AGDQ 2015 Feedback

Raelcun

Edit history:

Raelcun: 2015-01-24 08:50:51 pm

2015-01-24 08:49:01 pm

We require more minerals

Quote from Naegleria:

I asked this earlier and it didn't get a response; What does the tech crew think of having a dual setup, so you setup on one TV while the other is being used for a run?

This was addressed earlier.

Quote from Cool Matty:

Quote from final fight cd:

why can't there be TWO dedicated "couches?" as one is running a game, the other is getting setup for the next. that way, there actually might be a seamless transition between runs. it seemed the viewer count dropped by 20-30K when a run finished, which i'm sure can be mainly attributed to the expected LLOONNGG setup for the next run.

This isn't a logistical possibility. It would require significantly more equipment, more staff, and there is only one streaming computer. We couldn't check if they were set up beforehand, so time saved would be minimal.

Reiska

Edit history:

Reiska: 2015-01-25 01:17:41 am

Reiska: 2015-01-25 01:17:03 am

2015-01-24 08:56:31 pm

Quote from bashfluff:

What bugged me was the attempt to have a more repressed and professional atmosphere. Everyone noticed. No one liked it. If you want to draw in viewers, why not take a leaf from the book of the last AGDQ? It was a constant party train and everyone loved it.

Point of order: people actually made this exact same comment repeatedly in the feedback for AGDQ 2014. There was even a meme image floating around for a while contrasting a still image from AGDQ 2013 with Werster laughing at his bad RNG luck in Pokemon Fire Red with a still image from AGDQ 2014 with Werster looking kind of bored at Pokemon Heart Gold (I think that was the game, it doesn't really matter). Hearing people now say that AGDQ 2014 was a "constant party train" makes me wonder how the past magically changed.

Quote from Billnye_Fan:

Also, why is there this two week waiting period for feedback thread? I read the post in the marathon forum but what I don't understand is that no one is forcing the organizers to read the feedback until they are settled back in. Instead of a "no feedback for two weeks" rule could it change to something like "No responses to feedback by the organizers for two weeks"?

It exists to prevent the echo chamber effect. The organizers are not prepared to read or respond to feedback immediately after the marathon (they need time to decompress). Allowing the discussion to start early means you have two weeks of echo chamber and possible drama starting. I had to stop reading /r/speedrun on Reddit during the course of the marathon because it was actively depressing to read the amount of GDQ-and/or-PCF-bashing that was going on there and literally no one seemed to be moderating it.

Re: dual setup: There are some streaming programs that can handle stuff like scene change previews on a live stream without messing up the live feed, I believe (I think Wirecast does this; I think OBS is working on the feature also, though). Of course, you'd have to obtain copies of these programs, and they aren't cheap, and this doesn't obviate the other stated problems with staffing/equipment.

I think it's something worth looking into, personally, but I wouldn't expect it to be implemented any sooner than, like, SGDQ 2016 or so given the effort that would be involved in making it happen.

[quote="bashfluff"]What bugged me was the attempt to have a more repressed and professional atmosphere. Everyone noticed.  No one liked it. If you want to draw in viewers, why not take a leaf from the book of the last AGDQ? It was a constant party train and everyone loved it. [/quote]

Point of order: people actually made this exact same comment repeatedly in the feedback for AGDQ 2014.  There was even a meme image floating around for a while contrasting a still image from AGDQ 2013 with Werster laughing at his bad RNG luck in Pokemon Fire Red with a still image from AGDQ 2014 with Werster looking kind of bored at Pokemon Heart Gold (I think that was the game, it doesn't really matter).  Hearing people now say that AGDQ 2014 was a "constant party train" makes me wonder how the past magically changed.

[quote="Billnye_Fan"]Also, why is there this two week waiting period for feedback thread? I read the post in the marathon forum but what I don't understand is that no one is forcing the organizers to read the feedback until they are settled back in. Instead of a "no feedback for two weeks" rule could it change to something like "No responses to feedback by the organizers for two weeks"?[/quote]

It exists to prevent the echo chamber effect.  The organizers are not prepared to read or respond to feedback immediately after the marathon (they need time to decompress).  Allowing the discussion to start early means you have two weeks of echo chamber and possible drama starting.  I had to stop reading /r/speedrun on Reddit during the course of the marathon because it was actively depressing to read the amount of GDQ-and/or-PCF-bashing that was going on there and literally no one seemed to be moderating it.

Re: dual setup: There are some streaming programs that can handle stuff like scene change previews on a live stream without messing up the live feed, I believe (I think Wirecast does this; I think OBS is working on the feature also, though).  Of course, you'd have to obtain copies of these programs, and they aren't cheap, and this doesn't obviate the other stated problems with staffing/equipment.

I think it's something worth looking into, personally, but I wouldn't expect it to be implemented any sooner than, like, SGDQ 2016 or so given the effort that would be involved in making it happen.

Countneko

Edit history:

Countneko: 2015-01-25 01:35:58 am

2015-01-25 01:35:15 am

This was the second AGDQ I attended, I did have fun, though I want to provide some constructive criticism. A lot of what I want to say has already been said, I admit, but it's worth reiterating.

-The lack of much of an onscreen audience, but I understand why this kind of had to be done because of the layout? It kinda made the event seem smaller than it had to, and you basically partitioned the runners off from the rest of the audience, making them watch it on screen. It just seemed like an effort to create separation and 'sanitize' the event, coupled with the removal of more 'silly' things like plushes (RIP Reimu) and cosplay. I can understand wanting to remove things that block people's view or upstage the runner, but I think it ultimately made the stream come across as more 'dull'. I'm not trying to make the case that we should fill the couch with all of that stuff every run, but maybe be a bit more relaxed on it. As far as the layout, why not ditch one of the projector screens and have the couch off to the other side where the second projector was, much like AGDQ 2014?

-No nearby food apart from overpriced hotel food + no catering kind of made it a bit difficult and expensive (the alternative being ordering whole pizzas from places like Dominos' or Papa John's, the latter who for some reason didn't honor the AGDQ discount when we used them). I understand why catering was stopped (impossible to just straight up feed 1k people, especially considering how damn tiny the actual food room is) but the difficulties should be taken into account for next year, since the food costs quickly racked up for myself as well as several friends.

-Bonus stream. I know the mindset is to kill it now, but I think that's the wrong idea. The reason bonus stream failed to do what it set out to do is because nothing was scheduled to go on it apart from the Smash tournament finals. There was no pre-planning, and since speedruns weren't allowed, most people didn't have any ideas on what to put up there. There was also the fact of needing to tear everything down that night because the hotel needed the room, leading to bonus stream being much shorter than the previously advertised 24 hours (and leaving anyone who'd paid to stay there the extra day with little to do since both the casual and practice room were gutted too.)

I just feel like killing off bonus stream is far too premature and there should be more thought into how it's organized or what's put on it. If you can't allow speedruns from just anybody because of fighting over who gets to run what, then change the process, make people either submit non-speedrun games ahead of time or something on a first-come, first-serve basis, or you could put a few extra 'waitlisted' games up on there. Hell, you could put 'setup block' games that had to get cut because of time restraints. I don't have all the answers, but throwing up our hands and saying 'bonus stream is dead, better end it' is not an answer. If anything killed bonus stream, it was the way it was handled this year.

I don't want to sound totally negative...I had a lot of fun, and wouldn't trade the experience for anything, but there's room for improvement.

This was the second AGDQ I attended, I did have fun, though I want to provide some constructive criticism. A lot of what I want to say has already been said, I admit, but it's worth reiterating.

-The lack of much of an onscreen audience, but I understand why this kind of had to be done because of the layout? It kinda made the event seem smaller than it had to, and you basically partitioned the runners off from the rest of the audience, making them watch it on screen. It just seemed like an effort to create separation and 'sanitize' the event, coupled with the removal of more 'silly' things like plushes (RIP Reimu) and cosplay. I can understand wanting to remove things that block people's view or upstage the runner, but I think it ultimately made the stream come across as more 'dull'. I'm not trying to make the case that we should fill the couch with all of that stuff every run, but maybe be a bit more relaxed on it. As far as the layout, why not ditch one of the projector screens and have the couch off to the other side where the second projector was, much like AGDQ 2014?

-No nearby food apart from overpriced hotel food + no catering kind of made it a bit difficult and expensive (the alternative being ordering whole pizzas from places like Dominos' or Papa John's, the latter who for some reason didn't honor the AGDQ discount when we used them). I understand why catering was stopped (impossible to just straight up feed 1k people, especially considering how damn tiny the actual food room is) but the difficulties should be taken into account for next year, since the food costs quickly racked up for myself as well as several friends.

-Bonus stream. I know the mindset is to kill it now, but I think that's the wrong idea. The reason bonus stream failed to do what it set out to do is because [i]nothing[/i] was scheduled to go on it apart from the Smash tournament finals. There was no pre-planning, and since speedruns weren't allowed, most people didn't have any ideas on what to put up there. There was also the fact of needing to tear everything down [i]that night[/i] because the hotel needed the room, leading to bonus stream being much shorter than the previously advertised 24 hours (and leaving anyone who'd paid to stay there the extra day with little to do since both the casual and practice room were gutted too.)

I just feel like killing off bonus stream is far too premature and there should be more thought into how it's organized or what's put on it. If you can't allow speedruns from just anybody because of fighting over who gets to run what, then change the process, make people either submit non-speedrun games ahead of time or something on a first-come, first-serve basis, or you could put a few extra 'waitlisted' games up on there. Hell, you could put 'setup block' games that had to get cut because of time restraints. I don't have all the answers, but throwing up our hands and saying 'bonus stream is dead, better end it' is not an answer. If anything killed bonus stream, it was the way it was handled this year.

I don't want to sound totally negative...I had a lot of fun, and wouldn't trade the experience for anything, but there's room for improvement.

Mystery

2015-01-25 02:15:38 am

The biggest problem with the bonus stream, I believe, is simply that the staff is tired after the main event and don't want to supervise the bonus stream. But the bonus stream is nevertheless broadcasted as part of GDQ, which means they can't go unsupervised.

Onin

2015-01-25 02:58:41 am

I'd say a rather simple solution to the lack of audience thing would be to simply set up a crowd camera. It'd require some live production, but it wouldn't be too difficult to occasionally cut from the couch camera to the crowd camera to emphasize their reactions to a great trick that just got pulled off. Would be hard to find room for three different screens in the layout, but the couch cam really isn't equally interesting at all times anyway.

