Butters, I don't know if it's quite that simple. If the two runners are clearly in different "tiers", then yes, the faster runner should win. But if the WR holder has a 32:30 and is as dull as dirt to listen to, and an extremely entertaining runner has a 33:15 or a 33:30, and no one is within two minutes of either of those two... then maybe we should seriously consider the slower runner. Is the average viewer going to know what the WR time is? How often was the WR time asked for on stream?
SDA Forum
I just think it's a little more complicated than that. Degrees of insufferableness and disparity in skill should be considered. If the WR holder has a hair trigger temper and is prone to explode into a litany of vulgarities or physical violence, then we need to keep him away from GDQ's regardless of their skill.
Honestly? I didn't. But nice job for trying.
But to slap blanket rules down is probably a bad idea. I think degrees of separation along with degrees of commentary skill and ability to make the run interesting need to be considered. Sure, if we're talking scrub tier vs. pro tier runners, but if we're talking about small discrepancies in time, it'd be ridiculous for us to say "Look, I know your commentary is much better, and you have a much larger following, but the other guy has a time 2.5 seconds faster so we're letting him run."
But to slap blanket rules down is probably a bad idea. I think degrees of separation along with degrees of commentary skill and ability to make the run interesting need to be considered. Sure, if we're talking scrub tier vs. pro tier runners, but if we're talking about small discrepancies in time, it'd be ridiculous for us to say "Look, I know your commentary is much better, and you have a much larger following, but the other guy has a time 2.5 seconds faster so we're letting him run."
@tiburonCS
wanted to reply to things some other people had said as well as offer some of my own impressions
context: i watched the first half of the marathon at home, arrived on wednesday and stayed till the end of the main marathon.
stream: people had complaints about it but it was so much better than past marathons. the first time a GDQ has actually had a layout befitting the scale of the event imo.
venue: the venue was great. this was the first marathon I didn't have the skin peeling off my lips/nose, wasn't sitting in my hotel room shivering, wasn't accosted by disgusting smells, and there were in general either a lot less disgusting people or they kept their hygiene etc in check. having a small runner-only practice room next to the stream room is great, keep that idea imo. no food places nearby was a bummer, and we could have used actual doors on the bathrooms, but everything else was great. i liked the fact that you could literally walk from the casual/tournament room to the first floor hotel rooms and be right there hanging out with your friends. posting up near the elevators and chatting with people was super fun and not ridiculously crowded unlike last year.
people: GDQs are getting more inclusive, not just to the non-white guy demographic but also the non-huge nerd demographic, unlike some viewers who feel that GDQ is somehow "losing its charm" (its unkempt smelly charm) i'm a big fan of this trend and hope it continues.
rule enforcement seemed to be a lot more even-handed yet firm, i feel like GDQ staff is developing the right touch for this kind of thing.
also unlike many stream monsters/internet commenters i like the rule against attention-getting costumes and crap that's not part of the run. the runner did not practice however many hours for the chat to spam about some guy wearing a ~wacky cosplay~ two rows behind him for the entirety of the run. it's really rude imo.
yelling 'hoip' (hype): annoying, not hype, infact super weird. i could say more but basically, yelling "hype" does not make the event hype, it comes off as some kind of nerd mating ritual. pls stop
depressing donation comments: i appreciate that people want to remember their loved ones and the charity is for cancer prevention, but it has long since gotten to the point that it detracts from the spirit of the marathon. this is an event where speedrunners get to see their friends once every 6/12 months, it's raising money for a good cause. it's not a dirge, and there should never be 3-4 'death from cancer' comments read out in a row, it's really unfitting in the middle of a run and nobody knows how to react.
PLUS: this money is going towards 'preventing cancer' not 'curing cancer' and for some reason no one seems to realize that. pet peeve
donation readers: much better voices than past marathons, i appreciated how everyone was very clear and could enunciate. however it was hard to hear them from the couch area, apparently the speakers were turned the wrong way or something? i thought this wasn't an issue anymore.
sorry if this came off as no fun allowed, i had a lot of fun and was really happy to be there. imo best marathon yet.
context: i watched the first half of the marathon at home, arrived on wednesday and stayed till the end of the main marathon.
stream: people had complaints about it but it was so much better than past marathons. the first time a GDQ has actually had a layout befitting the scale of the event imo.
venue: the venue was great. this was the first marathon I didn't have the skin peeling off my lips/nose, wasn't sitting in my hotel room shivering, wasn't accosted by disgusting smells, and there were in general either a lot less disgusting people or they kept their hygiene etc in check. having a small runner-only practice room next to the stream room is great, keep that idea imo. no food places nearby was a bummer, and we could have used actual doors on the bathrooms, but everything else was great. i liked the fact that you could literally walk from the casual/tournament room to the first floor hotel rooms and be right there hanging out with your friends. posting up near the elevators and chatting with people was super fun and not ridiculously crowded unlike last year.
