The hero we need.
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Necessary criticism is necessary. Unnecessary criticism is unnecessary. But even unnecessary criticism can be helpful, what matters is that you are constructive.
leaving constructive feedback in a thread titled “learnings and opportunities” is not the same as leaving mean spirited YouTube comments
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Just want to chime in that as an Aussie, I really appreciated the round-the-clock uploads, rather than them being uploaded 4 AM my time. I realise that this might not be best for the YT algorithm but it made me feel included which is rare in online gaming communities like this.
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This is good to hear - one of the main reasons I went for around the clock was because this community is global.
I do think Ghast brings up a good point about prime time EST, and potentially including more videos during this time since usually that is where there is the most viewership. I’d be all for potentially increasing the number of videos at specific timeslots so that we shorten the event a bit. If we have more stringent length guidelines, I think this is could be feasible.
However, WarPath’s data also shows that the timeslots were relatively even in terms of viewership, albeit the sample size is small, so it may not hold up to scrutiny at scale. Won’t know more until we continue growing the reach of the event.
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My feedback abt FEE3:
First we need more organizers, Pandan single handedly did most of the organizing for FEE3. Recruiting more volunteers might help in this regard.
Then we need some volunteers who are willing to create thumbnails at the very least, thankfully we had a few this year, ideally you can extend this to layouts in a video or video editing but the latter two need a lot of time, communication and likely payment compared to the work you’d put out in a thumbnail.
Abt the videos:
They were long, I shouldn’t complain abt that since my videos were around a hour long…
You can either shorten them, Length is pretty complex, sometimes the hacker requests the lp’er to showcase something, in my case, I had to show all the promotion options for demon’s curse, and that took 1/3 of the video’s length for a 1.5 hr video, sometimes you get that enthusiasm in a hack while playing it for the first time. I’m recording my FE 6 PE run rn, recording the voice after recording the gameplay probably removes some exciting reactions, and yet recording a video without sound is probably the best way to edit it since you don’t have to worry abt cutting out what you want to say…
Then there’s the fact of viewer burn out, maybe making the event post lesser videos per day like two per day, or two shorter videos and one longer video is a good idea.
As for timezones, I really appreciate it that it is posted round the clock, I don’t live in America so I don’t have to check my notifications to watch a video at a later time.
Cutting out people who don’t have quality equipment is harsh imo, I have a cheap headset mic and an average laptop, some people can’t afford the equipment or not sure on whether they actually want to do it… Luckily there are tools in OBS which can cut down most of the background noises and free video editors and sound editors which could help in improving the video quality, lending these software download links along with tutorials might be helpful in that regards.
I get that bad quality videos are irritating to watch but helping these people create better quality videos could lead to creating better videos.
mix up content like trailers, tutorials for FEbuilder, SRPG studio, LT, showcase what these are capable of, for instance, in SRPG studio and LT you can create combat arts while FE builder is working on it and it isn’t currently available for FEbuilder, this way you highlight what all the engines could do, encourage more people to use it and in the long run get some good stuff… again this is a showcase to a hacking community ,there’s a lot more to hacking than putting let’s plays.
You can put in debates, scripted content, for instance Pandan has a good series of how to design a hack and Markyjoe dabbles into game design. These are understandably hard to do since making scripts, arranging co commentators can be hard.
Mixing up content may also increases viewer interest instead of showcasing only or mostly lps. Nuramon did an animation showcase while pandan did an interview…
As for reskins, probably pick the good ones, project ember for instance is a pretty good reskin hack, it’s far from complete and the developers are still working on variations, but make them show what’s unique in a hack… animation, gameplay, story, ptraits animations.
The FEU community has it’s own youtube channel, MK404 was probably a youtuber who posted regularly and hence he has a higher amount of views. I’d recommend putting in something regularly, for instance long videos you couldn’t put in a main event because of time restrictions if you put a hard limit or Vesly’s idea of posting something biweekly or ideally weekly… because that’s likely the bare minimum for youtube algorithm to recognize a regular viewer.
Project of the week, tutorials, Project of the month, design philosophies the content could be anything, that’s an another discussion.
We need promotion, we have a couple of bigshot youtubers in the hacking community like Ghast or Markyjoe, if they are willing perhaps we could ask them, otherwise we could ask Mekkah, Bismix or FED to promote the event or channel if it is needed.
