A change is in order

ONOGMuffins

Edit history:

ONOGMuffins: 2014-10-21 08:39:07 pm

ONOGMuffins: 2014-10-21 08:37:51 pm

2014-10-21 08:37:37 pm

I'm fine with my hours being shared if the rest of the staff wants to.

Edenal

2014-10-22 08:26:31 am

Hockey enthusiast

Quote from mikwuyma:

Edenal: I can reveal some estimated expenses and budget if you like, but as I said earlier, I'm not going to be posting what people are contracted for.

That will be much appreciated.

Your statement about subs / ads conflicts with previous statements from 2013 where 50% of the subs were sent to the charity.

You may disagree, but I do strongly believe that you and everyone contracted would be wise to be as transparent as possible. Not being so encourages speculation.

Seems to me like the charity event is taking precedence over the community meetup. Are there plans to separate these? It doesn't make sense to me that PCF has 13 persons under contract but the attendees pay for the equipment. Which is getting ridiculously expensive at this point.

Cool Matty

Edit history:

Cool Matty: 2014-10-22 08:49:09 am

2014-10-22 08:33:18 am

Crawlathon WR, get down on my level.

Quote from Edenal:

Your statement about subs / ads conflicts with previous statements from 2013 where 50% of the subs were sent to the charity.

Subs go to charity. The 50% mark was back when Twitch didn't donate their half of subscription income. They do now. Of course, they can alter that deal anytime they want, but that's how it stands now.

Ad revenue goes to the company, and has paid a significant chunk of our equipment bill among other things in the past.

Edit: IIRC the attendance fee is going to be lower than it was last year, so I really don't understand the complaint about the fee. The event is large (800+ possible for 2015), requires things like insurance, filing paperwork, server hosting and DDOS protection, a lawyer, taxes, and all the other stuff that goes with running a business. We can't get by with a fly-by-night semi-organized event when you have this many people, and this much money being exchanged.

Finally: Edenal, I dunno what it's like where you live, but here it's considered very rude to ask how much a person makes. Speculation is just a roundabout way of trying to drive an answer to that question.

[quote="Edenal"]
Your statement about subs / ads conflicts with previous statements from 2013 where 50% of the subs were sent to the charity. [/quote]

Subs go to charity. The 50% mark was back when Twitch didn't donate their half of subscription income. They do now. Of course, they can alter that deal anytime they want, but that's how it stands now.

Ad revenue goes to the company, and has paid a significant chunk of our equipment bill among other things in the past.

Edit: IIRC the attendance fee is going to be lower than it was last year, so I really don't understand the complaint about the fee. The event is large (800+ possible for 2015), requires things like insurance, filing paperwork, server hosting and DDOS protection, a lawyer, taxes, and all the other stuff that goes with running a business. We can't get by with a fly-by-night semi-organized event when you have this many people, and this much money being exchanged.

Finally: Edenal, I dunno what it's like where you live, but here it's considered very rude to ask how much a person makes. Speculation is just a roundabout way of trying to drive an answer to that question.

Omnigamer

Edit history:

Omnigamer: 2014-10-22 08:36:24 am

2014-10-22 08:33:36 am

All the things

Quote from Edenal:

Quote from mikwuyma:

Edenal: I can reveal some estimated expenses and budget if you like, but as I said earlier, I'm not going to be posting what people are contracted for.

Your statement about subs / ads conflicts with previous statements from 2013 where 50% of the subs were sent to the charity.

If the controversy is as I remember it, the progression of events went from:

Initial: GDQ would take in the sub money to cover expenses.
Next: GDQ would donate the sub money it receives (50% went to Twitch, as is normal for sub).
Final: Twitch agreed to donate their portion of the sub money as well. This may not have actually happened until SGDQ or 2014.

As for the last point, I don't think that's a fair assessment. The charity has always been a strong focus in terms of directions and decisions, but to say that it is taking away from the event as a community meetup can't really be substantiated. It is still the most-attended event throughout the community and people have a blast regardless of whether they are directly participating in the event or supporting their favorite runners/friends. It is often said that the best experiences at GDQs take place away from the marathon room.

[quote="Edenal"][quote="mikwuyma"]Edenal: I can reveal some estimated expenses and budget if you like, but as I said earlier, I'm not going to be posting what people are contracted for.
[/quote]

Your statement about subs / ads conflicts with previous statements from 2013 where 50% of the subs were sent to the charity.  [/quote]

If the controversy is as I remember it, the progression of events went from:

Initial: GDQ would take in the sub money to cover expenses.
Next: GDQ would donate the sub money it receives (50% went to Twitch, as is normal for sub).
Final: Twitch agreed to donate their portion of the sub money as well. This may not have actually happened until SGDQ or 2014.

