Hey!

We were quite happy that bringing back the old style feedback post last time resulted in useful feedback, so we’re doing it again!

Basic ground rules

• Please keep discussion of an individual's points out of this thread and create a separate thread if something needs detailed discussion.
• Please be civil - no curses or personal attacks
• Format your post so it's not a wall of text
• If you've already posted a pastebin somewhere, we're happy if you copy/paste it here.

This thread will be open until 8 March

Changelog:

3 Sep 2019 - Master news post written 4 Oct 2019 - Created Thread 6 Oct 2019 - Added Game Selection announcement and key dates 6 Nov 2019 - Added volunteering announcement date 17 Nov 2019 - Added volunteering info post 17 Nov 2019 - Added first cuts info post 9 Dec 2019 - Added link to personal prize submissions 14 Jan 2020 - Added charity announcement

ESA Winter 2020 Dates: 15 to 22 Feb 2020 Venue: Quality Hotel View, Malmö

The purpose of this thread is to consolodate all information

General Info

• Master News Post
• Registration
• Hotel Booking (Scroll to the BOTTOM of the page!)
• Prize Submission for personal prizes - open until 20 January 2020
• For corporate prizes please contact orgs@esamarathon.com

Game Selection Announcement - LIVE Submissions open - 2019-10-20 Submissions close - 2019-11-03 First cuts - 2019-11-17 Chase game submissions - 2019-12-12 Schedule announcement - 2019-12-15 Charity announcement - Save the Children - 2020-01-14

Volunteering Applications Announcement - 2019-11-16 Submissions open - 2019-12-15 Submissions close - 2020-01-15 Acceptance notifications - TBC Provisional schedules published - TBC

Hi Everyone

Thanks for your feedback about this year’s event. We’d like to talk a little about some of these points and ask for further feedback on our proposed changes.

Setup times We didn’t have a very good year keeping to schedule on stream 1, and there’s a range of plans we are already setting up to try and reset on this next year. There was no one big thing that caused us to go long vs schedule, just lots of little things that were a mixture of technical and human.

Code of Conduct This will be significantly revised for 2020 with more explicit rules put in place for some areas.

PCs This event always was going to have growing pains. This is the first Summer event for five years where we have been wholly self sufficient in PC stock. We think this is the correct long term move, the loaners we have had in the past were growing old beyond the point they could be reasonably presented as gaming PCs. This year we bought and built 20 brand new systems, however unfortunately this was not enough.

The plan going forward is to continue to buy five to ten new systems for every event, so that we have a rolling replacement program of strong gaming PCs. Unfortunately, this is a significant expense, and one that we can’t afford without increasing the price of attending ESA. Each PC is 500 to 800 euros, this renewal program may constitute 20% of the event budget for Winter. Further on in the post we will talk about this a little more.

Stream room layout Your feedback has been heard loud and clear and in the future there will be two changes made to the stream room. Next Summer, all practice and casual gaming setups will be moved out of Oresundshallen into other spaces in the hotel. Secondly, we will use the dividing wall to provide partial or full isolation of one stream room from the other, depending on how flexible the arrangement is.

Quiet Practice and PC room misuse In the future all side rooms will have a named contact person to address issues of misuse with.

Fundraising An incremental improvement action plan has been developed to build upon the success of this event in the future.

Arcade Next year there’ll be big changes to the arcade. We need to travel smarter, about two thirds of our transport to ESA this summer was taken up by arcade cabinets, particularly the racing games.

ESA’s current stock is made up of cabinets we’ve been able to pick up at relatively low cost within Sweden. We have investigated the pricing of further imports, and importing machines 1 by 1 is neither cost nor time effective. The upfront spend to bring about six more high quality machines (we’re talking SDVX, Bishi Bashi, Scotto, Pop’n, maybe DDR HD) is about €20,000.

We are therefore considering if the arcade should either

1. Stay with the current selection of games, minus the driving cabinets which we can not afford the space to bring.
2. Buy a container of the above games from Japan, with a heavy focus on bringing modern and music games to ESA.