The FEE3 channel needs to be able to stand on it’s own feet, because relying upon another content creator single handedly to host the event has it’s risks, MK404 couldn’t host it this year because of reasons… so promoting the newly created channel is a good idea in the long run.
That’s it for my feedback.
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I’ve made a few of these myself and would be happy to continue making them for the FEU youtube channel
I’d like to echo something that I think Klok and Pandan already mentioned. Its awesome that people are thinking of alternative ways to present FEE3 passed 30 minute LPs. I agree that there are MUCH more digestible types of videos that can be made, but like they mentioned, it takes significantly more time to push out a single video this way, and editing a scripted video is understandably different than just LPing something for 45 minutes and cutting it down. If you wanted to have a more digestible format, I think massively increasing the cooperation between developer and presenter could be a good idea?
Idea: requiring the project submitters themselves to write their own scripts and submitting their own B-roll footage of their hack at the appropriate bitrate and FPS for the video editor themselves to voice over and edit, saving a BUNCH of time on their end just needed to compile what the project developer sent them.
- Developer records footage of their hack and everything they want to showcase. Footage can be around 5-10 minutes.
- Write a script advertising/ talking about their project and the features it has with time stamps to the B-roll footage they themselves provided
- instructing the narrators/ video editors how to use the footage, making the process of making the video a coordinated effort between both as clear as possible.
- Hopefully the end result is a quick, painless 5-10 minute video about the project.
It would probably save a shitload of time for the video makers and editors. Instead of LPing 1-1.5 hrs of game footage, they have all they need to edit anyway. Recording a 5-10 minute script is WAY less timeconsuming than playing 1.5 hours of a hack.
For developers who want to showcase a full chapter, they can do that, too. But given that viewer retention is already very low on 20-30 minute videos, you might be better off opting for this option if you want the viewer to watch more of your stuff.
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I’ve gone back and forth about throwing my opinions into this, but I’ve decided to quickly write out some of my thoughts on what I’ve seen in this thread, hopefully without excessively echoing things people have said.
Gatekeeping
I want us to be very careful with gatekeeping submissions to FEE3, particularly when based off of activity within FEU. While FEU has generally taken charge of the event, the origins of the event are not within FEU and it’s unfair of us to intentionally exclude external things, namely SRPG Studio submissions. The schism between FEU and the SRPG community is bigger than many people here truly realize and excluding them would not be the play. There were numerous indie projects in FEE3 this year as well that I personally found some of the coolest things submitted that wouldn’t have been able to be included if we made it an “FEU” exclusive event. While I would argue we’re the center of ROMHacking specifically here, SRPG Studio and other engines, as well as indie projects, often don’t feel at home in FEU. I don’t think this should be grounds to exclude them from the event.
In terms of reskins and rebalances, I think it depends on the level of quality. Something complete that I would say really redefines how a game is played, such as Project Ember for FE6, would be fair to include. Senseless rebalances and reskins that really don’t offer anything new, on the other hand, would be fair to exclude (or even have a few “pre-show” videos showcasing these as a light taste of what’s to come)
Organization
More people need to be willing to step up to help out with this in a realistic way. While too many helpers can be a problem, it shouldn’t all fall to Pandan to organize the entire event. More LPers (which I would argue should be filtered to ensure high quality recording quality, even if commentary is subpar), more people dedicated to communicating, etc. There’s been a lot of ideas and volunteering stepping up this thread and I trust the organizers to find a way to synthesis this for next year, as well as I trust those of you who have said they’re volunteer will hold your word on that. Hopefully you get treated better than you treated this year’s organizers.
While I think that there was heavy disrespect towards the organizers from the community, I also think more transparency from the organizers would have gone a long way in lessening that. There was no need for numerous people to ask about the fundraiser after one person had asked; likewise, there was no need for the staff to snap back so vehemently once they got around to answering. The community tab offers a few more opinions about this specific issue.
Mature Content
If its for “memes” or just being “dark humor,” it has absolutely 0 place in FEE3. Having it on the site in general is a different issue that’s not my area to discuss, but for something like FEE3 that (in my vision, at least) is a sort of outreach showcase of what the fan game communities have created, it shouldn’t be included.