As for the last point, I don't think that's a fair assessment. The charity has always been a strong focus in terms of directions and decisions, but to say that it is taking away from the event as a community meetup can't really be substantiated. It is still the most-attended event throughout the community and people have a blast regardless of whether they are directly participating in the event or supporting their favorite runners/friends. It is often said that the best experiences at GDQs take place away from the marathon room.

kirbymastah

Edit history:

kirbymastah: 2014-10-22 08:48:20 am

kirbymastah: 2014-10-22 08:46:01 am

kirbymastah: 2014-10-22 08:44:47 am

kirbymastah: 2014-10-22 08:43:48 am

kirbymastah: 2014-10-22 08:43:23 am

2014-10-22 08:42:27 am

<(^_^)>

Quote from Edenal:

You may disagree, but I do strongly believe that you and everyone contracted would be wise to be as transparent as possible. Not being so encourages speculation.

I don't get why you're pushing mike to reveal everyone's salary so much. He's in no position to reveal how much everyone else makes. If you want to see how much PCF puts towards hiring people overall and supporting the marathon, you can easily find that on their website (as multiple people have said already). But how much each individual gets paid is none of your business. Mike is being as transparent as possible within reasonable limits. If you want more specifics, you can bring it to PMs but chances are, he's not going to give you salary-specific information (would you start telling the world how much your co-workers got paid?)

The donations go to PCF untouched. It's up to PCF on how they use the money. If PCF thinks it's wise to invest some of that into AGDQ more, then they will do so and raise more money which will be better in the long run. If you disagree, then bring it up to the company itself.

Quote from Edenal:

It doesn't make sense to me that PCF has 13 persons under contract but the attendees pay for the equipment. Which is getting ridiculously expensive at this point.

I didn't know that ~$60-70 is ridiculously expensive for attending for multiple days...

(was going to respond about the sub stuff but cool matty and omnigamer answered that)

[quote="Edenal"]You may disagree, but I do strongly believe that you and everyone contracted would be wise to be as transparent as possible. Not being so encourages speculation.[/quote]

I don't get why you're pushing mike to reveal everyone's salary so much. He's in no position to reveal how much everyone else makes. If you want to see how much PCF puts towards hiring people overall and supporting the marathon, you can easily find that on their website (as multiple people have said already). But how much each individual gets paid is none of your business. Mike is being as transparent as possible within reasonable limits. If you want more specifics, you can bring it to PMs but chances are, he's not going to give you salary-specific information (would you start telling the world how much your co-workers got paid?)

The donations go to PCF untouched. It's up to PCF on how they use the money. If PCF thinks it's wise to invest some of that into AGDQ more, then they will do so and raise more money which will be better in the long run. If you disagree, then bring it up to the company itself.

[quote="Edenal"]It doesn't make sense to me that PCF has 13 persons under contract but the attendees pay for the equipment. Which is getting ridiculously expensive at this point. [/quote]

I didn't know that ~$60-70 is ridiculously expensive for attending for multiple days...

(was going to respond about the sub stuff but cool matty and omnigamer answered that)

Edenal

2014-10-22 09:11:33 am

Hockey enthusiast

Cool Matty: Fair point about subs! I might have read it wrong then. That one's totally on me!
I don't consider it rude to ask, and my colleges wouldn't think so either. But I'm sure there are those who would think that it is. It's not my intention to be rude in any way.

I'm not out to get anyone, I'm simply interested in knowing what's really going on. I wouldn't mind paying 100$ for the attendance fee, not even 150$. If I knew where the money was going... And there is the problem.

I don't detest that AGDQ and SGDQ are the two of the biggest events in the speedrunning community. As been said in this thread before, there would be no charity event without the community, and the community would not get a chance to get together without the charity event. They co-exist in unity. I'm questioning the ratio to where money being put in to these event end up, it seems like there would be plenty of room to invest in a better backstage environment where most attendees spend most of their time like Omnigamer says.

Cool Matty: Fair point about subs! I might have read it wrong then. That one's totally on me!
I don't consider it rude to ask, and my colleges wouldn't think so either. But I'm sure there are those who would think that it is. It's not my intention to be rude in any way.

I'm not out to get anyone, I'm simply interested in knowing what's really going on. I wouldn't mind paying 100$ for the attendance fee, not even 150$. If I knew where the money was going... And there is the problem.

