ESA 2017 is a speedrunning centred community meetup and marathon. The doors are open from Friday the 21st of July until Sunday the 30th of July at 11:59pm The stream is planned to run from the evening of the 22nd of July the evening of the 29th of July. Mass Housing with cover this entire period and close on Monday the 31st at 10am.

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Submission status: Open until 1st of March
First cuts: 20th of March
Final cuts & schedule: 1st of May
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As you've noticed, the format for cuts is a little different this year. We're keeping all the information on that page so that you can see all the runs if required. If a game is listed under "Phase 1" it means your game is still being considered. If it is left behind in "Phase 0" then your game will not be at ESA.

Up to this point we considered all facets of the run: skill, times, entertainment value, the runner themself and so on. Now we will go through all that again with a finer comb.

For many runners there is still a lot of work to be done on improving times and we actively encourage you to start on that now - we'll be looking at times from now until the schedule is out and taking that into account. Keep updating your speedrun.com times, leaderboards, estimates and practice hard for the event. Feel free to post about progress here and discuss new things found - this helps us a lot with keeping up with each game.

A few games (Breath of the Wild, Yooka-Laylee and NieR: Automata etc.) were submitted before the games were released. We will need to see a lot of hard work going into these games and good times being posted by the runners. We understand that they may be large draws to the marathon, but we will hold these runs to the same quality standard as any other. At the moment they are through on the chance that they make great runs.

Please continue to share any limitations for when your run can be. We would like to get these before the 28th of April.

Finally, we have not given individual reasons for each cut purely because of the sheer amount of time it takes. We will have a second post below this one where we can edit in responses. If you want to know why your game was cut, please ask and we'll share our answers.

Answers and comments by Fatzke:

@MartyrrSenpai:
The game was shown quite a lot in the past in all kinds of marathons. We feel like there were no major improvements that justify another appearance this year.

@s.:
Dear S-ther, we cut SWAT 4 because of your concerns regarding the successful completion of maps. None of the solutions presented
was really satisfactory.

@Alko:
We think that the run itself is not quite there yet with a lot of possibility for improvements and is highly unlikely to be fully fleshed out by the end of April.

@Harpa:
Correct. We can always have the other one next year. :]
About Lion King: We will monitor your progress and make a decision about this in April. If you both agree to turn it into a race we can do that as well if you get your time closer to TMR.

@Chfou:
Quite frankly the Neptunia games and Chroma Squad we didn't find all that interesting.
For Bulletstorm we liked the really unique category. We probably wouldn't have accepted any%, but all skillshots has the potential to be interesting throughout the whole run.

@Frozer:
Less survivability makes for a more exciting run. 🙃

@Ellieceraptor:
It's not the most exciting platformer, especially considering the length.

@Ponk:
We really like the idea of blindfolded challenges. It's incredibly impressive and takes a lot of commitment. That being said, we also felt like being about about three hours long both runs overstayed their welcome quite a bit too, sorry.

@Kennyman:
Noted!

@Baunsgaard:
You basically gave the reason yourself. It's comparable in parts to Dear Esther (even though that's a very extreme example), which has the same problems.

@Shirdel:
There was only really space for one Tekken tournament, so we prefer the "proper" game. We're also curious in how many people you can actually get for the character auction tournament. Gauge some interest and get back to one of us in April, it'll be important in the final decision making.

@Nepumuk:
That was an oversight and happened before the forum post about the cuts being final was made. We fixed it in our final check. Sorry for the confusion.

@JayFermont:
The cuts are being done differently this year. Last year we cut less than 10 percent in the first cut, this year we cut a bit more than 50% of overall time.

@Robo:
You're amazing, never change.

More feedback by bangerra 24/03

@ZooKetra:
After some discussion we decided this would only really work out if it were to be premiered at ESA, but to our understanding it will be out for quite a while by then. Most of the people interested will most likely have watched it by then, so we don’t feel too strongly about a big public showing.

@iiSalad:
To be fair, I got stuck reading the games’ titles about 13.9 and a theoretical 2/3rds % through, so I’m quite content with having the least convoluted name pass through the cuts. If wou want a somewhat more sensical reasoning, I’ll have to refer you to Flicky as I have absolutely no idea what I’m talking about.

@Sphere / @Arctice:
Parkour games by default aren’t really in our ‘Must-Have’ list and this one lacks a lot of visual flair. It basically looks like a Minecraft parkour map. I guess you can blame Mirror’s Edge and the like for it not making the cuts.

