FGM Wrap-Up/Future Considerations

[tehjman1993]

Hello fangame community,

First of all, congratulations! This event, by and large, was a huge success! With some bumps in the road, it was clearly a very large success that this community made a reality for 2 straight days. We attracted all sorts of gaming communities to ours - every community from our own to some of the other speedrunning communities, as well as some of the casual communities (like BL2)! We received a lot of new viewers that had no idea what "guy games" are, and chat was fairly responsive to a lot of their questions. Of course, all of our runners seemed very well prepared and ran their games very well (a little too well for your estimates, Kappa). For all of our runners, I'm very proud. You truly showed the "best of the west"!

And now here's a large thank-you list:

Thanks to SandskyZero for initial layout design. They were amazing!
Thanks to ShadowsDieAway for updated layout design, visuals, and VOD creation. You have helped us more than I could imagine!
Thanks to Klazen108 for broadcasting and marathon organization. It is always a pleasure working with you!
Thanks to Wolsk for broadcasting, PR, and CatBags! You really kept our chat entertained!
Thanks to 7thAce for the FGMBot, which I accidentally banned. The bot was great!
Thanks to DanSalvato & SirStendec for live FFZ updates. Thanks a ton!
Thanks to IrelandOfEndor for partnering our marathon stream and giving us quality options, as well as the frontpage! You're awesome!
Thanks to Denferok for Twitter PR about the marathon and adding FGM to the twitch team! #fangamemarathon #thanks
Thanks to Anyone who raided and/or hosted the marathon! You really kept our viewer count high!
Thanks to All of the runners who ran in the marathon. I am very proud of every runner in this marathon, this includes our fillers! #BestOfTheWest
Thanks to The Wannabes for hosting this event. It was really a fun experience.
Thanks to All of our viewers, who stuck with us through sudden frame drops, stops, breaks, and other crazy interruptions!

I encourage you all to thank these individuals for their contributions to the marathon. Without them, this would have never been as big, nor entertaining. Once again, I'm very proud of this community for what has been accomplished. Thank you.

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To address popular questions floating around:

When is the next FGM? It was so fun!
The next FGM is unannounced. If someone picks up initiative to start another marathon at a later date, I am more than happy to hand over the title of "Fangame Marathon" to them. As of now, there is no date of the next "FGM", but this does not mean there won't be future events!

What about VODs? I missed a few runs!
We have Shadows highlighting runs of the marathon as we speak. This will be a slightly longer process, as some runs are muted and we need to take locally recorded files to upload to youtube in place of them. This will most likely take a week. All runs will be highlighted, don't worry!

Bonus stream? BONUS STREAM?
While there are remnants of the bonus stream still alive on twitch after the marathon, a bonus stream was not initially planned for this marathon. For future events, this is a good topic to bring up when it is time for schedule organizing.

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Please note that the following topics will most likely spark some debate in our community. Please keep it civil.

Future considerations:

Self-Promotions: To an extent, these are alright! We made sure that broadcasters plugged the stream of the runner before/after every run, as well as letting the runner talk about any other social media site to follow them on. This marathon was to encourage viewers to your channel, and more importantly, the community. While this was received well, there was lots of small talk about some streamers going overboard with advertising. While we condone advertising during your own run, we do NOT condone advertising for other channels during others' runs. This was a common problem, and happened after almost every run. This was seen as extremely disrespectful to the current runner, and the community itself. For future events, keeping self-promotions to the runner only in emote and/or text form is necessary.

Time Estimates: Obviously an issue during FGM. While some runners were within 5/10 minutes of their estimate, some runners went waaaaayyyyy under estimate and put us in a bad spot for finding "filler" content until the next run. There was a few accusations of runners abusing the time estimate for self-promotion purposes. If this is the case, we will not accept this in future events. While fangames are tricky to find an accurate time estimate for, more time and effort needs to be given to runners' submissions before giving a time estimate. Keep this in mind for future events.

FrankerFaceZ: Another issue during FGM. Some emotes were added without approval, and some emotes were seen as not directly related to FGM. Another minor issue that came up was that mobile users cannot see FFZ, so it makes the chat a mess for them. In the future, FFZ must be used sparingly and must be directly related to the event at-hand.

Variety of games: A slightly minor issue in FGM, but a good topic to discuss. Some viewers had pointed out a lack of avoidance, while there was heavy emphasis on needle games. While this is true, this ultimately ended up as a scheduling/submission issue. For future events, I encourage the organizers of the event to promote all game types, and to spread them out evenly in the event.