I don't detest that AGDQ and SGDQ are the two of the biggest events in the speedrunning community. As been said in this thread before, there would be no charity event without the community, and the community would not get a chance to get together without the charity event. They co-exist in unity. I'm questioning the ratio to where money being put in to these event end up, it seems like there would be plenty of room to invest in a better backstage environment where most attendees spend most of their time like Omnigamer says.

Yashichi

(user is banned)

2014-10-22 09:12:16 am

will funds ever be used to hire makeup artists to pretty up the runners before their runs

kirbymastah

2014-10-22 09:13:47 am

<(^_^)>

Quote from Edenal:

Cool Matty: Fair point about subs! I might have read it wrong then. That one's totally on me!
I don't consider it rude to ask, and my colleges wouldn't think so either. But I'm sure there are those who would think that it is. It's not my intention to be rude in any way.

I'm not out to get anyone, I'm simply interested in knowing what's really going on. I wouldn't mind paying 100$ for the attendance fee, not even 150$. If I knew where the money was going... And there is the problem.

I don't detest that AGDQ and SGDQ are the two of the biggest events in the speedrunning community. As been said in this thread before, there would be no charity event without the community, and the community would not get a chance to get together without the charity event. They co-exist in unity. I'm questioning the ratio to where money being put in to these event end up, it seems like there would be plenty of room to invest in a better backstage environment where most attendees spend most of their time like Omnigamer says.

Then the issue is not how PCF spends its money nor where the donations go (I'd hope nobody have a problem with that at this point), it's how the registration money is used. Which is a fair point; pretty sure it's been documented somewhere around but it might be out of date.

[quote="Edenal"]Cool Matty: Fair point about subs! I might have read it wrong then. That one's totally on me!
I don't consider it rude to ask, and my colleges wouldn't think so either. But I'm sure there are those who would think that it is. It's not my intention to be rude in any way.

I'm not out to get anyone, I'm simply interested in knowing what's really going on. I wouldn't mind paying 100$ for the attendance fee, not even 150$. If I knew where the money was going... And there is the problem.

I don't detest that AGDQ and SGDQ are the two of the biggest events in the speedrunning community. As been said in this thread before, there would be no charity event without the community, and the community would not get a chance to get together without the charity event. They co-exist in unity. I'm questioning the ratio to where money being put in to these event end up, it seems like there would be plenty of room to invest in a better backstage environment where most attendees spend most of their time like Omnigamer says.[/quote]

Then the issue is not how PCF spends its money nor where the donations go (I'd hope nobody have a problem with that at this point), it's how the registration money is used. Which is a fair point; pretty sure it's been documented somewhere around but it might be out of date.

Cool Matty

2014-10-22 09:15:30 am

Crawlathon WR, get down on my level.

Quote from Edenal:

it seems like there would be plenty of room to invest in a better backstage environment where most attendees spend most of their time like Omnigamer says.

I'm curious what people think is needed in that environment. It's not like we're against putting money towards something that doesn't go on stream (I mean, for crying out loud, we're practically a Belkin shareholder with all the power strips), but I'm genuinely curious what people really want in this regard.

dwangoAC

2014-10-22 11:41:55 am

Keeper of TASBot

I think there are a lot of people looking at this from the "wrong end" - i.e. there's a lot of concern over how funds are being spent but not a lot of discussion about the value those funds bring. As a quick disclaimer to show my bias, I am the President of the North Bay Linux User's Group (http://nblug.org) and I oversee an unregistered non-profit with an extremely small budget (less than $200 per our last report from our Treasurer). I am absolutely in favor of full transparency and my group does absolutely everything out in the open, but I think a bit of common sense is required on a few points here in this discussion.

For starters, let's do some loose math, and I mean *really* loose math that should not be relied on in any way but is worth throwing around for the sake of discussion. I believe that Mike and staff have provided truthful information in this thread that can be used to come to some interesting conclusions. For starters, let's assume the best-case scenario of a 1:8 ratio and $1.5m as a reasonable AGDQ 2015 goal (I may be overly optimistic, it's a flaw of mine... Smiley

- that'd mean $187.5k is the maximum PCF would want to spend on the event. That seems like a lot at first glance but it really isn't when the amount of work is considered.

As Mike hinted, he definitely won't be on their list of contractors receiving $100k or more for past years and there is no reason to believe it'd be any higher this year but what the heck, let's go with that number. So let's assume that out of that imaginary $187.5k, an imaginary $87.5k is spent on expenses outside of what goes to GDQ, LLC (i.e. things like paying for the conference rooms, getting PCF representatives to the event, any outside promotional work, office work for handling the marathon, handling the donations from the marathon and establishing and running the grant program, etc.). PCF has a reputation for being extremely efficient with their spending so I think this is a reasonable amount for all of those expenses. In our imaginary world, that gives us $100k for *all* other expenses, so let's play with what that looks like.