Hacks like Inheritance, which present mature content, are a bit of a different issue. I’ve not played Inheritance, so I can’t speak to the long term effects the mature themes actually play. If they truly enhance the story and are painted in a truly negative light, it’s one thing. However, I think that for hacks like these, the “clean” version should be showcased instead, or nothing at all. I’m not here to condemn Inheritance; that’s a can of worms that’s been opened repeatedly the past week that isn’t my job to deal with.
Community
This is, far and away, the biggest issue this FEE3. Our community has become incredibly self-destructive. The personal assaults against Arch for adding FE7x at the end were unwarranted, especially since Blademaster himself had no issue with it. Don’t get mad on other people’s behalf if they aren’t angry. It’s immature, stupid, and divisive. The constant bitching about formatting, the fact this is called a “post-mortem” thread, and everything else is also totally unwarranted. We all want a good event. That’s why we discuss these things afterward. Freaking out about pointless things that nobody cares about makes it that much harder for people to want to organize it. I can barely blame the staff and organizers for becoming so vehemently defensive throughout this. We as a community members treated them like shit, beginning to end, and we should honestly be ashamed of ourselves.
Tl;dr: Gatekeeping based on FEU activity and engine is a terrible idea, more people should help with organization, mature content should (at the very very least) be excluded from the showcase itself.
Overall, to echo what Chair has said, we need to fix ourselves as a community first and foremost if we truly want the future of FEE3 to be successful.
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This
And we need some low effort content besides lps…
Like streams if you can set it up, mainly because they don’t need to be edited, bring in viewer and content creator interaction , FED for instance posts something discussing abt Fire Emblem almost everyday,short and simple videos describing some mechanic in three houses. Interviews that Rengor did on various bigshot FEtubers while he was recording his 0% growth ltc on three houses which weren’t frankly edited yet the hype of doing something new, high gameplay skill , combined with a famous personality essentially increased the no. of views of a particular video along with his subscriber count. Tutorials probably can be low effort especially if you are just showing what to do while talking on a screen.
Streaming on a weekend might be a good idea…
I’d basically recommend the community watching an youtuber who puts Fire Emblem content daily to atleast thrice or twice a week and does something which isn’t an lp to get a few ideas on what sort of content variety, we could bring to the table.
TLDR
We need to fix the content length, get a decent variety of easy to create content and ideally get some viewer content creator interaction.
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Love the idea, but it will only work at scale if 1) project creators are empowered to do this themselves and 2) we have more volunteers with the editorial and communication skills to facilitate this. It sounds like the work of the volunteer here is just to provide voice over and record the final video, which does sound way more viable than having them make/edit the footage as well. I think this is a good compromise if someone asking for this format needed volunteer support.
I’ll be drafting up a few guides for next year to help organizers and project creators, and including a “best in class” example for different formats (LPs, trailers, your suggested format, etc.) will help folks out.
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Re: voice over of 10 mins of footage - one issue I forsee is that users may want their footage to line up with the voiceover, which makes it a lot more difficult to coordinate. Or if the footage is unrelated to the script, the cuts can seem pretty random. Having fade out/in transitions for cuts in footage would nice, too.
I like the idea, though. I don’t think it’s a huge barrier of entry to record simple footage without any commentary, but a few people probably can’t or aren’t willing to try it. I don’t really want us excluding people from the event, so I’m not really sure how to handle those cases.
Not everyone needs to follow a single format so long as they can fit within the guidelines around video length and inappropriate content.
Also, if someone is submitting for a volunteer, there has to be expectation that the volunteer won’t be able to 100% align to your vision - it’s the nature of outsourcing. Specific detail and instruction will help get closer, but I think folks will need to accept it if the work isn’t exactly what they want, so long as it meets quality benchmarks.
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Yeah, different editors will have different strengths and ideas for what the presentation will look like. And yeah, this idea will rely on a group of dedicated and experienced video makers all on the same page. there’s a lot of good ideas in this thread but hopefully there’s a dedicated group of individuals wanted to execute all these things.
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i like making videos as a hobby so i could try my hand at editing
too bad my software is bad xd
What about for FEBuilder video tutorials we have them reviewed by @7743? Of course, we don’t want to overload the amazing 7743 (or have too much content that is only tutorials all at once). But as the creator of febuilder, he might be a good judge of that content. He gave me some harsh criticism on the video I made for the Difference Debug Tool, for example 
I would like to make more febuilder tutorials, and it’s nice to encourage new users to give hacking a go by making it more easily accessible. Users could upload the videos to googledrive which would allow 7743 to review it. If he’s unsatisfied with it, then he’d provide feedback and the video maker could implement that feedback and resubmit it. Once approved, it gets sent over to the staff to upload it.
