ESA 2017 Feedback First of all I want to use my feedback to give a huge shout-out to every helper and volunteer that made 2017 a fantastic event and a huge improvement over last year.

To give my feedback a bit of weight I want to add that I’ve been host/volunteer at both ESA 17 and 16, helped organize several online speedrun marathons and also been attendee at SGDQ 15. I’ve been running two games this year, one on each stream. I’ve spent a fair amount of time talking to people about the event, not only attendees but also other volunteers and also friends (“viewers”) at home to gather as much feedback to give back to you guys as possible.

VENUE: I’ve grown to like the venue and the city. Coming there for the first time last year, it was a bit of a “diamond in the rough” situation. This has improved drastically this year. The venue space has been optimized to give it an all-around more organic feel. The tables felt less organized and static, the viewer area felt very inviting. Having tech set up the way it was definitely paid off. It was nice to be able to observe tech + hosts while they work and vice-versa, being able to communicate and reply while you were sitting at these stations or needed help from somebody and not feeling super detached (more on this later). The utilization of the B-Hall was absolutely needed. I’ve spend a fair amount there since it felt very different from the dark A-Hall area. A lot of casual play and just generally having fun + messing around, small tournaments, races… everything possible thanks to the additional PCs (more on this later) My favorite addition to the venue was the second stream in the VIP area. This was not only by far the best improvement to the marathon but also a nice place to just hang out and chill out (more on this later). The city itself felt a lot less confusing after having been here the year before. It was much easier to plan out meals and shopping trips and hence I have pretty much no complaints about the general location (other than Swedish Railroads being one big stressful mess sometimes). The new bistro shop was a nice addition although the snacks + drinks were mediocre at best. But still a welcome addition. The Burger King service was also good to have the one time I utilized it but from what I heard they didn’t want to come back because of financial concerns? Maybe that was just a rumor. I haven’t seen any of the promised “food trucks” but I assume that BK was the replacement for that? Anyways, to make it short: It was no issue to pick food options, due to bikes + nice weather it wasn’t too bad to walk around and overall this year I have pretty much nothing to complain about in regard to the venue.

HOTELS: With Scandic being overbooked and the Royal Corner also at its limit, booking a hotel room was somewhat stressful this year. Even though I pretty much booked my Scandic hotel room as early as possible + used the WGW discount code, I ended up paying more than last year for a worse room. Might have been just unlucky, but I definitely will consider booking Scandic twice for next year (if we stay in Växjö). I’ve seen the Royal Corner and the Elite Park from the inside. Both were just marginally more expensive than Scandic but the benefits of both were somewhat equalized by the location. I am looking forward to the ICON hotel right next to the venue and hope it opens until next year + ends up being affordable enough. The additional bike service provided by ESA was a really good idea and I ended up regretting not getting one for myself.

STREAM: I don’t have to go into detail why last year’s stream was not a good experience. This year improved it on so many levels. The layouts were a lot nicer, Streamdeck helped for a much better viewing experience and also made hosting great and simple. Sure, there are some minor downsides, as you often needed to contact somebody specific for minor changes on the layout or such. Also a big shoutout to tech for no terribly long setup times. Overall, the schedule felt very well thought-out and didn’t keep moving around by too much. On-site viewing experience was fantastic although I hope that next year we may get another 1-2 couches for viewers, especially for night shift viewing ;) The first couch was a bit too close to the monitor and past the speakers – which was great for console runs happening there, but not ideal to watch PC runs on. Speaking of PC runs, sadly sometimes the commentator was cut off by the camera placement but I feel like that the runner + commentator could have checked that too (or tech could have told them to move around a bit). One minor improvement to the layout would be to maybe make the top bar smaller to provide a bit more room for the game itself as gameplay was still quite small for mobile devices. But it wasn’t nearly as bad as some people online made it look. Maybe a short mention here as it’s not worth its own category: Mods seemed to do a decent job once again but I’ve felt a lot of unnecessary tension/spam was created in chat by certain mods going a little bit overboard with their “own” agenda. I’ve mostly followed those instances along in the volunteer discord but sometimes a personal agenda was put in place where it really wasn’t the best idea and some mod decisions were followed up by “If this was my charity marathon”, etc… I know that there is a fine line between being too liberal and being too strict but personally I prefer the more open approach.