people: GDQs are getting more inclusive, not just to the non-white guy demographic but also the non-huge nerd demographic, unlike some viewers who feel that GDQ is somehow "losing its charm" (its unkempt smelly charm) i'm a big fan of this trend and hope it continues.
rule enforcement seemed to be a lot more even-handed yet firm, i feel like GDQ staff is developing the right touch for this kind of thing.
also unlike many stream monsters/internet commenters i like the rule against attention-getting costumes and crap that's not part of the run. the runner did not practice however many hours for the chat to spam about some guy wearing a ~wacky cosplay~ two rows behind him for the entirety of the run. it's really rude imo.
yelling 'hoip' (hype): annoying, not hype, infact super weird. i could say more but basically, yelling "hype" does not make the event hype, it comes off as some kind of nerd mating ritual. pls stop
depressing donation comments: i appreciate that people want to remember their loved ones and the charity is for cancer prevention, but it has long since gotten to the point that it detracts from the spirit of the marathon. this is an event where speedrunners get to see their friends once every 6/12 months, it's raising money for a good cause. it's not a dirge, and there should never be 3-4 'death from cancer' comments read out in a row, it's really unfitting in the middle of a run and nobody knows how to react.
PLUS: this money is going towards 'preventing cancer' not 'curing cancer' and for some reason no one seems to realize that. pet peeve
donation readers: much better voices than past marathons, i appreciated how everyone was very clear and could enunciate. however it was hard to hear them from the couch area, apparently the speakers were turned the wrong way or something? i thought this wasn't an issue anymore.
sorry if this came off as no fun allowed, i had a lot of fun and was really happy to be there. imo best marathon yet.
The obvious one: Food situation sucked. Only a Deli was within walking distance and they closed at 4pm. It's a good deli, just not viable. The hotel food was inadequate. I ordered the $10 medium pizza and it was literally a bottom of the barrel frozen pizza. The food shuttle typically will drop you off and return in an hour. It's just not a fun thing when alot of the time you want to eat with your speedfriends and you have to pick and choose based on how big the shuttle is and who already ate.
Also one other thing is that the few vending machines in the building seemed to only have been restocked once or twice the entire week.
Another item: Having a main hallway intersect with the Floor 1 room corridor (that same corridor actually is a shortcut to the marathon room) is a really bad combination for a 24 hour event such as GDQs. More than once at about 3-5 AM a super loud group of people go strolling down the hallways absolutely killing the possibility of uninterrupted sleep on the bottom floor.
The hotel staff were really nice, but the hotel is simply not well suited for GDQ events.
The next item is about being in the small audience directly behind the runner. I understand the constraints and the reason why the main audience room is not used anymore. My complaint is the lack of support for extra screens in the stream audience. A majority of the runs that I watched from the smaller audience were just really hard to see because either the screen was too small or just too many heads to look through. There was at one point a monitor erected ontop of a stand, and it made a world of difference on the one run that I got to see it used. My suggestion is to have the auxiliary monitor available to the small audience at all times.
Another obvious point: The casual room was HOT, like probably 15-20 degrees warmer than the hall just outside it. I'm aware this was an issue with the AC being broken. But man that was pretty terrible.
Also one other thing is that the few vending machines in the building seemed to only have been restocked once or twice the entire week.
Another item: Having a main hallway intersect with the Floor 1 room corridor (that same corridor actually is a shortcut to the marathon room) is a really bad combination for a 24 hour event such as GDQs. More than once at about 3-5 AM a super loud group of people go strolling down the hallways absolutely killing the possibility of uninterrupted sleep on the bottom floor.
The hotel staff were really nice, but the hotel is simply not well suited for GDQ events.
The next item is about being in the small audience directly behind the runner. I understand the constraints and the reason why the main audience room is not used anymore. My complaint is the lack of support for extra screens in the stream audience. A majority of the runs that I watched from the smaller audience were just really hard to see because either the screen was too small or just too many heads to look through. There was at one point a monitor erected ontop of a stand, and it made a world of difference on the one run that I got to see it used. My suggestion is to have the auxiliary monitor available to the small audience at all times.
Another obvious point: The casual room was HOT, like probably 15-20 degrees warmer than the hall just outside it. I'm aware this was an issue with the AC being broken. But man that was pretty terrible.
Precursor
Quote from superrobin:
please be more explicit + transparent about how much of what were donating is put towards you staff. So we can see if its worth it. Thanks
I can't tell if you're being serious, because it's always been made completely clear that 100% of donations go straight to PCF. Staff gets nothing of it.
Hockey enthusiast
Quote from KennyMan666:
I can't tell if you're being serious, because it's always been made completely clear that 100% of donations go straight to PCF. Staff gets nothing of it.
I think superrobin means he wants to know how much the staff are being payed in total. Not individual numbers. Because that's already been made clear that it won't be shared due to privacy concerns.