Let's take $25k off the top for equipment and physical things that need to be purchased. This is wild, wild guessing based on previous conversations, but that'd leave $75k for paying for contract hours for 13 people. Some of those people are only doing comparatively "small" jobs at the marathon (more on that in a second) while others are putting in 6 months worth of work or more. Let's assume 4 people are contracted for 6 months worth of work, 5 are contracted for 1 month worth of work, and 4 people are contracted for two weeks worth of work (i.e. the length of the marathon and a bit of other time outside of the marathon itself). With a bit of rounding and creative math this comes out to about 128 weeks of man-work or 5,120 hours, or about an imaginary $14.64 per hour (that'd be at best "OK" pay of around $30k/year if it were a full-time position). Except it doesn't really work that way - most people are putting in *far* more than 40 hours a week, especially during the marathon (or to phrase that differently, most people are putting in more hours than they are contracted for - just ask them). For those who have been to a marathon, they know that ONOGMuffins is there working every day, all day, and she easily puts in 90 hours during the 8 days of the marathon itself. Stretching her contracted pay to fit the number of hours (even if you allocated 8 days out of the 10 days she'd be paid for in this theoretical thought experiment) would put her pay at way less than minimum wage (about $4.37 an hour).

These are all *very* made up numbers and are probably skewed by a dose of bad math, but what I'm trying to point out is that the value that *we as the community* receive from the hours that GDQ, LLC. puts in is extremely high. Most of the "contractors" being paid are clearly not being lavished with massive piles of cash here, and I think all of us would do well to thank the organizers for their hard work and focus a lot less on what they are being paid (and as has been pointed out, in most every corporate culture it is not appropriate to ask co-workers what they are being paid as it tends to not help productivity or improve the self-worth of workers).
Besides, a lot of the talk in this thread is so inward-facing - the real goal is to raise money for grants to help prevent cancer, and even if everything I did in my thought experiment was way off and that imaginary $1.5m raised only translated to $1m after PayPal's fees and everything else, that'd still be an imaginary $1m going straight to cancer research. And *that* would be imaginatively awesome.

I think there are a lot of people looking at this from the "wrong end" - i.e. there's a lot of concern over how funds are being spent but not a lot of discussion about the value those funds bring.  As a quick disclaimer to show my bias, I am the President of the North Bay Linux User's Group (http://nblug.org) and I oversee an unregistered non-profit with an extremely small budget (less than $200 per our last report from our Treasurer).  I am absolutely in favor of full transparency and my group does absolutely everything out in the open, but I think a bit of common sense is required on a few points here in this discussion.

For starters, let's do some loose math, and I mean *really* loose math that should not be relied on in any way but is worth throwing around for the sake of discussion.  I believe that Mike and staff have provided truthful information in this thread that can be used to come to some interesting conclusions.  For starters, let's assume the best-case scenario of a 1:8 ratio and $1.5m as a reasonable AGDQ 2015 goal (I may be overly optimistic, it's a flaw of mine... :) - that'd mean $187.5k is the maximum PCF would want to spend on the event.  That seems like a lot at first glance but it really isn't when the amount of work is considered.

As Mike hinted, he definitely won't be on their list of contractors receiving $100k or more for past years and there is no reason to believe it'd be any higher this year but what the heck, let's go with that number.  So let's assume that out of that imaginary $187.5k, an imaginary $87.5k is spent on expenses outside of what goes to GDQ, LLC (i.e. things like paying for the conference rooms, getting PCF representatives to the event, any outside promotional work, office work for handling the marathon, handling the donations from the marathon and establishing and running the grant program, etc.).  PCF has a reputation for being extremely efficient with their spending so I think this is a reasonable amount for all of those expenses.  In our imaginary world, that gives us $100k for *all* other expenses, so let's play with what that looks like.

Let's take $25k off the top for equipment and physical things that need to be purchased.  This is wild, wild guessing based on previous conversations, but that'd leave $75k for paying for contract hours for 13 people.  Some of those people are only doing comparatively "small" jobs at the marathon (more on that in a second) while others are putting in 6 months worth of work or more.  Let's assume 4 people are contracted for 6 months worth of work, 5 are contracted for 1 month worth of work, and 4 people are contracted for two weeks worth of work (i.e. the length of the marathon and a bit of other time outside of the marathon itself).  With a bit of rounding and creative math this comes out to about 128 weeks of man-work or 5,120 hours, or about an imaginary $14.64 per hour (that'd be at best "OK" pay of around $30k/year if it were a full-time position).  Except it doesn't really work that way - most people are putting in *far* more than 40 hours a week, especially during the marathon (or to phrase that differently, most people are putting in more hours than they are contracted for - just ask them).  For those who have been to a marathon, they know that ONOGMuffins is there working every day, all day, and she easily puts in 90 hours during the 8 days of the marathon itself.  Stretching her contracted pay to fit the number of hours (even if you allocated 8 days out of the 10 days she'd be paid for in this theoretical thought experiment) would put her pay at way less than minimum wage (about $4.37 an hour).