COMMUNICATION: The new setup allowed for easier communication between all stations. There was very little miscommunication and if there was, it was mostly individual error and not a failure of the system itself. Tech did a great job this year and so did most hosts. It’s pretty hard to be talking as a host while in your ear tech and runners are communicating. But with a bit of practice and will power you learn to filter for the important information. There is always room for improvement here but this new setup worked quite well already. I personally would have liked more direct commands rather than the slightly too much “chatting” you could hear on comms, but it wasn’t too terrible. Some hosts seemed to struggle with the “order of action” whenever a game finished as they forgot to thank the runner and cut to a commercial directly, which caused them to appear for 2 seconds on full screen (automatically), only to fade out again. An example I have of this was the first host shift of Mergy and SevenS1ns (which I both absolutely respect as hosts and who both did a great job despite this): It just shows how we might need a better communication BEFORE the hosting. During the host meetup we discussed a lot of things that were, despite being important, very redundant. Sure, the talking points are important but they were – or so it felt – barely utilized and we spend a good chunk of time discussing each individual point. Instead, what we really would have needed was a quick introduction to what happens once a run is over and how to use the streamdeck. In general, all hosts learned this from the previous shift but that’s also one way to assure that some sort of miscommunication comes up. In general, this wasn’t a huge issue and pretty much all hosts that struggled with the new control options improved. Another point would be Ads. In generally, it felt like certain ads were played a lot more often and despite it being mentioned during the host meetup, it didn’t seem like hosts took too much care about what the previous host duo has done in terms of pacing (interviews, ads, talking, etc.). I understand that not everyone has time to spend a bit of time before their hosting shift to talk about what happened before but this would improve the overall selection of ads and such next year if done correctly.

ON SITE PCS: Despite the fact that we were promised far more PCs than we eventually ended up with, the PC gaming situation at the venue was a lot better this year. It’s just a crucial part to be able to practice your games on hardware that is somewhat up to date and even more so important that you aren’t bottlenecked by hardware during your run, allowing you to do all the tricks and show off the run in the best light possible. The gaming PCs, as troublesome as they may sometimes be, were a huge and important improvement to the overall feel of the event but it will mostly be appreciated by PC runners. The Dreamhack PCs, as shitty as they are, were still a nice addition to have in B-Hall to hang out and practice on. I’m just slightly upset how often the 4 (we started with 6 but they kept disappearing :/) good practice PCs were occupied by people doing casual things but it does show how much they add for on-site entertainment either way. I was slightly confused as to where the promised notebooks ended up but to my understanding they’ve never been 100% promised. Overall, although we ended up with much less PCs than first expected, it was still nice to end up with a handful of useful stations and the DH PCs for casual entertainment. The arrangement could be approved a little bit by adding more PCs to the main hall so that 4-man races or similar events can take part with the main event and not get completely excluded in the corner of B-Hall. Although, either way, it worked out fine.

SECOND STREAM: I’ve read a bunch of feedback prior to writing my own, partially to see points that I can agree/disagree on. In Pac’s premature Reddit post one of the most upvoted critizisms of this year was how confusing the second stream was to viewers. How they were upset that some games they wanted to watch ended up on a different channel. How that channel wasn’t even ESA’s own. Well, as a participant and runner on second stream, I can only stress how absolutely important the second stream was to me, personally. It was not only a much different feel from running on first stream but also an overall nice place to hang out and watch runs in. Sure, the room may have suffered a bit from poor ventilation, but the setup and tech was on point and Liva did one hell of a job to get everything running fine and communicated well with the runners. If it wasn’t for him and the second stream, my favorite run wouldn’t have made it into the marathon at all. Lots of my friends did runs on second stream, I watched, commentated and hosted there a lot and the atmosphere and feel was just even more relaxed. With the exception of one incident I think it was just the right feel of “everybody is just here to have a good time”. Regarding the Silent Hill run, I think lots of factors went wrong – without blaming a specific individual here, runner, host and audience all made mistakes that could have been prevented to make the run not as much of a train wreck. The fact that Liva ended up being insulted by a few upset viewers is, in my opinion, tragic and not justified but also apparently inevitable when you are running a public marathon where people are just grasping on the smallest strain of drama to blow it out of proportions. And I am fairly certain that exactly that happened. If a somewhat awkward crowd/runner/chat interaction is the biggest drama of this year’s event then that’s certainly a good sign overall. I definitely beg you to keep the second stream for next year, if in any way possible. It’s too important for participants and runners to be dropped just because a few viewers didn’t bother reading the schedule right or were annoyed that they may miss a run and have to watch the VoD.

