Small wallet gang unite (it was 7.76 before fees)
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The dispute can contribute little to the solution of the problem. Objectively speaking, this event has more and more submissions, which is hard to everyone. Organizers may feel powerless, LPers may feel tired, contributors may feel anxious, and audiences may feel bored finally (over 2 weeks). The objective of this event is to keep everyone motivated rather than upset, so why don’t we split it into two next time? For example, FEE3 2021 Summer and FEE3 2021 Winter, twice a year. Furthermore, it is better to seperate different contents too, like one for new projects and the other for updated projects. Thank you for the effort to hold this awesome event. Let’s make it better next year.
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question is, who decides who gets in when? that just seems like doubling the problem
if a hack has an entry at summer fee3, but is releasing around winter fee3, are they not allowed to make an entry? seems like too much logistical work for not that much
We’re definitely considering how we’re planning to scale for next year, and the idea of running two separate events has been floated a bunch. Expect a post-mortem once this year’s done!
One major concern is that the organizing team definitely does not have the cycles to run two events per year. There’s a lot to be done, and if the number of projects keeps growing (for example, splitting this year in half for 36 projects per is already more than most previous years got in total), we’d basically be in the middle of coordinating these events year-round.
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So I’m just hearing about this and I’d like to know what the details for entry are. I guess it’s probably too late at this point but I have something that’s just about ready for release.
One big issue with FEE3 is that it’s trying to be sort of this all-encompassing thing for every year.
What is FEE3? A yearly event that:
- Showcases finished fangames
- Previews WiP fangames
- Features long, looong LP’s of the previous two options
- Shows the progress of fangames from previous-year FEE3 submissions
- Advertises new animations
- Shows off new community tools
…And so on.
Now, I don’t contribute to FEE3. I have helped a tiny bit in the past, but my involvement was minuscule. Therefore, I’m certainly not going to say ‘this is what y’all gotta do’ since it’s not my place.
However, I do have a suggestion. If you’re not going to filter out different types of submissions (because that would seem somewhat unfair) then why not switch up the format a bit?
LP’s are somewhat ‘easier’ to make, but at the same time, they’re also not. I recommend that starting next year, the event coordinators move away from the LP format. Record footage of the submissions, then edit out some of the boring content (this isn’t super hard to do by any means, just splice out the dead movement stuff) which will cut down these 30 minute videos to, oh, say, 5 minutes of relatively quick action, but also action that still shows off the general gameplay.
Then, you have the LPers post-produce some talky-talk chatter over the footage, explaining each project’s goals, its story, and other such things.
This is less effort than a fancy shmancy trailer, but also quite informative, less footage to watch, and overall should be more interesting as a final result.
After FEE3 I can make an example video, if you like. I’ve done this sort of thing before, and it’s not hard, just a bit time consuming.
Also, naturally, if people still want to post full LP’s that’s still on the table, as are fancy trailers and whatnot. I just think the ‘focus’ should be on these medium-quality showcase videos, rather than raw LP’s.
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I don’t disagree with your suggestion, Klok, but operationally it is difficult to execute.
There are too many projects and not enough people to LP them. This is a question of man hours relative to the time given to us to record. I do think this issue can be solved by providing more lead time into the event, but I’ll cover that in the post-mortem.
While it is hard to find LPers, it’s even harder to find editors. I’d be wary of putting the burden on anyone to sift through recordings and make highlight reels for FEE3. A 3 minute trailer can take longer to make than a 1 hour LP. Given the amount of dependencies on videos and the number of people responsible, I think we would see a lot of delays and have a great amount of frustration from all sides if everything is funneled through a few people to edit.
Can we get more people to edit? Maybe, but I think the more we rely on a small group to get the videos made, regardless of what they are, the more risk we take on that the event will happen on time or at all.
“If I had more time, I’d have written you a shorter letter” is a quote that comes to mind. I have a few ideas, but I don’t think moving away from LPs will happen unless it is on a project by project basis (As in a project creator does it themselves), versus what organizers and volunteer LPers are able to put together.
Tl;dr I think if people want to go with this format, they should, but I think putting the onus on others to do it for them as we do volunteer LPs, isn’t going to scale well for the number of projects and footage we’d have to sift through.
3 Likes
I’m not sure if I explained poorly.
There are essentially two tiers to FEE3 right now. Let’s Plays, and Trailers.
Let’s plays are usually stream of consciousness, very long, and kind of a slog to sit through. If each LP in FEE3 is an average of 20 minutes (and I’m pretty sure they’ll be closer to 30 minutes) that means 2 hours of content to watch per day for 18 days. That’s 36 hours of video. You could watch most of the Marvel Cinematic Universe in that time, or watch LOTR 2-5 times depending on whether it’s the theater or director’s cut.
Then there are trailers. These are highly stylized editing buffets. These take a lot of time and energy to create, resulting in a 1-3 minute beauty for the eyes to behold. That, or they come out kind of mediocre but still end up much shorter and less exhausting to watch than a super long LP.
What I am suggesting is a middle tier. Instead of recording a long LP, the event organizers instead have people just record footage with no talking. Then you just chop out the boring stuff. It’s a few hours of time to do this, but it’s really not that much effort, nowhere in the region of what it takes to make a trailer. After you finish, you record a voice over and play it over the footage. If the submitter wants, they can obviously up the effort, but even the minimum effort here is still going to be easier to watch than a 20-30+ minute LP.
Here’s the thing. 36 hours of content is a lot to sit through. For me, what I ended up doing for the past 2-3 FEE3’s was… I just kinda glanced at the projects, saw the ones I had already heard about, and skimmed through them real fast. I probably skimmed maybe 5 videos.