DarkAries

2015-01-25 03:25:22 am

All the main points have been hit, not gonna even bring up anything tech which is about the only thing I can ever comment on, and not even fully since I'm not there and can only speculate, as always. Seems like the same issue with people manning tech happens time after time though. Everybody is saying get professionals. Well...... honestly why not just I dunno, actually teach people how to atleast do the basics. I mean I would love to come down and help out. I know how to handle pro equipment but as mentioned, not everybody has the means to get there. So for the people who atleast are able to, make them come a day early. Do what I did in highschool AV. Tech is the first to arrive. New comers get taught how to use all the equipment in a basic manor while testing the setup. Sure you'll have the complainers of needing to be there early, probably bright and early in the morning etc. Hey well guess what, it would probably solve a SHIT TON of issues if the jrs could actually learn from the srs. During the downtime between games try teaching them the sound board, or the PC setup. If it truly is as posted where the Senior techs were just like "Nah I got it" well fuck nothing is gonna change.

Also I totally agree with the headsets. You have sponsors, get some headsets worn for a free ad. They'll have monitors in their ears, it's not like they wouldn't be able to hear the game since it can be mixed it, no issue with audio cues since whoever is on the board can solo just the game into the headset, they can get talked to by tech and not be heard on stream. Basically get some headseats or in ear monitors. People not used to having headsets will bitch and complain, as they all do, but in this case I doubt it since most gamers actually do wear headsets.

Also I would get some wireless mics with battery packs if you already don't. Let's you mic the next group of people going up and they literally just walk onto the couch, the last group goes to tech, takes off their stuff and gives it to the next group. This kind of contradicts the big headset paragraph earlier but since I don't know the specifics of the setup I'm just throwing out general suggestions. As I said, I'd love to actually show up one day and help, get some recommendations from my highschool teacher who did professional broadcasting (On CHCH and the Red Green Show if you want credentials) on some tips and ideas before I go and off to help. Maybe this SGDQ? Who knows.

All the main points have been hit, not gonna even bring up anything tech which is about the only thing I can ever comment on, and not even fully since I'm not there and can only speculate, as always. Seems like the same issue with people manning tech happens time after time though. Everybody is saying get professionals. Well...... honestly why not just I dunno, actually teach people how to atleast do the basics. I mean I would love to come down and help out. I know how to handle pro equipment but as mentioned, not everybody has the means to get there. So for the people who atleast are able to, make them come a day early. Do what I did in highschool AV. Tech is the first to arrive. New comers get taught how to use all the equipment in a basic manor while testing the setup. Sure you'll have the complainers of needing to be there early, probably bright and early in the morning etc. Hey well guess what, it would probably solve a SHIT TON of issues if the jrs could actually learn from the srs. During the downtime between games try teaching them the sound board, or the PC setup. If it truly is as posted where the Senior techs were just like "Nah I got it" well fuck nothing is gonna change.

Also I totally agree with the headsets. You have sponsors, get some headsets worn for a free ad. They'll have monitors in their ears, it's not like they wouldn't be able to hear the game since it can be mixed it, no issue with audio cues since whoever is on the board can solo just the game into the headset, they can get talked to by tech and not be heard on stream. Basically get some headseats or in ear monitors.  People not used to having headsets will bitch and complain, as they all do, but in this case I doubt it since most gamers actually do wear headsets.

Also I would get some wireless mics with battery packs if you already don't. Let's you mic the next group of people going up and they literally just walk onto the couch, the last group goes to tech, takes off their stuff and gives it to the next group. This kind of contradicts the big headset paragraph earlier but since I don't know the specifics of the setup I'm just throwing out general suggestions. As I said, I'd love to actually show up one day and help, get some recommendations from my highschool teacher who did professional broadcasting (On CHCH and the Red Green Show if you want credentials) on some tips and ideas before I go and off to help. Maybe this SGDQ? Who knows.

romscout

Edit history:

romscout: 2015-01-25 05:24:15 am

romscout: 2015-01-25 05:23:05 am

2015-01-25 05:18:56 am

that Metroidvania guy

Quote from Cronikeys:

Is there any sort of discussion that goes into what charity we, as a community, support?

On top of the great work that PCF does, they are also by far the most flexible charity for giving support to our events. However, we have also spoken to other charities who wish to work with us, and like to keep an open mind about it. We have opened up choices for the community multiple times before, with the most recent being before SGDQ 2013. We certainly listen to community concerns about the charities we fundraise for and keep them in mind as we move forward and grow.

Quote from BaronHaynes:

One other thing regarding subs: Currently, there's no real incentive to subscribe to the channel. You're not going to talk in this thing, no one is going to see what you have to say, and the room is never in sub-only. This is partly a Twitch problem, I think it'd help tremendously to be able to turn on sub-only locally and talk in a functional chat with other subscribers, but the site doesn't have that functionality. This could be a good middle ground if it was ever a thing. But at the moment, there's no reason to subscribe apart from a handful of emotes vs. just making a $5 donation.

One thing that can be done to help with making a subscription desirable is to reassess the emotes we have or add new ones that people would want to use a lot more. The general chat policy is a bit of a bigger issue here, of course, so I'll go ahead and address that.

During this last AGDQ, we never went to a sub-only chat. We are open to changing this policy, but do not want to make the jump to a full sub-only chat for the entire marathon yet. Doing this could have very negative effects on the community. We may instead try an approach where we attempt to have chat be less negative first, then go to sub-only for a set amount of time when we experience high volumes of bad spam/negativity.

Quote from Linkinito:

Nintendoverdose of games

That's a proven fact, there was half the time and half the games dedicated to Nintendo platforms. We can't deny that some games bring a lot of donations, especially Zelda and Mario, but I think there should be some rebalancing on next editions, and give more space to Sega, Sony and Microsoft which were not that present, even though some big games from them were showed (Sonic block, iconic PlayStation licenses, Halo 2). I think that we could trade like a day of obscure games from Nintendo platforms towards heroes from other consoles. ESA does it better than GDQ, in my opinion.

The games we choose are not solely dictated by donation potential, although that is certainly a big factor. You might have noticed during this last AGDQ that a lot of newer/current gen games did not fill up the room very much, and that is undoubtedly because most attendees are nostalgic for big hits from the 1980s, 1990s, and early 2000s. We have been very experimental in the past with mixing obscure and modern games into the schedule extensively, particularly at the last SGDQ, and the results for those runs definitely affected the lineup for AGDQ.

We want this to be a fun event for everyone who attends and watches online, so we will play to our strengths often and build the core of the schedule around what the community seems to love most. Don't worry though, because we will always make sure to leave plenty of room for other great speedgames that don't receive as much attention and would never have a consistent opportunity to be on a GDQ schedule regularly.

Quote from Billnye_Fan:

What strikes me as odd is that PCF knows AGDQ gets roughly 75-100k viewers. Why didn’t they require you to spread actual information about preventing cancer to the large audience? This to me seems like a huge flaw that an organization who seems to focus on awareness wouldn’t want to educate an audience of 100k+ people. PCF seems like it would be a much better SPONSOR for the event where they can educate 100k+ people while the actual donations go towards an international charity that focuses on researching a cure for various cancers. To me this seems like a much more EFFICIENT use of donations.

Also, why is there this two week waiting period for feedback thread? I read the post in the marathon forum but what I don't understand is that no one is forcing the organizers to read the feedback until they are settled back in. Instead of a "no feedback for two weeks" rule could it change to something like "No responses to feedback by the organizers for two weeks"?

As for the feedback for the marathon itself, AMVX's posts (and other's) pinpoint exactly my sentiments towards the tech issues. I think what is really bothersome is that since GDQs decided to become professional, that everyone is expecting the event to be professional quality, and in some cases they are being let down in that aspect. There are standards to live up to.

Also, can someone clarify some facts for me. I am under the impression that AGDQ has a large budget (1:7 ratio of the $1,000,000 from last year, sponsorship funds, attendance fees, ad revenue, etc.), the organizers do this as their main job, and the community is full of people offering to help (the 40+ tech volunteers). How come every year the same mistakes seem to occur? The cord jungle, the layout issues, camera issues, prize issues, etc. It just seems like there is more than enough time, money, and manpower to handle these issues.

In my opinion, many issues can easily be PREVENTED if the community was actually allowed to discuss and provide feedback PRIOR to the marathon. A good example is last years AGDQ layout thread.

Finally, I just don't understand why all the secrescy. Secrecy leads to rumors like $200k+ salaries of the staff. It shouldn't be taboo to talk about finances with the community that is essentially doing all the entertainment for the marathon. I can even imagine some people actually helping out and finding ways to more efficiently spend money on better quality equipment. The community has a ton of skills in all areas. Keeping people out of the loop seems to be hurting the event more than helping.

Quote:

-Pick the charity, or the community. Trying to balance both is ruining it for everyone.

This quote was from the ESA feedback thread but it very much applies to AGDQ. Pick one and focus on that.

I believe you may be a little misinformed on how GDQs are run and how the staff operates. All of the staff who worked at AGDQ have full time jobs as workers or students outside of their efforts for the marathon, and we do not make enough from organizing the events to live comfortably from that alone. We are not a huge corporate entity, and I would not expect the on-site or online experience of the events to convey that. Also, conference space costs a lot as the marathons grow, and that actually makes up a huge portion of the expenses. If the charity did not cover this, the registration fees would be too high for most people in the community to consider attending (including staff).

There are new tech issues that come up for almost all big gaming events, especially ones where the setup changes constantly due to growth. Even The International last year had some serious sound issues that they took a long time to fix, and the people producing that make a full living from making streams look and sound good. That being said, this is not an excuse for the mistakes that happen during our events, although you almost have to accept that something will go wrong when you attempt to stream for 150+ straight hours. A few production professionals have reached out to me since AGDQ ended, and we are definitely open to having them be volunteers or staff members if they are a good fit. One of the reasons our layouts improved so much is because someone reached out to us after SGDQ, and we hired him to work for us. We know there are always improvements to make, and sometimes we need extra help to make it happen.

As far as secrecy, Mike has publicly posted the budget for each of the last two events and has had open discussions with the community about it. Perhaps you missed it, but even if you did, the same thing will be done for the next SGDQ and there should be no issues there. We do not release the amount of pay for staff members because that is a personal privacy issue.

The two week period before posting the feedback thread was actually a soft rule added by Mike a couple years ago because of a few posts that were bashing the marathon within five minutes of it ending. I think we're pretty chill about posting it as soon as we feel ready, now. The only issue this time was that all of the staff went right back to work after the event, and we actually did not have time to post the thread until we did. Even so, the thread was put up less than two weeks after the marathon finale.

