This is a risk as the community gets bigger and more projects are shown. I think Zan and Zahl’s recommendation of a new video every 6 hours makes the most sense since it appeals to all timezones fairly. As long as creators have some say in their timeslot for the premiere, then that would be ideal.
I disagree. I’d rather have an LPer chat. It’ll streamline comms for Arch since he just needs to ping people in a chat versus finding people individually. It also provides transparency for who is covering what.
Ideally, content creators include all pertinent details in their sign up so that the need for comms between the creator and the LPer are minimal.
Yes. This should be solved with more detailed sign up form.
The challenge with this is that it can create a dichotomy where hacks that are well liked get preferential treatment. This may happen today with how things are scheduled and dispersed, but I would want to avoid creating this. I agree that length can be an issue and we should provide guidelines for creating a good video submission, but not disqualifying people for making their video too long. I think the general consensus is that the premieres were too long in general, and hopefully we can all take that to heart and improve next year.
This is an interesting point. It’ll be curious to see lifetime views of content and if it decreases compared with years prior over the same time period. I can say that VQ has already surpassed all views of last year’s premiere, but the project’s popularity has also grown and it looks way better now. So it is hard to say.
Live streams would require a lot of additional coordination and should only be done if the LPer/creator want to go that route. I had fun doing a livestream for Ternon, but for the co-comms it was easier to do that privately.
My only issue with this is that it puts the onus on one person to edit things down. I like the idea of having something like this to supplement, but I’d be wary of putting this on someone, especially since there are so many projects to look at. I’d rather put it on creators and LPers to do a better job showcasing their work, than have someone else need to review and edit out.
Big agree here. I can draft up a new form to use for next year and a sample we can use to help guide folks for next year
This is probably the right range to recommend. 30-50 minutes is ideal, with 90 minutes as an upper limit. I don’t think we should have hard cutoffs, but share some guidelines based on what we see being successful.
Yeah this is big, and something that was overlooked. We can do better next time to schedule around big game releases that would impact viewership. Good callout.
I love this idea, but again, to my earlier point, it creates a burden on whoever is editing to keep tabs on all of the footage. Perhaps to the point of shortening videos, we call this out as something that will be done, and highlight that it makes it easier for the editor to splice together footage if your video is shorter? Could be a way to encourage shorter videos.
Agree. I do not think two events is the right solution. A gap could be a good idea too.
Agreed. I think if we announce FEE3 in June, have submissions until July, use July to record, and then launch in August - I think that would be the best since we can wrap up the show before end of the month.
Yeah, this was inappropriate and I don’t like that this was included.
Agreed. As long as the system allows for creators to give LPers what they need without requiring much back and forth, I think that would be ideal.
Fair point. I’d like to think that they would be more altruistic and see the opportunity to help bring attention to games that they may be able to play and profit from, but so far it seems like they do not seem interested. We’ve all heard horror stories on mangs making a comment on a hack which can make it difficult for its reputation to recover from. But, if done right, can help broaden exposure. It is a tricky balance and I think with what Xenith suggested earlier about choosing LPers, that the risk of a bad showcase decreases.
I disagree with this. If there is enough coordination and the LPer knows what they’re getting into, I do not think this is a blocker. I’d be happy to showcase a hack in another language if it meant getting other projects shown off. Machine translation is decent enough to cover the gaps for closed captioning.
I agree. We can make this work, and I think there could be more interest in cross-cultural projects and exchange.
Yes. This is what would help solve it. I don’t blame creators if they don’t want to do back and forth. If there is enough info upfront, there is less of a need. Oftentimes submissions have no notes and so it is hard looking at a project for the first time to know what to do or what to highlight.
I agree with everything @Pandan has said and just about everything in the rest of the thread, but I feel like there’s something being overlooked.
As someone who has fingers in a fair number of pies- i.e. keeping an eye on the projects that interest me, there wasn’t really a whole lot of stuff that I haven’t seen already.
Take Ternon for example. The videos were fun to watch, the concept is interesting, and Kirb’s wizardry is always impressive. Yet still, I’ve been aware of this content as its being developed just by keeping channels unmuted in that server. Even though I’ve yet to play VQ, something I plan to remedy this week, I’ve got a pretty good idea of what’s going on over there by being activeish in the server. Don’t get me wrong, it looks impressive as hell. The content in the video looked cool but not entirely new to me.
