It happened. We got the schedules done in time. You can find the schedule of the first stream on our website and both on horaro:
https://esamarathon.com/schedule
https://horaro.org/esa/2018-one
https://horaro.org/esa/2018-two

If you wish to re-watch the live reveal, you'll be able to do so HERE.

Every game that is not part of a schedule is rejected for now, but part of a backup list. As usual these schedules are not completely final. There will be dropouts and changes that have to be made up until the event in July. Every run has the chance to make a comeback depending on what we're looking for.

SETUP Games: These are buffer blocks that give us an opportunity to tackle delays. The games will be played in their specified timeslot if the marathon is not too far behind the original schedule at that point. If we are, they will be pushed to the last day of the 2nd stream. Decisions will be made several hours before the run is scheduled. That means all SETUP Games will definitely get shown.

Intermission: Short games that will fill longer setup times.

Get your tickets! All information can be found in the Main Post.
All runners are required to have bought a ticket by July 2nd. Keep in mind that ticket prizes will increase one month prior to the event. We will warn runners who don't have one yet before the deadline.

If you want to know about rejection reasons, if we scheduled a run by accident outside of your availability or if you just have a general question/request, post in this thread or PM either Fatzke#4192, eTholon#5871 or IrregularJinny#2406 on the ESA Discord. Mistakes happen, don't hesitate if you spot one. Non-private PMs may be posted in this thread if we feel they would be helpful to others.

The same applies if you want to make changes to estimate, donation incentives or your run in general. Accepted runs are unable to be edited by runners at this point, so just send us a message and we'll get it sorted.

Thank you for all your great submissions. See you in Malmö!

With the release of our schedules just around the corner we still have one more submission phase to go through.

Find out below about how to submit chase games and newly released games in the next three days and also how and when the schedules will be made public on sunday.

As already stated in the original post about the submission process, we will reopen game submissions at https://submissions.esamarathon.com/ for "chase games" and newly released games again between Today, May 10th and (including) Saturday, May 12th.

"Chase games" are games that we would like to have in the marathon but were not released by the end of the first submission phase. Newly released games include all games that got released since the end of the first submission phase.

The original chase game list for ESA Summer 2018:
March 16th: Kirby Star Allies
March 20th: Attack on Titan 2
April 20th: God of War 2018

Important: Just submitting these games will not guarantee them a spot in the marathon. We will hold them and you to the same standards as all the other games. If one of those runs turns out to be a four hour long autoscroller or we think that you are not good enough to show them off properly, they will be cut in the end.

Please don't submit games that were released before March 10th 2018, they will be deleted without further notice.

God of War 2018 is a bit of a special case. We originally wanted the game and included it in the list. Due to how it turned out we unfortunately won't be considering the Any% or Glitchless categories. The lack of skippable cutscenes and great speedtech just outweigh the novelty factor. But instead of denying it straight up there's still a window for somebody with a crafty idea of how to make the run presentable.

The schedules for the first and second stream will be released "live" and game by game on Sunday, May 13th at 8pm CEST (that's 2pm EDT, 11am PDT or just 6pm GMT). We did something similar for the first round of accepted games and got good feedback, so we decided to keep and expand on the format.

You'll be able to follow the unveiling on our stream, on the ESA Discord and on a public spreadsheet.

If you have any questions, post in this thread or PM either Fatzke#4192, eTholon#5871 or IrregularJinny#2406 on the ESA Discord. Non-private PMs may be posted in this thread if we feel they would be helpful to others.

With the horrible slaughter out of the way and the first batch of accepted games in the bag we move on closer and closer to the schedule release and ultimately the event in July.

Check out all the games and their current status here:
https://submissions.esamarathon.com/submissions/view

Total hours submitted: ~695
Total hours rejected: ~289
Total hours accepted: ~71
Total hours pending: ~336
Total hours required to fill the marathon: ~230 (+-10, depending on average run length, setup times necessary etc.)