Your final statement about having to choose the charity or the community is a bit bothersome, though a few others have brought this up before. I don't know who exactly made that post in the ESA feedback thread, but I have made it clear to Edenal that I support ESA's efforts to raise money for charity while also bringing together the community. It is no different for GDQs. The community comes together and collaborates to support a great cause, and everyone benefits from it. There is no battle between the charity and the community that needs to be created, and I'm sad that concept exists to some people.

Quote from TruthBomber:

-dead air. There was a considerable amount of dead air, and the time between runs was underutilised. You could have sizzle reels that aren't purely for advertising. In touching on the point I raised above, AGDQ does not exist without the runners who travel there, pay to attend, and give their time to not only run & commentate at the event, but also the time given to practicing their runs to be able to attend. Interviews with runners, glitch showoffs (prerecorded or live), things like the Track & Field 100m competition, previews of runs that have donation incentives. I understand that GDQ is essentially a business now and so it is run with profits (for charity) and the sponsors in mind, but the way that was handled this year lost viewer interest and I think left a lot of people disillusioned with the spirit of this years AGDQ.

While it is doubtful that we will have a full second stream that is equipped to travel around all areas of the venue this year, we have already started exploring options for having an area set aside in the main marathon room for extra content to be specifically shown during setup time or other downtime. We realize that the "dead air" feeling inevitably happens with our current setup blocks and believe we have the means to improve this. We will have more details on this as SGDQ gets closer.

Quote from ”Linkinito”:

The prizes

I think it was a big letdown this year. The only prize that really deserved to be considered as "grand prize" was the PS4, and, without a clear explanation, it was only up to Mega Man X3, because "Romscout wanted it".

(And check on agdq.ma.pe or alligatr.co.uk how the donations slowed down hard after Mega Man X3... Thursday and Friday were abysmal days in terms of donations. Even though some runs were great - look at GTA Vice City, praised by everyone, but very few donations throughout the whole run! And it was in graveyard shift)

Because honestly, I don't think getting a banner or Twitch swag was that interesting to motivate donations solely for that. Remember the Tychus Findlay statue? Donations during the Starcraft 2 run last year went through the roof. Even though the run was considered bad by Twitch Chat (I'll come back to it later), the amount of donations skyrocketed thanks to this goodie. A good prize can be a game changer. And I don't think the Pinball machine was attractive enough for a gamer audience as a grand prize. The best prizes? Consoles, games, artworks. I think the GDQ Staff should ask some help from Loading Ready Run. The Desert Bus marathons are awesome in terms of prizes because they get in touch with devs and publishers. Next GDQ should get more prizes, both official and handmade.

The PS4 was chosen as a prize for the halfway point in the marathon because it is not necessarily something desired by everyone, but is still valuable and is a big draw to a decent crowd. This was the same logic for it being the "halfway prize" for SGDQ. The grand prizes chosen for the end of the marathon were much more neutral to a general gaming audience. You are right about special prizes being donated by developers usually being a huge draw, though. As the events grow, it becomes easier for the staff to start conversations with bigger companies, so this is something we will be looking to have more of in future events.

Quote from Overfiendvip:

I'll try to take up as little space as possible for this (perhaps wildly unpopular and mildly off-topic) opinion - as an attendee that enjoys speedrunning to the point where I probably spend the most time out of the vast majority of people there practicing games and actually speedrunning, I sincerely hope you have more events like SGDQ 2014 in terms of the event's physical layout, if that's at all possible. Thank you.

We had issues at SGDQ with that for several reasons, including but not limited to sound problems and people unknowingly bringing food into the wrong areas often. We will tend to prefer having the event spaces broken up a bit in the future, like at AGDQ.

Quote from dangodofthunder:

4. As a donor of a prize, I was tremendously disappointed with the amount of mention and hype that was made for my prize. At no point at all during the designated block was my prize ever mentioned or shown, despite many other prizes being shown. The prize I donated was only shown the following day, about 24 hours after the donations window had already closed. It was never announced at any point. Understand that this is a prize with a retail value of roughly $85.00, and I am extremely reluctant to donate a similar or even larger prize for future GDQs if there is no promotion, hype, or even outward signs of appreciation. It's disappointing to me that no one from the GDQ community has really reached out or thanked me for my donation, and the prize donors were one of the only groups not mentioned for thanks during the finale. I've noted a few people here say they were extremely disappointed with the prizes available in this year's event, but as a donor, I would have serious reservations about repeating this commitment.

Mike and I have been primarily in charge of all prize-related tasks for the last couple of years, but we recognize that we have not been putting the amount of effort and passion that all of the prize donors and winners deserve into this because we have to focus on so much else. We made the decision to have a dedicated prize team on staff because of this, and we will do our best to ensure that prize submissions, showcases during the marathon, and shipments after the marathon will be much smoother from now on.

We know the events would not be anywhere near as successful as they are today without the awesome prizes made and donated by the community, so we are making sure to give you the attention you deserve from now on. I apologize for how lackluster we may have been with handling some of the prizes before, but the prize coordinators will definitely make sure that this won't be an issue again. The current prize coordinators are EvenSteven02 and Sent, but we may add more people to the team should the need arise.

Quote from Stingrayy:

-I don't know how others felt but I absolutely LOATHED the spectator set up. The crowd really needs to be behind the couch IMO. It adds to the feel of a community event over a corporate event which gdqs seem to be becoming.

Aside from the issues that Matt brought up, one of the primary problems with our old approach of having the entire crowd shown behind the couch as we grow is that when the room is empty, it looks REALLY EMPTY! We ran into this problem at SGDQ, even though we tried our best to take a neutral approach with being able to shift focus primarily to the couch or capture a big portion of the audience when needed.

It is inevitable that this issue will become more problematic as we grow if we take that approach again, and it will become even worse with the increased need for visibility to the entire audience when the room is full. It is impractical to move around projector screens much during the event, and they are a necessity at this point. This would make camera angles that capture everything perfectly almost impossible, even during the peak hours when the room is booming. It is a little easier moving forward to have some separation and focus on how to capture both portions of the audience better when needed.

Quote from andypanther:

- You really went too far with all the "stop having fun!" -rules. Who cares if people dress up funny or bring plushies, or if people dare to come too close to the sacred couch (now we're back at the previous topic), just take it easy. These new policies probably killed a lot of the classic GDQ atmosphere and memorable moments.

I don't believe our rules really changed much from last year's AGDQ, but were instead focused on fixing issues that runners brought to our attention. One of our missions, since we started these marathons in 2010, was to have the focus be on the game, but it is definitely important to let the runners and audience have fun in their own way outside of that. When FiFi asked me if he could bring his mascot plushie with him for his run at SGDQ, I approved, and would do the same for almost any other similar request brought to me (unless it was lewd, of course).

I feel that something that's been happening ever since we started growing massively is that people take a couple of days to settle in, calm their nerves, and feel comfortable. It is not really the fault of anyone in particular, it's just something that happens when the stage and audience become bigger and the feeling of intimidation is stronger. I suppose I don't have any particular advice for this other than to remember we’re all just people playing video games on a couch for fun and a good cause. Perhaps this is something we could be presenting in the rules and orientation better, and I will definitely keep this in mind for the future. Personally, there were still a ton of memorable moments for me during this marathon. I hope that there were still some memorable moments for you, too.

Quote from ButtersBB:

Lastly, this really confused me and I have to ask: Why were Kid Chameleon and Big Rigs in the marathon? I was keeping track of the submission process and never saw them anywhere near the schedule, so I was surprised that they were somehow added in. This was even more surprising to me considering that we were way behind schedule. So why were they there?

We had a bit of miscommunication behind the scenes with the schedule due to the Tetris runner’s arrival time being delayed. When we had moved the Tetris run a couple of hours ahead, some staff mistakenly thought that the game had been cut completely at the same time that we were informed of Peaches_’ availability to run Kid Chameleon (when a scheduled game is unexpectedly cut or we end up ahead of schedule, we sometimes insert games into the schedule in this manner).

For Big Rigs, we encountered an error with Alex Navarro’s attempts to submit his game during the submission period that we were unable to figure out. We discussed internally and decided it would be alright to add it as an incentive to the AwfulGDQ block. We had it in the bonus list for a while, but a copy error ended with it being left out of the spreadsheet’s final draft.

We learned a lot from these two incidents and will work on improving both game submissions and communicating schedule changes internally.

[quote="Cronikeys"]Is there any sort of discussion that goes into what charity we, as a community, support?[/quote]

On top of the great work that PCF does, they are also by far the most flexible charity for giving support to our events. However, we have also spoken to other charities who wish to work with us, and like to keep an open mind about it. We have opened up choices for the community multiple times before, with the most recent being before SGDQ 2013. We certainly listen to community concerns about the charities we fundraise for and keep them in mind as we move forward and grow.

[quote="BaronHaynes"]One other thing regarding subs: Currently, there's no real incentive to subscribe to the channel. You're not going to talk in this thing, no one is going to see what you have to say, and the room is never in sub-only. This is partly a Twitch problem, I think it'd help tremendously to be able to turn on sub-only locally and talk in a functional chat with other subscribers, but the site doesn't have that functionality. This could be a good middle ground if it was ever a thing. But at the moment, there's no reason to subscribe apart from a handful of emotes vs. just making a $5 donation.[/quote]

One thing that can be done to help with making a subscription desirable is to reassess the emotes we have or add new ones that people would want to use a lot more. The general chat policy is a bit of a bigger issue here, of course, so I'll go ahead and address that.

During this last AGDQ, we never went to a sub-only chat. We are open to changing this policy, but do not want to make the jump to a full sub-only chat for the entire marathon yet. Doing this could have very negative effects on the community. We may instead try an approach where we attempt to have chat be less negative first, then go to sub-only for a set amount of time when we experience high volumes of bad spam/negativity.

[quote="Linkinito"]
[b]Nintendoverdose of games[/b]

That's a proven fact, there was half the time and half the games dedicated to Nintendo platforms. We can't deny that some games bring a lot of donations, especially Zelda and Mario, but I think there should be some rebalancing on next editions, and give more space to Sega, Sony and Microsoft which were not that present, even though some big games from them were showed (Sonic block, iconic PlayStation licenses, Halo 2). I think that we could trade like a day of obscure games from Nintendo platforms towards heroes from other consoles. ESA does it better than GDQ, in my opinion.[/quote]

The games we choose are not solely dictated by donation potential, although that is certainly a big factor. You might have noticed during this last AGDQ that a lot of newer/current gen games did not fill up the room very much, and that is undoubtedly because most attendees are nostalgic for big hits from the 1980s, 1990s, and early 2000s. We have been very experimental in the past with mixing obscure and modern games into the schedule extensively, particularly at the last SGDQ, and the results for those runs definitely affected the lineup for AGDQ.