I still have not fully understood if the staff are being payed by PCF or Games Done Quick LLC.
I don't really want to lend credence to the argument (because the argument annoys me), so let me preface this post by saying that I am fully comfortable with the "status quo" as concerns donations and PCF and whatnot.
It is indeed true that 100% of donations go straight to PCF. It is also true (straight from the mouth of Mike Uyama) that PCF pays one or more organizers an unspecified fee (which I respect the decision and right of those organizers to keep private, and do not expect them to publicize it) for their services in organizing the event and raising the money for PCF. And I'm perfectly fine with this; IMO, it stopped being objectively reasonable for all the people involved in GDQs to put on the events entirely gratis out of their own pocket about the same time the events stopped being held in people's private homes.
Let's face it, in the real world, things cost money. It costs (lots of) money to rent out a large amount of a hotel's convention space for over a week. It costs every member of staff (lots of) money to take off as many as 10 days off of their day jobs twice a year to attend these events and make sure they go off as smoothly as possible (and frankly, they're lucky that they even _can_ get that magnitude of time off every year to run the events). It was more reasonable to conduct things on a purely volunteer basis when the marathons were 72 hours long, or less, but a full week is really pushing it. It costs (lots of) money to have all the TVs and consoles and PCs and cameras and all other equipment necessary to put on a good show available. In a perfect world, sure, these things would come for free, but we don't live in a perfect world.
I'd also like to note before anyone brings it up that PCF is hardly unique as a charity for subsidizing the cost of holding a marathon; I'm reasonably certain that MSF paid some or all of the venue reservation costs for SGDQ in recent years (and will continue to do so). By the same token, though it wasn't a GDQ marathon, I wouldn't be surprised if JDRF paid some or all of those same costs for Crystals for Life.
0% overhead is a nice ideal, but it's in no way realistic for any event on a scale bigger than about "48 hours in Uyama's basement with about 10 people," or about what the original CGDQ was.
It is indeed true that 100% of donations go straight to PCF. It is also true (straight from the mouth of Mike Uyama) that PCF pays one or more organizers an unspecified fee (which I respect the decision and right of those organizers to keep private, and do not expect them to publicize it) for their services in organizing the event and raising the money for PCF. And I'm perfectly fine with this; IMO, it stopped being objectively reasonable for all the people involved in GDQs to put on the events entirely gratis out of their own pocket about the same time the events stopped being held in people's private homes.
Let's face it, in the real world, things cost money. It costs (lots of) money to rent out a large amount of a hotel's convention space for over a week. It costs every member of staff (lots of) money to take off as many as 10 days off of their day jobs twice a year to attend these events and make sure they go off as smoothly as possible (and frankly, they're lucky that they even _can_ get that magnitude of time off every year to run the events). It was more reasonable to conduct things on a purely volunteer basis when the marathons were 72 hours long, or less, but a full week is really pushing it. It costs (lots of) money to have all the TVs and consoles and PCs and cameras and all other equipment necessary to put on a good show available. In a perfect world, sure, these things would come for free, but we don't live in a perfect world.
I'd also like to note before anyone brings it up that PCF is hardly unique as a charity for subsidizing the cost of holding a marathon; I'm reasonably certain that MSF paid some or all of the venue reservation costs for SGDQ in recent years (and will continue to do so). By the same token, though it wasn't a GDQ marathon, I wouldn't be surprised if JDRF paid some or all of those same costs for Crystals for Life.
0% overhead is a nice ideal, but it's in no way realistic for any event on a scale bigger than about "48 hours in Uyama's basement with about 10 people," or about what the original CGDQ was.
Reiska, what I think it boils down to is that GDQ's are currently at this awkward crossroads between being a "Basement" event and a "Convention" event. The vibe, methodology, and what we were able to do when it was just held in someone's basement and everyone slept in sleeping bags are completely different than what we can do now, when a thousand plus folks want to attend. You're completely correct that it's impossible to set up an event of this size and this magnitude with no costs... unless someone owns a ****ing hotel or climate controlled warehouse, and even then they'll have opportunity costs. If PCF and DWB are willing to pay for the costs for us to get the materials and resources we need to throw these events, we should take it every day and twice on Sunday.
I wonder though, if PCF and DWB can maybe give GDQ a single number... they don't owe us each individual line item, but there's definitely a lot of folks who would want to know how much more these charities have to work with thanks to our efforts. On the other hand, if we raise say, 2 million and PCF reports back they have 1.75 million available for future projects... there's going to be hell raised by the community that doesn't understand economics or the cost of doing business. Maybe make it available for those curious, but it doesn't have to be shouted from the rooftops.
I think there's probably a few in the community who aren't thrilled with the overall direction and size of these events. I mean, what, a thousand folks came to AGDQ 2015? Try fitting that into.... anyone's basement. And I don't really fault those who are unhappy about it... it's a different event now. Things that were done before simply aren't viable now, and I'm not necessarily going to say that it's bad to be upset about that.