Of course, this all depends on if 7743 would like to review any FEBuilder tutorials that we make.
I would also suggest that we keep these videos as focused on a topic and to keep them short and sweet. I think that makes it a lot easier for quality control and organization of the videos. Personally, I wanted to try and keep them under 5 mins when possible.
Apologies for the self-plug here, but I started this thread last month as a draft of how I’d do this:
Of course, I’ll be making more tutorial vids when I have time either way. I was just thinking that this might be a nice way to do things. If anyone has any thoughts or feedback on this, I’d appreciate your input. I also look forward to hearing about any decisions regarding usage of the channel.
I think we as a community could have a small team of veteran volunteers preview fee3 submissions and look for any blatantly bad content.
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It’s been awhile since I have been here even as a lurker, so it is entirely possible I am missing a lot of context and quite possibly talking out of my ass, so take what I am about to say with a bit of salt.
First off, sorry to hear all the hardships involved with this year’s FEE3. Especially with the content of some the submissions. Perhaps it would help to have a disclaimer at the start of these events that mature/graphic content is obviously not going to fly for a sponsored event. Even if common sense should have come into play, one can never assume creators would know not to submit such content if it was never stated.
On the subject of the community, I have seen the FE community at large always go through these kinds of drama (with no idea about it) to the point I wonder if it’s just a community’s growing pains. Other than diligently enforcing rules and escalating punishments to repeat offenders, I don’t think this type of behavior ever be stomped out completely and should be just dealt with as it comes up on a case by case basis.
That being said, I have always held the opinion of if, you are not happy how your project was showcased, do it yourself. No one, absolutely no one is going to care about your project as much as the person who made it. Advertising/Promotion is a valuable skill in itself and a creator should not be afraid to jump into it. I get wanting to promote to an already established audience but one should understand that is not without it’s own risks. Like the audience may not even be interested in your type of hack and trash it at no fault of the LPer showcasing your stuff. The risks of putting yourself and your project out there never goes away no matter what route a creator chooses to promote their stuff.
As for FEE3 itself, I have an opinion I have kept to myself throughout these 10 years (holy shit it’s been that long?!) because the solution requires “someone to build the houses” kind of thing and I am still not in a position to help. I don’t think the length of the videos is the problem, its sheer amount of submissions. As in I think this shows a much bigger problem, the community needs more events/contests. I have always wondered why there is no consistent place to submit projects for feedback and I genuinely feel a part of these submissions have secret agendas like this. (I too will admit that is why I submitted my project last year, I just wanted to see my project played somehow) I truly believe more contests will help with FEE3 problem indirectly and could also help the channel itself build more content. You can also ask for cameos to appear there instead of the other way around by popular FE content creators so that way the channel can always be managed. (also less risk for whatever happens in the future and to the creators, I think we all know what I am getting at.) This will also allow for more structure and more solid rules because this entire thread kind of sounds like it is trying to get FEE3 to account for everything because it’s kind of the only event the FE community has. Besides MAFC.
edit: Crap I forgot to say this but on the subject of favoritism on certain projects, some projects actually deserve it and I am not sorry. As much shit TLP gets, I absolutely respect it for being a completed hack and the community shouldn’t feel ashamed for celebrating finished, fleshed out, complete hacks. Hacking is fucking hard, many aspects of it require serious work and even if the tools do make it easier, many many projects never see the finish line.
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On FEU’s discord we have a channel for playing chapters of each other’s hacks in order to provide feedback, which was only created a few months ago. I would strongly encourage more people to use it. I have found it quite valuable, personally. You could even submit a chapter you made ages ago, as long as you’re looking for feedback. #Playtesting is the channel.
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So the Sonic Hacking Contest 2020 just started, and I looked around their website here: https://sonichacking.org/ Particularly the “Rules and Guidelines” and “Quality Control” parts. In Quality Control, they actually had different categories for submissions, each with their own set of rules (Retro/2D, 3D). I think we could learn a lot from looking at other hacking communities and how they handle this stuff.
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