We want this to be a fun event for everyone who attends and watches online, so we will play to our strengths often and build the core of the schedule around what the community seems to love most. Don't worry though, because we will always make sure to leave plenty of room for other great speedgames that don't receive as much attention and would never have a consistent opportunity to be on a GDQ schedule regularly.

[quote="Billnye_Fan"][spoiler]What strikes me as odd is that PCF knows AGDQ gets roughly 75-100k viewers. Why didn’t they require you to spread actual information about preventing cancer to the large audience? This to me seems like a huge flaw that an organization who seems to focus on awareness wouldn’t want to educate an audience of 100k+ people. PCF seems like it would be a much better [b]SPONSOR [/b]for the event where they can educate 100k+ people while the actual donations go towards an international charity that focuses on researching a cure for various cancers. To me this seems like a much more [b]EFFICIENT [/b]use of donations.

Also, why is there this two week waiting period for feedback thread? I read the post in the marathon forum but what I don't understand is that no one is forcing the organizers to read the feedback until they are settled back in. Instead of a "no feedback for two weeks" rule could it change to something like "No responses to feedback by the organizers for two weeks"?

As for the feedback for the marathon itself, AMVX's posts (and other's) pinpoint exactly my sentiments towards the tech issues. I think what is really bothersome is that since GDQs decided to become professional, that everyone is expecting the event to be professional quality, and in some cases they are being let down in that aspect. There are standards to live up to.

Also, can someone clarify some facts for me. I am under the impression that AGDQ has a large budget (1:7 ratio of the $1,000,000 from last year, sponsorship funds, attendance fees, ad revenue, etc.), the organizers do this as their main job, and the community is full of people offering to help (the 40+ tech volunteers). How come every year the same mistakes seem to occur? The cord jungle, the layout issues, camera issues, prize issues, etc. It just seems like there is more than enough time, money, and manpower to handle these issues.

In my opinion, many issues can easily be PREVENTED if the community was actually allowed to discuss and provide feedback PRIOR to the marathon. A good example is last years AGDQ layout thread.

Finally, I just don't understand why all the secrescy. Secrecy leads to rumors like $200k+ salaries of the staff. It shouldn't be taboo to talk about finances with the community that is essentially doing all the entertainment for the marathon. I can even imagine some people actually helping out and finding ways to more efficiently spend money on better quality equipment. The community has a ton of skills in all areas. Keeping people out of the loop seems to be hurting the event more than helping.

[quote]-Pick the charity, or the community. Trying to balance both is ruining it for everyone.[/quote]
This quote was from the ESA feedback thread but it very much applies to AGDQ. Pick one and focus on that.[/spoiler][/quote]

I believe you may be a little misinformed on how GDQs are run and how the staff operates. All of the staff who worked at AGDQ have full time jobs as workers or students outside of their efforts for the marathon, and we do not make enough from organizing the events to live comfortably from that alone. We are not a huge corporate entity, and I would not expect the on-site or online experience of the events to convey that. Also, conference space costs a lot as the marathons grow, and that actually makes up a huge portion of the expenses. If the charity did not cover this, the registration fees would be too high for most people in the community to consider attending (including staff).

There are new tech issues that come up for almost all big gaming events, especially ones where the setup changes constantly due to growth. Even The International last year had some serious sound issues that they took a long time to fix, and the people producing that make a full living from making streams look and sound good. That being said, this is not an excuse for the mistakes that happen during our events, although you almost have to accept that something will go wrong when you attempt to stream for 150+ straight hours. A few production professionals have reached out to me since AGDQ ended, and we are definitely open to having them be volunteers or staff members if they are a good fit. One of the reasons our layouts improved so much is because someone reached out to us after SGDQ, and we hired him to work for us. We know there are always improvements to make, and sometimes we need extra help to make it happen.

As far as secrecy, Mike has publicly posted the budget for each of the last two events and has had open discussions with the community about it. Perhaps you missed it, but even if you did, the same thing will be done for the next SGDQ and there should be no issues there. We do not release the amount of pay for staff members because that is a personal privacy issue.

The two week period before posting the feedback thread was actually a soft rule added by Mike a couple years ago because of a few posts that were bashing the marathon within five minutes of it ending. I think we're pretty chill about posting it as soon as we feel ready, now. The only issue this time was that all of the staff went right back to work after the event, and we actually did not have time to post the thread until we did. Even so, the thread was put up less than two weeks after the marathon finale.

Your final statement about having to choose the charity or the community is a bit bothersome, though a few others have brought this up before. I don't know who exactly made that post in the ESA feedback thread, but I have made it clear to Edenal that I support ESA's efforts to raise money for charity while also bringing together the community. It is no different for GDQs. The community comes together and collaborates to support a great cause, and everyone benefits from it. There is no battle between the charity and the community that needs to be created, and I'm sad that concept exists to some people.

[quote="TruthBomber"]
-dead air.  There was a considerable amount of dead air, and the time between runs was underutilised.  You could have sizzle reels that aren't purely for advertising.  In touching on the point I raised above, AGDQ does not exist without the runners who travel there, pay to attend, and give their time to not only run & commentate at the event, but also the time given to practicing their runs to be able to attend.  Interviews with runners, glitch showoffs (prerecorded or live), things like the Track & Field 100m competition, previews of runs that have donation incentives.  I understand that GDQ is essentially a business now and so it is run with profits (for charity) and the sponsors in mind, but the way that was handled this year lost viewer interest and I think left a lot of people disillusioned with the spirit of this years AGDQ. [/quote]

While it is doubtful that we will have a full second stream that is equipped to travel around all areas of the venue this year, we have already started exploring options for having an area set aside in the main marathon room for extra content to be specifically shown during setup time or other downtime. We realize that the "dead air" feeling inevitably happens with our current setup blocks and believe we have the means to improve this. We will have more details on this as SGDQ gets closer.

[quote=”Linkinito”]
The prizes

I think it was a big letdown this year. The only prize that really deserved to be considered as "grand prize" was the PS4, and, without a clear explanation, it was only up to Mega Man X3, because "Romscout wanted it".

(And check on agdq.ma.pe or alligatr.co.uk how the donations slowed down hard after Mega Man X3... Thursday and Friday were abysmal days in terms of donations. Even though some runs were great - look at GTA Vice City, praised by everyone, but very few donations throughout the whole run! And it was in graveyard shift)

Because honestly, I don't think getting a banner or Twitch swag was that interesting to motivate donations solely for that. Remember the Tychus Findlay statue? Donations during the Starcraft 2 run last year went through the roof. Even though the run was considered bad by Twitch Chat (I'll come back to it later), the amount of donations skyrocketed thanks to this goodie. A good prize can be a game changer. And I don't think the Pinball machine was attractive enough for a gamer audience as a grand prize. The best prizes? Consoles, games, artworks. I think the GDQ Staff should ask some help from Loading Ready Run. The Desert Bus marathons are awesome in terms of prizes because they get in touch with devs and publishers. Next GDQ should get more prizes, both official and handmade.
[/quote]

The PS4 was chosen as a prize for the halfway point in the marathon because it is not necessarily something desired by everyone, but is still valuable and is a big draw to a decent crowd. This was the same logic for it being the "halfway prize" for SGDQ. The grand prizes chosen for the end of the marathon were much more neutral to a general gaming audience. You are right about special prizes being donated by developers usually being a huge draw, though. As the events grow, it becomes easier for the staff to start conversations with bigger companies, so this is something we will be looking to have more of in future events.

[quote="Overfiendvip"]I'll try to take up as little space as possible for this (perhaps wildly unpopular and mildly off-topic) opinion - as an attendee that enjoys speedrunning to the point where I probably spend the most time out of the vast majority of people there practicing games and [i]actually speedrunning[/i], I sincerely hope you have more events like SGDQ 2014 in terms of the event's physical layout, if that's at all possible. Thank you.[/quote]

We had issues at SGDQ with that for several reasons, including but not limited to sound problems and people unknowingly bringing food into the wrong areas often. We will tend to prefer having the event spaces broken up a bit in the future, like at AGDQ.

[quote="dangodofthunder"]4. As a donor of a prize, I was tremendously disappointed with the amount of mention and hype that was made for my prize. At no point at all during the designated block was my prize ever mentioned or shown, despite many other prizes being shown. The prize I donated was only shown the following day, about 24 hours after the donations window had already closed. It was never announced at any point. Understand that this is a prize with a retail value of roughly $85.00, and I am extremely reluctant to donate a similar or even larger prize for future GDQs if there is no promotion, hype, or even outward signs of appreciation. It's disappointing to me that no one from the GDQ community has really reached out or thanked me for my donation, and the prize donors were one of the only groups not mentioned for thanks during the finale. I've noted a few people here say they were extremely disappointed with the prizes available in this year's event, but as a donor, I would have serious reservations about repeating this commitment. [/quote]

Mike and I have been primarily in charge of all prize-related tasks for the last couple of years, but we recognize that we have not been putting the amount of effort and passion that all of the prize donors and winners deserve into this because we have to focus on so much else. We made the decision to have a dedicated prize team on staff because of this, and we will do our best to ensure that prize submissions, showcases during the marathon, and shipments after the marathon will be much smoother from now on.

We know the events would not be anywhere near as successful as they are today without the awesome prizes made and donated by the community, so we are making sure to give you the attention you deserve from now on. I apologize for how lackluster we may have been with handling some of the prizes before, but the prize coordinators will definitely make sure that this won't be an issue again. The current prize coordinators are EvenSteven02 and Sent, but we may add more people to the team should the need arise.

[quote="Stingrayy"]-I don't know how others felt but I absolutely LOATHED the spectator set up. The crowd really needs to be behind the couch IMO. It adds to the feel of a community event over a corporate event which gdqs seem to be becoming. 
[/quote]

Aside from the issues that Matt brought up, one of the primary problems with our old approach of having the entire crowd shown behind the couch as we grow is that when the room is empty, it looks REALLY EMPTY! We ran into this problem at SGDQ, even though we tried our best to take a neutral approach with being able to shift focus primarily to the couch or capture a big portion of the audience when needed.