All the games that are accepted will be part of the marathon.
All the games that are still "Pending" will be reviewed again when we make the 2nd set of cuts before releasing the schedule on May 13th.
All the games that are rejected will definitely not show up in the first schedule drafts of either stream, but might still be considered as backups in case of dropouts.

If you have not yet done so, now is the perfect time to get your tickets, book your hotel room and plan your travels. You'll find the necessary information in the General Info Post.

The purpose of the time between now and the release of the schedule is to allow runners to improve all aspects about their submission while also giving us the possibility to look closer at each individual game.
We allowed games that were not even learned yet and have faith that six weeks is enough to reach a level of gameplay and commentary desired for a marathon showcase.

It is now more important than ever to keep your times on the leaderboards up-to-date. This is the first place we will be checking for signs of improvement. Having an up-to-date time and video on there saves us the hassle of trying to find it somewhere else and also saves the game from being cut because we can't find your time. Make sure to edit your submission should your estimate change, if you have a new video to show off or new information about your run.
Let us also know privately or through the submission form about your availability at the event. We'll make sure to be mindful of that when creating the schedule.

As already stated in the original post about the submission process, we will reopen game submissions for chase games and unreleased games (info here) again between Thursday, May 10th and (including) Saturday, May 12th.
During that time, all submissions of games which came out before the end of the first submission phase (March 10th) will be deleted.

Of course we will once again be giving out reasons of why runs got rejected. Either shoot us a message on discord or post in the thread and we will get back to you.

If you have any questions, post in this thread or PM either Fatzke#4192, eTholon#5871 or IrregularJinny#2406 on the ESA Discord. Non-private PMs may be posted in this thread if we feel they would be helpful to others.

When deciding whether a suggested game will fit into the final schedule, we will consider the following: Length, entertainment value and commentary quality. We will be looking at these three qualities over others such as game popularity.

For example, long games (4 hours or more) are harder to put in the schedule due to how many games could be put in their place. Long games can and still will make it in, but will require more consideration than a shorter game.

Additionally, the entertainment value of runners, games and commentary is taken into consideration. If you are running a game that had a limited release, but is incredibly entertaining or has fantastic commentary, your game is still likely to get in. We also place stock in the scenes and communities around these games and previous marathon runs and runner behaviour (if appropriate).

Pitching games that you have not yet learnt or mastered is OK. But you need to show significant (weekly) progress after the point that your suggestion passes the first cut.

There will be a limit of five submissions (including categories) per person. You can exceed this maximum by being part of a race, relay or co-op run another runner has submitted. These do not count towards your personal total.

You are welcome to submit all content including non-speedrun content so long as it has a relevance, such as score attack, rhythm games, and exhibitions. With a 2nd stream we will have more options to make these part of the marathon. Also feel incentivized to put together and submit things out of the ordinary. The Super Mario 64 70 Star Relay was a great success and we'd like to have more oddball submissions in general.

Non-complete game categories will be allowed provided they are accepted by the individual communities.

Submitted games must adhere to Twitch's community guidelines:
https://www.twitch.tv/p/legal/community-guidelines

When you submit your game, you should provide a short description about the run/showcase/exhibition and/or the game(s), a link to a video as well as information about your progress in the game. Bonus points for submitting a video with marathon-like commentary! We suggest adding your times to the speedrun.com leaderboards for your game (or making your own if it doesn't exist yet!) so we can more easily keep track of times. If your community uses other leaderboards, please link them in your submission form.

If you are submitting races, relays, co-op games or anything else with multiple people, only one runner will be required to submit it and list the other runners on the submission page. All participants also have to have their Twitch account linked. The other runners will then be notified and are required to confirm that they are willing to take part in the race.

