Point out the blatantly obvious from a viewer's perspective [locked]

Edit history:

mikwuyma: 2011-01-21 07:22:15 pm

2011-01-11 06:26:18 pm

Highly Evolved

I wanted to post this stuff from a perspective the staff and other marathon attendees did not have, the viewers'. My comments will basically be concerning how viewers saw and absorbed the stream and how the chat and viewers received information. I have a tendency to be long, so bear with me in this thread. I guess I would be remiss to say that the marathon wasn't a complete success for viewers of the event, but there were some things that hopefully can make a marathon of this scope be more successful than it is.

There were two major items that caught the attention of the viewer that weren't ideal, the schedule, and the prizes/bidding wars. I'll start more with the obvious schedule issues. Having the schedule get off at the end by about 24 hours certainly wasn't a planned thing, nor was it taken lightly, and I definitely do appreciate the schedule being updated as much as it was. I'm sure that updating eliminated a bunch of consternation I would have otherwise seen in the chat. Still, there were quite a few upset that they arrived at the stream and were a bit upset, if not impatient, that the game they wanted to see was still two, three, four hours away from being attempted. My suggestion that I had for a few days kind of loses its thunder because I think I heard Mike discussing it on the commentary stream on Monday. There should be at least a five minute down time between every game for setup, prize giveaways, explanations, etc. Meaning, if a game starts at 1:00 and is budgeted 20 minutes. The schedule should have the next game starting at 1:25. For 100 games, that adds a seemingly whopping 8+ hours to the schedule, but the marathon got behind 24 hours at the end, and the 8 hours would surely have eased the pain of getting behind.

I think a lost benefit of keeping on schedule was not having popular games on prime time on the east coast. I think Chrono Trigger lost a lot of earning power for starting on the graveyard shift. It still made a lot of money, but several thousand dollars were surely lost because of when it was played.

Concerning prizes and bidding wars, there were constantly questions from newcomers to the chat about what was being bid on, and what was being given away. While the schedule had what prizes were being won for each game, and they were mentioned in the stream, the specifics on how one could win a prize weren't. The Twitter contest was advertised really well, but the rest weren't. I would suggest for next year a FAQ page for the marathon that people in chat can link newcomers to that tells the viewer what prizes there are and how one can win them.

I believe the bidding war needs a page for viewers to see, as well. When the marathon started, Mike wanted to keep bidding wars contained to a small window of time before the game started. This made sense as it seemed a logistical nightmare at the time to keep track of all the bidding wars. What I would suggest for the bid page is have all planned bidding wars on the page. There would be an indication of whether that particular selection was open to be bid upon. For example, the final game, I would presume it to be an RPG, would not have character's names open for bidding, perhaps being in gray, but would have the time posted when bidding would begin, say two days before the game was scheduled to start. The open bids would have updates on what names have been bid upon, but I'm torn on whether actual dollar amounts should be posted. On one hand, not having the price of a bid shown may not discourage someone for donating because of a huge money gap, having the price shown is just the honest thing to do and will help avoid constant questions in the chat about how much was put up for what name.

I'll post more after I eat. I want to get this up and running for other viewers who watched the marathon to post in.

Thread title:

I wanted to post this stuff from a perspective the staff and other marathon attendees did not have, the viewers'.  My comments will basically be concerning how viewers saw and absorbed the stream and how the chat and viewers received information.  I have a tendency to be long, so bear with me in this thread.  I guess I would be remiss to say that the marathon wasn't a complete success for viewers of the event, but there were some things that hopefully can make a marathon of this scope be more successful than it is.

There were two major items that caught the attention of the viewer that weren't ideal, the schedule, and the prizes/bidding wars.  I'll start more with the obvious schedule issues.  Having the schedule get off at the end by about 24 hours certainly wasn't a planned thing, nor was it taken lightly, and I definitely do appreciate the schedule being updated as much as it was.  I'm sure that updating eliminated a bunch of consternation I would have otherwise seen in the chat.  Still, there were quite a few upset that they arrived at the stream and were a bit upset, if not impatient, that the game they wanted to see was still two, three, four hours away from being attempted.  My suggestion that I had for a few days kind of loses its thunder because I think I heard Mike discussing it on the commentary stream on Monday.  There should be at least a five minute down time between every game for setup, prize giveaways, explanations, etc.  Meaning, if a game starts at 1:00 and is budgeted 20 minutes.  The schedule should have the next game starting at 1:25.  For 100 games, that adds a seemingly whopping 8+ hours to the schedule, but the marathon got behind 24 hours at the end, and the 8 hours would surely have eased the pain of getting behind.

I think a lost benefit of keeping on schedule was not having popular games on prime time on the east coast.  I think Chrono Trigger lost a lot of earning power for starting on the graveyard shift.  It still made a lot of money, but several thousand dollars were surely lost because of when it was played.

Concerning prizes and bidding wars, there were constantly questions from newcomers to the chat about what was being bid on, and what was being given away.  While the schedule had what prizes were being won for each game, and they were mentioned in the stream, the specifics on how one could win a prize weren't.  The Twitter contest was advertised really well, but the rest weren't.  I would suggest for next year a FAQ page for the marathon that people in chat can link newcomers to that tells the viewer what prizes there are and how one can win them.

I believe the bidding war needs a page for viewers to see, as well.  When the marathon started, Mike wanted to keep bidding wars contained to a small window of time before the game started.  This made sense as it seemed a logistical nightmare at the time to keep track of all the bidding wars.  What I would suggest for the bid page is have all planned bidding wars on the page.  There would be an indication of whether that particular selection was open to be bid upon.  For example, the final game, I would presume it to be an RPG, would not have character's names open for bidding, perhaps being in gray, but would have the time posted when bidding would begin, say two days before the game was scheduled to start.  The open bids would have updates on what names have been bid upon, but I'm torn on whether actual dollar amounts should be posted.  On one hand, not having the price of a bid shown may not discourage someone for donating because of a huge money gap, having the price shown is just the honest thing to do and will help avoid constant questions in the chat about how much was put up for what name.

