It’s strange how a weekly special from a small video games merchandise company in Arizona can change your life. Fangamer Officecam is a show that broadcasts from the office of Fangamer every Friday, hosted by the staff of the office. Fangamer is a branch off of Starmen.net, the world’s largest community of EarthBound fans. Every week, they have a face-to-face chat with the internet, answer questions made over Twitter, and their resident artist Camille makes little clay figures based on suggestions submitted from the broadcast’s chat room. This past Friday, they announced that the next week’s show will be their last.
Clay models made by Camille on Officecam
I started watching Officecam two years ago when it wasn’t even a regularly scheduled event. During the late hours of the night, when the staff at the office would be working hard, they would set up a camera so that the outside world could interact with them. I suppose that I could say that this was one of the first times I got to know anybody in the Starmen.net community very well. It’s because of Officecam that I started to become a part of the Starmen.net community, and when it became an official thing they did every Friday, it became a part of my weekly routine. Getting home from school and dinner, I’d pull up Officecam and wait in eager anticipation of what they had planned that day. Officecam was something that I knew that I could look forward to, even if I had had a rough week.
A drawing that Steve did based on my handle: "rune_devros"
And so, we had wonderful times together. I’ll always remember during the early days when they would come up with drawings based on our usernames. The above picture was what Steve came up for my name. During Officecam, we’ve had everything from funny videos to playing charades with the audience. Over the two years, Camille has made so many beautiful sculptures that we’ve compiled a collection of pictures of in this thread on the forums. The Camille Art Fridays segment was always the highlight of each episode. The family grew slowly at first, but it got bigger with each week. Madoka’s Kyubey made an appearance on a whiteboard. One of her last ones ended up as Momoneko-sama, from Tamayura.
The Officecam crew, with some guests!
I want to encourage everyone, even if you’ve never seen it before, to tune in this coming Friday, February 24th at 8:30PM EST for the final show.
To the staff of Fangamer and to all those in the chat room from all around the world that watched together alongside me, I will always treasure our evenings together. You really brightened up every Friday night for me. Officecam, you will surely be missed. Thank you.
I’m going to miss ‘em too.