Changes to FEE3 2025+

Announcements
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Right, I’ve been sitting on this post for a while because I’ve been busy, but I don’t think I can wait much longer.

Let me begin by stating that this is not an announcement of major format changes (in other words, it has nothing to do with this old pseudo-announcement). This is partially an explanation of some things that went on behind the scenes + some procedural changes that may snowball into bigger format changes, depending on how things turn out.

AI and FEE3

tl;dr: Moving forwards, projects using AI-generated assets will not be featured in FEE3. AI-generated content remains legal on FEU in general, provided that it follows our AI Content Policy.

For those who don’t know, during this year’s show, there was a kerfuffle over some projects submitted to this year’s FEE3 that made heavy use of AI-generated assets. I think calling this “an oversight” is probably the most accurate description from my point of view. The sequence of events went as follows:

  1. FEE3 submissions open, AI implicitly allowed under FEU content rules
  2. At least one AI project is submitted
  3. AI-generated assets are noticed, but behind the scenes it is decided that it would be unfair to retroactively introduce a blanket ban on AI work.
  4. Showcase for an AI project goes live.
  5. Discussion on said showcase becomes toxic to the point of drawing attention away from the other showcases.
  6. Comments are disabled on showcase, with a note added to the video description.
  7. Conversation continues on other platforms, including some people explicitly stirring up trouble.
  8. Offending showcase is removed entirely.

To prevent something like this from happening again, we’re instituting the following policies.

  • Starting from 2025 and onwards, projects featuring AI-generated assets will not be featured in FEE3. Regardless of your opinion on the technology in general, we do not appreciate the vitriol it brings.
  • The staff and organizers reserve the right to reject and/or remove your project from the show at any time. This was the policy before as well, but we’re now writing it down.

Who will be running FEE3?

I realize that, with the revolving door of organizers, the process for “who actually runs the show” hasn’t exactly been clear, so here’s an attempt to fix that.

Historically, if you wanted to run FEE3, you would DM me at some point and I would say “yeah sure, probably”, and you were in charge, easy. Unbelievably, this has never caused problems before.

During the lead up to FEE3 2024, for the first time ever, I had multiple people ask me. I’ll let the people involved talk about what actually happened if they want, but for my part I will say that I think I handled it poorly, and want to repeat my apology to those individuals.

In the interest of making the whole thing clearer for everyone, here is how we’ll be handling it moving forwards:

  • For any given year, if the previous head organizer wants to run it back, they get first dibs. This only extends one year back (the 2023 organizer would not get priority for 2025).
  • Otherwise, we will be opening a proper application process for FEE3 head organizer. If this sounds like something you’d like to do, you’ll want to spend some time thinking about the following:
    • What is your plan for the event? This can be as simple as “I’m going to run the same thing as before”, or whatever ideas you might have.
    • Why should I believe that you’ll do a good job? I’m not super interested in your real-life resume (if that’s even something you want me to have), but rather, what have you done around the community? Why should I trust you with the keys to the FEU channel? This will inherently be biased towards people who have existing good relationships with the staff and prior FEE3 organizers by the nature of the show, but that’s somewhat unavoidable.

We are not accepting applications for organizing FEE3 2025 at this time. Expect more concrete news on this in the coming months.

Other policy changes

These are some things that have been rattling around for a while, many of which were unofficial/year-specific policies that we’re going to be enshrining as part of the show moving forwards. The main theme is that staff will be taking more of an active role than in the past, though we’d like the show itself to remain volunteer-run if possible. Content uploaded to the FEU channel is implicitly endorsed by us, and we’re going to start taking that more seriously than in years past.

  • You must be a user in good standing to submit to FEE3. You are “in good standing” if you are unbanned on both the Discord and this website. If you become banned between submission and upload, your showcase will be removed from the schedule. This applies to all members of a project, not just the submitter.
  • FEE3 will be stricter on its content policy than FEU as a whole. This will be handled on a case-by-case basis, but in general we will not showcase any work that would be rated higher than an ESRB T rating (or equivalent).
  • We will be instituting basic quality checks (things like audio fidelity and framerate) for submissions. This has not been a huge issue thus far, but now that it’s official, we’re going to be much more strict on it.

This thread will remain open for comments and clarifications. While these changes are motivated by things that happened during FEE3 2024 (and so some discussion of such will be inevitable), I’d like to ask that people hold onto their full takes on what went right/wrong with that show until the post-mortem.

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I’m glad AI is banned from FEE3, but why even leave it allowed on FEU?

In a community that depends and relies on crediting work made by other members of the community, it seems backwards to allow uncredited plagerism.

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I think these are overall pretty solid rules :+1:

Maybe let the people who want to submit who aren’t in “good standing” be handled on a case-by-case basis though, since people can get banned over pretty dumb and stupid stuff we do sometimes. Though I suppose at that point they could probably appeal to be unbanned.

The clarifications on the qualifications to be the host is also great to lay down, and I think are definitely the right things to check for. Maybe I’ll even apply one year XD

The rules on ai and the video quality are also a good call, mostly because they were the source of a lot of discourse this year, so I appreciate steps taken to avoid huge arguments that take away from the other projects.

Again, I like these rules, and hope they can lead to a smooth FEE3 experience under the hood in the future!

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If your view of the technology is “all generative AI is plagiarism”, then I can understand why you feel that way, and I don’t think anything I have to say will convince you.