I wonder though, if PCF and DWB can maybe give GDQ a single number... they don't owe us each individual line item, but there's definitely a lot of folks who would want to know how much more these charities have to work with thanks to our efforts. On the other hand, if we raise say, 2 million and PCF reports back they have 1.75 million available for future projects... there's going to be hell raised by the community that doesn't understand economics or the cost of doing business. Maybe make it available for those curious, but it doesn't have to be shouted from the rooftops.
I think there's probably a few in the community who aren't thrilled with the overall direction and size of these events. I mean, what, a thousand folks came to AGDQ 2015? Try fitting that into.... anyone's basement. And I don't really fault those who are unhappy about it... it's a different event now. Things that were done before simply aren't viable now, and I'm not necessarily going to say that it's bad to be upset about that.
Even those figures ($2 million raised, $1.75 million available) aren't unreasonable. Mike said a while back in another thread (don't have the link handy, sorry) that AGDQ 2014's expense to fundraising ratio was better than 1:7, which according to him was an industry standard. (That is, $1 spent on overhead for every $7 raised. And sure enough, your numbers are exactly 1:7.)
I can definitely agree with the rest there. There are some people in this thread and elsewhere who are disappointed with the direction GDQ has evolved in, which is inevitable, reasonable and fine. The only advice I can really give them is: if you want to have a "strictly for fun" speedrun marathon event with a casual laid-back atmosphere, organize one! It seems self-evident that there is demand for such an event.
I can definitely agree with the rest there. There are some people in this thread and elsewhere who are disappointed with the direction GDQ has evolved in, which is inevitable, reasonable and fine. The only advice I can really give them is: if you want to have a "strictly for fun" speedrun marathon event with a casual laid-back atmosphere, organize one! It seems self-evident that there is demand for such an event.
Picking a Game's Runner In the Case of Multiple Submitters.
So I saw this conversation, and it's important to remember that when there are multiple runners submitting the same game, the final decision generally comes down to the runners themselves. The process involves conversation with the event organizer, the runners, and an attempt to accommodate everyone. There have been some strict decisions, and those tend to come down to time (For example, iateyourpie needed a certain PB in Mega Man X-2 to be allowed to race at SGDQ 2014). The runners have the first swing at coming up with a solution when it comes to multiple runners.
Though time is still incredibly important, and if there's a significant difference in time the faster runner will run the game (and often other runners that are far behind will bow out on their own). For example, I submitted They Bleed Pixels at the same time Squidclaw did, and Squidclaw blows me out of the water. I volunteered myself out, and even if I hadn't, I would have been removed unless I could somehow show I'm competitive with his times. Something similar happened at SGDQ 2014 with Half-Life 2, where the HL2 community agreed to have Gocnak do the run. This is despite the fact that during games submission the world record was in flux due to a new skip.
We feel this is a way that keeps the solution primarily within a community, and can also lead to some well-planned commentary (since there are now multiple runners that run a game interested in attending a GDQ).
So I saw this conversation, and it's important to remember that when there are multiple runners submitting the same game, the final decision generally comes down to the runners themselves. The process involves conversation with the event organizer, the runners, and an attempt to accommodate everyone. There have been some strict decisions, and those tend to come down to time (For example, iateyourpie needed a certain PB in Mega Man X-2 to be allowed to race at SGDQ 2014). The runners have the first swing at coming up with a solution when it comes to multiple runners.
Though time is still incredibly important, and if there's a significant difference in time the faster runner will run the game (and often other runners that are far behind will bow out on their own). For example, I submitted They Bleed Pixels at the same time Squidclaw did, and Squidclaw blows me out of the water. I volunteered myself out, and even if I hadn't, I would have been removed unless I could somehow show I'm competitive with his times. Something similar happened at SGDQ 2014 with Half-Life 2, where the HL2 community agreed to have Gocnak do the run. This is despite the fact that during games submission the world record was in flux due to a new skip.
We feel this is a way that keeps the solution primarily within a community, and can also lead to some well-planned commentary (since there are now multiple runners that run a game interested in attending a GDQ).
Literally speaking... literally...
One thing hat really struck me as a bad thing (and since a few GDQs back for that matter) is how donations were sometimes offered if a runner failed to do one thing or another. In my oppinion this kind of thing needs to stop. The main goal of a runner is to be as good as he/she can be, which effectively means purposely denying the charity money when he/she does not fail.
I personally think such 'quick incentives' should be made if a runner gets something hard done, which would show the runners strength at the game and would feel more rewarding for the run itself, none the less bring some quick money to the charity.
I know there were many such incentives which incorporated the runner getting something done, but quite a lot involved the runner failing something which he/she obviously didn't want to do, denying the charity money in the end.