We would prefer to go for option 2, however for this to be at all possible we will need to develop a business plan where the arcade becomes closer to self sufficient. A part of this would be charging for credits. In this arrangement, we would still bring the pandora’s box multicabs and they would remain free to play in a different area from music games.

Bar The hotel has a licence until 1 am, and we will talk with them to try and secure later opening hours next year. This will be on a “use it or lose it” basis, so long as people are drinking this should be no problem.

Volunteer compensation We’ll be moving back to more of a ticket based system in 2020. More details will be announced in due course.

Hotel AC Main room - We know it’s colder than the rest of the space, but it’s pre-set by the hotel and can’t be changed. Hotel rooms - Again, unfortunately a fundamental design issue with the hotel that is outweighed by the positives of being there.

Sponsor plugs vs donations We have a balance to strike. If runners shout for donations and there are none, something will be said. We are looking to build next year on the indicator LED we trialled so the runner can be kept silently informed.

Next steps - Ticket pricing As may be clear from this post, there are a couple of areas we want to improve upon that have direct and significant cost to the event. As a result, we would like to bring in the concept of a supporter ticket. This can be viewed as a donation to event finances with a few perks. Long term we would anticipate three tiers, however for winter we will be selling just one. The perks will be a t shirt, a special supporter name badge, and a bundle of arcade credits if we go pay to play.

The ESA Winter pricing for general admission will be as follows 40 tickets at 80 euros 40 tickets at 90 euros Thereafter at 100 euros

The supporter ticket will be an additional 30 euros

Tickets go on sale from 1 Sep @ 3pm CEST from https://www.ticketfairy.com/event/esa-winter-2020/

Final words ESA continues to punch above it's weight in production quality. We are a bootstrapped event (no investors) and know from the positive feedback that you wrote that what we offer is phenomenal value, and phenomenally valuable to the speedrunning community in Europe.

We're in this for the long term, and we hope you are too.

Basic ground rules

• Please keep discussion of an individual's points out of this thread and create a separate thread if something needs detailed discussion.
• Please be civil - no curses or personal attacks
• Format your post so it's not a wall of text
• If you've already posted a pastebin somewhere, we're happy if you copy/paste it here.

With the current popularity of pastebins, we thought we'd try the old style of feedback thread again. There's something nice about reading other people's feedback alongside your own, so let's get started :)

We'll be reviewing the thread and our own internal feedback in the coming month and will get a review out as soon as it's ready.

ESA Marathon is a one off special event, an online marathon raising money for The Movember Foundation. It will be ran by a full on site hosting and tech crew from the ESA warehouse in Vaxjo.

23 - 26 November 2018

The following threads contain all information regarding ESA Movember 18

ESA Movember: Master information

ESA Movember: Submissions

ESA Movember: Personal fundraising

Please join us on the ESA Discord

[centre]http://i.imgur.com/NneENhL.png[/centre]

Hopefully you are home and beginning the process of rest and recuperation from ESA. Packing up this weekend was far easier than last year, thanks to so many of you hanging back to help pack up on Sunday, so we thank you enormously.

As an organising team we have many thoughts (almost all good!) on ESA this year, but before we share them, we need as usual to listen. Please use this thread to post your thoughts on any part of ESA, whether you watched at home or were an attendee. It is important you are critical if needs be, so we can effectively plan for next year.

We will be feeding summarised feedback to the hotel, and they will be providing a group response in due course. If you have specific complaints hotel service that require a personal response, please email them directly as we can not handle individual points.

All on site attendees will shortly also receive a short multiple choice survey by email with a comments box. Comments made here will remain private to the organising committee.

If you have already written a pastebin, please copy/paste it here. It helps us out a lot to have all comments in one place

See you next time!

Planks

Just like with FM, we're sponsoring a shirt prize for this one!

I'm glad to announce ESA will sponsor this race with one 2018 Supporter's Shirt being awarded to the winner

May Seto 3 bless your run with ez-mode

This post is a duplication of the main post on our website https://esamarathon.com/news/ac0e260c-4b8f-4208-9e6c-7cd755a6076b

It’s time to open the recruitment for tech this year. Tech’s responsibility is to run the stream that everyone at home watches.