These are all *very* made up numbers and are probably skewed by a dose of bad math, but what I'm trying to point out is that the value that *we as the community* receive from the hours that GDQ, LLC. puts in is extremely high.  Most of the "contractors" being paid are clearly not being lavished with massive piles of cash here, and I think all of us would do well to thank the organizers for their hard work and focus a lot less on what they are being paid (and as has been pointed out, in most every corporate culture it is not appropriate to ask co-workers what they are being paid as it tends to not help productivity or improve the self-worth of workers).
Besides, a lot of the talk in this thread is so inward-facing - the real goal is to raise money for grants to help prevent cancer, and even if everything I did in my thought experiment was way off and that imaginary $1.5m raised only translated to $1m after PayPal's fees and everything else, that'd still be an imaginary $1m going straight to cancer research.  And *that* would be imaginatively awesome.

DK28

2014-10-22 12:46:06 pm

General Kong - Bullets and Bananas

Quote from Cool Matty:

Quote from Edenal:

it seems like there would be plenty of room to invest in a better backstage environment where most attendees spend most of their time like Omnigamer says.

I'm curious what people think is needed in that environment. It's not like we're against putting money towards something that doesn't go on stream (I mean, for crying out loud, we're practically a Belkin shareholder with all the power strips), but I'm genuinely curious what people really want in this regard.

Can we get some arcade cabinets brought in? Tongue

moooh

2014-10-22 12:51:55 pm

Exoray

Quote from DK28:

Can we get some arcade cabinets brought in? Tongue

Preferably ones that are capable of just plugging into a capture card

z1mb0bw4y

Edit history:

z1mb0bw4y: 2014-10-22 01:07:31 pm

2014-10-22 01:07:14 pm

Gets the cake.

Quote from DK28:

Quote from Cool Matty:

Quote from Edenal:

it seems like there would be plenty of room to invest in a better backstage environment where most attendees spend most of their time like Omnigamer says.

I'm curious what people think is needed in that environment. It's not like we're against putting money towards something that doesn't go on stream (I mean, for crying out loud, we're practically a Belkin shareholder with all the power strips), but I'm genuinely curious what people really want in this regard.

Can we get some arcade cabinets brought in? Tongue

Dude, as the GDQ computers "age out", what if we converted them into custom MAME cabinets as we replace them? HOW COOL WOULD THAT BE?

Darkwing Duck

2014-10-22 01:53:23 pm

Highly Evolved

Have you seen this thread, Edenal?

https://forum.speeddemosarchive.com/post/postsgdq_2014_budget.html

mikwuyma

2014-10-22 04:21:58 pm

My feelings on The Demon Rush

Subs: What Cool Matty said is correct. The typical split is 50% goes to the channel and 50% goes to twitch, and Twitch didn't give us an option to donate it straight to the charity in 2013, which is why we donated 50% (which was our portion) to the charity.

For SGDQ 2014 Twitch just let the subs go straight to DWB. I'm not 100% sure we announced this because it was pretty last-minute when this happened (less than a month before SGDQ).

Attendance fee: What Cool Matty said pretty much, equipment, insurance, legal fees, server costs and the like. By better backstage environment, what do you mean? I don't really know what you mean by this so I'll need more specifics.

PCF reimbursements and GDQ expenses/equipment: Here's the biggest distinction, any piece of equipment that PCF reimburses GDQ (or me) for in the budget is their property, as in they own it. Anything that is bought by GDQ, we own.

That's why PCF doesn't reimburse for all equipment, because there's some that we want to own and either use for both AGDQ and SGDQ, or simply have around to test/potentially use for something else GDQ-related. Generally we have PCF reimburse for heavier and less frequently-used equipment such as TVs, speakers, UPSes, and the like, whereas any equipment we'd want to test or use for both events, GDQ purchases.

Subs: What Cool Matty said is correct. The typical split is 50% goes to the channel and 50% goes to twitch, and Twitch didn't give us an option to donate it straight to the charity in 2013, which is why we donated 50% (which was our portion) to the charity.