In my eyes, this is a fundamental issue with FEE3 that I don’t have a solution to. What’s intended to appear as new content doesn’t seem that new to many of the active members of the community, the people who care. The people coming to visit the YT premieres generally seem to be the same people active with that project, which kinda defeats the purpose of “premiering” content in my eyes. Do I think the premieres are a bad thing? Not really, but I think we as a community need to think about what we want FEE3 to mean to us. Is it to show off fun new content? If so, I think that the current format does not suit that goal. Is this a hot take? I’m honestly not sure, but this is my two cents.
I feel like our main reason for this was in attempt to show off as much novel stuff as possible in order to stand out… and even then we wen’t overboard… This is entirely my fault because if you actually watch the thing, Noguchi wanted to cut it off, so I apologize. We’re definitely gonna rethink what we want for next year.
I’m skeptical here. Not everyone is going to have your experience of this, but also there’s value in seeing a plan really come to fruition. FEE3 gives hack (and animation and tech) creators a deadline to work towards and a sense of recognition that comes from the community. The premiere chats might be dominated by people with fingers in pies, so to speak, but those are always just going to be the more outgoing members of the community anyway. (I can assure you that when 50 people are watching a premiere, most of them are silent most if not all of the time.)
Besides - as long as the content is new to the person doing an LP, there’s still the potential for surprised reactions.
On the problem of many of the active members having already seen it, I don’t think there’s much of a solution, people on the specific project’s discord are bound to see something of it, there can be surprises like Nuramon’s Dread Fighter, and at least on the FEU discord Ternon only had small bits of it shown off. Surprises are hard to pull off as people like to show things off on Discord and get feedback.
For the language, auto closed caption, while not ideal, are good enough, of course keeping the actual commentary in english is ideal, going more global would mean the possibility of hacks where the text is not in english, gameplay would still shine through in spite of language barrier but the story will be lost, I don’t know, maybe a speaker of the language as a LPer could work, having them read the dialogue out loud so it gets caught by the CC, but that might complicate matters. I don’t know, alternatively bilingual LPers? Might be hard. If by next fee3 I’m not too busy I could sign up as a candidate for LPs as I can speak english and spanish fluently (if you ignore the countless typos I make on Discord)
not going to comment on much, these are points i largely agree with and I wasn’t actually involved with the event this year
I agree with the sentiment, but in a lot of ways this is a logistical nightmare. Way back when we were starting out, Tangerine (is she even still the SF admin?) and I spent hours trying to coordinate things, and there was a comparatively small number of entries then. This site was a lot smaller then as well – at the time, we didn’t have much choice but to let SF push us around, but with the growth we’ve experienced in the past several years (something I’m incredibly proud of!) this just increases the potential for friction.
One thing I am quite on the fence about is the role of FEU, in general, in this event. Should Colorz and I be more involved? This year we were basically entirely hands off, but I do know the advantages to having some kind of “official” backing (not that having MK404 and Arch on board is nothing – I"d argue that having loud community voices is way more important than having a forum!)
This is similar to asking the major FE youtubers to help us out. As seen, the logistics with managing Mangs was already pretty difficult. Do the organizers have the manpower to help coordinate everything? I think we’re long past the point of being some grassroots group trying to put something slapdash together, but I’m not so sure our attitude has changed to reflect that. This is kind of reflected in the deadline thing – how many Serenes contests extend their deadlines by upwards of a month?
One thine that might help with content fatigue is to space out the really hyped-up releases. This happened to some extent this year, but I absolutely think that big ticket showcases like FE7x, SoA, etc, should be placed strategically to avoid burnout. This might mean at the end of days, spaced out with animation and tech showcases (I’m actually opposed to putting these all into one video – I think that they provide a nice breather between larger, less technical content). Of course, we do need some strong showings on the first day, but by putting the lesser-known releases between the most hyped ones, you encourage viewers to at least keep track a little.
This is fair. I suppose it depends on the level of involvement and coordination. At minimum we should ensure that someone on our side is posting content to other places. Ideally, we would have a relationship with a mod or admin that could help promote it on their sites, but unsure what the historical relationship is with FEU and other sites.