The marathon run will be a no-reset run, so you should practice a few runs truly without resetting and find an average of those. Actively practice no reset strats and also have backup strats (or savegames) at hand in case something never happened before. The estimate should consider everything that can go wrong as well as any additional content that you may wish to show off. Remember that you may have been awake for forty hours having fun before your run! It is much better to err on the side of caution and overestimate. You will be able to adjust your estimate time later on and you are advised to do so! Don’t add an inaccurate time in the hope that it will appear more impressive and increase the chance that you are accepted!

Not complying with the rules will cause your submission to be deleted.

We will be using the same submission form developed by Lordmau5 and FreezyLemon that already proved itself for ESA Winter 2018 and several online marathons.

https://submissions.esamarathon.com/

You will need to register and link your Twitch account in order to log in. Additionally we require you to link your speedrun.com and Discord accounts in the “My connected accounts” section:

We require your speedrun.com account to check your leaderboard times. Discord will be the main tool for all forms of communication leading up to the main event and will also be the way for the game selection and scheduling team to contact you.

If you don't have an account yet, please get one here (https://discordapp.com/) and join the ESA Server: https://discord.gg/esamarathon

If you already know about your availability during the week, please make that known in your submissions. If you don’t you will be able to edit your submission later, so don’t worry.

Possible donation incentives/bidwars can be entered through the form as well. Keep in mind that those undergo a review process as well and should not add much more than five minutes to your run, unless justified. We will reach out to you if we feel like one of your incentives is inappropriate or could work better in a different format.

You will be able to and are encouraged to update your submission with new information over time. Submission comment, video, estimate, availability and donation incentives will be editable even after submissions are closed.

There will be two rounds of selections:

The first cut will pick out all the games we are interested in and confirm a good amount of the final picks. This will give early security to the runners who are already at the top of their game to book their trip.

The rest of the games will then undergo another selection process directly before the schedule release. The additional time between the first and the second cut is supposed to give runners time to learn their games, hone their skills and get to the desired level to be able to showcase their runs. In the end we will apply the same standards in terms of skill/commentary to the first and the final picks.

We will release those second cuts alongside the schedule on May 13th.

Chase games are games that we would like to have in the marathon but are not yet released by the end of the submission phase. For these particular games and games unreleased at the time of the first submission phase we will have separate submissions opening up a few days before schedule release and lasting only a few days. Please do not submit unreleased games during the first submission phase.

The chase game list for ESA Summer 2018:
March 16th: Kirby Star Allies
March 20th: Attack on Titan 2
April 20th: God of War (PS 4)

Important: Just submitting these games will not guarantee them a spot in the marathon. We will hold them and you to the same standards as all the other games. If one of those runs turns out to be a four hour long autoscroller or we think that you are not good enough to show them off properly, they will be cut in the end.

If you have any questions, post here or PM either Fatzke#4192, eTholon#5871 or IrregularJinny#2406 on the ESA Discord. Non-private PMs may be posted in the thread if we feel they would be helpful to others.

ESA Summer 2018 will be open to all attendees from Friday 20 July to Sunday July 29
The marathon stream will run from Saturday 21 July to Saturday 28 July
There will be setup days on Thursday 19 July and Friday 20 July, and Monday 30 July. Attendees are welcome to book their hotel over these days, or longer, and help out with the running of the marathon.

The marathon will be streamed, as usual, on our twitch tv channel https://www.twitch.tv/esamarathon

The game selection crew is lead by Fatzke, assisted by IrregularJinny and eTholon.

The main period of game submissions will be open from Tuesday 20 February and run until Saturday 10 March
First cuts and some accepted games will be Sunday 1 April
Final cuts and first schedule will be Sunday 13 May

There will be an additional submission period between first and final cuts for games that were not released during the primary submission period. Any submissions during this period will be held to an equal, if not higher standard, to those being submitted in February.

We will have the same stream setup that proved itself during the event in 2017:
A main stream running 24 hours from Sunday to Saturday and a second stream running 14-18 hours per day produced by Liva and Malouna from GeekyGoonSquad (https://www.twitch.tv/geekygoonsquad). The second stream will start one day later and end about midday through the final day of the marathon.

