My feelings on The Demon Rush
DO's
DON'Ts
-When you aren't reading donations, please don't be a backseat driver. Everyone has their own style, and they generally all work out. Spikevegeta and Breakdown are both different hosts, but they're also both very effective.
-If you break the above rules too often or if you disrupt the commentary too much, then Romscout, Puwexil, Murphagator, or I will pull you from the commentary.
-Just remember, have fun! One of the reasons why the marathons are so great is because we're having fun.
-Do flush out donations after every run. Yes, it can be done, and it doesn't look so great when Super Metroid comments are being read during Zero Mission or an even later game.
-Do emphasize that we cannot read every single donation anymore, but we do receive all of the donations and process them in our tracker even if they are not read. We should have a working ticker by the time AGDQ starts so you can point people toward http://gamesdonequick.com if they want to see donations.
-Do update people on upcoming donation wars and incentives, it's hard to keep track of all of the incentives, so it's good to remind people on a regular basis.
-Do plug Doctors Without Borders. People are always asking where the money is going and what the charity is about. They gave us a cheat sheet we can read that describes where the money goes. Plugging the charity at least twice an hour is a good guideline.
-Do plug SDA and SRL. Because speedrunning is fun. You can also plug the twitch team pages. I hope you guys don't need a cheat sheet for SDA and SRL. D:
-Do plug the people who made and provided prizes, especially if one of them is a prize for the current game. These people sacrificed time and money to make and/or provide prizes.
-Do go over upcoming donation incentives. People like knowing what they can donate for, especially if it's coming in the next couple of hours!
-Do mention and show the prizes (if we have them on-site and not just a picture to show on stream). The prizes are awesome and people need to see why are they are awesome.
-Hosts, do use your headphones so you can hear if the runner and couch commentators are talking. Interrupting good commentary is the last thing we want to do.
-Do respect serious time. If a runner needs to concentrate, then let them do so.
-Do a roll call every once in a while (once an hour or so). People do like to know who we are. But remember, keep it to just names so they don't take forever.
-Do keep in mind that file and character names need to fall within pg-13 guidelines. If you want to know what the border is, we allowed the name "Wang" for Yang during FF4 at AGDQ 2011.
-Do take the time to read touching personal donation comments.
-Do read comments with hashtags if they're for a community IRC channel such is #smw or #alttp, or if they're hashtags hyping up the marathon like #sda, #srl, or #SGDQ2014. A couple of hashtags here and there won't kill anyone, as long as there's some other content in the donation.
-Speaking of #SGDQ2014, that is the hashtag we want to use for the marathon! If there's one hashtag you promote, promote that one!
-Do take the time to filter out inappropriate donation comments. This is something a couple of us failed to do at previous marathons (I know a couple slipped by me), and donation comment filtering does not stop at the tech station! We're only human.
FYI, a good rule of thumb is to be wary of the first name Mike in donation comments because of the number of last names you can stick on it, like Rotch.
-Do flush out comments that are talking about previous games if we're more than 15-20 minutes behind on donation comments. We can't always read every single donation comment, and we will have a button for flushing out donation comments if we're way behind.
-Do talk about trivia related to the game.
-Do be informative. Informative commentary is one of the most popular commentary styles during the marathon. A good example is Lee during Yoshi's Island last AGDQ. Both people watching live and the stream chat enjoyed all of the information he was dropping.
-Do take time to explain jargon within the speedrunning community. We all might know what a sequence break or frame is, but thousands of viewers won't know.
-Do hype people up about upcoming games, donation incentives, or anything marathon-related. People like being excited about something and marathon-related events are the best way to excite them.
-Do emphasize that we cannot read every single donation anymore, but we do receive all of the donations and process them in our tracker even if they are not read. We should have a working ticker by the time AGDQ starts so you can point people toward http://gamesdonequick.com if they want to see donations.
-Do update people on upcoming donation wars and incentives, it's hard to keep track of all of the incentives, so it's good to remind people on a regular basis.
-Do plug Doctors Without Borders. People are always asking where the money is going and what the charity is about. They gave us a cheat sheet we can read that describes where the money goes. Plugging the charity at least twice an hour is a good guideline.
-Do plug SDA and SRL. Because speedrunning is fun. You can also plug the twitch team pages. I hope you guys don't need a cheat sheet for SDA and SRL. D:
-Do plug the people who made and provided prizes, especially if one of them is a prize for the current game. These people sacrificed time and money to make and/or provide prizes.
-Do go over upcoming donation incentives. People like knowing what they can donate for, especially if it's coming in the next couple of hours!
-Do mention and show the prizes (if we have them on-site and not just a picture to show on stream). The prizes are awesome and people need to see why are they are awesome.
-Hosts, do use your headphones so you can hear if the runner and couch commentators are talking. Interrupting good commentary is the last thing we want to do.
-Do respect serious time. If a runner needs to concentrate, then let them do so.
-Do a roll call every once in a while (once an hour or so). People do like to know who we are. But remember, keep it to just names so they don't take forever.
-Do keep in mind that file and character names need to fall within pg-13 guidelines. If you want to know what the border is, we allowed the name "Wang" for Yang during FF4 at AGDQ 2011.
-Do take the time to read touching personal donation comments.
-Do read comments with hashtags if they're for a community IRC channel such is #smw or #alttp, or if they're hashtags hyping up the marathon like #sda, #srl, or #SGDQ2014. A couple of hashtags here and there won't kill anyone, as long as there's some other content in the donation.
-Speaking of #SGDQ2014, that is the hashtag we want to use for the marathon! If there's one hashtag you promote, promote that one!