It is inevitable that this issue will become more problematic as we grow if we take that approach again, and it will become even worse with the increased need for visibility to the entire audience when the room is full. It is impractical to move around projector screens much during the event, and they are a necessity at this point. This would make camera angles that capture everything perfectly almost impossible, even during the peak hours when the room is booming. It is a little easier moving forward to have some separation and focus on how to capture both portions of the audience better when needed.

[quote="andypanther"]
- You really went too far with all the "stop having fun!" -rules. Who cares if people dress up funny or bring plushies, or if people dare to come too close to the sacred couch (now we're back at the previous topic), just take it easy. These new policies probably killed a lot of the classic GDQ atmosphere and memorable moments. 
[/quote]

I don't believe our rules really changed much from last year's AGDQ, but were instead focused on fixing issues that runners brought to our attention. One of our missions, since we started these marathons in 2010, was to have the focus be on the game, but it is definitely important to let the runners and audience have fun in their own way outside of that. When FiFi asked me if he could bring his mascot plushie with him for his run at SGDQ, I approved, and would do the same for almost any other similar request brought to me (unless it was lewd, of course).

I feel that something that's been happening ever since we started growing massively is that people take a couple of days to settle in, calm their nerves, and feel comfortable. It is not really the fault of anyone in particular, it's just something that happens when the stage and audience become bigger and the feeling of intimidation is stronger. I suppose I don't have any particular advice for this other than to remember we’re all just people playing video games on a couch for fun and a good cause. Perhaps this is something we could be presenting in the rules and orientation better, and I will definitely keep this in mind for the future. Personally, there were still a ton of memorable moments for me during this marathon.  I hope that there were still some memorable moments for you, too.

[quote="ButtersBB"]Lastly, this really confused me and I have to ask: Why were Kid Chameleon and Big Rigs in the marathon? I was keeping track of the submission process and never saw them anywhere near the schedule, so I was surprised that they were somehow added in. This was even more surprising to me considering that we were way behind schedule. So why were they there?[/quote]

We had a bit of miscommunication behind the scenes with the schedule due to the Tetris runner’s arrival time being delayed.  When we had moved the Tetris run a couple of hours ahead, some staff mistakenly thought that the game had been cut completely at the same time that we were informed of Peaches_’  availability to run Kid Chameleon (when a scheduled game is unexpectedly cut or we end up ahead of schedule, we sometimes insert games into the schedule in this manner).

For Big Rigs, we encountered an error with Alex Navarro’s attempts to submit his game during the submission period that we were unable to figure out.  We discussed internally and decided it would be alright to add it as an incentive to the AwfulGDQ block.  We had it in the bonus list for a while, but a copy error ended with it being left out of the spreadsheet’s final draft.

We learned a lot from these two incidents and will work on improving both game submissions and communicating schedule changes internally.

sumichu

Edit history:

sumichu: 2015-01-25 05:49:38 am

sumichu: 2015-01-25 05:49:25 am

2015-01-25 05:40:13 am

ㅋㅋㅋㅋ

Quote from Shaddex:

As someone who has has high hopes of being accepted to SGDQ, I have some small criticisms and improvements in regards to the Submission Process.

- In my opinion, the Character limit was too low. I struggled with trying to compress my run description into such a small space, and as a result my pitch came in as a shadow of what it should have been. I'd appreciate being able to describe my game in its best light, not in a vastly diminished sense.

- Instead of cluttering up the description with donation incentives and race proposals, it'd be nice to have a separate space designed specifically for these purposes. This could be accomplished through a simple check box indicating willingness to race, and a separate text box for describing donation incentives.

- One small thing I'd also like is a way to indicate past marathon experience. Not only does this demonstrate dedication, it also demonstrates advancements in routing and player skill.

We are going to try to make the submission form request more information the next time around, though we're not sure if the character limit for your description will change (there's a high volume of submissions). These suggestions are definitely helpful in helping us identify things that we should be looking out for. Thanks!

Quote from Gwimpage:

I'm not sure if anyone brought it up but was there no way to get your clothes washed? I had asked the front desk for options and they recommended a local dry cleaning (They delivered it to and back which was very nice) and the price to get laundry done was very expensive. I payed almost 40$ for a load of laundry I could have done at a laundromat for like 4$.

Laundry hasn't really been a priority in the venue search, but that will be one of the things we ask about and consider when we choose a venue (since our list of preferences is rather lengthy, we always end up sacrificing some, unfortunately).

Note: I added romscout's answers and some of the responses to the general questions/suggestions to the OP in spoiler tags.

[quote="Shaddex"]As someone who has has high hopes of being accepted to SGDQ, I have some small criticisms and improvements in regards to the [b]Submission Process[/b].

- In my opinion, the [b]Character limit[/b] was too low. I struggled with trying to compress my run description into such a small space, and as a result my pitch came in as a shadow of what it should have been. I'd appreciate being able to describe my game in its best light, not in a vastly diminished sense.

- Instead of cluttering up the description with [b]donation incentives and race proposals[/b], it'd be nice to have a separate space designed specifically for these purposes. This could be accomplished through a simple check box indicating willingness to race, and a separate text box for describing donation incentives.

- One small thing I'd also like is a way to indicate [b]past marathon experience[/b]. Not only does this demonstrate dedication, it also demonstrates advancements in routing and player skill. [/quote]

We are going to try to make the submission form request more information the next time around, though we're not sure if the character limit for your description will change (there's a high volume of submissions).  These suggestions are definitely helpful in helping us identify things that we should be looking out for.  Thanks!

[quote="Gwimpage"]I'm not sure if anyone brought it up but was there no way to get your clothes washed? I had asked the front desk for options and they recommended a local dry cleaning (They delivered it to and back which was very nice) and the price to get laundry done was very expensive. I payed almost 40$ for a load of laundry I could have done at a laundromat for like 4$. 
[/quote]

Laundry hasn't really been a priority in the venue search, but that will be one of the things we ask about and consider when we choose a venue (since our list of preferences is rather lengthy, we always end up sacrificing some, unfortunately).

[size="16"]Note: I added romscout's answers and some of the responses to the general questions/suggestions to the OP in spoiler tags.[/size]

AMVX

Edit history:

AMVX: 2015-01-25 08:41:56 am

2015-01-25 08:27:57 am

www.twitch.tv/amvx

Quote from Melodia:

Quote from AMVX:

It's become more about a charity gathering funds by holding a speedrunning marathon, than speedrunners holding a marathon for fun to raise money for charity.

This quote sums up my thoughts perfectly, and I was even commenting on that in a chat yesterday. A good term might be "sold out".

I am definitely not using that phrase.

Quote from DarkAries:

Also I would get some wireless mics with battery packs if you already don't. Let's you mic the next group of people going up and they literally just walk onto the couch, the last group goes to tech, takes off their stuff and gives it to the next group.

General rule; avoid wireless wherever is reasonably possible. There is many issues to cover with them (e.g receivers, batteries, frequencies) but most importantly it's interference. Especially with so many other signals around (e.g. wireless Internet, Nintendo 3DS consoles, mobile phones) you can disrupt the signals that you tested and worked fine two hours ago.

If you can get away with a cabled mic, you do it. If you're doing a presentation like you see at E3, you go for a wireless one for each presenter, sure, but here, in a fixed position for multiple hours at times - keep it wired.

Quote:

Not to mention that ESA last year ran two streams, not just one. So please let me know how much 'extra' tech there truly is?

I would still love an answer to this question? What extraordinary amount of stuff took three days to set up?

I wouldn't mind as answer to these questions as well - http://forum.speeddemosarchive.com/post/agdq_2015_feedback_152.html

Quote from Cool Matty:

Billnye: We did have things under control, as the event happened and was a success. It was not polished as we originally planned, but additional volunteers, particularly ones too far away and too late, would not have improved that situation.

While I agree that overall the event could be argued as a success - did you really have it under control? Cause it definitely doesn't seem like it was for a while there, saying you were running out of time leading into the event and fixing things the middle of it. Donation trackers going down in the middle of the marathon, stream crashes, people saying they couldn't find staff...

[quote="Melodia"][quote="AMVX"]

It's become more about a charity gathering funds by holding a speedrunning marathon, than speedrunners holding a marathon for fun to raise money for charity.
[/quote]

This quote sums up my thoughts perfectly, and I was even commenting on that in a chat yesterday. A good term might be "sold out".
[/quote]

I am definitely not using that phrase.

[quote="DarkAries"]Also I would get some wireless mics with battery packs if you already don't. Let's you mic the next group of people going up and they literally just walk onto the couch, the last group goes to tech, takes off their stuff and gives it to the next group.[/quote]

General rule; avoid wireless wherever is reasonably possible. There is many issues to cover with them (e.g receivers, batteries, frequencies) but most importantly it's interference. Especially with so many other signals around (e.g. wireless Internet, Nintendo 3DS consoles, mobile phones) you can disrupt the signals that you tested and worked fine two hours ago.

If you can get away with a cabled mic, you do it. If you're doing a presentation like you see at E3, you go for a wireless one for each presenter, sure, but here, in a fixed position for multiple hours at times - keep it wired.

[quote]Not to mention that ESA last year ran two streams, not just one. So please let me know how much 'extra' tech there truly is?[/quote]

I would still love an answer to this question? What extraordinary amount of stuff took three days to set up?

I wouldn't mind as answer to these questions as well - http://forum.speeddemosarchive.com/post/agdq_2015_feedback_152.html

[quote="Cool Matty"]Billnye: We did have things under control, as the event happened and was a success. It was not polished as we originally planned, but additional volunteers, particularly ones too far away and too late, would not have improved that situation.[/quote]

While I agree that overall the event could be argued as a success - did you really have it under control? Cause it definitely doesn't seem like it was for a while there, saying you were running out of time leading into the event and fixing things the middle of it. Donation trackers going down in the middle of the marathon, stream crashes, people saying they couldn't find staff...

Molotov

2015-01-25 08:49:37 am

Note: I have never volunteered for the tech station, nor do I know much about the specifics. This is all based on the impression I've gotten from years of attendance and feedback topics. Don't be surprised if I suggest something that already exists.

I propose a few things:

- Revive the bonus stream by giving it a new and important goal. This goal is to train new tech staff while also entertaining people.
- Recruit a team of volunteers specifically for bonus stream, so that you can increase your talent pool for future events.
- Create a manual for basic tech issues to relieve some of the senior staff help requests and iron out minor problems.
- Use said manual to formalize a training procedure, so that all volunteers get a consistent level of basic training.
- Consider creating a new staff position specifically for training new volunteers.