"Memes": Some viewers and runners felt that at times, the FGM chat had promoted an overabundance of spam, memes, etc. While single emotes and text are ok for spam (example: JUAN JUAN JUAN during the NANG run), copypasta and walls of text/emotes are not ok. This hurts the chat more than you could imagine, especially for new viewers. For the future, mods of the chat should be instructed to take down any copypasta and walls of text/emotes. Of course, we will encourage single-emote and small-text spam during fun moments in runs!

Professional Attitudes: During some points in the marathon, some runners had exhibited some unprofessional behaviors. Whether accidental or on purpose, we simply cannot represent our community with a childish attitude, as our runners are a direct reflection of our community. Following Twitch's rules about dress code, camera positions, and behavior towards other runners and chat during the run needs to be respectful and adhered to. For future events, please keep these in mind.

Remember to keep all discussion about these topics civil. I do not condone any names being directly tied to any of the considerations. Your comment will be edited to not include names. I encourage discussion to the fullest extent so we can make the next event even better! Please let us know what you thought of the marathon below, and what you liked/disliked!

Thanks again, fangame community. You made us look great!
-TJ

[SSFireBall]

Even though it's probably been mentioned more times then most of the things on the list, the time estimates were a huge problem and were seriously sinking in time that could of been used for runners and for more spotlight over the entire community.

[zanto]

First, I want to say that the marathon was awesome and I miss you guys already! It felt a little lonely when everything was over

Self-Promotions: To an extent, these are alright! We made sure that broadcasters plugged the stream of the runner before/after every run, as well as letting the runner talk about any other social media site to follow them on. This marathon was to encourage viewers to your channel, and more importantly, the community. While this was received well, there was lots of small talk about some streamers going overboard with advertising. While we condone advertising during your own run, we do NOT condone advertising for other channels during others' runs. This was a common problem, and happened after almost every run. This was seen as extremely disrespectful to the current runner, and the community itself. For future events, keeping self-promotions to the runner only in emote and/or text form is necessary.

I agree with this... it was awkward when people flooded the chat with promotions to a twitch channel that wasn't related to the runner, the commentators, or the Wannabes team.

Variety of games: A slightly minor issue in FGM, but a good topic to discuss. Some viewers had pointed out a lack of avoidance, while there was heavy emphasis on needle games. While this is true, this ultimately ended up as a scheduling/submission issue. For future events, I encourage the organizers of the event to promote all game types, and to spread them out evenly in the event.

Another idea would be to make "blocks" of games. Like an avoidance block, a needle block, an adventure block. This would make easier for viewers who like specific genres not to miss what they want to watch. I'm not sure this is a good idea, but I figured I'd mention it just in case someone can elaborate on it.

Time Estimates: Obviously an issue during FGM. While some runners were within 5/10 minutes of their estimate, some runners went waaaaayyyyy under estimate and put us in a bad spot for finding "filler" content until the next run. There was a few accusations of runners abusing the time estimate for self-promotion purposes. If this is the case, we will not accept this in future events. While fangames are tricky to find an accurate time estimate for, more time and effort needs to be given to runners' submissions before giving a time estimate. Keep this in mind for future events.

Maybe one of the reasons that happened is because, as far as I know, there were no clear guidelines on how to make estimates. What should it have been? The personal best plus a set number of minutes? Something short enough to keep viewers excited? Something long enough to avoid a mercy kill?

"Memes": Some viewers and runners felt that at times, the FGM chat had promoted an overabundance of spam, memes, etc. While single emotes and text are ok for spam (example: JUAN JUAN JUAN during the NANG run), copypasta and walls of text/emotes are not ok. This hurts the chat more than you could imagine, especially for new viewers. For the future, mods of the chat should be instructed to take down any copypasta and walls of text/emotes. Of course, we will encourage single-emote and small-text spam during fun moments in runs!

This is really difficult, because the flood of memes and texts is almost natural when hundreds (or thousands) of people gather in one place and feel excited about something. What should the mods do when they see emote or text spam? Time out everyone? I'm not sure it's a good idea, because people will probably feel discouraged to interact with the marathon. They might even stop watching it, because one of the fun things about the marathon is being playful with other people, like a bunch of children (and I don't mean that in a bad way ). On the other hand, I understand that it can be seen intimidating to new viewers or viewers who don't like that kind of mess. Maybe we could think of different solutions? Like a separate chat for game discussions or something like that?

