FEE3 2025 Retrospectives

Community
21

I think any sort of featured project thing needs to be self serving. People love to talk about themselves. I envision it as something like this:

  1. Each month, a new (pinned?) nominations/voting featured project Community thread is made. It announces the current winner, perhaps quotes their post, and links their project thread. Optionally, their thread is also added as a banner to the site for a week.
  2. It explains that users can reply with one image up to 600x600 in size, and up to 150 words. Brevity is the soul of wit. And it’s more engaging.
  3. Users reply to the thread with their blurb/image as self nominations. People like their post. The most popular post wins (unless it’s disqualified / overruled by staff).
  4. Optionally, after x hours or 5 replies of self nominations, the thread is locked and pinned. This is to stop people from getting as burnt out on the process, as people will want to recycle their replies from last month, and anything far into the thread isn’t going to get the most likes anyway. Alternatively, there could be a reply from the organizer saying that self nominations are now closed, so please save your submissions for next month. That way discussion could still occur.
  5. When the new thread is made in the new month, it includes stuff about the winner. See 1. The winner may also revise their project thread OP if they feel inspired to do so.

I think something like this would be sustainable.

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22

Ultimately all of this is a discussion about a hypothetical different event that is not FEE3. There are merits to weekly/monthly community posts, or podcasts, or whatever other community run things one can think of, but FEE3 is not one of those things, and I don’t think the answer to the relatively small issues facing FEE3 is to uproot the event entirely with an entirely new kind of event largely unrelated to what it currently is.

The goal is to find a format change that improves FEE3 - that is, the annual event presenting developer-made showcases of FE hacks - not to transform it into a new event. FEE3 isn’t a newsletter, or a podcast, or a forum thread, and I don’t believe that discussions about these hypothetical other kinds of event are ultimately incredibly helpful. As stated in the original post, the intention is to find changes that are relatively simple for the event to improve it. I don’t think the answer to “FEE3 is finally easy to run!” should be “fantastic, let’s run it every month then." Workload is low: this is a good thing for an annual community event, because it makes volunteering for it easy and stress-free. Changes we make should be minor workload increases at worst, as whatever changes are made need to be sustainable for future volunteers to also run.

At the moment, there are two ideas in my head, one easier than the other.

The easy one is to rapidly increase the pace of the event. Trailers only, uploaded every 2 hours between 10 AM and 12 AM, with a pause in the early morning. This would double the pace that videos are getting uploaded, and prevent anything from being uploaded in that 6 AM deadzone. With the event limited to trailers, each upload is lightweight and easy to watch, rather than having a big weighty 45 minute gameplay showcase with only 2 hours until the next showcase pops up. Maybe such videos could be uploaded alongside a trailer as bonus material for people who want to dig deeper? idk. Problems: this floods the subscriptions of anyone who follows the channel, and risks having videos just generally get lost in the massive flood of videos.

The harder idea is to adopt a more typical showcase format, with a single live premier of a video with every single trailer in the event at once, including some light commentary between each video and maybe some minor fluff pieces if anyone is interested in such things. Then, all the trailers are uploaded individually after the premier ends so they can be linked to directly, and we could have longer showcases like gameplay and interviews trail the main stream over the course of the next couple days, with the understanding that these are side materials to the main event of trailers and the like.

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23

I’ll play devil’s advocate. Weekly or even monthly events / podcasts taking the place of FEE3 is a net negative to me. I think it would make a good supplement, but FEE3 week(s) feels like a holiday to me. It’s something I look forward to and I enjoy the theatrics / hype around it. I think you would lose a lot of that in the suggested format.

In that vein though, I agree that interviews or long form videos just don’t hit the same. Speaking for myself, I’m both a masters’ student and full-time worker. I don’t have the time to put 15+ minutes into a video just to get a feel for a project that I may or may not be interested in. And as fun as Fire Emblem is to play, it’s nowhere near as fun to watch. Quick, snappy trailers that highlight the key selling points and reveal the game’s personality will always resonate better with me.

TL;DR: Fire Emblem is like golf. It’s fun to play but boring to watch. I’d rather play a project on my own terms then spend time watching someone else’s playthrough/footage, and the best way to generate interest to me is through short-form digestible trailers.

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24

I can agree that FEE3 is best as an annual event. It is a highlight of my year whenever it comes around. On top of that, trying to make it a monthly event sounds like a workload that may be hard to maintain long term depending on who’s running everything and everyone’s schedules.