That’s up to you four to decide - The general sentiment is that FEE3 is now hosted by FEU, so I don’t think anyone sees it as not being endorsed by leadership here, but I am curious what you think involvement on your end as an admin would look like.
If we continue as we have been, then no. Arch shouldn’t be running around by himself and running point without support. I proposed the LPer chat (I believe someone earlier referred to it as a back room or back stage) so that we could coordinate amongst ourselves more easily. I think this would help with some of the communication gaps and add a sense of shared responsibility.
I’m not really sure what exactly caused this communications breakdown with Mangs or why others signed up and failed to show up. I don’t think we need to treat more prominent youtubers any differently than other LPers, nor do I think we should - if they say they’ll play a hack, we should hold them to it or pass it to someone else. The issue is less about who the LPer is, and more about the mechanism for communicating with them. Is a group chat the best mechanism for this? I don’t know, but it would make Arch’s life easier and provide more transparency then by extension, accountability. That should help quite a bit with level setting too.
This I agree with 100%. If we go with the drip of content every 6 hours, 1 in 4 should be one of the more prominent or well-known projects, so at least once every 24 hours there is something that will draw a crowd and keep the hype going. There were quite a few days this year where there were only unknown or early stage projects, which I think hurt turnout for the day overall, while others were a bit more stacked.
I agree that spacing out other content amongst LPs will also be better than putting them all back to back. Similarly, spacing out project formats or ideas (like not putting two SRPG studio projects back to back, or avoiding putting remakes/demakes adjacent to one another) should also help with diversity day-by-day.
This is tricky and I felt a bit similarly this year. But that’s part of working backstage on a play - you know what’s going to happen. You’re putting on the show, not sitting and watching.
The event, in my eyes, is to showcase our community’s hard work to a broader audience and celebrate our mutual success. I think it is easy to say it’s less hype because you’re involved so heavily. But that doesn’t mean the format is flawed.
The question is how can we continue to reach a broader audience so that we can grow the viewer base and the hacking community.
With 40+ entries and just about 80 hours of video content it was really hard to choose what to commit to clicking when all I might have going into it is the title name and the thumbnail. A highlight reel or light summary of what sort of hacks are in store for the given day would go a long way, I think.
Hard agree on capping time constraints for non-livestreamed showcases, via editing or just managing to make a presentation within 30 minutes.
One of the things I would like to see is the event’s development become more of a community event (people can pitch in as they are able to and incorporating videographers more widely). Yeah, it would spoil the surprises for ourselves (and I guess there’s always the potential of a bad bean spilling the soup), but if we’re trying to put our best showcase forward to people outside the community, we should be trying to use all the resources available to us.
Chiming in on this, I personally enjoyed being at my own premier, since it gave me the opportunity to directly reach out to answer people’s questions and comments being made live.
Was thinking a bit about this earlier, and wanted to summarize a bit to see about recommendations for this year’s upcoming FEE3.
Schedule 4 premiers per day, 6 hours apart. Have an inclusion on the sign up form for people to request the preferred time in their timezone so they can view the premier (if they care to).
Share guidelines with users on best practices for making a good recording. (length, topicality, things to show off, etc.). We shouldn’t put any restrictions that wouldn’t normally break our rules.
For a sign up sheet, I’d recommend something like:
Project Name
Project Creator(s)
Description of project
Showcase Chapter: [what do you plan to show? Are there specific things the LPer should show off?]
LPer: [Self record / arranged LPer / request for Volunteer]
Timezone preference: [Midnight EST, 6 AM EST, Noon EST, 6 PM EST]
Part of the application should include sending a patch to arch by the submission date.
From there, all LPers should have a chat group and a spreadsheet with links to a source for Arch to collate videos and submit to MK404.
Will think this through more but want to continue the conversation especially if we are still considering moving up this year’s FEE3 to the summer.
tl;dr Opting to go with YouTube Premiere is shooting yourself in the foot by limiting exposure.
Turns out YouTube Premiere doesn’t count views during the premiere, so after the premiere is over it’ll have no views.
Not a problem, right?
Wrong. It’s publish time will be when it went live, not after the premiere. Which means that for the entire duration of the premiere it will accumulate no views.
YouTube’s algorithm doesn’t like it when videos don’t have views within a short time frame after being published and the video will be less likely to be suggested to potential viewers (i.e. less exposure).