It is my personal view that there are ways to use these methods responsibly, such as to automate certain menial programming tasks. We will (and already have, in at least one case) ban users who intentionally use training data that is not cleared for public use. Regarding the large-scale models put forward by various big tech companies (e.g. DALL-E), we simply cannot enforce that the technology is never used, so our policy is designed to ensure that such (ab)uses, when they’re discovered, remain as publicly available as possible.

In any case, this thread is not an appropriate place to discuss the site’s overall AI policy or the justification thereof. If you’d like to continue this conversation in private, my DMs are always open.

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To get my obvious first thoughts out of the way, it is unfortunate that things played out this way. Generative AI showed up gradually, and the opinions the people eventually formed on it, one way or another, were something the event would not be able to get past peacefully, given that things were already in place. I’m sure it’s obvious to some where I stand on that line, but that’s not important.

Regarding the other policy changes, I’m glad that quality checks on showcases will be handled more seriously going forward. It really takes away from a submission when the video itself is of poor handling.

As for being in good standing, it’s… generally smart to get a handle on things in advance. We’ll see how that plays out.

I am concerned about the content policy, though. Case by case is good, I just hope there’s no close calls that bring controversy.

Problems aside, I thought 2024’s event was really good. Plenty of creativity on display. I hope that gradual increase in enjoyment goes up in the coming years.

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I’ll assume this is a compromise between ye olde days of FEE3 being a highly curated high-effort showcase and the fact that the flood of submissions in recent years has effectively made that impossible. I admire the effort and I appreciate it.

I also think, irrespective of where one stands in what can charitably be referred to as the AI “discussion”, that banning it from FEE3 was the right call, just for how controversial it really is.

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Will this include projects that use FE Map creator’s auto generator for maps? What if you use the tool to generate a base map and then edit it from there i.e. half AI, half manual work?

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Argh, I knew I forgot something.

Off the top of my head, I don’t want to preclude the use of FEMapCreator, but we will need some time to brainstorm how to phrase that as a concrete policy. For now, please assume that all forms of auto-generation are banned until further notice.

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That’s a stretch ngl

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does that include the old mug maker or is that technically splicing? think some hacks last year are still usin mugs that are made from that or are slight touchups?

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We’re most likely going to carve out exceptions for FEMapCreator and the old mug maker explicitly.

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This is the main thing I’ve used ai for, and it’s saved me quite a few hours. Eg. when I have a list of data that I need formatted in a specific way, it saves me time and effort and makes no difference to the end result.

“Featuring” is a good term to use, although some people are understanding it as “including”. Maybe “prominently featuring” would be clearer?
E.g. “works that prominently feature ai generated materials will be rejected from FEE3.” This leaves it up to the fee3 reviewing committee in cases that the submitter wasn’t sure about, and it shouldn’t worry people who’ve used map creator or mug maker, although you can certainly explicitly mention them as examples of what’s allowed.

If you did mean “include whatsoever”, then I’ll just say that I think it’s difficult to enforce a blanket ban on ai generated content as a whole, and that doing so encourages users who’ve used a little to not disclose this information. I think it’s easiest for everyone involved to include that word “prominently”, or if preferred “prominently featured at any point”, but I don’t want to misinterpret you.

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Agreed. AI is a tool, not a replacement, and it should be treated as such. It may be a scary thing, but as with many things, they can be used for good too. We just gotta remember to use it the right way

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This, 100%. I was not allowed to participate in this year’s FEE3, because I’m banned in the discord server. But this ban was not recent. It was a few years ago. Not only that, but I’ve made a lot of contributions here on the main FEU website that I would consider to qualify as getting in “good standing” with the community.

Furthermore, this rule of needing a “good standing” wasn’t informed at all initially. I had to find out the hard way, and it was only properly communicated publicly once I complained. On top of that, I have tried to appeal my ban from the Discord multiple times over the last few years, but I’ve been rejected every time.

In my opinion, if the mods are trying to harbor a better community, they are failing at it by trying to push away members just because they consider them to not have a “good standing”. Leaving no opportunity for those members to show they have changed for the better.

If we truly want to harbor a better community, the mods need to have better integrity at handling these cases. And not simply push away the people they don’t deem to be in “good standing”.

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Alice, if you’re referring to your case here, feel free to DM us. I sense that your reply might be unintentionally shifting the focus to your case, which isn’t the main point of the current discussion.

We never ignore your appeals, and I encourage anyone else appealing a ban to follow the same process. That said, we strive to remain as objective as possible when addressing these matters.

Unfortunately at that time, we had to revise the rules due to your case; which was regrettable, and I’m sorry for that. However, as I mentioned, we never ignore your appeals, so please feel free to reach out again.

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Yes. My intention wasn’t to shift the focus of the discussion. I apologize.

I didn’t say that my appeals were ignored. I said that they were always rejected (As in, I was never unbanned). Though, if there’s good faith in the process, I might reach out again sometime. Thanks.

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for this section, is it referring to the video or the hack itself?

Cause some hacks (even in this year’s showcase) would have moments that I would say are technically ESRB M17+ but these moments are brief and don’t represent the hack as a whole.

Maybe a general ban of any M17+ hack is a bit too far? I think it would be better if this rule just applied to the video.

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This restriction is more on vibes than a hard rule. Like said, it will be handled on a case-by-case basis.

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I’m assuming the video/audio quality checks also apply to trailers that are intentionally lo-fi like mine? :smiling_face_with_tear:

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So like,

if a project doesn’t feature AI within the showcase, but is still present within the project, could that be an issue?

I ask in case that could potentially be a situation.