I personally think such 'quick incentives' should be made if a runner gets something hard done, which would show the runners strength at the game and would feel more rewarding for the run itself, none the less bring some quick money to the charity.
I know there were many such incentives which incorporated the runner getting something done, but quite a lot involved the runner failing something which he/she obviously didn't want to do, denying the charity money in the end.
SEGA Junkie
Quote from Harima:
One thing hat really struck me as a bad thing (and since a few GDQs back for that matter) is how donations were sometimes offered if a runner failed to do one thing or another. In my oppinion this kind of thing needs to stop. The main goal of a runner is to be as good as he/she can be, which effectively means purposely denying the charity money when he/she does not fail.
I kind of see what you're getting at, but I don't think it's "denying the charity money" in the sense you suspect. I'm going to use my own experience to illustrate:
I've never known a runner to want to, or purposely put in, a bad performance at a marathon. I'm sure at some point I've said something like "I'll put in $20 if I fail this trick" off the cuff, particularly if it's a really simple one that'll make me look stupid if I fail it, but not doing so doesn't necessarily mean that I won't donate that money later for something else. I, and I imagine most other attendees, used to have a budget that I planned to donate at various points throughout, either at particular points for prizes I wanted or in response to some incredible occurrence. If I had to put in for something like that, I'd simply take that out of my kitty for later.
You could make an argument that the language around it is unnecessarily negative, but I think that's largely a non-issue. Nobody's saying the runner is terrible if they make such a mistake, mostly it's pretty humourous. Hell, those kind of moments get enshrined in our blooper videos!
from red to blue
yo guys, thanks a lot for all the HYPE and thanks not too much for the HOIP. but really great event. big shoutouts to whoever played slamjams, chat was somehow less awful than before despite growing and growing
i thought the race layouts for 2p and 4p were p bad (the 3p ones were okay though). the game streams being separated by the camera made me put in effort to see who's where whilst last year's was really easy to see the difference between the runs and a few of my college friends brought that point up too when i was talking to them about agdq. for the 4p runs this was even harder with my eyes constantly dancing round and it ended up being stressful to do so. i thought that it'd be changed after the previous 4p super metroid race which i found really hard to follow. also for races more commentary like the ninja gaiden relay race please, that was so good in contrast to sotn's and idk if most people could follow it without already knowing the run since i had some trouble following and i'm fairly knowledgeable about sotn runs.
god bless ms paint. anyways, something like this with the game part taking the full vertical space so you can put the runners' names at where they are or something, maybe flip it around or something but i find this way easier to keep track of. thanks again for the great event, so good!
i thought the race layouts for 2p and 4p were p bad (the 3p ones were okay though). the game streams being separated by the camera made me put in effort to see who's where whilst last year's was really easy to see the difference between the runs and a few of my college friends brought that point up too when i was talking to them about agdq. for the 4p runs this was even harder with my eyes constantly dancing round and it ended up being stressful to do so. i thought that it'd be changed after the previous 4p super metroid race which i found really hard to follow. also for races more commentary like the ninja gaiden relay race please, that was so good in contrast to sotn's and idk if most people could follow it without already knowing the run since i had some trouble following and i'm fairly knowledgeable about sotn runs.
god bless ms paint. anyways, something like this with the game part taking the full vertical space so you can put the runners' names at where they are or something, maybe flip it around or something but i find this way easier to keep track of. thanks again for the great event, so good!
<(^_^)>
Actually one more thing I do want to bring up
There's been some criticism about how the schedule was laid out. More specifically, I'm talking about the f-zero block. While the runs were overall really good, I feel that having all the f-zero games side by side was a bad scheduling idea, considering they're all racing games with some overlap (visually speaking), and of course ending on a really long game (relatively speaking) compared to the rest. This left a lot of the viewers rather exhausted and burnt out on f-zero. I think it would've been better to keep an eye out for these things to split them properly, perhaps in this case, have f-zero SNES and climax together while having X and GX together, in a different block. This was well done with 2d and 3d sonics, for example, since the 2d and 3d sonic games play pretty differently from each other.
There's been some criticism about how the schedule was laid out. More specifically, I'm talking about the f-zero block. While the runs were overall really good, I feel that having all the f-zero games side by side was a bad scheduling idea, considering they're all racing games with some overlap (visually speaking), and of course ending on a really long game (relatively speaking) compared to the rest. This left a lot of the viewers rather exhausted and burnt out on f-zero. I think it would've been better to keep an eye out for these things to split them properly, perhaps in this case, have f-zero SNES and climax together while having X and GX together, in a different block. This was well done with 2d and 3d sonics, for example, since the 2d and 3d sonic games play pretty differently from each other.
Owner of World 9 Gaming...kupo!
Hey everyone,
I was the guy from World 9 Gaming behind the table in the practice room all week. Wanted to say I had a blast helping out and meeting you all. I don't know yet whether they'll have World 9 back for future GDQs (I hope they will!) but I thought I'd post some thoughts on the practice room.