Professional Attitudes: During some points in the marathon, some runners had exhibited some unprofessional behaviors. Whether accidental or on purpose, we simply cannot represent our community with a childish attitude, as our runners are a direct reflection of our community. Following Twitch's rules about dress code, camera positions, and behavior towards other runners and chat during the run needs to be respectful and adhered to. For future events, please keep these in mind.

This seemed a little vague to me. What do you mean by "unprofessional behaviors"? Were it only the things you already mentioned before? Or do those include other things such as swear words and things like that? I don't know, maybe something happened while I was asleep.

Maybe for the next year, some guidelines could be created for the runners and mods on how to behave and what to do in certain situations. We must use the experiences we had this year to improve the next marathon. If we just leave all the discussion up in the air, I don't think much will change.


... Just my two cents

[SSFireBall]

Variety of games: A slightly minor issue in FGM, but a good topic to discuss. Some viewers had pointed out a lack of avoidance, while there was heavy emphasis on needle games. While this is true, this ultimately ended up as a scheduling/submission issue. For future events, I encourage the organizers of the event to promote all game types, and to spread them out evenly in the event.

Another idea would be to make "blocks" of games. Like an avoidance block, a needle block, an adventure block. This would make easier for viewers who like specific genres not to miss what they want to watch. I'm not sure this is a good idea, but I figured I'd mention it just in case someone can elaborate on it.

In my opinion, this isn't a good idea. First off, this isn't like gdq, where runners are available at any time. Maybe small blocks of the same genre spread over the entire marathon would work? But I bet it would cause a lot of problems for the organizers to plan everything.

[OhNoezEinPandy]

I also noticed that some runners trashtalked half of the screens they played. Maybe not the best idea to shittalk the game which is currently used for promoting our event.

[Mr Wonderful]

Variety of games: A slightly minor issue in FGM, but a good topic to discuss. Some viewers had pointed out a lack of avoidance, while there was heavy emphasis on needle games. While this is true, this ultimately ended up as a scheduling/submission issue. For future events, I encourage the organizers of the event to promote all game types, and to spread them out evenly in the event.

Another idea would be to make "blocks" of games. Like an avoidance block, a needle block, an adventure block. This would make easier for viewers who like specific genres not to miss what they want to watch. I'm not sure this is a good idea, but I figured I'd mention it just in case someone can elaborate on it.

In my opinion, this isn't a good idea. First off, this isn't like gdq, where runners are available at any time. Maybe small blocks of the same genre spread over the entire marathon would work? But I bet it would cause a lot of problems for the organizers to plan everything.

I think big blocks is also a bad idea, except for a different reason: I'm sure a lot of people would tune out for a big block of a genre they don't usually enjoy as much, and just not end up tuning back in for whatever reason. Where as if it's just one or two games before there's another run they want to see, they're more likely to stay and check it out. I feel like having a near-constant variety is better for viewer retention, and for just making things more exciting in general - I mean, how many people really want to watch needle grinds for, say, 6 hours straight. Even if you're into that sort of thing, you know chat will be ResidentSleeper.

[BBF]

If you ask me,  there should only be 1 specific block, a "bad games block" (think AwfulGamesDoneQuick). The rest can still be mixed for variety.

A bunch of people probably thought Fangames are completely dumb if they just joined during the WDJ runs or Flying Spike. Putting them together in 1 block would at least let people know what they are coming to the stream for. As pretty much everyone can play these games it wouldn't be hard to find a runner for any timeslot assigned to it.

I might post some more thoughts as they occur to me, but this is the main issue I wanted to adress.

[klazen108]

Hey everyone!

I had a blast doing the restreaming, it was an honor to have helped out. Overall, I think the marathon was a huge success! There were some very minor issues, but considering that we've never done anything on this scale before it's mind-blowing that things worked out as well as they did! For instance, we never had to scramble to find a runner right before their scheduled time, big thanks to everyone for being very professional and prompt.

Here's my thoughts on things, as a professional marathon watcher

Game Blocks: I'm not a big fan of blocks of games, I like variety. Blocking games together doesn't encourage me to show up to the stream when the blocks I want to see go live, I would have been there anyway! Rather, it encourages me to leave when a block of games comes up that I don't want to see. I will concede the point about Awful Games Done Quick, blocking together the silly games could be a good idea so that people know what they're getting (heck, I personally love the Awful Games block at GDQ events). This is just my personal preference, we should keep discussing this as events like AGDQ always do this, maybe there's a reason there that I'm not connecting with.

