Just to say, a tweaked schedule will be out some time today - most likely later in the evening around 11pm CET. People asking for runs to be moved or rejigged for commentary and so on - we are going to do our best to move people around so don't worry if I didn't mention you personally.
Two stream feedback is welcome, as I said, we'll talk about this soonish - just bear with us. We understand that you can maybe feel a little betrayed if your run is not on the first and while we didn't intend that in any way, we can still try and switch things up if you want - feelings are feelings after all. We want our runners to be happy - that's our goal.
Some responses in the meantime -
@KrazyRasmus - We're experimenting with something here that we've called "Mickey Mornings". Hopefully you've noticed that every day at 10am~ there's a Mickey game. We reckon it could be a good idea to guarantee a run of a certain theme or type at the same time. This culminates in CoI HD. We don't normally get this many of the same series this way so we were keen to try it out.
@S. - Due to recent strats putting the 100% time on par with the old 98%, we've "upgraded" it to a 100% run.
@Kotti - I don't know how we keep messing this up. herp derp.
@Kennyman - we think Sunshine will be a really good finale. We had a bunch of games we could've gone with but we just found they fit perfectly in other places (Wind Waker on Friday night is a perfect transition out of Muramasa and the feather in the cap of an afternoon of beautiful games). We opted to end the stream at around 10pm after last year's attempted going out afterparty that lasted all of 20 minutes before bars closed.
@Nord - Wellllllllll =P... Nah, for the first day we wanted really cool games going up until late so that any Americans watching got to see some good stuff on the first day, that's why we put Dying Light there.
@Cerberus - That... might be possible, we'll see =D
@badbrakes - The secret is to not stop drinking.
@Drazerk - For some reason our columns were switched around so we kept making this mistake.
@Mergy/Grig - Just due to timeslots and so on, we're not sure we can make this switch, but we have an idea that will hopefully work out for a few people.
We definitely don't think we nailed a perfect schedule first time so don't worry there. As I said, we plan to tweak this one and get it out today. Then we'll probably give it a few more days and make any last few changes. The draft out today will hopefully be mostly final.
Just to say, we're obviously going to work on this, just waiting for more feedback before we start fiddling with things - we don't want to move something to find the other runner now can't do whatever.
@Deathtome, Chaos Legion was cut last round.
Anyone else who has games missing - we've no idea what happened but they will be in the marathon, don't worry - nothing that wasn't already cut last round is going to be cut now. We will add them in - honest mistakes somewhere on our part - we weren't expecting to have to use a google doc for this and it messed with our method.
We'll talk about Stream A/B ideas soon as well, just bear with us.
ESA 2015 will be open from the afternoon of June 26th until noon July 7th 2015. Click here to visit the master thread!
The Game submission and scheduling team are flicky, bangerra and joka. We will also reach out to individuals and game communities regarding runs, rules and so on to help us make our decisions.
[centre][big]Final Schedule![/big] [/centre]
This is mostly fixed. We will change things we messed up so let us know of any weird choices and so on.
This one was really hard to make. Please don't drop out ever again - our two streams have really suffered from lost runs. Stream B is likely to become a much more loose stream with on-site bonus content and so on. We should have it imported into a speedrun.com format in the next few weeks. Please keep checking the forums/twitter and your email for more information about adding game information and sorting commentary.
¤We have more to add but Joka is hungover, bang is gone and flicky has to work¤
#keeponsaxing
ESA 2015 will be open from the afternoon of June 26th until noon July 7th 2015. Click here to visit the master thread!
Alrighty, volunteering stuff at ESA is getting organised and we're getting our information out there! We have five guides for five different jobs (two aren't finished yet, but bear with us!) and we're good to start to take on interest!
For our volunteering, we want to be more open about it and allow people to offer to help out while at the event. Not every job is going to have strict blocks that must be abided by, some will be, but not everything will require four+ hour chunks of time. However, we do ask that if you do volunteer and get given a scheduled block, that you fulfill your duty to it and make sure you're available - please don't sign up if you're not 100% ready and willing to help out at the event. Volunteers are really important for us to be able to keep running (I mean technically, all of us are volunteers). It's a fun experience so please give it a shot!