For SGDQ 2014 Twitch just let the subs go straight to DWB. I'm not 100% sure we announced this because it was pretty last-minute when this happened (less than a month before SGDQ).

Attendance fee: What Cool Matty said pretty much, equipment, insurance, legal fees, server costs and the like. By better backstage environment, what do you mean? I don't really know what you mean by this so I'll need more specifics.

PCF reimbursements and GDQ expenses/equipment: Here's the biggest distinction, any piece of equipment that PCF reimburses GDQ (or me) for in the budget is their property, as in they own it. Anything that is bought by GDQ, we own.

That's why PCF doesn't reimburse for all equipment, because there's some that we want to own and either use for both AGDQ and SGDQ, or simply have around to test/potentially use for something else GDQ-related. Generally we have PCF reimburse for heavier and less frequently-used equipment such as TVs, speakers, UPSes, and the like, whereas any equipment we'd want to test or use for both events, GDQ purchases.

Billnye_Fan

2014-10-22 05:04:46 pm

I have a question. I see some people are contracted to make the event look better like graphic designers and video editors. Why aren't the runners contracted as well since they are the actual entertainment that generates most of the donations? Or at the very least why don't the runners get an exemption from the attendance fee?

TheMG2

2014-10-22 05:06:43 pm

There is enough drama over who gets into agdq as it is. Imagine if the runners got paid. The drama would be 50 times worse, and way more justified.

chuckles825

2014-10-22 05:24:07 pm

Paying runners for GDQ performance doesn't seem realistic at all. I've never been to a GDQ so I don't know if this is currently feasible, but depending upon how large the event becomes and how many attendees there are, would it not be reasonable to offer runners/volunteers a slight discount on registration versus regular attendees? I don't think the attendance is large enough yet for this to be considered, but maybe in the future?

dwangoAC

2014-10-22 05:47:38 pm

Keeper of TASBot

I'm participating as a runner (more like the TASBot handler Smiley

because I want to see cancer stopped and I have no expectation or desire to be paid. I also do not believe this is needed, because as you can see from the submissions page there are far more people willing to come and figure out how to pay their own way to the marathon than the marathon can accommodate. GDQ doesn't even need the incentive of having runners pay a lower conference fee as they are instead trying to make the conference fee and hotel room costs as reasonable as possible for *everyone* attending. Perhaps the story of Scrooge from the SDA news feed last year will come to pass and it will be necessary at some future GDQ marathon to coerce runners into coming but I hope that that sad fate never befalls us.

kirbymastah

2014-10-22 10:17:09 pm

<(^_^)>

The registration fee should be one of the least worries for everyone, seeing as it's basically nothing compared to travel, hotel, and food costs for each individual. No reason to make a big deal out of it.

chuckles825

2014-10-23 02:53:02 am

Fair enough, like I said, I've never been to a GDQ before so I don't even know how much the fee is honestly. The main priority is the charity and I care about that as much as anyone. I understand that it's not a real concern compared to other costs, so I'll drop it.

thadarkman78

Edit history:

thadarkman78: 2014-10-24 07:31:33 am

2014-10-24 07:29:49 am

Quote from kirbymastah:

The registration fee should be one of the least worries for everyone, seeing as it's basically nothing compared to travel, hotel, and food costs for each individual. No reason to make a big deal out of it.

The AGDQ registration fee last year (yes I know it will be reduced this year) represented nearly 10% of my total budget for AGDQ. I wouldn't exactly call that expense trivial.

I think chuckles brings up a good point to be honest. Personally I don't know how I feel about it, but logically it makes total sense to at the very least discuss it, not just brush it aside because the expense isn't a big deal.

Cool Matty

2014-10-24 09:10:37 am

Crawlathon WR, get down on my level.

Quote from thadarkman78:

I think chuckles brings up a good point to be honest. Personally I don't know how I feel about it, but logically it makes total sense to at the very least discuss it, not just brush it aside because the expense isn't a big deal.

Again, I'm not Mike, so take this only as personal opinion and thoughts:

1. Doing so would raise the cost for the rest of the attendees (by 15% or more depending on the number of attendees).
2. Almost everyone, if not all, who are getting paid, are working outside of the event as well as spending a significant amount of time working during it.
3. Even the staff pays the registration fee, regardless of whether they're paid or not.
4. It'd also potentially create issues with elitism and submitting runs just for the basis of a discount.

Personally, I don't even invoice PCF for my hours at the event (which would probably be between 80-100 hours of work including setup/teardown). I consider that time part of my donation to the charity and the event.