I might be opening Pandora's box, but I'm curious about something. Since bonus stream was always meant to be super casual and unscheduled, why can't it be used almost exclusively to train a secondary team of tech people in a low-stress environment? It could just be me, but it seems like a good chunk of the "oh, we're so tired after the marathon" thing from the tech station is from a severe training issue. Training people (maybe even total newbies) to meet rising standards in a short pre-marathon time span has always been a bad idea, and it's worse if you do group training. I don't really see this as any different from workplace training, so that's why I'm thinking bonus stream time would be the perfect opportunity for individual training that actually works.

Here's what I was thinking:

- Two teams of tech station volunteers. One for the main event, and the other for some sort of bonus material. With the way these events are growing, I doubt you'd have trouble finding volunteers.

- The main event team should include those with enough previous experience that you don't need to watch them constantly. Schedule them in the main event, because they can probably handle it.

- The bonus team should be mostly limited to new or very inexperienced volunteers. Basically, if they can't handle main event stuff without heavy supervision, they go here. _{(Note: I don't call them the "B Team" for connotation reasons. They are "new talent," and should be treated as such.)}

- Use the entire bonus stream time to focus on training people to the point where they can work with minimal supervision. I wouldn't expect guru-level work, but days of training is a pretty big deal. There's no hurry at that point to get things working properly, so trainee mistakes are not a problem anymore. (I can think of a couple ways to deal with senior staff fatigue issues, but those shouldn't a problem in a casual bonus environment anyway.*)

- Combine the previous bonus team into the next event's main team whenever possible. Use this to make a new bonus team to repeat the process.

As for the actual bonus material, I'd still consider runs as a secondary priority. You could kill the supposed "fighting" over getting a run by just having a different submission process. Limit submissions per person, limit length, throw everything into a quick list, and then use a randomizer to pick what's next. Person isn't awake/around? Draw again. No bias or scheduling issues to cause fighting. People could get upset about not getting anything, but that's just bad luck. The runs themselves would still be "bonus-like," because the main purpose of doing it at all is to get a lot of low-stress training time in. The fact that people play games at the same time is just a perk. (My suggestion for handling runs is obviously iffy. I only include it as a basic suggestion to eliminate hard feelings. I would personally prefer giving priority to "waitlisted" runs in the same randomizer order.)

I bring this up mainly because Emptyeye's comment reminded me of the tech issue. As the equipment woes only get worse (more stuff to manage), I have this bad feeling that you'll eventually be without the senior-level crutches some of these marathons have relied on. Training people before the marathon is all well and good, but it's too short. It also sounds like it stresses out the trainers before the event even starts, because the high standards make it tough to feel confident in new trainees working without a lot of supervision. Use bonus stream time to your advantage to develop new highly-skilled tech people, use them in the next marathon, and repeat the process. People get their precious bonus stream, you get free training time, and you won't risk the situation where a bunch of your senior tech guys get sick at the worst possible time.

* At the risk of sounding (even more?) ridiculous, would it be possible to have a designated "trainer" specifically for tech? His/her purpose would NOT be to do anything during the marathon itself, so that he/she won't be a zombie at the end of the marathon. This person could take over most of the training duties in the bonus stream time, because everybody else is toast. Obviously this would take a year or so to setup, since you can't really spare a tech guru right now. But if you properly train someone to reach that level, this might be something to consider later on.

And at the risk of sounding really ridiculous, I propose a tech manual for the most common issues. There's no reason at all that senior staff should have to troubleshoot recurring issues, and especially not "simple fixes." Manuals are not that hard to make (I know firsthand), and could save a whole lot of headache. Yes, the equipment changes every year. Yes, new issues come up. This manual would only need to cover things that have happened frequently in the past. When the relatively inexperienced volunteer hits a common snag, there's no good reason that he/she should have to hit the panic button to get help. That help should be on the tech station table. Also, it doubles as a good start for a training manual. Marathons have needed one of these for a very long time, as far as I can tell. Training and overall orientation need to be structured, so that you don't miss key points. Winging anything shouldn't be an option by now.

Note: I have never volunteered for the tech station, nor do I know much about the specifics. This is all based on the impression I've gotten from years of attendance and feedback topics. Don't be surprised if I suggest something that already exists.

[spoiler="Summary of this post"]I propose a few things:

- Revive the bonus stream by giving it a new and important goal. This goal is to train new tech staff while also entertaining people.
- Recruit a team of volunteers specifically for bonus stream, so that you can increase your talent pool for future events.
- Create a manual for basic tech issues to relieve some of the senior staff help requests and iron out minor problems.
- Use said manual to formalize a training procedure, so that all volunteers get a consistent level of basic training.
- Consider creating a new staff position specifically for training new volunteers.[/spoiler]
I might be opening Pandora's box, but I'm curious about something. Since bonus stream was always meant to be super casual and unscheduled, why can't it be used almost exclusively to train a secondary team of tech people in a low-stress environment? It could just be me, but it seems like a good chunk of the "oh, we're so tired after the marathon" thing from the tech station is from a severe training issue. Training people (maybe even total newbies) to meet rising standards in a short pre-marathon time span has always been a bad idea, and it's worse if you do group training. I don't really see this as any different from workplace training, so that's why I'm thinking bonus stream time would be the perfect opportunity for individual training that actually works.

Here's what I was thinking:

- Two teams of tech station volunteers. One for the main event, and the other for some sort of bonus material. With the way these events are growing, I doubt you'd have trouble finding volunteers.

- The main event team should include those with enough previous experience that you don't need to watch them constantly. Schedule them in the main event, because they can probably handle it.

- The bonus team should be mostly limited to new or very inexperienced volunteers. Basically, if they can't handle main event stuff without heavy supervision, they go here. [sub](Note: I don't call them the "B Team" for connotation reasons. They are "new talent," and should be treated as such.)[/sub]

- Use the entire bonus stream time to focus on training people to the point where they can work with minimal supervision. I wouldn't expect guru-level work, but [i]days[/i] of training is a pretty big deal. There's no hurry at that point to get things working properly, so trainee mistakes are not a problem anymore. (I can think of a couple ways to deal with senior staff fatigue issues, but those shouldn't a problem in a casual bonus environment anyway.*)

- Combine the previous bonus team into the next event's main team whenever possible. Use this to make a new bonus team to repeat the process.

As for the actual bonus material, I'd still consider runs as a secondary priority. You could kill the supposed "fighting" over getting a run by just having a different submission process. Limit submissions per person, limit length, throw everything into a quick list, and then use a randomizer to pick what's next. Person isn't awake/around? Draw again. No bias or scheduling issues to cause fighting. People could get upset about not getting anything, but that's just bad luck. The runs themselves would still be "bonus-like," because the main purpose of doing it at all is to get a lot of low-stress training time in. The fact that people play games at the same time is just a perk. (My suggestion for handling runs is obviously iffy. I only include it as a basic suggestion to eliminate hard feelings. I would personally prefer giving priority to "waitlisted" runs in the same randomizer order.)

I bring this up mainly because Emptyeye's comment reminded me of the tech issue. As the equipment woes only get worse (more stuff to manage), I have this bad feeling that you'll eventually be without the senior-level crutches some of these marathons have relied on. Training people before the marathon is all well and good, but it's too short. It also sounds like it stresses out the trainers before the event even starts, because the high standards make it tough to feel confident in new trainees working without a lot of supervision. Use bonus stream time to your advantage to develop new highly-skilled tech people, use them in the next marathon, and repeat the process. People get their precious bonus stream, you get free training time, and you won't risk the situation where a bunch of your senior tech guys get sick at the worst possible time.

* At the risk of sounding (even more?) ridiculous, would it be possible to have a designated "trainer" specifically for tech? His/her purpose would NOT be to do anything during the marathon itself, so that he/she won't be a zombie at the end of the marathon. This person could take over most of the training duties in the bonus stream time, because everybody else is toast. Obviously this would take a year or so to setup, since you can't really spare a tech guru right now. But if you properly train someone to reach that level, this might be something to consider later on.

And at the risk of sounding [i]really[/i] ridiculous, I propose a tech manual for the most common issues. There's no reason at all that senior staff should have to troubleshoot recurring issues, and especially not "simple fixes." Manuals are not that hard to make (I know firsthand), and could save a whole lot of headache. Yes, the equipment changes every year. Yes, new issues come up. This manual would only need to cover things that have happened frequently in the past. When the relatively inexperienced volunteer hits a common snag, there's no good reason that he/she should have to hit the panic button to get help. That help should be on the tech station table. Also, it doubles as a good start for a training manual. Marathons have needed one of these for a very long time, as far as I can tell. Training and overall orientation need to be structured, so that you don't miss key points. Winging anything shouldn't be an option by now.

Reiska

2015-01-25 09:33:41 am

Interesting idea, Molotov. I'd actually make another bold suggestion along those lines, and intended to be read in conjunction with Molotov's idea:

Why does the "bonus stream" have to be after the marathon?

Is there any intrinsic reason you can't turn the bonus stream into a pre-show the day before the formal start of the marathon? Use it to train tech staff, test layouts/hookups/etc., whatever needs to be done? The actual content can (and probably should) be any random old thing, since it's for the benefit of the people on-site primarily.

Poorscythe

2015-01-25 09:42:13 am

I was thinking along the same lines as Reiska.

What if bonus stream was re-purposed as a GDQ preview show that occurred the day BEFORE the marathon start? Let's say 4-8 hours of content that could include volunteer speedruns by individuals whose runs couldn't fit into the marathon (or alternatively, casual games like Mario Party), interviews with runners, a first look at prizes, a preview of donation incentives, an introduction to the sponsors, or even just a discussion of the upcoming marathon schedule. You could even drop the speedrunning aspect of it, but it could provide a valuable opportunity for tech crew to test things out or train staff before the main event begins.

BradNThings

2015-01-25 09:46:07 am

Okay, here we go:

Layouts were a huge step in the right direction: Outside of a few questionable things:
-such as sponsor size (they shouldve been smaller, but rotated through with 1 large logo instead of 6 or 7 thrown together)
-the race layouts (2x & 3x 4:3 game size could be improved.)
-the 16:9 layout (honestly the top of the game should be the same as the top of the webcam),
-the background choice (the choice of a flat color was kind of dull)

But hey, it didn't get posted to @badlayouts! It's honestly a lot better and Chris Hanel (right?) did a good job.

Audio behind the couch was dreadful.: I couldn't hear Vulajin 3 feet away from me during Transistor half the time. A lot of sound pollution. The only thing I can really recommend is the sound absorbing material they use in studios, but I don't know how much that would help. Something to keep note of though.