I'll post more after I eat.  I want to get this up and running for other viewers who watched the marathon to post in.

aleckermit

Edit history:

aleckermit: 2011-01-11 06:42:45 pm

aleckermit: 2011-01-11 06:42:44 pm

aleckermit: 2011-01-11 06:40:15 pm

2011-01-11 06:39:29 pm

Ocarina of Time and Super Mario 64 at 4am and 5:30am respectively was pretty terrible, purely from a time slot perspective. Those were easily the 2 most popular games of the entire marathon and they were at the worst possible watching times. I'm not saying a complete schedule flip would have solved it but surely we could have swapped them with other games. The fact that I was playing OoT has nothing to do with my opinion here, I'm looking at this from a viewer's convenience/donation standpoint. Jiano had an amazing 3,200 viewers during SM64 120 star, but if it was on at 8pm the views would have been 5,000+ I bet. Not saying these games are better than any others, just that they are monumentally popular.

Oh and a mini-fridge was badly needed, but that's been discussed.

randomzero

2011-01-11 06:43:22 pm

I was kind of glad that the schedule ended up screwed up. I could only watch between 2 and 7AM, so I got to watch those games live, whereas I wouldn't have if they were at 8pm or the like. So, thanks. lol.

Idkbutlike2

2011-01-11 06:43:30 pm

I honestly can't complain about the time slots. When you're dealing with people from so many different time zones, you can't expect to make a perfect schedule. I agree with DW's thoughts on downtime and explaining the prizes and stuff better, though. That would makes things easier for the viewers.

aleckermit

Edit history:

aleckermit: 2011-01-11 06:49:34 pm

aleckermit: 2011-01-11 06:49:07 pm

aleckermit: 2011-01-11 06:49:05 pm

aleckermit: 2011-01-11 06:49:04 pm

aleckermit: 2011-01-11 06:48:59 pm

aleckermit: 2011-01-11 06:47:51 pm

2011-01-11 06:47:29 pm

Quote from Idkbutlike2:

I honestly can't complain about the time slots. When you're dealing with people from so many different time zones, you can't expect to make a perfect schedule.

That's true but considering we were broadcasting from North America, the games we played (for the most part) were North American, the charity we assisted is based in North America, and most of our viewers were North American; the time slots should be best adjusted to North America.

Carl Sagan

2011-01-11 06:47:34 pm

First off, I want to say great work for everyone involved -- I think it's definitely important to consider that nobody was getting paid for this, and, in fact, had a lot of money coming out of their own pockets.

I do think it would have been probably more successful to target popular games during peak hours (if it can be said with certainty that any time fits this -- I assume the /majority/ of viewers were from the US, but I don't know for sure).

As far as scheduling goes, the constant schedule updating was enough to keep me satisfied. However, perhaps making sure everyone overestimates the their run time by a little bit would be good to account for unintended speedrunning problems or technical difficulties.

Again, many many thanks for all the hard work everyone put in. I can't wait for next year.

Darkwing Duck

2011-01-11 07:02:06 pm

Highly Evolved

Ah, now that I've eaten, I can continue.

Re: schedule. There will be no doubt if you look at the numbers that there were more viewers during what would be considered east coast prime time relative to any other time. That's, for better or worse, where the popular games should fall.

A couple other things that I think would improve the experience for the viewer:

The commentary desk was a bit harried in the beginning. Understandable given the unexpected flood of donations that had to be handled. Having the second man, uh, manning the donations and bidding really helped. The commentator should also be in concert with the runner. This happened for the most part, but there were times the commentator wasn't in tune with the runner, and the runner looked frustrated about it. However the runner's disposition is, the commentator (and rest of the participants) should play off that. If the runner is more of a quiet runner that can't speak and run at the same time, the commentator should be more chatty. If the runner wants to discuss everything done in the run, the commentator should take a step back and be most concerned with reading off donations when he (maybe she in the future?) has the chance. Again, this happened for the most part, but there were times where it didn't happen.

Also, the chatter in the room, while not that big of a concern, kind of gave off an impression to the viewers that people were not interested in the run being played. In a long run, that's bound to happen and isn't a big deal, but for short runs, it didn't look good on camera. For instance, when AndrewG was running Marble Madness and Excitebike, no one in camera view looked like they cared what was going on in the run.

I would also like to suggest that people who were at the run should be more encouraged to join the chat rooms while they are there. This is especially helpful when the chats are split up. When the chats are split, the commentator was looking at only one of the chats, making the other chat room(s) feel neglected. Having a marathon participant in the chat room, despite the tedious nature of full chat rooms, really brings the viewer closer to the event.

Ah, now that I've eaten, I can continue.

Re: schedule.  There will be no doubt if you look at the numbers that there were more viewers during what would be considered east coast prime time relative to any other time.  That's, for better or worse, where the popular games should fall.

A couple other things that I think would improve the experience for the viewer:

The commentary desk was a bit harried in the beginning.  Understandable given the unexpected flood of donations that had to be handled.  Having the second man, uh, manning the donations and bidding really helped.  The commentator should also be in concert with the runner.  This happened for the most part, but there were times the commentator wasn't in tune with the runner, and the runner looked frustrated about it.  However the runner's disposition is, the commentator (and rest of the participants) should play off that.  If the runner is more of a quiet runner that can't speak and run at the same time, the commentator should be more chatty.  If the runner wants to discuss everything done in the run, the commentator should take a step back and be most concerned with reading off donations when he (maybe she in the future?) has the chance.  Again, this happened for the most part, but there were times where it didn't happen.

Also, the chatter in the room, while not that big of a concern, kind of gave off an impression to the viewers that people were not interested in the run being played.  In a long run, that's bound to happen and isn't a big deal, but for short runs, it didn't look good on camera.  For instance, when AndrewG was running Marble Madness and Excitebike, no one in camera view looked like they cared what was going on in the run.

I would also like to suggest that people who were at the run should be more encouraged to join the chat rooms while they are there.  This is especially helpful when the chats are split up.  When the chats are split, the commentator was looking at only one of the chats, making the other chat room(s) feel neglected.  Having a marathon participant in the chat room, despite the tedious nature of full chat rooms, really brings the viewer closer to the event.

Regular Mg

2011-01-11 07:09:32 pm

It seemed like the more popular games were concentrated toward the first couple days of the marathon. I don't know about other people, but I was watching the marathon pretty much non-stop Friday and Saturday, but I lost a lot of interest after that. For example, the Mega Man, Mario, and DKC series were all on the same day. Perhaps you could spread out the popular series so that doesn't happen?