And while I prefer short trailers over more long-form showcases, I take the time to watch/listen to the long ones too since I tend to have those on as background noise as I work on my own stuff lol I also rewatch them when I have the time to sit down and pay attention to them properly. So, I think there is a place in FEE3 for these longer videos, even if the appeal of them is just something to put on in the background. However, I do understand that the numbers speak for themselves. If longer gameplay showcases aren’t allowed in FEE3 going forward, I understand, but they will be missed.

I also agree that the event’s runtime can be shorter. 6 hour wait times between showcases feels too long, so shortening that to maybe 2-4 hours might be good? idk im just throwing around numbers here.

But overall, the event this year was pretty good! No complaints here, and I did like the addition of having interviews. It was nice to hear people talk about their projects. It’s just too bad, analytics-wise, they didn’t do so hot just due to the nature of how long those videos ended up being.

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25

I guess I will throw my thoughts in. I watched more trailers this year than I did in previous years. I think I finally bought into the hype, but I really really didn’t have a desire to watch longer form videos. I say this as someone who uploaded a 15 minute video last year now understanding why those are hard to watch.

I think participants should be encouraged to upload shorter traditional trailers and upload supplementary material somewhere else. We all know how Fire Emblem plays. Beyond a few exceptions, most hacks have identical mechanics. Then again, I guess that acts as a double edge sword because you can’t really fit map design and story into a 3 minute trailer, so maybe its not so simple.

I like the idea of shortening the gap of when videos are uploaded, avoiding the dead times. I think that can be an easy implementation with little to no push back.

On the topic of things outside of FEE3, I do like the idea of project spotlights. I understand Archanea monthly filled that role, and its really cool, but I understand that is a lot of effort. I think something as simple as having a pinned project rotate out each month would be a cool thing. It could just be a pin, or maybe an organizer does a short Q&A with that project and that is displayed somewhere. Not a video, just some old fashioned text.

IDK, just some thoughts.

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26

Thanks Olivia for taking the mantle this year and running the event. Glad to hear that it’s gotten smoother to run and that operational issues were not as significant as in years past.

When it comes to changes, my question is what is the purpose of the event and what goals are we trying to hit? This has been a debate as long as I’ve been involved, and my view is that it is still more about community participation than it is about advertising FEU or hacking more broadly.

To me, views aren’t the be-all-end-all. The FEU channel has grown consistently year over year (it’s close to 9k today, was about 1k when I ran the event years ago) and it looks like all of the videos this year, at minimum, have over 1k views now. This seems pretty good given the channel’s size, and it’s not like (to my knowledge) we rely on any advertising money from FEU channel to fund the site, so it’s really all vanity metrics.

In general, my view is still make it as easy for people to participate and as easy for hosts to facilitate the event as possible. Unless FEE3 becomes a way to help fund the site or fundraise for community assets (ie raising funds to commission artists to make animations), I am biased towards the most low-effort, inclusive version as possible. I don’t think it’s worth trying to make a more heavily produced event unless it’s going to be more explicitly to drive revenue.

The point about discussion is a tough one to figure out. I think it’s going to be hard to get consistent discussion about projects over so many days. For one, there are so many projects to talk about, tons of projects that are live and fully playable, and the community exists in many pockets versus all in one place. Even a few folks doing commentary in between on the channel would also probably be tough to sustain unless you had the right personalities committed to doing it, and most of those people who have an audience would likely rather route them to their own channels vs. volunteering on the FEU site. I don’t have a good answer to help spur discussion about the videos.

Lastly, I’ll add I also think FEE3 serves as an important forcing function to get people to actually release their work. How often do you hear “I gotta get a release out for FEE3”? I feel like without its current annual cadence and relatively open structure, we’d probably see fewer projects get released. So I’m totally biased to status quo and continuing to drive improvements at the margins, like tweaking upload times vs. rethinking the structure of the event more heavily, unless we see FEE3’s purpose shifting to something different.

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27

I’ve held the same stance for a very long time, and it’s been running it this year that’s started to change my mind. The event is tailored for community-purposes and isn’t serving them anymore, and instead its breakout successes are primarily when it spreads the word about a hack that would have otherwise gone under the radar.