SECURITY: Oh boy. I am fairly certain that I brought up this exact point last year and I was quite frustrated throughout the event to see that nothing or not much has changed this year. Of course I feel a bit sorry for the people that had to sit at the entrance all day, but I have a textile allergy so I removed my wrist-band on day one. The lanyard was just way too big to carry around your neck and the clip thing in the back was annoying, so I basically had mine lay in the hotel room all week. Despite me not having any visible authentication, I was free to move in-and-out of the venue any given day despite the last Friday. I even entered multiple times through B-Hall’s open exit doors. I understand that the climate justified keeping that door open day + night and the risk of organized crime groups entering the building to steal large quantities of equipment with attendees around is relatively slim, but still. There were zero ID checks, not just not at the entrance but also not on site. I also happen to be the guy that reported “Mr. Medge” to Planks – to summarize the incident a bit: A very peculiar guy showed up at the event in a brown leather trench coat, black glasses and a small handheld photo device. Sure, he looked a bit awkward standing in the corner with his costume but not too out of the ordinary. But then one day he ran up in Hall B yelling out “Mr Walrus” (the Mirrors Edge runner) to engage him in conversation. He asked him very strange questions (but still nothing too weird) but it made it obvious that the guy had zero knowledge about speedrunning and just happened to catch some information about the run either online or via the event itself. Well as we called him out on his pretentious statements he dug himself deeper and deeper into a hole. He refused to give us his name, but argued that he “used to be third in Mirror’s Edge at some point” and “wanted to participate in the event but got beaten by Mr Walrus’ time”. And also that he would want to participate next year. So far, so good. Nothing too weird other than him not being recognized nor actually knowing anything about the game at all when asked a few deeper questions. In general, he did not appear to be a runner nor very knowledgeable about the concept of speedrunning. Here’s where it gets weird though. The guy went up to several people after their runs, about a meter away, bend down and started taking pictures of their faces. Then asked them if it was ok if they posed for him or to look into his camera. And while he seemed somewhat interested in the runs and generally just socially awkward (which is completely ok and not too uncommon in a large gaming event like this), he ended up becoming relatively creeping when reappearing a few days later, doing the same thing again during Fallout:NV and Battlefield 1. During that run he sat down next to me (you can see it in the first 5 mins of the BF1 run) and started talking some weird things. That’s when I asked him if he streamed (since he didn’t wear a badge that showed his name). He said he wasn’t able to but considered it. So yeah, thought he was just new to everything. As the conversation went on it got more and more apparent that he just wandered into the venue not knowing what was going on. He had a general interest about video games but definitely didn’t sign up. He refused to show me his wrist band or lanyard, so I got planks to remove him. Sure, he later bought admission to the venue via Edenal, but I personally didn’t feel personally save from that point on especially because of an incident I witnessed with Pac (where I am not in the position to go into further detail). Overall, the security was lacking, I assume we had some more stray people wandering in the venue. I caught a handful of people without lanyard or wristband walking around freely and I myself have never been approached and asked for it once. I really hope this improves next year. While in general the place felt save enough, you just never know. It’s a definite vulnerability and the only reason it is tolerated is because it hasn’t been abused by anyone yet.