This year tech is going to be a smaller, tighter team. Our goal is to recruit 12 volunteers in total. These volunteers will be working alongside six senior tech in teams of two. These senior tech are trusted, returning volunteers who this year have taken on the extra responsibility of being leaders.

These senior tech this year are Tyr, Gael, Linkboss, JohnUK89, Milk and Popeter. These guys will be doing about 24 hours each through the week, supported by Edenal, Planks, and the software team Zephyyrr, Zoton2 and Oromit

The goal is that during the daytime, while the two scheduled people will be there, there will always be additional knowledgeable people around to help. During the night time, of which there will be one or two “antisocial shifts” each, only straightforward single player runs will be scheduled to keep stress to a minimum!

In the future, when we need senior tech, we’ll be looking to past returning tech volunteers who want to continue to support ESA with their time.

As a volunteer, you’ll be working with one of these senior techs for about 12 hours. In this time we you’ll learn how to operate our stream overlay software, mixer, and how to connect consoles. In addition, like all other ESA volunteers, you’ll be required to spend a couple of hours helping out at the registration/infodesk.

For a full rundown in more detail, the YouTube intro videos from last year are still the best place to go. Nothing in our setup has changed since then https://goo.gl/yE5rg5

In return for helping, we are offering a ticket for 400SEK and some sort of daily catering while on shift. The exact nature isn’t confirmed, but it’ll probably be pizza take out!

We will show preference to those who are able to stay the full day on Sunday 29th, leaving on the 30th. This is to assist with packing away the streaming area.

Signup here! https://goo.gl/kPJ5MK

If you’ve helped in the past, please write in the notes who you worked with. This will help us make an informed decision.

This form will be open until 1 month before the event, or until a suitable number of volunteers are selected. You may be contacted via discord at any point up to or after the submission deadline for a chat or to let you know you’ve been selected.

If you have any questions, please @Planks in #tech-chat on discord

Not much to say from my point of view

We had a really successful and fun event!

Let me know your thoughts on....

IRL: Donation reading Intermission hosting Runner experience Venue quality

At home: Stream layouts Sound and video quality Games played

And anything else you an think of?

[centre]https://imgur.com/ZgRQ1zQ.png[/centre]

ESA invites you to return to Växjö, Sweden for our first winter event! Taking place from 17 Feb to 25 Feb entirely within the Royal Corner, this will be a small event with a ‘second stream’ / old ESA feel.

This post was significantly revised on 12/10/2017

#TLDR Run submissions -> http://esa.lordmau5.com/ Tickets -> https://esamarathon.eventbrite.com/ Hotels -> See below

#Why ESA Winter?

For the past 3 years we’ve hosted a 2-3 day marathon at each Dreamhack and have realized that it’s just as much work as running an event ourselves. We feel Dreamhack just wasn’t long enough to present our best work and the loud halls of Dreamhack don’t provide a pleasant venue to practice, speedrun, or hang out.

After the success of “ESA Winter Highlights” at Dreamhack Winter 2016 we believe it’s time to run a fully independent winter event. We want the schedule at ESA Winter to be as diverse and varied as the ESA second stream this year, and to carry a similar positive vibe. If you’ve ever considered that you want to do a marathon run but have never attended a marathon before, we think this is going to be the ideal place.

We will try our hardest to make sure everyone submitting has at least one game in the marathon. Like old times! There are going to be no limits to tickets even if you are not running. In the event the first hotel allocation sells out we will explore further options, like during ESA.

#When?

The marathon will run for 24 hours a day from approximately late afternoon Tuesday 20th to late evening Saturday 24th. It will be streamed on www.twitch.tv/esamarathon

Hotel check in will be available from 4pm Friday 16th, and the event space will open later on Saturday 17th when ready. Anyone who wants to help setup and tear down the practice rooms will need to arrive on Saturday and in return we can offer a [200SEK] ticket. Hotel check out will be on Sunday 25th or Monday 26th at 10am and we hope to have completed teardown by Sunday night.

There is no need to stay the full duration, but no discounts are available for short trips.

#Submissions

The game selection and schedule group will this year be lead by Fatzke in cooperation with eTholon and IrregularJinny. For full details see the submissions forum post.

