I was away for this year’s FEE3 so I could build up power.
I’m fully charged.
I’m Xilirite, or maybe you know me better as Olivia. I’ve been toying with the idea of running FEE3 for years, but never stepped up to bat until recently - last year was the closest I got to biting, but work had me a little too busy. This year, however, I’ve got a whole lot of free time on my plate, and some lost time to make up for.
Qualifications
- I’ve worked behind the scenes with FEE3 for years now, in a variety of capacities. I’ve helped with QA screening and showcase recording, as well as handling communication for the organizer. I’ve also been party to a lot of the behind the scenes of each FEE3, including having a hand in policy discussion and the like. One of my big roles was to try to protect the organizer - who is, obviously, just a volunteer - by trying to take the heat for any confrontational or controversial bits of communication. It goes without saying, but this means I’m comfortable with taking that same responsibility for my own decisions.
- I’ve been a member of the FEU discord moderation team for almost as long. I’ve been heavily involved in the community, from chatting with big-name devs to helping playtest for up-and-comers, and in my capacity as a mod, I’ve (again) handled a lot of communication between the team and the community.
- I have a really big hard drive. FEE3 understanders know why this matters…
- I’m a member of the shadow government and dislike opposition greatly. This doesn’t make me a better FEE3 organizer, but it does make me a safer vote. You can vote to save lives.
My Platform
I’ve been party to an ungodly number of conversations about the future of FEE3, and have heard many, many, many opinions about how the event should be managed, changed, altered… I understand where people are coming from with all of these opinions, but I also think that they are, on average, wrong. To be clearer, they’re correct, but aiming towards the wrong goals.
FEE3’s job, first and foremost, is to celebrate the FEU hacking community.
Almost all of the proposals to improve FEE3 have involved slanting the event to be more viewer-oriented. Several of those proposals are specifically geared towards expansion - we need more audience, new audience, we need to get people into romhacking, we need to hook into the YouTube algorithm to get more views, more hits, more publicity, more clout!
Towards the former, I think this misses the point of FEE3. This event is about the creators, uplifting hackers and giving them a platform to show off their work. While the biggest platforms of course draw the most eyes, there have also been complete no-name shadowdrop hacks that have gotten huge popularity boosts from their trailers, and even if they don’t, the chance for a creator to discuss their work with others while their trailer is doing the rounds is invaluable for getting their art noticed. I think this is incredible! It’s awesome, fantastic, the best!
Changing this event to be about the audience experience, making it easier to consume all of FEE3 in less time at the expense of the creators and their ability to find an audience, sacrifices the parts of FEE3 I think are most valuable. The focus should be on the hack submitters; always, always, always.
Towards the latter, once again, this misses the point. FEE3 is not an attempt to advertise hacks to the non-hack community, it’s an attempt to advertise hacks to FEU. Fostering discussion, sharing our work with one another, this is, first and foremost, an inter-community event, not an extra-community event.
Towards these goals, I think FEE3’s format works perfectly as is. The 6 hour span between uploads gives time for each video to catch traction and foster discussion, and the limited restrictions on the format of the showcase makes it easier for hackers to create and submit a showcase, regardless of their skill as video creators.
Is this an exciting platform? No, not really. But there’s only so much time to go around, and massive structural changes like this will take a ton of effort, time commitment, and coordination to pull off, all to possibly make FEE3 better at being something that the event simply is not, and was not, intended to be. I want to focus on FEE3’s strengths, to keep the event running smoothly and continue the traditions that make this event so much fun for the community.
To this end, I want to help create more interesting showcases. In previous FEE3s, besides my gameplay showcases, I conducted a couple interviews, which I think were super interesting, and fun to do as well. So…
As organizer, I will conduct interviews with any submitters for their showcase, as a way to lighten their load for showcase creation and to curate higher quality work and more thoughtful, creator-oriented content at the event.
also bc it would be fun !!
Finale
I’d kill this shit.