Time Estimates: Yes, these were very messy but I don't think this is due to sabotage or anything of that sort, this is simply inexperience on everyone's part (schedulers and runners alike). No one wants to be mercy killed, of course! But an estimate should be as accurate as possible. This is actually why I declined Rekt from being in the marathon - there's no possible way to give an accurate estimate for that game! Before you give an estimate, you should run the game multiple times and get a feel for how long it will take you - don't just base it off your old PB from months ago before you stopped running the game. Your estimate does not have room for cushion - every minute you finish under estimate is a minute that could have gone to another run, and another minute we have to scramble to find content for before people get tired of waiting and leave. The only guideline I can give towards coming up with an estimate is to bring it as close to your PB as possible - if your PB is 30 minutes, but it's possible you could lose 5 minutes to RNG throughout the run, then go with 35 minutes. Be smart about it, make your estimate as low as possible and strive to meet it!

Memes: Never thought I'd see the day where 'memes' was a bullet point in a list of considerations for an event This is a natural part of marathon streams, and Twitch in general. But the key is to let it flow naturally - let the viewers make it happen, this is actually the one part of the experience they have control over! Some mods were spamming messages faster than the cooldown that everyone else has to abide by, and this kinda robs the viewers of their fun (I'm not making accusations, nor am I angry at anyone at all - this is just hypothetical discussion for next year!). If you were modded during the marathon, it means that you were a runner in the marathon, or that you are a Wannabe, a close friend of the Wannabes, or that you brought something else to the table that has really helped out. That badge is there to help you stand out in chat, to show that you're someone worth looking up to, someone who should be listened to. Please be a good role model!

Restreamers: We had 3 restreamers for the entire 40 hour period of the marathon (4 if you include the times Geezer did Twitch Plays Guy Games). TJ streamed for 7.5 hours + 8.5 hours, and I streamed for 6.5 hours and 9 hours, and Wolsk had his block for 5 hours. I feel like our core team could have been bigger, including someone who could help the streamers with prep before their runs (often times I had to communicate with the runners and explain how things were going to work right before their run, and things got difficult when I had to do that while entertaining the viewers over in the main stream!) However, one thing I think we really got right was responsiveness to the chat - every time I watch AGDQ, something happens (for instance, game audio being too quiet) and chat spams about it for what feels like forever with no response from an admin! I'm sure they had noticed and were working on it, but you really need to acknowledge chat as fast as possible. Whenever we had an issue, we made sure to let chat know we were fixing it, and then got on it right away. That's a great way to boost professionalism. Speaking of game audio, this goes out to all the runners - first and foremost, a marathon's purpose is to put on a good show. This means that if an issue comes up with your stream, the best thing to do is stop and fix it! Don't just keep running, having a functional stream is more important than trying to PB! If you need to check stream quality, audio levels, etc, please find someone to check for you well before it's your turn to go on (you can always ask one of the admins, we'd be more than happy to check).

That's really all I have to say about the matter, and it doesn't mean that I think we failed any of those things! These are just ways to go from good to great at our next event (and we are gonna do this again, right? right!?) With this hugely successful experience under our belt we now know the guidelines to set, things to keep an eye out for, and ways to improve, and I believe next FGM will be even more successful than the last! Thanks again guys for letting me be a part of the experience, and I hope you had as much fun as I did!

[Arclooper]

The event itself went fine imho, and I think that most of the issues that happened can be chalked to lack of experience, which is completely understandable considering it was the first time for most, if not all of the people involved, and if we do more of such events it'll get better as long as there's enough communication and preparation time.

Now for specific topics:

Game Blocks: Huge blocks sound like a bad idea, but smaller blocks throughout the event could work, although with the size of the marathon currently, the way it was done was a good form. But there are some types of blocks that could probably work, such as the bad games block BBF said, but not only those, I think making small avoidance blocks would work not only for covering the variety of genres issue, but to also remedy the scheduling issue that some avoidances could present, as they are usually harder to estimate because you either beat it all or not at all, so making something like time-slots for a player to do multiple avoidances, not necessarily having to beat them all, but just to show some avoidances they like, this way the estimate would be easier to make. Lastly on this topic, since this is about fangames, and not just speedruns, I think it's fine to add more segments (although I wouldn't want them to be blocked all together) like shadesbot and geezerbot, maybe segments specifically intended to show gamemaking, tutorials and previews of big projects like the cultured 2, being officially part of the schedule, as they're pretty interesting in their own right and easier to keep on schedule since you don't have an end to reach, and can just go with it until the time is up.