Paraxade

2011-01-11 08:01:36 pm

Agreed with Regular Mg... I somewhat lost interest in the marathon towards the end because all of the games I wanted to see had already been played. Looks like the viewer numbers dropped as well; in a way this problem can't really be avoided, but spreading out the popular games a little more sounds like a good idea.

Also, the planning stages of the marathon seemed to have had a heavy impact on the rest of the site :x Maybe something that can be avoided next time?

ShinerCCC

2011-01-11 08:22:50 pm

Yes, a worthless avatar riding my posts.

The popular series were all on the weekend, when people could commit to watching. A lot of viewers petered out as the working week returned.

Shifting the schedule period is more disastrous than committing to a 'bad' timeslot, like late at night. But there were still plenty of European viewers so it wasn't graveyard for them either. I saw a few people in chat irked about Sly Cooper being swapped with Crash Bandicoot 2, upset they had missed one or showed up at the wrong time for the other.

I also concur about the page showing the status of all bidding wars. The chat was asking about those nearly constantly (that and for Aitamen and MercuryZelda's contact info so they could commission some awesome crafts).

Rakuen

2011-01-11 08:45:44 pm

Weegee Time

This is something that was mentioned in the chat, and it would be cool if it's possible to do. During Desert Bus for Hope this year, they had a large TV screen that was devoted solely to the IRC chat. It allowed pretty much anybody to read it and respond to it without having to really tie up a computer. Would it be feasible to get a third TV or screen and do that for future marathons?

I also agree that there definitely needs to be a page for the bidding wars. I know someone suggested being able to dynamically update the webpage through the app, but even a plaintext output would suffice. You could copy and paste it into Google Docs every hour or so.

A big thing that we should try to look into is the problems with viewing the races this year. Some people had absolutely no problem watching them, some people had some minor lag, and for others it was completely unwatchable. I personally experienced all three, and it's the third scenario that I find difficult to accept. I think we should try to figure out what it is that's causing the problem. I imagine a large part of it is on Ustream's end, maybe someone could ask an admin what's up?

This is something that was mentioned in the chat, and it would be cool if it's possible to do.  During Desert Bus for Hope this year, they had a large TV screen that was devoted solely to the IRC chat.  It allowed pretty much anybody to read it and respond to it without having to really tie up a computer.  Would it be feasible to get a third TV or screen and do that for future marathons?

I also agree that there definitely needs to be a page for the bidding wars.  I know someone suggested being able to dynamically update the webpage through the app, but even a plaintext output would suffice.  You could copy and paste it into Google Docs every hour or so.

A big thing that we should try to look into is the problems with viewing the races this year.  Some people had absolutely no problem watching them, some people had some minor lag, and for others it was completely unwatchable.  I personally experienced all three, and it's the third scenario that I find difficult to accept.  I think we should try to figure out what it is that's causing the problem.  I imagine a large part of it is on Ustream's end, maybe someone could ask an admin what's up?

InsipidMuckyWater

Edit history:

InsipidMuckyWater: 2011-01-11 09:20:07 pm

2011-01-11 09:18:45 pm

Visit my profile to see my runs!

For scheduling: Maybe for games that are going WAAAY long, you could pull the plug. I believe somebody or other quit during their run because of this, but maybe if a run is +50% too long, then it automatically ends. Or maybe less? Maybe different amounts for different length games? I don't know. Obviously because it's a marathon, the runner would have to play until this point at least, but after this the run would end and the next could begin. Personally, I don't care if other runs have to wait, but for those who do ...

Also, I hate not knowing who everybody is in the room. Could we have a page just to put everyone's name and a picture of them (taken the day they show up)? Plus it'd (hopefully) get rid of people asking who is who.

At first, I thought the number of people in the room was too many, but I changed my mind eventually. Regardless, don't take these criticisms to heart. It's just easier to think of improvements than compliments. It was a great marathon guys. I wish I could have been there.

For scheduling: Maybe for games that are going WAAAY long, you could pull the plug.  I believe somebody or other quit during their run because of this, but maybe if a run is +50% too long, then it automatically ends.  Or maybe less?  Maybe different amounts for different length games? I don't know. Obviously because it's a marathon, the runner would have to play until this point at least, but after this the run would end and the next could begin.  Personally, I don't care if other runs have to wait, but for those who do ...

Also, I hate not knowing who everybody is in the room.  Could we have a page just to put everyone's name and a picture of them (taken the day they show up)?  Plus it'd (hopefully) get rid of people asking who is who.

At first, I thought the number of people in the room was too many, but I changed my mind eventually.  Regardless, don't take these criticisms to heart. It's just easier to think of improvements than compliments. It was a great marathon guys.  I wish I could have been there.

kariohki

2011-01-11 09:29:59 pm

waifus are laifu

Finding a lot of people here share the same thoughts I'd post about, like:
1) pulling the plug on a game that's going too long: if it's got save points, maybe move it to later if there's time so the runner can still finish if they want?
2) knowing who the people are in the room: a sort of "SDA Yearbook" type page would be nice. I was only able to tell apart the people who appeared a lot or the people who were unique looking
3) some sort of alert that tells about schedule changes. the schedule itself was a bit hidden as well, and there was no notice if it had changed.
4) FAQ page would be nice, though that means people will have to read and people on the camera would be saying "read the FAQ" instead of answering, I guess. hit or miss thing here.

Rakuen

Edit history:

Rakuen: 2011-01-11 09:40:34 pm

2011-01-11 09:38:12 pm

Weegee Time

Yeah, there's a lot of stuff that went very well too, don't forget to point those out, especially in the shoutouts thread. :]

As far as pulling the plug goes, I think part of that can be solved by being more liberal on time estimates. Leave greater margins for errors when you propose a time length for your run. Crap happens, especially when the pressure's on and you're streaming live. It's very easy to slow things down if we get too far ahead. It's very difficult to speed things up if we're too far behind. Maybe have some bonus events that could happen if we manage to get far ahead of schedule: fun runs like Castle Crashers and Kirby's Super Star, or competitions like the Dr. Mario match.