Cameras: In general, camera work was pretty bad. You couldn't see the whole couch or the runner half the time, even on 4:3 1-player speedruns. Maybe have a camera in the audience you can switch to at times or something.

Room stink: Holy balls. The casual room was really bad, even with a fan and window open. Stink Police need to come out and bust a febreeze on some of these guys.

Suggestion for donation station: Have a list of people who run your game in case you donate, just print a piece of paper or hand it to the donation team.

PreStream: GDQ preview show as others have mentioned, and maybe casual gaming (works two ways, tests setup and generates hype.)

Okay, here we go:

[b]Layouts were a huge step in the right direction[/b]: Outside of a few questionable things:
-such as sponsor size (they shouldve been smaller, but rotated through with 1 large logo instead of 6 or 7 thrown together)
-the race layouts (2x & 3x 4:3 game size could be improved.) 
-the 16:9 layout (honestly the top of the game should be the same as the top of the webcam), 
-the background choice (the choice of a flat color was kind of dull)

But hey, it didn't get posted to @badlayouts! [u]It's honestly a lot better[/u] and Chris Hanel (right?) did a good job.

[b]Audio behind the couch was dreadful.[/b]: I couldn't hear Vulajin 3 feet away from me during Transistor half the time. A lot of sound pollution. The only thing I can really recommend is the sound absorbing material they use in studios, but I don't know how much that would help. Something to keep note of though.

[b]Cameras[/b]: In general, camera work was pretty bad. You couldn't see the whole couch or the runner half the time, even on 4:3 1-player speedruns. Maybe have a camera in the audience you can switch to at times or something.

[b]Room stink[/b]: Holy balls. The casual room was really bad, even with a fan and window open. Stink Police need to come out and bust a febreeze on some of these guys.

[b]Suggestion for donation station[/b]: Have a list of people who run your game in case you donate, just print a piece of paper or hand it to the donation team.

[b]PreStream[/b]: GDQ preview show as others have mentioned, and maybe casual gaming (works two ways, tests setup and generates hype.)

NiL8r

Edit history:

NiL8r: 2015-01-25 10:43:02 am

NiL8r: 2015-01-25 10:42:58 am

NiL8r: 2015-01-25 10:42:48 am

2015-01-25 10:35:28 am

I don't think using party games and fighting games as a pre-show for a speedrunning marathon is the greatest idea.

Twinge

2015-01-25 10:47:05 am

Agreed - probably no good for a pre-show to have that sort of bonus stream content (though it might work fine for other types like lighter speedruns, trick videos - which could be prerecorded, interviews, etc.)

I do like this overall concept for Bonus Stream quite a bit though - pack-up timeframes can still be limiting, but if there's less stress about it running perfectly and less need for the exhausted tech folks to be on hand it seems like it could work. We could've done this during SGDQ '14 with some unique boardgaming content, for example, with newbies interested in learning the tech like myself and some more experienced folks like TestRunner around.

Cool Matty

Edit history:

Cool Matty: 2015-01-25 11:00:50 am

2015-01-25 10:59:57 am

Crawlathon WR, get down on my level.

Quote from AMVX:

While I agree that overall the event could be argued as a success - did you really have it under control? Cause it definitely doesn't seem like it was for a while there, saying you were running out of time leading into the event and fixing things the middle of it. Donation trackers going down in the middle of the marathon, stream crashes, people saying they couldn't find staff...

These are things that happen every event for various, ever changing reasons. Even giant events, like The International, is not flawless. The only one that is unfortunate is running out of time.

And staff wasn't missing, those were just complaints about how the registration desk was handled mid-week.

ESA does not have to supply equipment and material for 1000 people. That's why. We had close to 40 boxes worth of new equipment/materials (most with smaller boxes inside) that all had to be opened and sorted. Then 6 PCs had to be built. An audio gear rack had to be put together. A console rack had to be put together. TVs had to be checked for quality and placed. Office supplies had to be placed. The network (we don't just have a single computer connected) had to be wired. New capture cards had to be installed. Layouts needed to be put into OBS and prepped. Audio and video cabling had to be ran. Splitters set up. Cameras set up. 2 enormous projector screens set up (this was a two-person job alone) and projectors aligned. Had to setup the final mixer layout, routing, and mic checks. We had issues where things were missing because parts we thought were ordered were not (Mike), so trips had to be ran to purchase replacements. The other rooms needed to be prepped as well, including getting equipment set up like microwaves and projectors, power cabling, etc. We had a walkaround meeting with the hotel management to discuss food, room layout changes, missing risers, etc.

Realistically we had about 2 days to do that in. The majority of the equipment arrived on a delayed moving truck about 1PM on the 2nd. I arrived 3 days early, but that was after a long drive. I picked up all the computer stuff from Mike's place and had the hotel meeting on that day.

So yeah, is that more than ESA? I dunno, it might not be, but it sure seems like it.

[quote="AMVX"]
While I agree that overall the event could be argued as a success - did you really have it under control? Cause it definitely doesn't seem like it was for a while there, saying you were running out of time leading into the event and fixing things the middle of it. Donation trackers going down in the middle of the marathon, stream crashes, people saying they couldn't find staff...[/quote]

These are things that happen every event for various, ever changing reasons. Even giant events, like The International, is not flawless. The only one that is unfortunate is running out of time.

And staff wasn't missing, those were just complaints about how the registration desk was handled mid-week.

ESA does not have to supply equipment and material for 1000 people. That's why. We had close to 40 boxes worth of new equipment/materials (most with smaller boxes inside) that all had to be opened and sorted. Then 6 PCs had to be built. An audio gear rack had to be put together. A console rack had to be put together. TVs had to be checked for quality and placed. Office supplies had to be placed. The network (we don't just have a single computer connected) had to be wired. New capture cards had to be installed. Layouts needed to be put into OBS and prepped. Audio and video cabling had to be ran. Splitters set up. Cameras set up. 2 enormous projector screens set up (this was a two-person job alone) and projectors aligned. Had to setup the final mixer layout, routing, and mic checks. We had issues where things were missing because parts we thought were ordered were not (Mike), so trips had to be ran to purchase replacements. The other rooms needed to be prepped as well, including getting equipment set up like microwaves and projectors, power cabling, etc. We had a walkaround meeting with the hotel management to discuss food, room layout changes, missing risers, etc.

Realistically we had about 2 days to do that in. The majority of the equipment arrived on a delayed moving truck about 1PM on the 2nd. I arrived 3 days early, but that was after a long drive. I picked up all the computer stuff from Mike's place and had the hotel meeting on that day.

So yeah, is that more than ESA? I dunno, it might not be, but it sure seems like it.

flatluigi

2015-01-25 11:07:22 am

Quote from Twinge:

Agreed - probably no good for a pre-show to have that sort of bonus stream content (though it might work fine for other types like lighter speedruns, trick videos - which could be prerecorded, interviews, etc.)

I do like this overall concept for Bonus Stream quite a bit though - pack-up timeframes can still be limiting, but if there's less stress about it running perfectly and less need for the exhausted tech folks to be on hand it seems like it could work. We could've done this during SGDQ '14 with some unique boardgaming content, for example, with newbies interested in learning the tech like myself and some more experienced folks like TestRunner around.

I think the main problem with making bonus stream come before GDQ is that it, well, comes before GDQ. It used to happen because the equipment was already all set up and there wasn't a rush to disband, but putting it before the marathon happens just would end up making all the setup have to happen a day or two earlier and in effect would just make the marathon start earlier.

[quote="Twinge"]Agreed - probably no good for a pre-show to have that sort of bonus stream content (though it might work fine for other types like lighter speedruns, trick videos - which could be prerecorded, interviews, etc.)

I do like this overall concept for Bonus Stream quite a bit though - pack-up timeframes can still be limiting, but if there's less stress about it running perfectly and less need for the exhausted tech folks to be on hand it seems like it could work.  We could've done this during SGDQ '14 with some unique boardgaming content, for example, with newbies interested in learning the tech like myself and some more experienced folks like TestRunner around.[/quote]

I think the main problem with making bonus stream come before GDQ is that it, well, comes before GDQ. It used to happen because the equipment was already all set up and there wasn't a rush to disband, but putting it before the marathon happens just would end up making all the setup have to happen a day or two earlier and in effect would just make the marathon start earlier.

Svenne

2015-01-25 11:13:51 am

Smörgåsbord

I think the marathon was great and it beat my wildest expectations with the donation-amount it raised. Which is also the main purpose of the marathon right?

The only problem I had was that me, Pro_JN and Druvan all got food-poisioning from the bar-food we ordered when we arrived to the venue. That is on the hotel but we pre-emptively stayed away from all the home-made breakfast from that point, only ate like apples and milk/flakes etc.

your_name_here

2015-01-25 11:59:45 am

Quote from AMVX:

Quote from your_name_here:

Quote from AMVX:

Donation comments - some of these where cringe-worthy when read out, but still better they get read out. I do feel that the donation reader should use sound judgement of what should an shouldn't be read. There were a couple of VERY inappropriate comments read out, and a couple that apparently were not read out due to one or two bad words. Just self-edit that comment slightly, if the rest of it is good. The best measure here is common sense.

Having the host filter comments on their own hasn't been very successful in the past. The donation filterers ought to assume that the host won't read the comment before reading it aloud, which is sometimes what happens. Though, sometimes the bad word is "FrankerZ," and it wouldn't exactly be devastating to have it read, and maybe the rules should be a bit more lax wrt the occasional twitch memes.

Either I am mis-understanding you a little, or you're not understanding me correctly. More likely the former. People should never assume in these scenarios, you are right on that. But if you're reading something out loud, and it's written in front of you, then you should be pre-reading it first. Not just for what it contains, but also so you don't stumble halfway cause you reach a word you don't know how to pronounce, or a comma break.

Trusting the host to filter comments doesn't work as well as having the comments be pre-approved for reading by someone else, if only simply for the fact that it's harder for two people to make a mistake simultaneously than it is for one person. The host is already reading the comments beforehand and selecting the ones that best fit the situation, but it makes their job a lot easier if they've already been filtered for appropriateness and quality. You can claim that the host is responsible when they read a bad comment, which is great for assigning blame, but it doesn't actually solve the problem.

I wasn't saying that hosts should read their comments, I'm saying that the donation station shouldn't intentionally let through comments that shouldn't, in their entirety, be read on air, because they just might be.