Spam/Meme Overload/Unprofessional behavior: First of all I'd like to apologize if I went too far with the spam and memes, but I tried to follow chat's mood and only do it at times where it seemed like it'd be ok, but if anyone thinks I went too far, I sincerely apologize, no harm was meant. And although going overboard with the casual/free for all mood is a serious concern, going too far to the opposite side sounds bad too. It shouldn't be sloppy, but there  is no need to go in as strictly as the GDQ events currently do.

Understaffed/Communication: Personally I think that was the biggest issue, because despite the event having turned out nicely, you can tell that the main organizers ended up overworking themselves from having to do most of the work alone, and that sometimes there wasn't a clear understanding between the runners and the organizers on what to do and how to act, which I think was the main reason for the scheduling issues and some of the random issues with filler material. So for the next possible events it would help a lot to have more people helping and more preparation time/communication beforehand.

That said I really enjoyed the marathon, and while I think it can get better, everyone still did a really good job helping it out and I hope more events like this can happen, because it was really fun

[Mr Wonderful]

Also, I mentioned this before, but I think having a trusted gamemaker (or small group of makers) create a game before the marathon, and have some well known players race it blind on stream would be tons of fun, and I honestly don't think it would be too hard to get organized or find people who are willing.

[Stepcore]

Firstly thanks for putting on this event, it was super fun to watch and play in. I thought it went really well pretty much all the way through and drew in a surprisingly high number of viewers (to me at least). Very nice layouts, music, commentary. It certainly didn't look like the first of it's kind. Everything was really well put together.

Estimates:
I am so sorry about the estimates being that terrible for me. Of all the estimates, mine were probably some of the worst. I did a bunch of practice runs and when I added the time, that was around how long it took me. My estimates for both games was set to about 5-10 minutes (rounded up) over my run times at the time. Last minute Practice killed it. I can imagine it was like that for other people as well and that we all learned something from this. So, sorry guys, I messed up.

Communication:
What I think was the hardest for me, was the intro and outtro for the run. Knowing when to start the countdown and when to cut the stream was hard since I couldn't have sound on for the stream (it would be very delayed anyway). Some easier way of communication between runner and host would be awesome. Also if we go under estimate, what to do with the time and when to mercy-kill.
This wasn't really a huge problem or anything, it was just a bit confusing for me personally. Seems like it worked out well still.

Blocks:
I agree with genre blocks not being a very good idea, especially because a lot of the games are very mixed in their genres. Which block would Call Me It be in for example? It has 2 really cool looking avoidance fights, but would probably not be in that block. Though what arclooper said about avoidance games sounds like a good idea for hard avoidance games. They are pretty much impossible to put an estimate for.
Also bad games block sounds like a good idea to me.

[pieceofcheese87]

Sorry for my shitty estimates/run commentary

[Starz0r]

Also, I mentioned this before, but I think having a trusted gamemaker (or small group of makers) create a game before the marathon, and have some well known players race it blind on stream would be tons of fun, and I honestly don't think it would be too hard to get organized or find people who are willing.

I think this is a possible idea, honestly I was trying to get I wanna Twitch Relay a thing before FGM came along, so maybe we will get a game next time FGM happens?

[ShadowsDieAway]

Also, I mentioned this before, but I think having a trusted gamemaker (or small group of makers) create a game before the marathon, and have some well known players race it blind on stream would be tons of fun, and I honestly don't think it would be too hard to get organized or find people who are willing.

I think this is a possible idea, honestly I was trying to get I wanna Twitch Relay a thing before FGM came along, so maybe we will get a game next time FGM happens?

See my post, relays are one of my ideas to do once a month with the FGM channel

[Rikze]

I started watching guy streams about 2 months ago, so i was kinda excited about watching this marathon when i first heard of it, but to be honest it was a bit boring, there was a few runs that was okay and i liked the twitch plays guy games thing.

But i was really disappointed about the schedule times, i was really looking forward to watch k2 and k3 runs, as they are some of the best games to watch if u ask me, but they were starting at 5 am here in europe so i only saw a little bit of k2 and i missed whole k3. For next marathon you should probaly have them played at a better time for us europeans, cause the best games attracts more newer viewers.