Eldar

2011-01-11 09:54:59 pm

With the schedule, you guys have to remember that people in America aren't the only ones watching it. I had prime time for Jiano's SM64 120 Star run, I wasn't going to watch it but because it was in prime time, I did and I am extremely glad I did. Other games that I did want to watch were in the early hours of the morning for me and I couldn't watch them, but that's how it goes.

As for the times running late, I don't think that was bad at all. Some games were better then the predicted time and some were worse, this brings out the luck in speedrunning and I didn't think it was a bad thing. It made the marathon longer and made for more viewing time. I thoroughly enjoyed every moment that I watched, even on the games which I'd never heard of nor played.

Overall the marathon was extremely well run, and the commentary was hilarious. Well done guys.

Dent_D

2011-01-11 11:20:17 pm

I'm going to chime in on being much more liberal with the scheduling. It's much easier to plan what to view when the schedule doesn't change. Still, it was awesome that the schedule was updated constantly so that everybody knew the latest projection for certain games.

I'd also like to see a large chat projection implemented for all the streamers in the room to see and respond to vocally, rather than only a select few participate in the chat. Additionally, maybe the chat needs to be separated into two sections? One for viewers to discuss amongst themselves and then one for viewers to specifically address the streamers? Also, if possible, I think there needs to be a small waiting period imposed on chat messages to keep things slower and easier to read. A lot of questions/comments were missed or had to be repeated multiple times, which I'm sure got on people's nerves.

Reading the donation comments was really awesome, but there has got to be a better way to manage them. Having two people man donations seems really taxing. and it looked like it took a long time to sift through everything and find the new ones to read.

The lag was really frustrating at some points. I am sure this is more to do with UStream but missing an intense battle or the end of a game due to laggy streams stinks. Hopefully this can be researched and improved over the year.

While sometimes the banter between people in the streaming room was enjoyable, most of the time it made the runner/commentator audio difficult to hear. Also a couple of us were suggesting earlier today that next year the mic be mounted in the middle of the room on the ceiling, if possible. That way you hopefully wouldn''t have such a volume difference between the people sitting right in front (those on the couch) and the commentator or people in the back.

Anyway, almost all of my criticisms are minor because the entire marathon was amazing. Props to everybody who made it happen and I can't wait to watch next year.

I'm going to chime in on being much more liberal with the scheduling. It's much easier to plan what to view when the schedule doesn't change. Still, it was awesome that the schedule was updated constantly so that everybody knew the latest projection for certain games.

I'd also like to see a large chat projection implemented for all the streamers in the room to see and respond to vocally, rather than only a select few participate in the chat. Additionally, maybe the chat needs to be separated into two sections? One for viewers to discuss amongst themselves and then one for viewers to specifically address the streamers? Also, if possible, I think there needs to be a small waiting period imposed on chat messages to keep things slower and easier to read. A lot of questions/comments were missed or had to be repeated multiple times, which I'm sure got on people's nerves.

Reading the donation comments was really awesome, but there has got to be a better way to manage them. Having two people man donations seems really taxing. and it looked like it took a long time to sift through everything and find the new ones to read.

The lag was really frustrating at some points. I am sure this is more to do with UStream but missing an intense battle or the end of a game due to laggy streams stinks. Hopefully this can be researched and improved over the year.

While sometimes the banter between people in the streaming room was enjoyable, most of the time it made the runner/commentator audio difficult to hear. Also a couple of us were suggesting earlier today that next year the mic be mounted in the middle of the room on the ceiling, if possible. That way you hopefully wouldn''t have such a volume difference between the people sitting right in front (those on the couch) and the commentator or people in the back.

Anyway, almost all of my criticisms are minor because the entire marathon was amazing. Props to everybody who made it happen and I can't wait to watch next year.

Tranquilite

2011-01-12 12:17:37 am

One suggestion would be to find a way to reduce the bandwidth of race streams. I barely had enough bandwidth to watch both streams at once (very slow DSL), but the 4-way OoT race was reduced to a lagarific mess (I was able to watch Jiano's attempt though, because it was separate and on the Commentary stream). Additionally during the races it would be nice to be able t add text overlays to the video footage showing which screen had which player, but I understand that this would not exactly be easy/inexpensive to pull off.

Additionally, I know that Ustream is capable of setting a chat mode where people cannot post more than once per minute, I'm sure UltraJMan would know more about that, because his stream was like that for a while.

Also, I am in favor of improving the chat in any way possible. I found it kind of lame that Ustream would create multiple chats after the limit of 1499 people was reached, as people in the other chat were for the most part ignored. I agree with Demt_D's idea of having separate chats for addressing the people at the marathon, and regular viewer chat. While it may overly complicate things, it would make it easier for viewers to have their voices heard.

Overall though, the marathon was an astounding success. I really liked how the commentary and game play were on separate streams, as both were very important to the enjoyability of the marathon. Good job guys, I look forward to watching (and maybe even participating in) next years marathon.

One suggestion would be to find a way to reduce the bandwidth of race streams. I barely had enough bandwidth to watch both streams at once (very slow DSL), but the 4-way OoT race was reduced to a lagarific mess (I was able to watch Jiano's attempt though, because it was separate and on the Commentary stream). Additionally during the races it would be nice to be able t add text overlays to the video footage showing which screen had which player, but I understand that this would not exactly be easy/inexpensive to pull off.

Additionally, I know that Ustream is capable of setting a chat mode where people cannot post more than once per minute, I'm sure UltraJMan would know more about that, because his stream was like that for a while.

Also, I am in favor of improving the chat in any way possible. I found it kind of lame that Ustream would create multiple chats after the limit of 1499 people was reached, as people in the other chat were for the most part ignored. I agree with Demt_D's idea of having separate chats for addressing the people at the marathon, and regular viewer chat. While it may overly complicate things, it would make it easier for viewers to have their voices heard.

Overall though, the marathon was an astounding success. I really liked how the commentary and game play were on separate streams, as both were very important to the enjoyability of the marathon. Good job guys, I look forward to watching (and maybe even participating in) next years marathon.

Zealie

2011-01-12 01:34:07 am

Well I guess I'll chip in a bit as well.

As for scheduled time, until I see some statistics that actually could prove that doing the most popular games on east America prime time would get more money by a significant amount, I am going to say: You can't have it all.

As for other thoughts that popped into my head when watching this great event, I'll try not to repeat too much what others had said.