Someone mentioned how most of the SNESs did not have the tabs removed to play japanese carts. That is a simple fix that I will have done by next time (sorry for the oversight). There were a few other items that people needed that I didn't think to bring such as the discs for the gamecube gameboy players and famicom consoles. I will be sure to bring those next time along with anything else you request.
Cable management became a bit of an issue with the rats nest behind the TVs. I spent some time each day cleaning things up so it didn't get too out of hand but I know there were a couple instances where a power strip got bumped and games were reset and I wanted to apologize again if I caused that for anyone. At least we never blew a circuit!
It was really cold in that room almost all week. I made multiple requests to have that adjusted but it never seemed to make a difference, sorry!
Internet for the practice room PCs never really happened. There were a few reasons for that from what I understand: concern about taking bandwidth from the stream and complications with the networking devices that were in there. I think the people that could have fixed it were too busy with keeping the stream working and people seemed to get by without it. Huge shout out to Honorable Jay for helping out with PC issues all week and being awesome in general.
I never heard any complaints but I do apologize for not having a person at the staff table at all times. I was supposed to have a couple more people with me from World 9 but it ended up being just me.
The TVs I brought worked well for the most part. I was glad to hear people say they liked the smaller TVs; I've always thought they work well for events like these since you are sitting 2 feet from the screen anyway. Some people had gripes with many of them being RF only and I understand it's not ideal but I brought the cables for most consoles to be able to use them. I wasn't always able to be in the room to help people get their consoles hooked up however.
I guess that's all I have for now. If you have any other suggestions I'd love to hear them!
I was the guy from World 9 Gaming behind the table in the practice room all week. Wanted to say I had a blast helping out and meeting you all. I don't know yet whether they'll have World 9 back for future GDQs (I hope they will!) but I thought I'd post some thoughts on the practice room.
Someone mentioned how most of the SNESs did not have the tabs removed to play japanese carts. That is a simple fix that I will have done by next time (sorry for the oversight). There were a few other items that people needed that I didn't think to bring such as the discs for the gamecube gameboy players and famicom consoles. I will be sure to bring those next time along with anything else you request.
Cable management became a bit of an issue with the rats nest behind the TVs. I spent some time each day cleaning things up so it didn't get too out of hand but I know there were a couple instances where a power strip got bumped and games were reset and I wanted to apologize again if I caused that for anyone. At least we never blew a circuit!
It was really cold in that room almost all week. I made multiple requests to have that adjusted but it never seemed to make a difference, sorry!
Internet for the practice room PCs never really happened. There were a few reasons for that from what I understand: concern about taking bandwidth from the stream and complications with the networking devices that were in there. I think the people that could have fixed it were too busy with keeping the stream working and people seemed to get by without it. Huge shout out to Honorable Jay for helping out with PC issues all week and being awesome in general.
I never heard any complaints but I do apologize for not having a person at the staff table at all times. I was supposed to have a couple more people with me from World 9 but it ended up being just me.
The TVs I brought worked well for the most part. I was glad to hear people say they liked the smaller TVs; I've always thought they work well for events like these since you are sitting 2 feet from the screen anyway. Some people had gripes with many of them being RF only and I understand it's not ideal but I brought the cables for most consoles to be able to use them. I wasn't always able to be in the room to help people get their consoles hooked up however.
I guess that's all I have for now. If you have any other suggestions I'd love to hear them!
SPEEDruns not SAFEruns
If someone brings up commentary over speed they are obviously in the wrong forum. The fastest run should win out EVERY SINGLE TIME. Not everyone has the best commentary in the world, but that's what the couch is for. If you do amazing commentary and are a part of the community don't be butt hurt if your run didn't get in, come and help your community be showcased. I know money is obviously a large factor in the way things happen now and rightfully so. The amount coming in is substantial and needs to be a factor when determining the schedule. However, and I'm sure lots of runners would agree with me, the day that we begin choosing commentary over speed is the day I walk away from SDA forever.
Regarding the whole sub-only thing. Personally, I seriously dislike is and will be advocating to use it as little as possible. However, there are certain situations when sub-only is required for technical or social reasons. This whole event, I have never been inclined to turn on sub only, chat servers were stable enough, chat was alot less toxic, there were fewer cringe moments compared to other events and so on.
This is a subject that will probably have to be agreed on by the moderators community, but a general policy on sub only would be nice. I have seen several suggestions (I wont go back to find the exact quotes):
- Promote the runner and whatever he shouts out at the end of the run, perhaps go sub only for that.
- During interviews. These have a big potential to be one of the "cringe" moments, since there is no game to comment on and runners dont seem prepared for the questions (How about preparing them by handing them the questions beforehand?)