[quote="thadarkman78"]
I think chuckles brings up a good point to be honest. Personally I don't know how I feel about it, but logically it makes total sense to at the very least discuss it, not just brush it aside because the expense isn't a big deal.[/quote]

Again, I'm not Mike, so take this only as personal opinion and thoughts:

1. Doing so would raise the cost for the rest of the attendees (by 15% or more depending on the number of attendees).
2. Almost everyone, if not all, who are getting paid, are working outside of the event as well as spending a significant amount of time working during it. 
3. Even the staff pays the registration fee, regardless of whether they're paid or not.
4. It'd also potentially create issues with elitism and submitting runs just for the basis of a discount.

Personally, I don't even invoice PCF for my hours at the event (which would probably be between 80-100 hours of work including setup/teardown). I consider that time part of my donation to the charity and the event.

Graviton

Edit history:

Graviton: 2014-10-24 07:31:30 pm

Graviton: 2014-10-24 10:52:10 am

Graviton: 2014-10-24 10:49:43 am

2014-10-24 10:47:55 am

Quote from Cool Matty:

1. Doing so would raise the cost for the rest of the attendees (by 15% or more depending on the number of attendees).

I think we are expecting a ballpark estimate of around 700 people this time around? Looking at the schedule, It looks like there is about 150 unique people between volunteers, staff, and runners. If all of them got a 50% discount, that would increase the fee for everyone else by around 10%. A 33% discount would bring that down to around a 7% increase. I don't think that would be too unreasonable... a $50 registration fee would become between like $53 and $56 for non participating registrants. Even if runners had a free pass, that $50 only becomes a bit over $60. I'm not saying that we should change anything right now, but this could be something to consider in the near future as the ratio of non-participants to participants increases.

You have to keep in mind that as these things grow, the runners of the major games like Super Metroid (a game that by itself makes ludicrous amounts of money) have increasing amounts of leverage. Should the Super Metroid community decide to sit a marathon out, a golden opportunity for a guaranteed $100K+ was just lost. It seems kind of bad to think of runs as such a numbers game with money, but it has certainly become clear that games that the speedrunning community doesn't think too highly of are put on the schedule solely because of a potential to raise money... so I think this is worth mentioning. It would hardly be a bad idea to provide small perks to the runners involved (and possibly volunteers too), because without them, there wouldn't be a single cent raised.

Quote from Cool Matty:

2. Almost everyone, if not all, who are getting paid, are working outside of the event as well as spending a significant amount of time working during it.

Very true, but keep in mind that a large portion of runners spend hundreds, if not thousands of hours of their free time perfecting their games to showcase at marathons. With the exception of a select few, these runners don't get paid at all for what they do. The level of skill and mastery of these games is the entire premise behind Games Done Quick, and without that these marathons would literally be a lets play event. It doesn't sound that crazy to me to acknowledge that commitment, even if the runners themselves understand that they don't expect anything in return other than personal satisfaction and possibly the entertainment of others with their hobby.

Quote from Cool Matty:

4. It'd also potentially create issues with elitism and submitting runs just for the basis of a discount.

People will always question, jokingly or not, whether certain runners have advantages compared to others when submitting runs ("oldboy privilege", etc.). Runners having discounts wouldn't change any of that, as there is already an obvious advantage in simply participating in the marathon at all when you wish to showcase your game.

And to be fair, the notion of people submitting only for a discount is completely irrelevant because Mike would obviously still select the games based on what he thinks best fits the marathon. Even now, some people assuredly submit runs only to increase their exposure on twitch and become e-famous... which would far exceed the monetary value of saving a single registration fee anyway.

[quote="Cool Matty"]
1. Doing so would raise the cost for the rest of the attendees (by 15% or more depending on the number of attendees).
[/quote]
I think we are expecting a ballpark estimate of around 700 people this time around? Looking at the schedule, It looks like there is about 150 unique people between volunteers, staff, and runners. If all of them got a 50% discount, that would increase the fee for everyone else by around 10%. A 33% discount would bring that down to around a 7% increase. I don't think that would be too unreasonable... a $50 registration fee would become between like $53 and $56 for non participating registrants. Even if runners had a free pass, that $50 only becomes a bit over $60. I'm not saying that we should change anything right now, but this could be something to consider in the near future as the ratio of non-participants to participants increases.