I think the smaller scale projects, like Archanaea Monthly or the hypotheticals posed in this thread, would work far better as community-first events than FEE3 would. As is, FEE3 is an event made up primarily of trailers, which are a tool for showing off your work and getting people interested in that work, but it constructs itself like it’s a kind of community show and tell. As is, it’s doing a poor job of either task, and I don’t think we can push it further into its community role in a post-fracturing hacking scene.

Therefore, I think it’s a smarter move to try to make FEE3 about growth for the scene, drawing people to those smaller communities where these hacks are being made so they can follow and discuss them, creating inroads between these communities by making each other aware of the work being done in different pockets of the scene, and showing people outside the hacking community or along the fringes of it what’s being made in order to get them interested and investing in the scene.

As already stated in the initial post, FEE3 could be kept exactly as is for the rest of ever and nothing bad would happen, but I don’t think that means we shouldn’t seek to improve the event. We’re putting on a functional show: I’d like to see if we can put on a better show.

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28

I’m admittedly out of the loop so I’m not quite following when you say the event isn’t really serving that purpose well anymore.

Beyond lack of discussion, is there anything else indicating this that you observed?

I think my skepticism is around how many more people are we even able to reach. I remember in a past retrospective, Agro brought up their experience in Acapella and how the community was capped because it was so niche. So it’s a question around if we think we aren’t serving the core community who would participate vs. how many people not in the community that should be that we want to try to reach instead.

No right or wrong, it’s a difficult nut to crack and really depends on our philosophy for the event

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29

Lack of discussion is a big one. There’s less hype around new videos, less discussion around them, less feeling of the community actually getting together to talk about the games being presented. For the most part, comments left on these videos are left by people who seem to be relative outsiders to the community, and they’re the people most excited by these trailers and who appear to enjoy the FEE3 content the most, whereas every year I hear most people in the community mention that they barely even watched the event aside from trailers for hacks they were already personally familiar with. This, to me, speaks to a failure to try to act as a moment for the hacking community to come together for these moments, and it’s instead more of a train station where all the disparate strands of the community meet for a moment before continuing on their merry way.

None of the solutions I’d be inclined to go with will involve raising the barrier of entry significantly. There have been concerns in the past that making trailers mandatory would be too large a barrier, but this year’s massive % of trailers vs traditional showcases has given me the impression that this simply isn’t true, and making a basic trailer for your game is largely achievable by most people with the technical know-how to assemble a hack. Even then, I’m not certain I’m happy with trailer-mandatory approaches, it’s just an idea I’m flirting with, albeit one who seems like a real sweetheart.

Towards how many people we can reach, we don’t know. We’ve certainly seen hack trailers outside of FEE3 get blessed by the algo to the tune of nearly 6 digit views. Views aren’t the be-all end-all, no, but they are important if the goal of the event becomes a chance to show your project to people outside of your direct community, which is something the event is, I believe, going to be better at doing. In so doing, it would still serve many of its previous goals at the same time - it may even serve them better, honestly, by eliminating viewer fatigue and keeping the community invested in the event for its entire runtime.

Part of the goal here is to try and use this period of time, where we know the event will have an organizer who’s willing to put in some extra effort for a bit, to find some data on how the event fares if it’s reconfigured, so that we aren’t operating in the realm of pure conjecture. There’s a lot of “this could do this or could do that” things one could say about the event, but the goal is that by experimenting a bit, we can get a firmer idea of how changes to the event will play out in practice in order to make more informed decisions about how best to run the event going forward.

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30

We should try this at least once, just to say we’ve really outlasted E3.

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31

i haven’t read the entire thread, just op, but i thought i’d add my voice to the choir

i agree with all of the points on issues with the event. the most salient i agree on is the need for a change in direction. from the outside looking in, it’s kinda crazy an event modeling itself after E3’s priority was to serve as a celebration of the community, rather than as an advertisement (which is what E3 is!).

the one thing i do disagree on is the need for small steps of improvement. i really, really dislike the current format as a viewer for all of the issues listed in the original post. i should air out my bias and say i’m not a fan of interviews (or longform fee3 content for that matter), they’re kind of awkward and i’d much rather watch an interview after i’ve finished playing a hack/game. it especially sucks when waiting for trailers, since the 6 hour break between projects really seems long when the trailer is a dud. even short trailers are made worse, since i’m watching them from like, whatever time i can find, and they end so fast. i think foundationally, viewer fatigue will always be an issue for an event lasting an entire month (i think most game expos last a week/weekend at most). if treating fee3 as an advertising event rather than a community celebration, it fails in a lot of steps.