@Semmlbroesel:
I guess we focused too much on the weak levels. Licenced / Tie-in games always have a hard time making us excited.

@Amateseru:
OoT and SM64 have an incredibly high standard when it comes to these things. Considering we didn’t find all that much info about you or your runs, we had to give preference to some other more well know/better documented runners.

@SerSanju:
We’re just not a fan of DLC runs, sorry.

@CartinaCow:
Usually when a game is still in with multiple categories, it means that we just haven’t decided yet which one will be featured. To specifically answer your question, not much thought went into this specific case yet.

Wondering why Hit and Run didn't make it past at least first cuts. 100% I totally get why it didn't make it, but I would have thought All Story Missions would have been a good fit.

Since the usability of the submitted games page is so poor, here's sort of a way to see which phase a game might be in.

1. Use your browser to search for "Phase 0".
2. Note where the line is drawn in your scrollbar, and remember it or put a sticky note on it.
3. Use your browser to search for your username.
4. Note the lines in your scrollbar as you go through the entries. If the line is above the "Phase 0" line then it's in Phase 1. Below it's in Phase 0.
5. Repeat this process because it's easy to get confused or be wrong about it, because the submitted games page is terrible.

This is not commentary on the content, merely the presentation of it, which I'm guessing is out of peoples' hands.

I'd like to know why SWAT4 was cut

I’m going to request the reason why Threads of Fate was removed.

I assume LISA: The Joyful was cut because LISA: The Painful already got accepted? Makes me a bit sad as they are actually quite different, but I understand that it would be quite a lot of time total for both games.

Also, is The Lion King a race now? I assumed I was cut in favor of TMR (which would have been totally cool with me), but now both our runs are in phase 1. Or will there be a decision between the two of us on May 1st?

Would be interested to know why Danganronpa got cut - I assume it's because I only submitted a run with no commentary, which I can understand. If it's just too VN-ish that's fair too.

I'd like to know why Bulletstorm was chosen instead of one of my other runs (i know about Hercs because I ran it last year).

I'm not complaining, but i'm just quite troubled since all the runs are eually interesting but you still chose the longest one. Also the other games/series have more runners than Bulletstorm.

Anyway i'll keep you up regularly about the progress of the training.

EDIT : I haven't bought tickets for ESA yet but I'll be there throughtout the whole event.

Cool.

Why Albus over Shanoa?

Correct me if I'm wrong but the "cut" is ongoing until 11:59pm CET today, right? If that is the case I guess people should wait with the questions until it's past the deadline.

edit: I guess that the fact that the original post actually exists means that phase 1 is done, so guess we can disregard my previous comment 🙂

Interested to know why Sound Shapes was cut. No reason other than curiosity. :3

Would really like to know why both DKC2 blindfolded and Super Metroid blindfolded were cut. They were both really well received at this years Snes Superstars

Supposedly cuts won't be fully done until 23:59 today right? If not, well, I didn't think Infamous was gonna my submission to go past cuts, anyway, I won't have much time to run it, but I'll try to be as active as I can, I really wanna show the run as it is now. Plus I'm pretty confident I can do much better than the estimate I put, but I run with some mistakes can go close to 3:20 easily, so I don't think I'll lower the estimate even if I manage to PB (which I doubt, my PB is really good atm), but I'll try.

That's about what I expected.

I will, at most, be at ESA until the 25th (which means that I will probably leave that day, so it would be most preferable to have my run/runs no later than the 24th), as I have other obligations the other half of the marathon.

I would also like to know why The Vanishing of Ethan Carter didn't make it.

I know the game is pretty "chill" and that there isn't much skill over it. However it's still some very interesting gameplay and games like that aren't normally shown at ESA.

I am curious as to why you guys chose the Tekken 7 Character Auction Tournament over the Tekken 3 Tekken Ball Tournament!

OK I swear both my submissions (Cally's Caves 3 and Ink) where in Phase 1 earlier (after you announced that first cut is finished), but now Cally's Caves 3 is in Phase 0 again.Now I'm confused.

I'm a bit baffled why Final Fantasy XIII-2 was cut so early this time around, in the last 4 years everytime I submitted it it made it at least to the 2nd round of cuts but it was never actually done at ESA again. So I'm a bit surprised why it's suddenly gone so early.

Edit (in response to @flicky ): Unfortunate. I really think 13-2 deserves another presence given how much as changed and just how much more optimized the run became, but I guess there's always another year.

Nepumuk, the schedule is live. Changes happens until 23:59 CET.