-Do take the time to filter out inappropriate donation comments. This is something a couple of us failed to do at previous marathons (I know a couple slipped by me), and donation comment filtering does not stop at the tech station! We're only human.
FYI, a good rule of thumb is to be wary of the first name Mike in donation comments because of the number of last names you can stick on it, like Rotch.
-Do flush out comments that are talking about previous games if we're more than 15-20 minutes behind on donation comments. We can't always read every single donation comment, and we will have a button for flushing out donation comments if we're way behind.
-Do talk about trivia related to the game.
-Do be informative. Informative commentary is one of the most popular commentary styles during the marathon. A good example is Lee during Yoshi's Island last AGDQ. Both people watching live and the stream chat enjoyed all of the information he was dropping.
-Do take time to explain jargon within the speedrunning community. We all might know what a sequence break or frame is, but thousands of viewers won't know.
-Do hype people up about upcoming games, donation incentives, or anything marathon-related. People like being excited about something and marathon-related events are the best way to excite them.
DON'Ts
-Don't swear all the time. It's not very professional and breaks the PG-13 aspect. You can swear occasionally (once every 30 minutes or so), but not once every 30 seconds.
-Don't diss the charity, other charities, or other speedrunning or marathon groups. This should go without saying.
-The same thing goes for other members of the community. If you have beef with someone, then discuss it with them face-to-face off-stream. Talking about it on-stream is just awkward and painful.
-Don't emphasize or hype donation incentives that are far away when others are close by. The upcoming incentives are higher priority! I'm not saying you can't mention incentives that are far away, but I wouldn't go over a full list of Final Fantasy IV names when Paper Mario is the next game and people want to know what filename is in the lead.
-Don't let people call serious time every 5 minutes. While serious time should be respected, it's only respectable if someone uses it sparingly.
-Don't let a roll call last over a couple of minutes. Keep it to the people on the couch and the people in the row behind. That time can be better spent commentating on the game or reading donations.
-Don't respond to trolls, you're just feeding them.
-Don't read a donation comment if all it has are twitch faces and/or hashtags. We will have a ton of donation comments and we need to prioritize the comments we read. If someone donates for a file or character name to be named after a twitch face or hashtag, then it's okay to point out that the donation is for a twitch face or hashtag.
-Don't hog the couch. The couch is for the runner(s) and the couch commentator(s), and just a hunch, but I don't think anyone can be a runner or couch commentator for every run. This also applies to the two rows behind the couch. Those rows are an extension of the couch and can be decided by the runner. Also, there's plenty of space to watch the runs on the projectors, so take one of those seats instead if you intend on watching for a while.
-On that note, don't hype by yelling out twitch face emoticons. That sort of hype doesn't really help hype up the gameplay or the marathon itself.
-Don't interrupt the runner if he or she is explaining something. The runner gets first priority for commentary. Also, please don't mention off-topic commentary unless if the runner specifically wants to go off-topic or it's a casual run.
-Don't burn yourself out reading donations! Be sure to take a break every couple of hours. We should have plenty of people around for donation reading this marathon, and we should take advantage of it. Murphagator even made a host schedule for people to switch off. If you don't think you can be up in your hosting spot, or if you're getting a bit tired, then find someone to switch out.
-Don't diss the charity, other charities, or other speedrunning or marathon groups. This should go without saying.
-The same thing goes for other members of the community. If you have beef with someone, then discuss it with them face-to-face off-stream. Talking about it on-stream is just awkward and painful.
-Don't emphasize or hype donation incentives that are far away when others are close by. The upcoming incentives are higher priority! I'm not saying you can't mention incentives that are far away, but I wouldn't go over a full list of Final Fantasy IV names when Paper Mario is the next game and people want to know what filename is in the lead.
-Don't let people call serious time every 5 minutes. While serious time should be respected, it's only respectable if someone uses it sparingly.
-Don't let a roll call last over a couple of minutes. Keep it to the people on the couch and the people in the row behind. That time can be better spent commentating on the game or reading donations.
-Don't respond to trolls, you're just feeding them.
-Don't read a donation comment if all it has are twitch faces and/or hashtags. We will have a ton of donation comments and we need to prioritize the comments we read. If someone donates for a file or character name to be named after a twitch face or hashtag, then it's okay to point out that the donation is for a twitch face or hashtag.
-Don't hog the couch. The couch is for the runner(s) and the couch commentator(s), and just a hunch, but I don't think anyone can be a runner or couch commentator for every run. This also applies to the two rows behind the couch. Those rows are an extension of the couch and can be decided by the runner. Also, there's plenty of space to watch the runs on the projectors, so take one of those seats instead if you intend on watching for a while.
-On that note, don't hype by yelling out twitch face emoticons. That sort of hype doesn't really help hype up the gameplay or the marathon itself.
-Don't interrupt the runner if he or she is explaining something. The runner gets first priority for commentary. Also, please don't mention off-topic commentary unless if the runner specifically wants to go off-topic or it's a casual run.
-Don't burn yourself out reading donations! Be sure to take a break every couple of hours. We should have plenty of people around for donation reading this marathon, and we should take advantage of it. Murphagator even made a host schedule for people to switch off. If you don't think you can be up in your hosting spot, or if you're getting a bit tired, then find someone to switch out.
-When you aren't reading donations, please don't be a backseat driver. Everyone has their own style, and they generally all work out. Spikevegeta and Breakdown are both different hosts, but they're also both very effective.
-If you break the above rules too often or if you disrupt the commentary too much, then Romscout, Puwexil, Murphagator, or I will pull you from the commentary.
-Just remember, have fun! One of the reasons why the marathons are so great is because we're having fun.
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