I attended ESA WINTER 2020 As a Runner of Cadence of Hyrule.

It was my first time I participated to such an event and I was actually surprised to get in in the first place since I started speedrunning pretty much 6 months ago. I really appreciate that ESA doesn’t look only for big streamers but also gives attention to smaller ones.

Sadly, for work reasons I could only stay at the venue from Saturday to Monday, I left right after my run was done, so my comments will mostly be on the first 3 days of the event.

Good things:
-amazing staff, very kind to newcomers. Ladaur (my donation reader) came to me while I was practicing to watch the run and discuss donations timings and other technical things. I really appreciated it.

-donation screen; it was a relief to see the queue for donations, it’s a really good thing that the runner can see how many donations he has to deal with, especially for short runs

-variety of games and format. I PERSONALLY prefer events like ESA to others that started too seem more like big TV shows than speedrun marathons.
Stream 2 is amazing.
More interviews would be welcome tho, to create a bit of hype for lesser known games, I know it takes a lot of effort but it doesn’t need to be hyper professional.

Things in the middle

Malmo is fairly easy to reach, as well as the hotel. But for people that wants to do more than staying at the venue 24/7 the weather in winter can be rough.
I still had the chance to visit Copenaghen with other runners, lots of fun.

Minus things:
I know that organizing spaces it’s very hard.
But sometimes the marathon, the practice room and the streaming station merged together too much.
Some people during the marathon started doing other things like playing cards in the marathon room, distracting both the runners and the people practicing. (It’s just an example, other events happened)

As a rithm game runner for this edition it was pretty much impossible for me to properly practice at the venue, since I could barely hear my game.

I know that having a practice room would be hard but I would at least set some rules about noise and things you can do in the practice area.

Overall ESA Winter 2020 extremely exceeded my expectations, I to Malmo a bit
Doubtful but I loved it.

So much that, as soon as I got home I started practicing and learning new games to show, hopefully at Summer 2020

My first winter event and my 2nd ESA overall, had lots of fun.
Positive:
The hotel and venue: Easy to reach, friendly staff
Stream 2: Shoutouts to the people behind stream 2 to make it even possible giving more runners the chance to show off their games
Practice: I found it great that practice room was in the stream 1 room as you always see what's happening on the stream.
Tabletop room: Always fun, great choice of games.

Negative:
The waste: I'm adressing everyone here: If there are already several trash cans is it that hard to just walk a few meters and throw away your trash? It wasn't that bad but it's still annoying that some people are simply unable to throw away their trash.
T2S donations on stream 2: I find it a bit sad that on stream 2 donations don't get read by a human person but rather by text 2 speech. As text to speech does not really deliver any emotions for big or hype donations when a bidwar is being sniped for example. In general while stream 2 will probably always be the minor stream, i think some fancy tech that is being used on stream 1 (for example the donation screens, the buttons to start/stop the runs) could make a great addition to stream 2.

Unfortunately the weather wasn't that good to actually go out and do something outside, but there is nobody to blame for that.

Overall a great event hope i can make it for Summer.

Yow, I thought I will write my thoughts about ESAWinter here aswell. Most things are already mentioned but I thought I will add some thoughts aswell :

+ No two streams in the same Room, I really hope that this is going to stay this way, having both streams in one room is just shit, so please keep this setup.

~ Streamingroom and Practice room together is fine by me as you can watch the stream while practicing or just chillin in the room without being in the cam, however I heard and saw that a lot of peeps were annoyed about it, but then I would have no clue how to use this big room better, maybe there can be a better though around this.

- I dunno what was going on this year, but for some reason there were more issues with the PC games and the runs there? As this is a first time for me it was just a bit suprising as the years before it was never a problem, (Deus Ex Human Revolution, FPS falling down to 10-20FPS during loading times, C&C Mouse lagging while in screen) I also heard from other PC runners that there were multiple issues in this regard. I know that there could be tons of reasons for this, maybe too many programms on the PCs, configs overwritting each other, programs overlapping and interfering etc.
Not sure how to handle this as currently, as the setup before the stream starts via remote was a cool idea, however I hope that for Summer this won't be a big issue.

--- I really don't get this point and I see that this is still the same issue since 2014, but dear god, even though we are in a hotel can people stop being assholes and just throw their trash away??? Everywhere you go around the venue you just saw ice cream packages, softdrinks, candy, popcornholder and nobody is removing those. At least now cups and glasses have to be returned so they were not that often seen around.

That should be it! I'm happy that the Event is growing so much over the years and that more people are coming over! Always love to attent and see my speedfamily for a week. See you at Summer!