[quote="AMVX"][quote="your_name_here"][quote="AMVX"] [b]Donation comments[/b] - some of these where cringe-worthy when read out, but still better they get read out. I do feel that the donation reader should use sound judgement of what should an shouldn't be read. There were a couple of VERY inappropriate comments read out, and a couple that apparently were not read out due to one or two bad words. Just self-edit that comment slightly, if the rest of it is good. The best measure here is common sense.
[/quote]

Having the host filter comments on their own hasn't been very successful in the past. The donation filterers ought to assume that the host won't read the comment before reading it aloud, which is sometimes what happens. Though, sometimes the bad word is "FrankerZ," and it wouldn't exactly be devastating to have it read, and maybe the rules should be a bit more lax wrt the occasional twitch memes.[/quote]

Either I am mis-understanding you a little, or you're not understanding me correctly. More likely the former. People should never assume in these scenarios, you are right on that.  But if you're reading something out loud, and it's written in front of you, then you should be pre-reading it first. Not just for what it contains, but also so you don't stumble halfway cause you reach a word you don't know how to pronounce, or a comma break.
[/quote]

Trusting the host to filter comments doesn't work as well as having the comments be pre-approved for reading by someone else, if only simply for the fact that it's harder for two people to make a mistake simultaneously than it is for one person. The host is already reading the comments beforehand and selecting the ones that best fit the situation, but it makes their job a lot easier if they've already been filtered for appropriateness and quality. You can claim that the host is responsible when they read a bad comment, which is great for assigning blame, but it doesn't actually solve the problem.

I wasn't saying that hosts should read their comments, I'm saying that the donation station shouldn't intentionally let through comments that shouldn't, in their entirety, be read on air, because they just might be.

Countneko

Edit history:

Countneko: 2015-01-25 12:17:33 pm

2015-01-25 12:13:01 pm

Oh yeah, I'd like to add, what others have said about comments that are cancer-related...I know the charity is about preventing cancer, but it's become sort of a running issue where in the middle of a hype run you'll have a 'I lost my wife, grandmother, and uncle to cancer' comment being read. While an unfortunate story, it's completely opposite to the atmosphere of the marathon, and a mood killer. I'm not saying that these shouldn't be read at all, but after about the 4th it begins to get really depressing. It shouldn't be GDQ's job to make people aware that cancer exists and is a bad thing that kills people--the fact that we're holding the charity for the Prevent Cancer Foundation should be all we need to motivate people to donate to help get rid of cancer, and the comments should be more focused on speedruns. I'd say about a 20/80 ratio of cancer to speedruns/etc comments would work well in the future, or at least, if you're going to pick cancer comments to be read, try and pick something thought provoking, not simply any comment that says 'half my family died to cancer' because there's a ton of those. Again, I don't want to sound like I'm insensitive to their story, but all the frequent cancer comments really bring the mood down.

doicm

2015-01-25 12:49:02 pm

Regarding Molotov's post, maybe UA could make some "Tech Training with UA" videos?

dangodofthunder

2015-01-25 01:09:19 pm

Quote:

Mike and I have been primarily in charge of all prize-related tasks for the last couple of years, but we recognize that we have not been putting the amount of effort and passion that all of the prize donors and winners deserve into this because we have to focus on so much else. We made the decision to have a dedicated prize team on staff because of this, and we will do our best to ensure that prize submissions, showcases during the marathon, and shipments after the marathon will be much smoother from now on.

We know the events would not be anywhere near as successful as they are today without the awesome prizes made and donated by the community, so we are making sure to give you the attention you deserve from now on. I apologize for how lackluster we may have been with handling some of the prizes before, but the prize coordinators will definitely make sure that this won't be an issue again. The current prize coordinators are EvenSteven02 and Sent, but we may add more people to the team should the need arise.

I understand that you guys are being stretched in a number of ways, and adding more folks to the staff may be of assistance, but my donated prize was amongst a small handful of prizes that got completely overlooked. It's also alarming that I still have no idea how to reach out to Jeremy10 who won the Nerf Stryfe that I donated.

My theory for my upgraded nerf blaster was that no one had any idea at all how to explain or relay the fact that this gift was a prize package. It isn't intuitive to a gamer audience like a PS4 or a Perler or a Plushie. I spoke to Evensteven02 mentioning this issue. Sure, it's a bit of explanation to go over how it isn't a nerf blaster that's been bought off the shelf from Walmart, and how it's quite a bit more powerful and fun to work with. I totally understand that. But if all of those were the case, why was my gift accepted at all? I did offer to send the blaster and the high voltage batteries to AGDQ for a demonstration firing, and while I understand that it isn't realistic or even feasible with the chaos and long logistical tail that AGDQ has, that would have gone a long way to explain exactly what I was donating (The modified blaster is roughly 45% more powerful than its counterpart).

I would have found it less insulting for my gift to be rejected for being too hard to explain or not gaming related than for it to be accepted and simply be a line item on the donation prize to make it seem longer, despite no attention or talk being given to it all during the GDQ stream. Especially considering that there are individuals who modify the same blaster and resell it for 75 dollars plus shipping. From what I've heard, AGDQ 2015 was extremely desperate for donation prizes of any sort, but if we donate a prize, it at least deserves a mention on stream, and ideally that mention on the stream would occur during that actual donation window. I am almost certain that my donation prize, which was of relatively high value compared to others, drove absolutely no donations this year. And with that being the case, what was the point of me donating?

[quote]Mike and I have been primarily in charge of all prize-related tasks for the last couple of years, but we recognize that we have not been putting the amount of effort and passion that all of the prize donors and winners deserve into this because we have to focus on so much else. We made the decision to have a dedicated prize team on staff because of this, and we will do our best to ensure that prize submissions, showcases during the marathon, and shipments after the marathon will be much smoother from now on.

We know the events would not be anywhere near as successful as they are today without the awesome prizes made and donated by the community, so we are making sure to give you the attention you deserve from now on. I apologize for how lackluster we may have been with handling some of the prizes before, but the prize coordinators will definitely make sure that this won't be an issue again. The current prize coordinators are EvenSteven02 and Sent, but we may add more people to the team should the need arise.[/quote]

I understand that you guys are being stretched in a number of ways, and adding more folks to the staff may be of assistance, but my donated prize was amongst a small handful of prizes that got completely overlooked. It's also alarming that I still have no idea how to reach out to Jeremy10 who won the Nerf Stryfe that I donated.

My theory for my upgraded nerf blaster was that no one had any idea at all how to explain or relay the fact that this gift was a prize package. It isn't intuitive to a gamer audience like a PS4 or a Perler or a Plushie. I spoke to Evensteven02 mentioning this issue. Sure, it's a bit of explanation to go over how it isn't a nerf blaster that's been bought off the shelf from Walmart, and how it's quite a bit more powerful and fun to work with. I totally understand that. But if all of those were the case, why was my gift accepted at all? I did offer to send the blaster and the high voltage batteries to AGDQ for a demonstration firing, and while I understand that it isn't realistic or even feasible with the chaos and long logistical tail that AGDQ has, that would have gone a long way to explain exactly what I was donating (The modified blaster is roughly 45% more powerful than its counterpart).

I would have found it less insulting for my gift to be rejected for being too hard to explain or not gaming related than for it to be accepted and simply be a line item on the donation prize to make it seem longer, despite no attention or talk being given to it all during the GDQ stream. Especially considering that there are individuals who modify the same blaster and resell it for 75 dollars plus shipping. From what I've heard, AGDQ 2015 was extremely desperate for donation prizes of any sort, but if we donate a prize, it at least deserves a mention on stream, and ideally that mention on the stream would occur during that actual donation window. I am almost certain that my donation prize, which was of relatively high value compared to others, drove absolutely no donations this year. And with that being the case, what was the point of me donating?

Spacekop

2015-01-25 01:39:59 pm

Quote from flatluigi:

I think the main problem with making bonus stream come before GDQ is that it, well, comes before GDQ. It used to happen because the equipment was already all set up and there wasn't a rush to disband, but putting it before the marathon happens just would end up making all the setup have to happen a day or two earlier and in effect would just make the marathon start earlier.

This wouldn't be the end of the world and would increase the chances of the actual marathon starting on time. As the event grows, punctuality and organization get more important.

As a tech station volunteer, I have to say the training needs work. My shift was almost a week after the start of the marathon, and the training was a scattershot knowledge dump of absolutely everything going on with the tech. No organization or structure to the presentation. I was a junior tech, so my responsibilities wound up limited to adjusting levels. Specific responsibilities for tech volunteers would allow for targeted an structured training, some sort of on-site printed reference or cheat sheet would fill in the gaps. If you're going to train people in absolutely everything, it's got to be taken more seriously. Run through a list of common scenarios and actually perform the steps. Get the volunteers involved with setup. It'll go faster and they'll gain better working knowledge.

[quote="flatluigi"]I think the main problem with making bonus stream come before GDQ is that it, well, comes before GDQ. It used to happen because the equipment was already all set up and there wasn't a rush to disband, but putting it before the marathon happens just would end up making all the setup have to happen a day or two earlier and in effect would just make the marathon start earlier.[/quote]
This wouldn't be the end of the world and would increase the chances of the actual marathon starting on time. As the event grows, punctuality and organization get more important.

As a tech station volunteer, I have to say the training needs work. My shift was almost a week after the start of the marathon, and the training was a scattershot knowledge dump of absolutely everything going on with the tech. No organization or structure to the presentation. I was a junior tech, so my responsibilities wound up limited to adjusting levels. Specific responsibilities for tech volunteers would allow for targeted an structured training, some sort of on-site printed reference or cheat sheet would fill in the gaps. If you're going to train people in absolutely everything, it's got to be taken more seriously. Run through a list of common scenarios and actually perform the steps. Get the volunteers involved with setup. It'll go faster and they'll gain better working knowledge.

Cool Matty

2015-01-25 01:43:59 pm

Crawlathon WR, get down on my level.

Quote from Spacekop:

This wouldn't be the end of the world and would increase the chances of the actual marathon starting on time. As the event grows, punctuality and organization get more important.

I'm not sure why you think that having the marathon start earlier would make it easier, regardless of what is shown. That just shifts the deadline around, it doesn't make it any easier. In fact, it just means tech crew and volunteers have to take even more time off of work to show up and setup.

Spacekop

2015-01-25 01:56:52 pm

I meant that if you target farther in advance of the scheduled actual marathon start time, you increase the chances that the marathon proper will be ready to start on time. It does shift the deadline around for finishing preparations, but the penalty for missing the earlier deadline is whatever who cares it's expendable bonus content. Maybe it streams on a different secondary channel or something? I'm not suggesting you do this if it won't work logistically, especially since, as you say, people would have to take more time off work. I'm just saying the idea has benefits.