#Volunteers

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 [200SEK] ticket. For tech/hosting this is 4x4h shifts, for setup this is making yourself throughout all of the setup/teardown times.

#Accommodation

Accommodation is in the hotel itself, and you can book single, twin, triple and quad rooms. The price list is attached below. There will be no mass housing available at ESA Winter.

Solo rooms: 600SEK per person per night Double rooms: 400SEK per person per night Triple rooms: 333SEK per person per night Quad rooms: 300SEK per person per night (limited number)

To reserve a, contact the hotel directly. The reservation code is “ESAW”.

Email: q.royalcorner@choice.se Tel: +46 470 70 10 00

#Charity

ESA Winter will be once again fundraising for Save the Children. Please consider in your submissions any incentives that you would find acceptable for your event!

#Ticket Price

The normal price ticket for attendees will be 400SEK. This will be used to pay the conference space for the week.

Volunteers will be offered a discount (see above). If you’re intending to volunteer, please wait until the end of volunteer registration before buying a ticket and we will send you a special discount code. If you apply you are guaranteed a ticket no matter what.

Regular tickets can be bought here: http://esamarathon.eventbrite.com/

During the booking process you will be offered the chance to buy the signature (grey) hoodie, a new lightweight (purple) hoodie and an event tee.

The grey hoodie has the shiny embroidered logo as before

The tee and the light hoodie will have this year’s new screen print design

#Timeline

##Game Submissions and Volunteer Applications Open October 2nd through October 22nd (extended by another week)

##First cuts November 5th (if necessary)

##Full game list, schedule and game incentive submissions December 1

##Open Registration NOW and onwards

##Off-site Volunteer Submissions Open January 14 thru 28

#ESA Winter 2018 Organisers

• 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#0431

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

[centre]http://i.imgur.com/NneENhL.png[/centre]

As usual we'd like to offer you the chance to give your feedback on ESA. Without pre-empting feedback too much, it is the feeling of the organisers that this year's event ran well. We started and finished on time using only two setup blocks and had no major technical issues on the streaming side.

When you write your post, please consider if you want to comment on any of the following areas:

Experience as a runner (selection process, experience at the streaming area, satisfaction with tech during setup, and standard of hosting during your run) Experience as an attendee (finding Fortnox, checking in, venue, cleanliness, etc), Experience volunteering at tech or hosting, Experience of side events (arcades, board games, community run tournaments) Experience of accommodation and distance to/from Fortnox Arena (be it a hotel or mass housing). Ability to find suitable practice equipment for your game(s)

If you watched at home,

Your experience of the stream, Your experience of the donation tracker, Your thoughts on the overall standard of runs on display, any major highlights and any genre or era of runs you thought were underrepresented

And of course any other area you can think of!

If you've already written an event pastebin (rather than a shoutouts to friends pastebin) please just copy it over.

In the coming weeks we'll be reviewing the event and your feedback will help shape next year's ESA.

If there's anything you're unhappy posting here under your name, please contact us privately using our anonymous Google Form. We'll read everything submitted and hold it in equal stature to public posts here.

Private or anonymous feedback option

Regards

Planks

PS. Here's our Discord reaction wall from the night of the event [centre]https://i.imgur.com/XIw7cFD.png[/centre]

Hi Attendees!

If you've any photo galleries from ESA 2017, please share them here. We all love checking them out.

If you don't know where to put your photos, Google Photos seems to be the most stable and reliable of the current sites available.

Sometimes we need press shots for ESA. If you're happy for us to use your photos for these purposes, please leave a note in your post too.

added stream details

We're opening collections to anyone arriving after 8pm on Thursday night (as we realise people will want to travel after work)

Just like ESA, the booking confirmation from paypal is your proof of purchase. Take it to the Royal Corner and they'll have a list.

I can now confirm all bikes will have a lock. There'll be a short contract to sign on collection, your liability if you lose or trash the bike will be an additional 50€

The general allocation is now sold out!

If any more become available I'll update here.

I fully expect these to be 'North European' style single or three speeds with a built in frame lock. No helmet, but you won't need one (the roads are very safe)

I'll find out about loss conditions and edit this post when I get a reply.