FEE3 2020: The post-mortem thread. Learnings & opportunities as we head into 2021

Community
137

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.

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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

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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 :sweat_smile:

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.

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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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144

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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I’ve watched some of the Sonic Hacking contest go down over the past couple years since my favorite youtuber, Somecallmejohnny, often covers a lot of entries. It’s definitely something we should look at for examples to learn from.

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This right there. There doesn’t need to be a huge amount of additional events outside FEE3, but besides some of the Blitz contests there isn’t much going on now. In many communities there are regular mapping and spriting contests - every month or even every week. Those contests can turn out to be a sight for curious visitors and they also help those attending to improve their skills.

Actually the idea of regular Game Jams crossed my mind a while ago. I am thinking about choosing themes for a Game Jam like ‘winter’, ‘family’, ‘rebellion’ - whatever could lead to interesting ideas. Make it so that the community can vote for the best entries and even provide a price. If a good spriter would design a custom sprite for the first place that would be motivation enough for many people I think. The best hacks could also be presented on the FEU YouTube channel so that there is regular content to fill the gap to the next FEE3.

Game Jams are also great to get feedback as well as getting something done. A common problem is that many hacks are over-ambitious and often people lose the motivation. Getting something done is a motivation boost though and feedback can influence the main hack you are working on as well.

If you are familiar with Hollow Knight: This games character originated from Game Jam and at a later stage the underground theme of the game also started from a Game Jam topic. So there is some huge hidden potential that many hacking and game dev communities are already using.

Besides the idea of Game Jams: FEE3 needs to be advertised better. I searched on Serenes Forest for “FEE3” and the event was only mentioned once in 2016 which is quite a shame. Most Fire Emblem communities seem to be fractured and many of them do their own thing. At least SF and the subreddit should be covered though. Yes, there was a FEE3 thread on the subreddit but it wasn’t active at all. We need to figure out how we can change that.

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Sounds like we need a marketing officer. And possibly a committee…

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I remember someone bringing up the idea to use the FEU channel for things like showcasing stuff like MAFCs or playing through hacks to keep “hype” throughout the year. That could be a good idea to increase reach, as the channel will be more frequently used.

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I ran my viewership report again, and thus it should be updated with views/likes that have poured
in over the past week.

Not a whole lot new, other than view counts being somewhat higher. Probably the most interesting
development is the flattening of views in the latter portion of the event; views don’t seem as much
to be steadily decreasing throughout the event now so much as falling off quickly in the first few
days and then remaining fairly steady. The very last day was notably higher than preceding days.

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I was gunna host an FEU Game Jam like forever ago but then ghast showed up outta the blue and announced his last MAFC.

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Are you making fun of the idea to advertise the event better, or am I getting something wrong? Maybe I just interpret it wrong though. :sweat_smile:

In my opinion all that has to be done is:

  • Asking VincentASM on Serenes Forest if a news article would be possible
  • Maintain the FEE3 thread on the FE subreddit a little bit better - discuss the event with people
  • Encourage people to share the event

Oh the last point reminds me that we could also encourage viewers to comment on the videos and share them by utilizing Call to Action.

For the next FEE3 I could provide an animated endcard, a lower third reminding to subscribe and a short intro that could be played before each video if this is helpful.

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does FEU still have its patreon? use the funds to cover for art assets for next year/ future events?

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Not at all - I’m the marketing officer for my own IRL concerts and have seen the effect of good promoting vs. not promoting at all. Bookings for our shows have increased about 200-300% since I’ve started managing things.

Ideally, FEU would have a budget, and then a committee to utilise and handle the budget properly.

Given the nature of the communities it’s probably not possible or ideal to do this, since I don’t think that FEU would be able to incorporate, but we could certainly ask for more art/promotions volunteers and also make it clear to people that everything about the event is done on a volunteer basis.

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Let’s buy youtube ad space.