Fangames > Tournaments

FGM Wrap-Up/Future Considerations

<< < (2/4) > >>

Mr Wonderful:

--- Quote from: SSFireBall on June 07, 2015, 12:26:43 PM ---
--- Quote from: zanto on June 07, 2015, 12:16:33 PM ---


--- Quote ---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.
--- End quote ---
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.

--- End quote ---

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.

--- End quote ---
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 :Kappa:

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 :P 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 :Kappa: 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.

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page

[*] Previous page