I have no idea if I represent the majority of people, or if most people watch all of the FEE3 videos, a large portion, a small portion, or whatever. What I do know is that at the rate FEE3 is going, you’re going to probably have 50 hours of footage for people to watch next year, maybe even more.
My suggestion does require a bit more work than a standard LP. After all, you need to:
- Download the fangame. Get it working.
- Get yourself all set up to record.
- Play continuously for an hour or two.
- Save the footage. Start editing.
- For every minute of footage, you’ll probably need 1.5 minutes to watch, cut out the dead bits, and move on.
- You’ll then need to write up and record the post-production voiceover lines, save them, and add them to the footage. Assuming you need 2-3 takes to get the wording right, this is probably another hour or two of work.
- Finally, you produce and finalize the video. Rendering is always fun, so maybe 15 minutes to 200 hours right there. It’s up in the air.
Doing that for 18x4 projects (I didn’t count the actual projects vs stuff like animations/whatever) is probably going to require several hundred hours of work.
It’s definitely not small. I think the project creators could help out a lot by at least recording and providing their own footage, though then you’ll run into different PC configurations, people who don’t know how to record/edit/upload footage, people who do but screw up the settings and now the video is 144p… etc.
Assuming you could formulate an efficient system for doing all of this, you could split the work among the LPers and cut down the time needed somewhat.
…But hey, I certainly wouldn’t blame the team if they decided the effort wasn’t worth the payout. I just find it a little sad that I don’t end up watching most of FEE3 because it’s such a long series, and it will only grow over time. Alternatives to the LP format, in my opinion, would be the superior way to conduct FEE3 in the future.
(Also worth mentioning, I’ve made hundreds of videos before in the past, so I’m aware of the time and effort it takes to make them. A big shout-out to all the youtubers less lazy than me who help out every FEE3!)
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Totally get what you’re saying. I agree that LPs may not be the ideal primary format given the number of videos, but we’ll see what the feedback looks like for this year.
Frankly, I wouldn’t want to volunteer my time to do anything besides help run the event or LP. I have very little interest in editing - it takes too much time and I don’t enjoy it. I am sure others feel differently, though, and would welcome it - I just question if making it part of our process as organizers will help the event, versus encouraging people to submit their own videos this way.
I’d certainly encourage people who create their own videos to try new formats. I personally went with Q&A this year for a more podcast style presentation, but experimentation is good! We had some solid presentations overall this year and I’m excited to see the reception.
3 Likes
The video I submitted for Overclocked is close to what you’re suggesting, Klok, and while I can say I’m really happy with the result (Xylon was also an excellent co-host/interviewer), it did take a solid 6-7 hours total to produce. For 70 projects, it… really adds up. That’s literally months worth of editing, not something FEE3 can get from just volunteer hobbyists.
I’d certainly encourage people who create their own videos to try new formats. I personally went with Q&A this year for a more podcast style presentation, but experimentation is good! We had some solid presentations overall this year and I’m excited to see the reception.
I do, however, wholeheartedly agree with this. A bit of foreplanning goes a long way, and having a library of examples of different formats ready for next year would help. Encouraging content creators to alleviate the load by doing prep work for the LPers, or recording/editing footage would spread the load more evenly as well.
as one of the organizers, i can confidently say that i do not have the bandwidth to edit more than maybe one or two videos (let alone 18), and i don’t expect that i’d enjoy it all that much either
as someone who edited a trailer for an fee3 entry, i can confirm i wouldn’t have the energy to edit more than two trailers at most
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I’d really rather have that extra time go into my product. It’s not a bad idea, but I can’t see it working in practice. 
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Problem: Event is overwhelming to organize and execute due to sheer volume of projects.
Solution: Require the volunteers and participants to do more work.
https://puu.sh/Gyq9p/da62ff3718.png
In fairness, the issue Klok was trying to address was FEE3 being unwieldy for the viewers to keep up with, not necessarily the time it takes to produce.
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Problem: Event is overwhelming to organize and execute due to sheer volume of projects.
Solution: Require the volunteers and participants to do more work.
There are two problems being discussed:
- Event is overwhelming to organize and execute, which sucks for organizers and LPers.
- Event is overwhelming to watch and projects get lost in the crowd, which sucks for viewers and creators.
Kolk’s suggestion addressed the latter and did yes, make the former more of an issue, as quite a few people, Klok included, noted.
Fair. If you believe that this mention in the registration form is enough and nothing else needs be done, then by all means, don’t do it differently next year. We only disagree on the amount and detail of the encouragement, here, really.
My prediction is that viewer fatigue will be reduced by having a 6 hour gap between videos versus all of them dropping at once, but will be keen to see feedback to see if I am wrong.
I would be concerned with merging too many projects into single videos since it would mean they’re more likely to get lost IMO.
The wording on this submission option does not imply strongly enough, “Please do as much of the work yourself” as you might think. It comes off to me more as “please take the time to contact someone who will record your submission for you.”
In other words, the wording implies that rather than just throwing your project out there willy-nilly, you should try to do the ‘bare minimum’ of contacting a specific LPer and asking if they will record your video.
I recommend rewording this in the future to specifically ask that participants record their own footage, and something something the organizers can help teach them how to do that if the participants don’t know. Give a man a fish vs teach a man how to fish or something along those lines.
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That isn’t the intent. The form asks what their situation is, there is no attempt to encourage people one way or the other. Given the amount of requests we got and constraints on bandwidth, the language will change.
I’m confident we will be updating the submission form and having more robust guidelines for next year.