during the month. The event facilitated many introductions to other people in the Retro PC community for ArtyomHavok.
In 2021 ArtyomHavok asked his Discord if there was anyone else interested in taking part in the event in a more organized way. That year saw 12+ participants and solidified the event as a group event for years to come. ArtyomHavok created a t-shirt featuring the names of all the participants who initially joined in and the 3 games they were most excited to play. The profits from the t-shirt were collected, and the participants kept an eye out for a good cause! At the end of the month they were introduced to HighburryHazard, who had just become a Twitch affiliate and was on his channel playing DOS games because he saw other people doing it. The money was used to gift fifty Twitch subs in his channel helping reach the threshold to get his first payout.
The event grew again in 2022. Havok was contacted by his good friend FractalMindMike who expressed interest in helping out and designing that year's t-shirt. The event doubled in size to 22+ participants. The merch money pool was used that year to buy a Roland Sound Canvas SC-55 mkII, a custom HardMPU ISA card, a special Dosember t-shirt signed by FractalMindMike, and awarded to CoTeCiO who was composing new MIDI music within the community.
Things exploded in 2023 with the introduction of Dosember.com created by Teklynk, ArtyomHavok, and FractalMindMike splitting organizational responsibilities, the official Dosember Tree with floppy disk ornaments featuring the avatars of community members, and the addition of fun competitive mini events during the month. The new mini events included Scorched Earth LIVE, Alley Cat, SkyRoads Live Race, Doomcember Multiplayer, Frosch competition. 2023 also saw the first Dosember streamed Quad_LAN party at Havok’s newly constructed LAN party space featuring CaptainPeelcard, Oldskooljay, and community member Jhilax. 2023 saw 172 participants across Twitch join in. The merch money pool reached over $700 and was awarded as gift subs to 5 twitch streamers who became affiliate during the event: Sakkra_, SecretsOfTheForgotten, RetroUnderBelly, Descentmax9730, and BloodyCactus.
Dosember will retrun...