I think it was a good (and smart thing) to put most good games on the weekends because that's prime time for all I guess.

Now I wasn't at the marathon so I don't really know what went on behind the camera, but while watching the speedruns I was thinking to myself it would also be awesome if there were some other stream where you could see like runners that are just battling against each other (for fun) on SSBM or doing Mario Party or some Super Street Fighter, or StarCraft or Mario Kart games or w/e. Just as a side thing. Although you would get 4 streams then. (Don't know if this would be doable technically)
I am going to assume people did play games with each other 'behind the scenes'.

But then, I was also thinking that maybe for scheduling you be waaayyy more lenient and in case you got time left you could implement some fun stuff, like have some SSBM matches or other competetive stuff against/with other runners. I'm pretty sure most people would also like to see that stuff. The only problem with that is that it would have to account for a lot less games if you want a very lenient schedule.

And now I kinda forgot the rest I wanted to say....
I'll probably get back to it if it isn't said already.
Great marathon guys! I hope I finally have the money (and time) next year to experience it myself...

Well I guess I'll chip in a bit as well.

As for scheduled time, until I see some statistics that actually could prove that doing the most popular games on east America prime time would get more money by a significant amount, I am going to say: You can't have it all.

As for other thoughts that popped into my head when watching this great event, I'll try not to repeat too much what others had said.

I think it was a good (and smart thing) to put most good games on the weekends because that's prime time for all I guess.

Now I wasn't at the marathon so I don't really know what went on behind  the camera, but while watching the speedruns I was thinking to myself it would also be awesome if there were some other stream where you could see like runners that are just battling against each other (for fun) on SSBM or doing Mario Party or some Super Street Fighter, or StarCraft or Mario Kart games or w/e. Just as a side thing. Although you would get 4 streams then. (Don't know if this would be doable technically)
I am going to assume people did play games with each other 'behind the scenes'.

But then, I was also thinking that maybe for scheduling you be waaayyy more lenient and in case you got time left you could implement some fun stuff, like have some SSBM matches or other competetive stuff against/with other runners. I'm pretty sure most people would also like to see that stuff. The only problem with that is that it would have to account for a lot less games if you want a very lenient schedule.

And now I kinda forgot the rest I wanted to say....
I'll probably get back to it if it isn't said already.
Great marathon guys! I hope I finally have the money (and time) next year to experience it myself...

Bromazepam

Edit history:

Bromazepam: 2011-01-12 01:44:37 am

2011-01-12 01:43:50 am

Steam addict

Schedule: I personally didn't mind the schedule being delayed, since I cared about the whole marathon, but I can see how some people who only wanted to see some select games might have been annoyed by it. Yes, adding looser estimates to accomodate for mistakes would solve this problem, but you also have to make sure it doesn't backfire: as I always say when I'm taking the bus, it's better late than early. If something comes late, you'll just have to wait a bit; if something's early, you have lost it. Therefore a runner who exceeds expectations might cause the next game to come too early and annoy people who were tuning in only later. Adding downtime wouldn't be a very good solution, either.
So basically I think that overall, this way of organizing the schedule was the best one - just add 5-10 minutes when switching game system or giving out prizes.

Commentary audio and overall experience: that mic was good. Too good. It could catch the plastic squeaking under the runners' hands. I'm not saying get a crappy mic, but overall a better positioning of it to balance runner/commentator voice would be needed.
Also, as it's been stated already, there was a bit of "priority issues" between runner and commentator voices. Often I was frustrated because I was trying to listen to the donation comments but the couch trio kept chatting and, while they probably didn't figure it out, the mic was catching only their voices due to the close proximity (this was especially bad during the Metroid Prime runs, since they had moved it closer).

Irc chat: I'm not sure a screen dedicated to the chat would be an entirely good idea. This is the internet, and the internet is full of arses, and the commentator often did an excellent job in skipping all the hate and very insensitive comments. I don't think some of the runners would have wanted to read hate and trolls after just a couple of deaths. For some people that might just end up increasing the frustration.

Race lag problem: I've come to the conclusion that the problem was Ustream itself. It wasn't obviously a problem on the 4-H's connection side, since if would have affected everyone.
I imagine that when a race was up the stream went from standard 640x480 to 1280x960, and Ustream just couldn't handle this for 2000+ people, so some would get a decent rate, while some were left with just a few packets.
I personally experienced both perfect race streams (Pianotoads) and unwatchable ones (Pianovania).
The issue might have been an overall network congestion, instead of Ustream, but from what I've seen in the chat if wasn't regionally localized, so I'm not too sure about this.

Awesomeness: you guys were too awesome. This lead many people to sleep deprivation, eye strain and overall plain addiction to the marathon.
This doesn't need fixing.

Schedule: I personally didn't mind the schedule being delayed, since I cared about the whole marathon, but I can see how some people who only wanted to see some select games might have been annoyed by it. Yes, adding looser estimates to accomodate for mistakes would solve this problem, but you also have to make sure it doesn't backfire: as I always say when I'm taking the bus, it's better late than early. If something comes late, you'll just have to wait a bit; if something's early, you have lost it. Therefore a runner who exceeds expectations might cause the next game to come too early and annoy people who were tuning in only later. Adding downtime wouldn't be a very good solution, either.
So basically I think that overall, this way of organizing the schedule was the best one - just add 5-10 minutes when switching game system or giving out prizes.

Commentary audio and overall experience: that mic was good. Too good. It could catch the plastic squeaking under the runners' hands. I'm not saying get a crappy mic, but overall a better positioning of it to balance runner/commentator voice would be needed.
Also, as it's been stated already, there was a bit of "priority issues" between runner and commentator voices. Often I was frustrated because I was trying to listen to the donation comments but the couch trio kept chatting and, while they probably didn't figure it out, the mic was catching only their voices due to the close proximity (this was especially bad during the Metroid Prime runs, since they had moved it closer).

Irc chat: I'm not sure a screen dedicated to the chat would be an entirely good idea. This is the internet, and the internet is full of arses, and the commentator often did an excellent job in skipping all the hate and very insensitive comments. I don't think some of the runners would have wanted to read hate and trolls after just a couple of deaths. For some people that might just end up increasing the frustration.