i think all of these issues could be solved with a format shift. imo Nintendo directs are such a time tested, exciting format already being used by our peers that it makes feu look dated.

if i had my little way, i’d probably segregate the format into a handful of days, the first being a direct-style, hour or so long presentation of trailer length videos (maybe broken up into several days if there’s too many), and the following day/days be dedicated to long form content. this would theoretically solve a lot of the issues with timing, viewer fatigue, quality control, showcase length, and generally make it easier for outsiders to “consume” the content ("oh man, fee3 at x/x/26? it’s like a nintendo direct! i understand!”). it would take a fair bit more effort to do this, but the organizers got a year to prep lmao

i ranted alot, but i enjoyed so many trailers this feu. AHOD, fourthack, and knights of leonsrer stick out in my mind as standouts. i hope fee3 could improve so these epic trailers now and in the future can get the spotlight they deserve.

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32

I’d argue part of the discussion piece, beyond the fracturing of the community into smaller discord servers and less on the forum, is also a function of how mature the community is and how much stuff is already out there. There is less truly “new” stuff, there is already a lot of stuff, and people are much more open and collaborative about their work, so there aren’t as many secretive details being revealed like in the past or how a professional studio would operate. I think that trend has been underway since the dawn of VBA and the pivot towards more open source in the community.

This is helpful to read though. I could see stringing all of the trailers and a few demos into a single direct type premier being a worthwhile experiment that doesn’t increase the burden, as long as the individual videos are then published after the fact to make it easier to search. This gives us best of both: a single event to build hype around that reduces month long fatigue, as well as a place that people can point to for their own work to promote it and also share separately. I think video editing has gotten so much easier that this is less of a barrier than it once was, and that doesn’t sound like it would be a ton more work.

We could also get Cam to show up like Miyamoto with the white background. “And now, another trailer from…”

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33

It’s there; it’s the very first video on the channel and is more of a traditional direct. The podcast I’m referring to would have been episode 2.

It is worth noting that this was my original original plan before bpat volunteered in 2023. I have since been convinced that something lower-effort is the way to go (at least personally, I’d only be able to commit to helping with this kind of project once every two years).

one day, arch and i will get to punch each other…

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34

I’ll throw my personal opinion into the ring despite someone who’s already had a trailer, showcase LTC and now interview.

I think FEE3 means to me (which may not be the norm but is worth arguing for) is simply part of the fact of feeling included in such a large scheme event as a community.

From what I’ve noticed for FE spheres not knee deep into hacking is that generally quality rises through the ranks in internet spaces at large regardless of FEE3. Hag in White is a notable example, although one could argue as an exception.

While FEE3 generally has quality content rise through (someone generally closer to completion will have more to show off), I think its goal first and foremost should be as a celebration to our wide community that as it stands it is accomplishing. Perhaps I am alone in this, but my first time being at FEE3 was magic because I got to somewhat stand next to all these other big projects.

I firmly believe that it acts not as a platform so the most impressive editors get more clicks on their project, but instead as a platform to show off the Fire Emblem Romhacking community.

Why else would we have animations showcases, coding showcases or guides to make chapters in builder or LT. To me it’s to further the goal of celebrating what’s been accomplished.

To raise the barrier of entry and lessen submission counts goes against the beauty of Fire Emblem hacking’s accessibility.

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35

I’m generally a more casual FEE3 viewer myself, and I’m not sure if what I have to say could be considered valuable or not, but I felt the need to try and say something anyway. As much as I adore FEE3, I do feel it tends to run a tiny bit long in the tooth, but not just in the length of the event itself.

To illustrate what I mean (and feel free to correct me if I’m mistaken on something), FEE3 this year began with a showcase of the Hag in White and a trailer for All Hands on Deck, one big 25ish minute showcase and the other a full trailer. And based on what I’ve seen, people usually tend to gravitate towards the trailers for what, at least in my opinion, is length. Now please don’t get me wrong, I think showcases and a sit down with the main developer or developers of the hack/project is more than important, but it might just be what makes FEE3 a little long in the tooth. I can only speak from experience, but typically to get an idea for a game, I’m more likely to look at a two or four minute trailer as opposed to a 59 minute gameplay showcase.