Each guide is self-contained, so read them below and post here with what you're willing to do! Note that for some of these, you don't necessarily have to be on site!
Everything needed will be listed in these guides! If you have any questions, please ask here!
Hosting and Tech guides will be done in the next few days! You can volunteer now before reading them.
Regarding SM64, we personally don't think it needs to be in ESA 2015 for a few reasons. Hopefully if we explain it, you'll understand where we're coming from.
The run this year would have would effectively be 2/3rds of what we had last year. Noizeeh's PB this year is only a bit faster than Hampern's was last year and based off that, the quality of the run wouldn't really be any higher than it has been and we'd be down a runner. This would also be the fourth ESA in a row (plus Dreamhacks, GDQs) with SM64 in it which is why we think that if anyone wanted to see the SM64 run, they would've done by now. It's been done an awful lot at marathons for the past five years and we don't think the ESA run would offer anything new - there's no real discernible difference this year in the game and it's been mostly the same for years so why not show off a different game instead? The WR is going down sure, but we're not getting WR runners submitting it to ESA.
If people like it, great, they can go watch any of the other streams or practically any other live marathon for VoDs. SM64 fans are completely spoilt for choice and so we don't see why we would need to pander to them. If you like 3D Mario then there's Sunshine and Galaxy to watch. I don't think people should expect certain games to be in 100% of the time. It's not good for marathons to keep repeating themselves - same game with the same runner year-in, year-out. We don't want to push viewers away but if people are going to not watch just because SM64 isn't in, then we still stand by our choice. You guys can survive a year with an SM64 run. Go watch the SGDQ three-way race between Cheese, Puncay and Simply (how can anyone compete with that?).
Two hours of 120 Star being freed up has meant two hours of games that may never see a marathon otherwise. People seem to be getting complacent and just thinking "great, I submitted SM64, I'm in." We don't think that should be the case for any game.
@Peanut - Have cut your game.
@Respirte/Zibang - That's no problem, we can work around limitations.
@Henneko - we were talking about your Sands of Time run. We haven't heard anything about you running it! Please update us in this thread!
@KVD - Unless we're mistaken, he has a WR that's 3 minutes faster than the Classic% run on PS3. From our understanding, Any% No Mission Skips on PC should be 40-60 minutes faster than that Classic% run. If we're wrong, let us know.
@Cartina - Dragonfangs will be running the fighting game tournaments. I'll get him to post on the forum about it.
ESA 2015 will be open from the afternoon of June 26th until noon July 7th 2015. Click here to visit the master thread!
The Game submission and scheduling team are flicky, bangerra and joka. We will also reach out to individuals and game communities regarding runs, rules and so on to help us make our decisions.
[centre][big]Round Two of Cuts are now Public![/big] [/centre]
Cuts These are the cuts. There's not a lot more to say, but they're there. We based it on personal knowledge the runners and the current known times we have. We also checked if runners were signed up or had paid if we had no other information to go on.
If your game is yellow, it means that we'd like it and we know and the trust the runner, but we haven't heard from you at all. Please contact us with info ASAP.
My game was cut =( Unfortunately we have to cut stuff. We can reconsider but you'll need to let us know about why we should. If we have genuinely made a mistake, we can change our minds.
What's next? Is my game safe? All that's left is to trytry and build a schedule with the remaining games. Games from this second cut will either be given a schedule slot or will be kept as standby games and used to fill gaps from any last minute drop-outs or subbed into the marathon as bonus games. None of those second round games will be cut completely unless the runner cannot make it.
Please note that we will be looking at who has and hasn't made the deposit while making the schedule. Runners who haven't made the 50 SEK Deposit will have their games either cut or left as backup. We understand that this can come off as a bit harsh or strict but we have made this known from the start. The deadline for the deposit payment is the 31st of May. To hopefully make this a bit easier for those on the fence, we will be publishing this schedule on the 30th of May. If you are in the schedule but fail to meet the deposit deadline, we will cut your game. It is a lot more work for us to post the schedule before the deadline, but we are doing it this way to act more in the interest of our attendees.