Race lag problem: I've come to the conclusion that the problem was Ustream itself. It wasn't obviously a problem on the 4-H's connection side, since if would have affected everyone.
I imagine that when a race was up the stream went from standard 640x480 to 1280x960, and Ustream just couldn't handle this for 2000+ people, so some would get a decent rate, while some were left with just a few packets.
I personally experienced both perfect race streams (Pianotoads) and unwatchable ones (Pianovania).
The issue might have been an overall network congestion, instead of Ustream, but from what I've seen in the chat if wasn't regionally localized, so I'm not too sure about this.

Awesomeness: you guys were too awesome. This lead many people to sleep deprivation, eye strain and overall plain addiction to the marathon.
This doesn't need fixing.

guest1

Flip

Edit history:

Flip: 2011-01-12 06:01:38 am

2011-01-12 02:03:43 am

Quote from aleckermit:

Ocarina of Time and Super Mario 64 at 4am and 5:30am respectively was pretty terrible, purely from a time slot perspective. Those were easily the 2 most popular games of the entire marathon and they were at the worst possible watching times. I'm not saying a complete schedule flip would have solved it but surely we could have swapped them with other games. The fact that I was playing OoT has nothing to do with my opinion here, I'm looking at this from a viewer's convenience/donation standpoint. Jiano had an amazing 3,200 viewers during SM64 120 star, but if it was on at 8pm the views would have been 5,000+ I bet. Not saying these games are better than any others, just that they are monumentally popular.

Oh and a mini-fridge was badly needed, but that's been discussed.

Yea, watching someone mash through 90% of the game during OOT was really popular. MST might be a popular category, but the reaction was generally really terrible among the casual viewers who watched the run that I have talked to (reading about RBA is cool but watching it in person is pretty terrible). You can't sit there and claim your game is more popular and then come and say "hey guyz! my opinion is unbiased" because you are completely biased here. Do an MST run that is actually interesting and isn't 90% cutscenes and I might agree with you.

A bigger travesty which your "unbiased opinion" didn't even bring up was the castlevania scheduling. I mean every single castlevania game was also in the worst time ever, and is one of the most popular games to speedrun, but you don't even mention it in your post at all. Nice job man, your opinion is really unbiased all right! Then, you come here and say, without any statistics or facts to back it up, that the majority of our viewers/donations are northamerican? Where the hell are you getting off on saying this at all, and what statistics do you have to back this up?

You have to have a balance on the placement of games. I agree that putting all the mega man, dkc, mario, castlevania stuff on the same day might have been poor scheduling from my biased perspective, but from another persons perspective, putting lots of the newer console games on the same day could also have been bad scheduling. The bottom line is, no one is going to come to a marathon if we sit here and look down on their games and tell them certain runs are more important than theirs. How much more money do you think we would have gained from even gaining more viewers? There were 3500 viewers during many of the popular runs, but I don't think there were ever even 200 different individuals who donated during a game. Gaining viewers is not our primary concern here, our primary concern was gaining more money for the charity. What was really successful in doing this was doing the "$5 minimum to win a prize" thing which we really need to thank aitamen/mercuryzelda for.

I suggest raising this minimum to $10 at least, preferably $20. There were so many $5 donations, and i really don't think raising this to $10 would have deterred many people at all. And we need other perspective here, but for those who donated specifically for prizes, would $20 have been too much?

Obviously everything isn't going to be perfect for a marathon, but personally I felt this marathon was too long because the donations definitely significantly slowed after a certain point. It felt like everyone who had donated had already donated by sunday, and that it was really a stretch to get more donations out of anyone. It also was a significant financial investment to get everyone here for such a long period of time, with people skipping work, school etc. If we did more "focused" marathons I think it might be a better idea, especially since most peoples interests do not spread among a lot of genres and a lot of time periods of different consoles. Maybe i'm wrong here and there are a lot of people who are interested in both classic NES speedruns and newer games, but generally I think its a specific population (I happen to be one of them) that is interested in speedruns that span generations of consoles. It would make the marathon shorter to have it more focused.

One of the things we have to be careful about is picking good games for marathon running, but at the end of the day it comes down to which runners are willing to donate their time and show off the games they are proud of. I really am proud that so many people were willing to come out, pay money and lose tons in opportunity cost to come out and play games, so i don't think we can really sit here and tell them "no your game is less important than any other" and it really is all about them donating their time. So please, those of you who have complained about the performance of some runners, please tone it down a bit. It really is frustrating to see all these people donate their time and money and then have people complain about how they did on the stream.

Again, this was a huge commitment from everyone involved, and I really want to thank everyone sincerely for all the time and money everyone put into this marathon.

[quote="aleckermit"]Ocarina of Time and Super Mario 64 at 4am and 5:30am respectively was pretty terrible, purely from a time slot perspective. Those were easily the 2 most popular games of the entire marathon and they were at the worst possible watching times. I'm not saying a complete schedule flip would have solved it but surely we could have swapped them with other games. The fact that I was playing OoT has nothing to do with my opinion here, I'm looking at this from a viewer's convenience/donation standpoint. Jiano had an amazing 3,200 viewers during SM64 120 star, but if it was on at 8pm the views would have been 5,000+ I bet. Not saying these games are better than any others, just that they are monumentally popular.

Oh and a mini-fridge was badly needed, but that's been discussed.[/quote]

Yea, watching someone mash through 90% of the game during OOT was really popular. MST might be a popular category, but the reaction was generally really terrible among the casual viewers who watched the run that I have talked to (reading about RBA is cool but watching it in person is pretty terrible). You can't sit there and claim your game is more popular and then come and say "hey guyz! my opinion is unbiased" because you are completely biased here. Do an MST run that is actually interesting and isn't 90% cutscenes and I might agree with you.

A bigger travesty which your "unbiased opinion" didn't even bring up was the castlevania scheduling. I mean every single castlevania game was also in the worst time ever, and is one of the most popular games to speedrun, but you don't even mention it in your post at all. Nice job man, your opinion is really unbiased all right! Then, you come here and say, without any statistics or facts to back it up, that the majority of our viewers/donations are northamerican? Where the hell are you getting off on saying this at all, and what statistics do you have to back this up?