- In the rare occasion that chat is unfixable:
- Theres an issue with twitch chat where, if it goes too fast, it starts delaying messages as to not crash the clients. This means timeouts are delayed aswell, meaning messages are deleted after they have been on stream for a while, this promotes copy-pasta spam in a massive manner, aswell as general toxicity, for spammers dont see those being immediately timed out and recon they have "free reign" - This is a common issue with which I deal on a near-daily basis. I hope to be able to work these issues out with the twitch chat engineers and bot developers that I am in contact with, I will have to see how the whole subject develops until SGDQ
- Whenever there is someone on camera that is not a white male... >_> There is little we can do here but to go sub only, Anonymity+Large amounts of people+The need to stick out, one way or another messes with people sadly.
In the end of the day, things will have to be decided on a case-by-case basis - Problem is, who is in charge? There is a ridiculous number of edge cases in which either decision could be considered wrong, and decisions have to be made on the fly, with less than a minute of delay. It is more of an organization problem than anything else and we will probably have to go into deeper detail about it before SGDQ in some kind of moderator-meeting. I had a lenghty talk with Cool Matty a few days back and theres some changes coming up™ on twitch that might help us with alot of things in the future, again, we will probably have to wait for how things develop.
On an unrelated topic, I was wondering if chat mods are considered "volunteers" aswell? more of a cosmetic thing, but I was interested anyways
This is a subject that will probably have to be agreed on by the moderators community, but a general policy on sub only would be nice. I have seen several suggestions (I wont go back to find the exact quotes):
- Promote the runner and whatever he shouts out at the end of the run, perhaps go sub only for that.
- During interviews. These have a big potential to be one of the "cringe" moments, since there is no game to comment on and runners dont seem prepared for the questions (How about preparing them by handing them the questions beforehand?)
- In the rare occasion that chat is unfixable:
- Theres an issue with twitch chat where, if it goes too fast, it starts delaying messages as to not crash the clients. This means timeouts are delayed aswell, meaning messages are deleted after they have been on stream for a while, this promotes copy-pasta spam in a massive manner, aswell as general toxicity, for spammers dont see those being immediately timed out and recon they have "free reign" - This is a common issue with which I deal on a near-daily basis. I hope to be able to work these issues out with the twitch chat engineers and bot developers that I am in contact with, I will have to see how the whole subject develops until SGDQ
- Whenever there is someone on camera that is not a white male... >_> There is little we can do here but to go sub only, Anonymity+Large amounts of people+The need to stick out, one way or another messes with people sadly.
In the end of the day, things will have to be decided on a case-by-case basis - Problem is, who is in charge? There is a ridiculous number of edge cases in which either decision could be considered wrong, and decisions have to be made on the fly, with less than a minute of delay. It is more of an organization problem than anything else and we will probably have to go into deeper detail about it before SGDQ in some kind of moderator-meeting. I had a lenghty talk with Cool Matty a few days back and theres some changes coming up™ on twitch that might help us with alot of things in the future, again, we will probably have to wait for how things develop.
On an unrelated topic, I was wondering if chat mods are considered "volunteers" aswell? more of a cosmetic thing, but I was interested anyways
Edit history:
Napstrpsx: 2015-01-26 04:44:03 pm
Napstrpsx: 2015-01-26 04:43:43 pm
Napstrpsx: 2015-01-26 04:43:37 pm
Napstrpsx: 2015-01-26 04:36:47 pm
Napstrpsx: 2015-01-26 04:36:27 pm
Napstrpsx: 2015-01-26 04:36:22 pm
Never attended a GDQ, thoughts from a stream/VOD viewer only-
Before offering constructive criticism, you all definitely deserve positive feedback! Can't imagine just how much really goes into organizing these. Thank you for putting together such a wonderful event.
While I don't have anything new to contribute, Want to hit on the big ones for me personally:
1) Whatever you do for future GDQ's to patch up the downtime, hopefully there will at least be music on deck. Don't underestimate the tremendous difference, especially for the casual viewer, of 20+ seconds of dead air vs. Funky the Main Monkey or some hilarious remix playing. Canned videos (even if related to speedrunning) are OK, but... I think music/donation comments are much better because it feels organic. Which makes viewers much more inclined to leave the stream open until the next run starts.
2) The stream layout for 2P races looked inefficient. I think the 2 screen captures should be side-by-side w/ little spacing, cam footage in one corner and rotating sponsor/prize stuff in the other.
3) The couch/crowd cam threw lots of us for a loop. I was really confused when I saw the Tropical Freeze opener because it made it look like that's all the room there was.
^ The response to this criticism has been pretty stiff... if you aren't able or willing to change the physical layout, consider something different with the camera. There's a subtle, but significant difference between how Tropical Freeze looked vs. Battleblock Theatre on stream. It helps if it's more ambiguous how many people are in the crowd. Maybe have 2+ camera angles depending on how many people there are.