You have to keep in mind that as these things grow, the runners of the major games like Super Metroid (a game that by itself makes ludicrous amounts of money) have increasing amounts of leverage. Should the Super Metroid community decide to sit a marathon out, a golden opportunity for a guaranteed $100K+ was just lost. It seems kind of bad to think of runs as such a numbers game with money, but it has certainly become clear that games that the speedrunning community doesn't think too highly of are put on the schedule solely because of a potential to raise money... so I think this is worth mentioning. It would hardly be a bad idea to provide small perks to the runners involved (and possibly volunteers too), because without them, there wouldn't be a single cent raised.

[quote="Cool Matty"]
2. Almost everyone, if not all, who are getting paid, are working outside of the event as well as spending a significant amount of time working during it. 
[/quote]
Very true, but keep in mind that a large portion of runners spend hundreds, if not thousands of hours of their free time perfecting their games to showcase at marathons. With the exception of a select few, these runners don't get paid at all for what they do. The level of skill and mastery of these games is the entire premise behind Games Done Quick, and without that these marathons would literally be a lets play event. It doesn't sound that crazy to me to acknowledge that commitment, even if the runners themselves understand that they don't expect anything in return other than personal satisfaction and possibly the entertainment of others with their hobby.

[quote="Cool Matty"]
4. It'd also potentially create issues with elitism and submitting runs just for the basis of a discount.
[/quote]
People will always question, jokingly or not, whether certain runners have advantages compared to others when submitting runs ("oldboy privilege", etc.). Runners having discounts wouldn't change any of that, as there is already an obvious advantage in simply participating in the marathon at all when you wish to showcase your game.

And to be fair, the notion of people submitting only for a discount is completely irrelevant because Mike would obviously still select the games based on what he thinks best fits the marathon. Even now, some people assuredly submit runs only to increase their exposure on twitch and become e-famous... which would far exceed the monetary value of saving a single registration fee anyway.

kirbymastah

Edit history:

kirbymastah: 2014-10-24 11:09:38 am

2014-10-24 11:08:24 am

<(^_^)>

A lot of people are already not attending the marathon just because they don't have a game. Do you seriously want to make this an even worse problem with the discount?

Quote from Graviton:

People will always question, jokingly or not, whether certain runners have advantages compared to others when submitting runs ("oldboy privilege", etc.). Runners having discounts wouldn't change any of that, as there is already an obvious advantage in simply participating in the marathon at all when you wish to showcase your game.

Maybe but it obviously doesn't help at all either. Again, there's already a ton of people salty about just the games themselves; there'll be even more people annoyed that they didn't get some discount and so on.

Also there's going to be an attendance cap eventually, so if it does get that big, runners/commentators/volunteers would get priority to attend anyways (I'd assume) over anyone who doesn't really contribute. So your point of "the ratio of non-participants to participants increases" doesn't really hold.

I honestly think this "discount" idea is ridiculous and completely unnecessary. What is the point of it? Most people who are serious about running/volunteering at a marathon would go regardless of "the discount" anyways (hence, my previous post that it's relatively irrelevant compared to travel/hotel/food). As far as I know, you don't see this happening at much bigger events, such as fighting tournaments (there sometimes a discount for people who bring equipment but that's different). The only purpose this "discount" would serve is to make an even bigger divide between runners/volunteers and those who aren't.

I guess wait for mike to make a post about it but I seriously doubt it'll happen for AGDQ2015, and it shouldn't happen anytime soon at all IMO.

A lot of people are already not attending the marathon just because they don't have a game. Do you seriously want to make this an even worse problem with the discount?

[quote="Graviton"]People will always question, jokingly or not, whether certain runners have advantages compared to others when submitting runs ("oldboy privilege", etc.). Runners having discounts wouldn't change any of that, as there is already an obvious advantage in simply participating in the marathon at all when you wish to showcase your game. [/quote]

Maybe but it obviously doesn't help at all either. Again, there's already a ton of people salty about just the games themselves; there'll be even more people annoyed that they didn't get some discount and so on.

Also there's going to be an attendance cap eventually, so if it does get that big, runners/commentators/volunteers would get priority to attend anyways (I'd assume) over anyone who doesn't really contribute. So your point of "the ratio of non-participants to participants increases" doesn't really hold.

I honestly think this "discount" idea is ridiculous and completely unnecessary. What is the point of it? Most people who are serious about running/volunteering at a marathon would go regardless of "the discount" anyways (hence, my previous post that it's relatively irrelevant compared to travel/hotel/food). As far as I know, you don't see this happening at much bigger events, such as fighting tournaments (there sometimes a discount for people who bring equipment but that's different). The only purpose this "discount" would serve is to make an even bigger divide between runners/volunteers and those who aren't.

I guess wait for mike to make a post about it but I seriously doubt it'll happen for AGDQ2015, and it shouldn't happen anytime soon at all IMO.