You have to have a balance on the placement of games. I agree that putting all the mega man, dkc, mario, castlevania stuff on the same day might have been poor scheduling from my biased perspective, but from another persons perspective, putting lots of the newer console games on the same day could also have been bad scheduling. The bottom line is, no one is going to come to a marathon if we sit here and look down on their games and tell them certain runs are more important than theirs. How much more money do you think we would have gained from even gaining more viewers? There were 3500 viewers during many of the popular runs, but I don't think there were ever even 200 different individuals who donated during a game. Gaining viewers is not our primary concern here, our primary concern was gaining more money for the charity. What was really successful in doing this was doing the "$5 minimum to win a prize" thing which we really need to thank aitamen/mercuryzelda for.

I suggest raising this minimum to $10 at least, preferably $20. There were so many $5 donations, and i really don't think raising this to $10 would have deterred many people at all. And we need other perspective here, but for those who donated specifically for prizes, would $20 have been too much?

Obviously everything isn't going to be perfect for a marathon, but personally I felt this marathon was too long because the donations definitely significantly slowed after a certain point. It felt like everyone who had donated had already donated by sunday, and that it was really a stretch to get more donations out of anyone. It also was a significant financial investment to get everyone here for such a long period of time, with people skipping work, school etc. If we did more "focused" marathons I think it might be a better idea, especially since most peoples interests do not spread among a lot of genres and a lot of time periods of different consoles. Maybe i'm wrong here and there are a lot of people who are interested in both classic NES speedruns and newer games, but generally I think its a specific population (I happen to be one of them) that is interested in speedruns that span generations of consoles. It would make the marathon shorter to have it more focused.

One of the things we have to be careful about is picking good games for marathon running, but at the end of the day it comes down to which runners are willing to donate their time and show off the games they are proud of. I really am proud that so many people were willing to come out, pay money and lose tons in opportunity cost to come out and play games, so i don't think we can really sit here and tell them "no your game is less important than any other" and it really is all about them donating their time. So please, those of you who have complained about the performance of some runners, please tone it down a bit. It really is frustrating to see all these people donate their time and money and then have people complain about how they did on the stream.

Again, this was a huge commitment from everyone involved, and I really want to thank everyone sincerely for all the time and money everyone put into this marathon.

guest1

2011-01-12 02:08:45 am

Also, just to clarify, the stream was behind 14 hours total, not 24 hours.

Josh the Funkdoc

2011-01-12 02:56:34 am

spread the dirt to the populace

i have a lot to say but i'll try to keep it simple:

it's very easy for a lot of us to forget that this is for charity first and speedrunning (a distant) second because this is the only live speedrunning event we do currently. this is where i think the speedrunslive crew gets it right...SDA players who want a more serious live experience should get into races! the marathon isn't exactly the best fit for that mentality because you have to draw in viewers and encourage people to donate, and stream viewers are more impressed with dying a few times to get crazy tricks than solid safe runs that get a better overall time. you can still display enough skill to differentiate us from TSG and the rest, easily, and that's all that counts imo.

a lot of my own personal complaints with the marathon have the same kind of issue. goofy casual playthroughs like castle crashers, memey commentary, Alternative Beast...i couldnt stand any of this but the stream crowd enjoyed it and it pulled in donations. i just have to accept that i'm the polar opposite of our target audience and remember that our cause is worth any amount of nerdy embarrassment.

oh, and alec...guest has a good point with the RBA run. i find it funny how you guys say majora's mask speedrun sucks because it's all cutscenes and then do RBA instead of more normal oot...

i have a lot to say but i'll try to keep it simple:

it's very easy for a lot of us to forget that this is for charity first and speedrunning (a distant) second because this is the only live speedrunning event we do currently.  this is where i think the speedrunslive crew gets it right...SDA players who want a more serious live experience should get into races!  the marathon isn't exactly the best fit for that mentality because you have to draw in viewers and encourage people to donate, and stream viewers are more impressed with dying a few times to get crazy tricks than solid safe runs that get a better overall time.  you can still display enough skill to differentiate us from TSG and the rest, easily, and that's all that counts imo.

a lot of my own personal complaints with the marathon have the same kind of issue.  goofy casual playthroughs like castle crashers, memey commentary, [b]Alternative Beast[/b]...i couldnt stand any of this but the stream crowd enjoyed it and it pulled in donations.  i just have to accept that i'm the polar opposite of our target audience and remember that our cause is worth any amount of nerdy embarrassment.

oh, and alec...guest has a good point with the RBA run.  i find it funny how you guys say majora's mask speedrun sucks because it's all cutscenes and then do RBA instead of more normal oot...

RingRush

Edit history:

RingRush: 2011-01-12 03:19:08 am

2011-01-12 03:18:34 am

I posted a lot of this in #sda, but my take on the marathon: it seemed to do a lot of things wrong, but what was done right was significantly more polished and overall better than last year.

Five specific points that could be improved for next year (focusing on the negatives yeah, but I’m sure everyone knows all the great things that were done):
1) Casual runs (castle crashers, kirby super star) - If there is a bonus stream at the end, why not put these there? These do draw in donations, but they completely go against the idea that we are doing games quickly and skillfully. Putting these as an extra at the end would let us have the best of both worlds: donations pooled from them (albeit less than if they were during the main marathon) and not sacrificing one of the major points of our marathon.

2) Runs done poorly – Do I really need to discuss this? I’m sure all the runners are very skilled, there is just an issue of people not dedicating enough time to practice. If you volunteer for the marathon, make sure you have time to put a lot of effort into your game, simple as that. We only get one shot at this per year, so we should really make every game count. It is obvious some runners did worse purely because of nerves or bad luck, but it is obvious that they had skill and practiced the game…that is completely understandable. But I know for some runs, at least, this wasn’t the case.
On a side issue, I think we should have a game cap, of say, 3. This isn’t a hard cap, but for every game over the third, perhaps you should be required to stream yourself doing a run, to show you can handle more games. A few runners seemed to have this problem of just too many games, and the quality of some of their games suffered because of it.

3) Bad donations – There were a lot of great donation ideas at this marathon: prizes, character choice, people doing weird things (shoes on feet, crotch grab, chicken dance, etc) , naming characters, and more. However, when the donation seriously hurts the quality or length of the run, there is a problem. If the runner hasn’t practiced on Legendary difficulty, don’t offer donations for difficulty. If the timeslot a runner has was for an any% run, don’t make them do a quarter of the levels 100% and create an awkward hybrid run. There are plenty of ways, as demonstrated, to raise money –without- making a run take much longer or look worse. Small things like letting a cutscene play seem fine, but some of the things went a bit over the top.