Before offering constructive criticism, you all definitely deserve positive feedback! Can't imagine just how much really goes into organizing these. Thank you for putting together such a wonderful event.
While I don't have anything new to contribute, Want to hit on the big ones for me personally:
1) Whatever you do for future GDQ's to patch up the downtime, hopefully there will at least be music on deck. Don't underestimate the tremendous difference, especially for the casual viewer, of 20+ seconds of dead air vs. Funky the Main Monkey or some hilarious remix playing. Canned videos (even if related to speedrunning) are OK, but... I think music/donation comments are much better because it feels organic. Which makes viewers much more inclined to leave the stream open until the next run starts.
2) The stream layout for 2P races looked inefficient. I think the 2 screen captures should be side-by-side w/ little spacing, cam footage in one corner and rotating sponsor/prize stuff in the other.
3) The couch/crowd cam threw lots of us for a loop. I was really confused when I saw the Tropical Freeze opener because it made it look like that's all the room there was.
^ The response to this criticism has been pretty stiff... if you aren't able or willing to change the physical layout, consider something different with the camera. There's a subtle, but significant difference between how Tropical Freeze looked vs. Battleblock Theatre on stream. It helps if it's more ambiguous how many people are in the crowd. Maybe have 2+ camera angles depending on how many people there are.
Every time I can think of where there have been multiple runners for a game, it's the runners themselves that sort things out, not the staff. My PB in Dark Souls 2 current patch has consistently been ahead of Oginam by a good margin, and I even had the WR a week before AGDQ, but I was totally fine with him taking the reins and it turned out to be a really good run with a good balance of commentary. Honestly, I would have been rather surprised if staff had insisted that I do the run over Oginam. The runners are almost always good friends and are in the best position to know what setup of runner and commentary will put on the best show. Staff only need to get involved if the potential runners cannot agree, and I doubt that comes up much.
As for my own experience, I liked just about everything about the venue except the food situation. I honestly didn't have any trouble with the hotel restaraunt; I ate there fairly often by myself and while you do pay a premium for the convenience of on-site meals, the meal quality was good and the waitstaff were all very friendly. So long as the hotel can continue to support our numbers, I think it would be a fine host for next year's AGDQ. The bathroom doors never bothered me. If you're trusting your roommates to foot their portion of a multi-hundred dollar bill, you'd better be able to trust them not to abuse sliding bathroom doors.
My one complaint about the equipment is that, as a PC runner not doing a run in the marathon, there wasn't much of a chance to play my speedgames without worrying about getting in the way of the runners, as all the PCs were in the practice room. I desperately wanted to play some speedgames the first couple days, but the internet was way too slow to download any of them and I didn't want to hog a PC that may need to be used by a runner. I'm not really sure if this can be fixed though, since the supply of PCs will always be limited, but having at least one PC in the casual room would have been nice. There were a few party games on PC I had hoped to play and never got the chance to do so.
Huge thanks to the staff for being responsive when problems came up; I was feeling ill four hours before my host shift and all it took was a short conversation with Vulajin to get things sorted out.
I was rarely able to see the game being played when I was sitting behind the couch, particularly for PC games; I often had to resort to looking at the backside of the projectors to get a very dim and mirrored view of the action. Having a single monitor set up facing the couch audience with the same video feed as the projectors would have been a huge help.
Overall, I had an absolute blast and am looking forward to the next event. Keep it up
As for my own experience, I liked just about everything about the venue except the food situation. I honestly didn't have any trouble with the hotel restaraunt; I ate there fairly often by myself and while you do pay a premium for the convenience of on-site meals, the meal quality was good and the waitstaff were all very friendly. So long as the hotel can continue to support our numbers, I think it would be a fine host for next year's AGDQ. The bathroom doors never bothered me. If you're trusting your roommates to foot their portion of a multi-hundred dollar bill, you'd better be able to trust them not to abuse sliding bathroom doors.
My one complaint about the equipment is that, as a PC runner not doing a run in the marathon, there wasn't much of a chance to play my speedgames without worrying about getting in the way of the runners, as all the PCs were in the practice room. I desperately wanted to play some speedgames the first couple days, but the internet was way too slow to download any of them and I didn't want to hog a PC that may need to be used by a runner. I'm not really sure if this can be fixed though, since the supply of PCs will always be limited, but having at least one PC in the casual room would have been nice. There were a few party games on PC I had hoped to play and never got the chance to do so.
Huge thanks to the staff for being responsive when problems came up; I was feeling ill four hours before my host shift and all it took was a short conversation with Vulajin to get things sorted out.
I was rarely able to see the game being played when I was sitting behind the couch, particularly for PC games; I often had to resort to looking at the backside of the projectors to get a very dim and mirrored view of the action. Having a single monitor set up facing the couch audience with the same video feed as the projectors would have been a huge help.
Overall, I had an absolute blast and am looking forward to the next event. Keep it up