Of course, I also know that raw gameplay can often say more about a game than a trailer can, depending on how the trailer is put together. And sometimes, depending on the extent to which the game touches upon the usually FE formula, more changes might need to be discussed. But looking at the view count, I’ve noticed the shorter, trailer-based videos seem to ultimately do a bit better than the raw, longer showcase videos.

So trailers are often a more effective, if more harder to put together way of showcasing your project, but showcases ultimately take less time, can often tell you more about a developer’s mindset during the hacking/development process. In fact, sometimes I’ll notice when a project like Scions of the Summit gets a short-form trailer one year that showcases the world, set up and characters and another showcase the next year that’s more of the “longer showcase” format.

So while this might kind of run counter to your idea of shortening the event to be more truncated, I would encourage, but absolutely not force, the idea of more “trailer” style videos or consider the possiblity of merging the showcase and trailer into one. A trailer to start you off that eventually leads into the mainshow case to let the viewer get an idea for how the game plays.

But this is entirely just me, these ideas might not even be that helpful but I wanted to contribute to the convo and see if maybe someone could take something from my rambling. I do really value FEE3 and I hope whatever I might’ve said could help someone out here, whether you’re helping moderate and run the event or you’re looking foward to showcasing your project at FEE3 2026.

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36

I’m curious to see what the workload for this type of event is, if we try to run it this way at least once to see how it goes and figure out how replicable it is going forward. I’ve said already I’m down to run this event for at least one more year, maybe even two, and personally I was already in the boat of like “man I don’t have to do anything to run FEE3,” so adding more to my plate isn’t too bad. It’s just a matter of if we can get it to a state where it’s relatively easy to run afterwards.

37

Hello, I’m not a very active participant in this community, but I followed FEE3 this year and wanted to share a few thoughts.

  1. The fatigue issue, in my view, seems very real, and I think the event could benefit from being condensed in time. Others have suggested stringing together a bunch of the shorter form trailers into a direct-style clip that is shown on the first day, and that sounds like a good idea to me. It would also let a large number of creators benefit from first-day hype, which seems good. Ending hype could be potent if the FEE3 doesn’t stretch on too long, so you might consider dividing the trailers into two separate direct-style clip compilations: one for the first day, and one for the last day. Longer form video content could fill the intermittent days (perhaps even with some videos being released in parallel).

  2. I offer a word of caution against putting too much stock in video analytics. Longer form video content may perform less well in terms of viewership, but I think it can benefit the community in ways that, while harder to quantify, are still meaningful. Specifically, tutorial-type videos like Vesly’s debugger showcase or PKLucky’s LT tutorial can lower the barrier of entry for new hackers or expand the toolkit of existing hackers. To a lesser extent, gameplay showcases where hackers talk about their work and the reasoning or process that went into making it are valuable for a similar reason. I think with long-form video content, it’s less about how many people watch it, and more about how it impacts the people who do watch it.

  3. I think you should show the full release trailer for Hollow Knight: Silksong at the end of FEE3 every year without any explanation or elaboration.

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I do agree with some of the other commenters that a singular, larger scale direct type video would be a good option. If your goal is to increase the exposure that each project gets, having them all compiled into a cohesive package tends to work well.

Something like animation showcases or already popular projects draw in a bigger crowd, but then the crowd may stick around for some other projects that they normally may not have clicked on. With the sheer amount of projects in FEE3, coupled with the duration being spread over several weeks, fatigue can easily set in. Removing the obstacle for viewers to keep checking in and deciding whether or not a video is worth their time does wonders towards leading them to unknown projects. Speaking from my own experience, this is also similar to why Steam festivals or indie directs tend to garner a lot more exposure for projects that struggle. They’re assisted by the pull of other projects, and larger projects aren’t really affected negatively either—they’re boosted too.

Longer videos can definitely still have a place in FEE3, perhaps just regulated to after the initial direct. I do like the idea of letting projects get a small 1-2 minute trailer in the direct, and then allowing them to have a deeper showcase later for those who’re willing, or allowing them to have an option between the two. Kinda like how Nintendo Directs would sometimes be followed by dedicated Treehouse segments. Might result in a larger workload for organizers, but it is something to consider.

Either way, I do think that this year was excellent! I do make it a habit to watch every video during FEE3, and the ones featured this time around were awesome!

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