4) Scheduling – Do I really need to talk about this? I think this has been and will be discussed enough, so I have no need to offer input here.

Other than these 4 things and a few very minor problems (talking over the runner when Uyama wasn’t there to enforce dictator mode, etc), the marathon was very, very enjoyable. If I remember correctly my name was mentioned seven times by people in the room, which beats my score of three from last year. Next year I’ll break fifteen!

Oh, and I fully support a smaller, west coast marathon in the Summer if there is anyone willing to organize it. I don’t know who has the insane dedication of Uyama, but maybe someone will step up to the plate.

I posted a lot of this in #sda, but my take on the marathon: it seemed to do a lot of things wrong, but what was done right was significantly more polished and overall better than last year.

Five specific points that could be improved for next year (focusing on the negatives yeah, but I’m sure everyone knows all the great things that were done):
1) Casual runs (castle crashers, kirby super star) - If there is a bonus stream at the end, why not put these there? These do draw in donations, but they completely go against the idea that we are doing games quickly and skillfully. Putting these as an extra at the end would let us have the best of both worlds: donations pooled from them (albeit less than if they were during the main marathon) and not sacrificing one of the major points of our marathon.

2) Runs done poorly – Do I really need to discuss this? I’m sure all the runners are very skilled, there is just an issue of people not dedicating enough time to practice. If you volunteer for the marathon, make sure you have time to put a lot of effort into your game, simple as that. We only get one shot at this per year, so we should really make every game count. It is obvious some runners did worse purely because of nerves or bad luck, but it is obvious that they had skill and practiced the game…that is completely understandable. But I know for some runs, at least, this wasn’t the case.
On a side issue, I think we should have a game cap, of say, 3. This isn’t a hard cap, but for every game over the third, perhaps you should be required to stream yourself doing a run, to show you can handle more games. A few runners seemed to have this problem of just too many games, and the quality of some of their games suffered because of it.

3) Bad donations – There were a lot of great donation ideas at this marathon: prizes, character choice, people doing weird things (shoes on feet, crotch grab, chicken dance, etc) , naming characters, and more. However, when the donation seriously hurts the quality or length of the run, there is a problem. If the runner hasn’t practiced on Legendary difficulty, don’t offer donations for difficulty. If the timeslot a runner has was for an any% run, don’t make them do a quarter of the levels 100% and create an awkward hybrid run. There are plenty of ways, as demonstrated, to raise money –without- making a run take much longer or look worse. Small things like letting a cutscene play seem fine, but some of the things went a bit over the top.

4) Scheduling – Do I really need to talk about this? I think this has been and will be discussed enough, so I have no need to offer input here.

Other than these 4 things and a few very minor problems (talking over the runner when Uyama wasn’t there to enforce dictator mode, etc), the marathon was very, very enjoyable. If I remember correctly my name was mentioned seven times by people in the room, which beats my score of three from last year. Next year I’ll break fifteen!

Oh, and I fully support a smaller, west coast marathon in the Summer if there is anyone willing to organize it. I don’t know who has the insane dedication of Uyama, but maybe someone will step up to the plate.

Darkwing Duck

2011-01-12 03:28:51 am

Highly Evolved

I guess I'll clarify a bit my reasoning for this particular thread. What I want is discussion about how the marathon can better portray itself to the viewing audience. I wouldn't say it's necessarily to get more viewers, but I'd say more viewer friendly, especially for the type of people who, as mentioned in the chat, may be sitting in a hospital room diagnosed with cancer enjoying a bunch of people getting together to raise money to fight the disease.

My opinion is that is that the games that are considered popular should be in the slots that would have the most viewers. While more viewers doesn't necessarily mean more donations, I would think there would be a bigger chance of donations with more people watching.

Regarding OoT specifically, I don't want to get too much into it since I would like this thread to stay on general terms, but the fact that four people were running it made the cut scenes miniscule as you could watch another screen. Add in the explanations of how the run works made the cut scene dominated run very entertaining to watch. I could see the issue if only one person was running it.

RingRush posted as I was typing this, and I agree with some of his sentiments. I do believe everyone learned very quickly to not elongate runs unnecessarily. Especially when the runner had not practiced for it. It was too bad it happened so early and put the marathon behind the eight ball so early. I'm not sure I'm a hundred percent on board with some of the other suggestions, because to the casual viewer, they wouldn't necessarily know the difference between a "quick" run and a speed run.

And blast my fairly blunt and straightforward typing style. Made this thread turn out kind of depressing.

I guess I'll clarify a bit my reasoning for this particular thread.  What I want is discussion about how the marathon can better portray itself to the viewing audience.  I wouldn't say it's necessarily to get more viewers, but I'd say more viewer friendly, especially for the type of people who, as mentioned in the chat, may be sitting in a hospital room diagnosed with cancer enjoying a bunch of people getting together to raise money to fight the disease.

My opinion is that is that the games that are considered popular should be in the slots that would have the most viewers.  While more viewers doesn't necessarily mean more donations, I would think there would be a bigger chance of donations with more people watching.

Regarding OoT specifically, I don't want to get too much into it since I would like this thread to stay on general terms, but the fact that four people were running it made the cut scenes miniscule as you could watch another screen.  Add in the explanations of how the run works made the cut scene dominated run very entertaining to watch.  I could see the issue if only one person was running it.

RingRush posted as I was typing this, and I agree with some of his sentiments.  I do believe everyone learned very quickly to not elongate runs unnecessarily.  Especially when the runner had not practiced for it.  It was too bad it happened so early and put the marathon behind the eight ball so early.  I'm not sure I'm a hundred percent on board with some of the other suggestions, because to the casual viewer, they wouldn't necessarily know the difference between a "quick" run and a speed run.

And blast my fairly blunt and straightforward typing style.  Made this thread turn out kind of depressing.

randomzero

2011-01-12 03:36:41 am

Seems kind of rude to post complaints a day after people sacrificed a lot of time, money, and effort to put on an event for charity. Not everything went perfectly, but I'm sure they know that better than we do and will make appropriate changes next year. I think the point of this thread should be more about things you want to see next time, rather than things that went wrong.