We will once again be using games declared as Setup Games on the first stream to absorb delays and be able to move those to the second stream if needed.

Attendees who are selected to help on tech, hosting or setup, and who are willing to volunteer 16 hours to their task, will be offered a half price ticket. For tech/hosting this is 4x4h shifts, for setup this is making yourself throughout all of the setup/teardown times.

Volunteer recruitment will open after final cuts are made in May, and part refunds will be given to anyone who signs up early.

Accommodation is in the hotel itself, and you can book single, twin, triple and quad rooms. The price list is attached below.

Solo rooms: 595SEK per person per night
Double rooms: 399SEK per person per night
Triple rooms: 332SEK per person per night
Quad rooms: 299SEK per person per night

These room rates all include daily housekeeping, free cancellation, a breakfast buffet and access to the gym and sauna area. There is a total of 302 rooms available.

Booking is by directly emailing the hotel, at q.view@choice.se quoting booking code ESA2018

There will be no mass housing available at ESA Summer. This decision has been taken after a good level of deliberation, and ultimately is to ensure the safety and comfort of all attendees. As everyone will be in the hotel together, it will be straightforward to return to your room and rest, shower, change, collect or drop off belongings. We consider that an uncontrolled sleeping hall is no longer appropriate for an event of this size.

The event is situated wholly within the event space of the Quality Hotel View, Malmö. This is a conference hotel in the Hyllie neighbourhood of Malmö. Opposite the hotel is the Emporia Shopping Center one of the biggest in Scandinavia.

Opening hours of local facilities:
Trains to Malmo city centre: 24/7, every 10 minutes between 0600 and 0000 with limited overnight service
Trains to Copenhagen city centre and airport: 24/7, no less than every 20 minutes between 0600 and 0000 with limited overnight service
Full details can be found on the [Öresundståg website](https://www.oresundstag.se/)
Emporia: 1000-2000
McDonalds: 0600-0000
Subway: 0700-2200
Pressbyrån: 0600-2200

Opening hours of hotel facilities:
Breakfast: 0600 - 1000
Bar food: 1700 - 2200
Gym and spa area: 0600 - 2300
Free popcorn and ice cream: 24 hours

Hyllie Station, the first/last stop in Sweden, is attached to the hotel. Trains run directly to Copenhagen Airport and Denmark every 20 minutes (journey time to the airport 15 minutes), and to Malmö city centre every 10 minutes (journey time 10 minutes).

The closest international airport is Copenhagen (Kastrup) which is a 15 minute direct train ride from the hotel. ESA attendees should not use Malmö airport, which is much further by bus and requiring a change in Malmö city centre.

Those travelling from Germany can also look for DB Sparpreis Europa tickets to Copenhagen Central, buying the last leg to Hyllie separately on arrival in Copenhagen. These are usually available three months prior and get more expensive over time.

The standard event registration fee is 800SEK. There will be promotional rates for early booking, and for volunteers (see above).

Ticket sales will be handled on esamarathon.com and processed by eventzilla.

Game Submissions
Tuesday 20 February to Saturday 10 March

First cuts and accepts
1 April

Full game list and schedule
13 May

Event Registration
After ESA Winter 2018

Volunteer Applications
Open after schedule release

Event space open
Friday 20 July to Sunday July 29

Charity marathon stream
Saturday 21 July to Saturday 28 July

• Edenal - Lead org - Finance / Tech - Discord Edenal#2460
• Planks - Asst org - Finance / Tech - Discord Planks#3102
• Fatzke - Asst org - Game Selection and Scheduling - Discord Fatzke#4192
• KrazyRasmus - Asst org - On site activities - Discord KrazyRasmus#0137

Please in the first instance direct event questions to one of us on Discord, and commercial/sponsor opportunities to info@europeanspeedsterassembly.com