Feel free to discuss any of the cuts here. If you're like to contact any of us privately to talk about cuts, please check our contact info in the master thread linked at the post of this post! If any information is wrong, please let us know ASAP!
ALSO GIVE US YOUR UPDATED ESTIMATES. YOU GUYS SUCK AT LETTING US KNOW. SILLY YOU PEOPLE. UPDATED ESTIMATES MEAN MORE GAMES.
Edenal said he'll do it tonight. Sorry for the delay there.
The deposit is just for runners and the deadline is just for discounts.
"**Is there a final deadline for payment if I want to attend ESA? ** No. However, runners and attendees who are paying the discounted price will need to pay before the set deadlines listed above under “Important Dates”. "
Sorry for not posting in here much but we have been reading everything. If you guys could update any estimates from around now that you may need, that'd be helpful. Also, make sure your speedrun.com stuff is up to date or you've posted in the thread!
We've started working on the next round of cuts (based on prior info and we'll be looking at what's to come too). We're planning to put the cuts out on Saturday the 16th of May.
We will then take what's left and try and build a schedule with the remaining games. Games from the second cut will either be given a schedule slot or will be kept as standby games and used to fill gaps from any last minute drop-outs or subbed into the marathon as bonus games. None of those games will be cut completely unless the runner cannot make it.
Please note that we will be looking at who has and hasn't made the deposit while making the schedule. Runners who haven't made the 50 SEK Deposit will have their games either cut or left as backup. We understand that this can come off as a bit harsh or strict but we have made this known from the start. The deadline for the deposit payment is the 31st of May. To hopefully make this a bit easier for those on the fence, we will be publishing this schedule on the 30th of May. If you are in the schedule but fail to meet the deposit deadline, we will cut your game. It is a lot more work for us to post the schedule before the deadline, but we are doing it this way to act more in the interest of our attendees.
For Americans who are flying into Stockholm on Friday the 26th, I will be there sometime around 11am-12pm and can help take you guys the rest of the way. If you want to have a quick tour of Stockholm I can do that too (provided you aren't too tired).
I'll post my travel stuff when it's sorted if anyone wants to sync up.
Read all the forum posts and you'll know everything. That's why we post stuff.
That would be totally possible and probably what we'll go for. Makes a lot more sense.
For last year's prizes, I think they have but I'll get Alko to respond for that one.
For this year, I'm not sure we have any plans for prizes after how much work they ended up being last year but don't quote me on that. If we do, it will likely be a few large prizes rather than many small ones.
Hopefully I can shed some light on this.
Firstly, we set a deadline so that we don't have to fiddle with any of the information or runs we've already got beyond that point, meaning we can just focus on what we've got listed. If we were still adding runs and runners and all that, it just means we have a lot more annoying admin work to do. This is why we set a deadline.
If we add one person after deadline, then we have no reason no to add everyone who asks. If we accepted you for example, suddenly everyone would be asking why they can't be added after the deadline as well. It's the most fair to only accept those that submitted pre-deadline as outlined. It's fair to them for staying within the boundaries and fair to everyone else that they're all denied. Accept one person and suddenly it becomes very unbalanced.
On top of that, the current list isn't even final. If we let you in now and then just cut SM64, then it was a waste of your time and ours. If SM64 was 100% in the marathon, it might be a different story, but it isn't. As well as that, we're not AGDQ and you're not siglemic. That's a completely different situation to compare to.
Finally, no one got angry or sad about it. We just followed our rule-set. We're not targeting you or anything, we're just trying to act according to those and in the interest of fairness for the vast majority of our attendees. If you still want to discuss it, feel free to post here, but hopefully that clears things up.
If you're interested in hosting and that, message me!
We've updated this and shoved it in a google doc. Sorry for the ghetto organisation. We'll hopefully get a public page that's easy to find soon.
Edit: Sign ups are now combined with payments: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/15ou3_7x6nUrRxdD6FIRFNL5KTadZvm6sguj5Qbs8dx4/pubhtml#
Just to say, we currently have just over 200 signups, that means the current price is €45 for each person.
If we get to 300 signups before the deadline (that's two weeks!) that will drop the price to €30 each so please signup if you haven't already and bug anyone you know who hasn't yet!
Soft signups list is here