DONATION TRACKER: I think I don't have to mention much. I put forward a lot of input at the event and actively helped + worked with Maral & others to get this sorted out. A lot of donations just didn't go through. This was partially Paypal's fault but also to a bigger extend an issue with the tracker. I've heard several different stories but I did a lot of testing with Maral/Save the Children where my transaction numbers were compared, etc. I came to the conclusion that especially donations with messages while logged in with a speedrun.com account didn't show up. None of my total of 10 donations were ever held by paypal and yet only 4 showed up in the tracker. That's not a great quota. I've had several people complain to me while I was hosting that their donations weren't read when they were donating from the audience. Nothing more awkward than KNOWING somebody donated and having to say "Sorry, no donations" when the runner asks for donations to be read during a downtime. This HAS to be fixed for the sake of the integrity of the event. Sadly, I don't have any more input on this matter due to lack of insight. But all my knowledge as to why things may have broken has already been sent to Maral.

VODs / DMoMM INCIDENT: To summarize this quicker than my Mr Medge story, the run of Dark Messiah of Might and Magic wasn’t broadcast because the internet went down during the run on Stream 2. This was addressed and fixed for the next day but to my understanding the uploads during the event were choking the connection throughout the event and some unforeseen issue killed the stream for pretty much the rest of the night (thankfully DMoMM was the last run of the day). Now in regards of the VoDs, I do understand that this is an unthankful and annoying task that you might want to get out of the way whenever possible. But I do not get why we need both Youtube + Twitch Uploads updated during the event if they don’t go up until after the event anyways. Instead, I would suggest to hire/ask a volunteer to do this externally, from home. We’ve been doing youtube uploads + highlights for our biggest online marathon (SFM) and have one guy dedicated to updating + cutting highlights as the event goes on. Uploads are usually up within 24 hours. Of course this does give the “filter” ability into somebody else’s hands but at a certain trust level I think this should be possible. We didn’t have any moments that absolutely shouldn’t be uploaded and even still the volunteer Discord allows for quick communication if that was the case. Again, I am not blaming the fact that DMoMM didn’t stream entirely on the fact of on-site uploading but at the same time this is something that could be improved and everyone would benefit from it.

HOSTS: Well, this is where I may step on somebody’s toes and I want to excuse myself in advance. In general, hosts did a very fine job this year and smaller mishaps like the before mentioned bad transitions and the repetition of ads can be forgiven or fixed on site. I also understand that hosts are volunteers and often with little or no experience, trying it out for the first time. I have been a first-time host before too and hosted again this year on both streams. And while I am no big name, I have a few things to critique regardless. Despite the very welcomed open / laissez-faire approach of ESA, some hosts seemed to be a little bit too unfocused on their job. And to my surprised, this did involve a few “higher profile” hosts. Again, nothing here was too terrible and I’ve already addressed the host lead Maral with actual names but despite that I would like to say that a host should at no point get involved with the commentary of a run when they weren’t asked to and the runner has one or multiple co-commentators present. Especially not when the host has little/no knowledge of the run and may cause the runner to lose focus or get into an awkward situation. Okay, this seems super harsh but it actually happened. As a host, your number one priority in regards of the run should be to communicate with the runner beforehand. I want to admit that I forgot to do this during my host shift too but I certainly didn’t see myself qualified to get involved during that run either. Yes, giving a stale run a bit of flair and helping a runner that seems lost out is definitely a nice move and I’m not worried about those instances. Also if the host knows the runner, a well-placed joke or donation message can add a whole lot to the run. As an example I want to highlight Andy’s ALttP run from this year’s SGDQ. But the number one rule on the host sheet, underlined and at the very top, was to NOT ADVERTISE YOURSELF as the host. And while this mostly addressed people mentioning their own channels while hosting, it might just as well be extended to hosts asking loaded questions during a run. There wasn’t much drama in the particular incident I had in mind because the runner dealt with it quite well and the run wasn’t in the spotlight and overall had very solid commentary but it just felt incredibly odd and even now, a week later, watching the run still makes me cringe a little (what a shitty word but it’s just too accurate). I wouldn’t say it completely ruined the run, but the non-invited co-commentary certainly dragged the run down a whole lot. And it sadly didn’t stay at one incident. Yes, in hindsight I should have talked to the person in question instead of going directly to Maral but I still feel like this can be easily prevented if hosts are more communicative with the runner before the run. Make it a rule that the runner should introduce themselves to the hosts before the run or vice-versa. It just prevents awful moments, clears up confusion and can add a lot more flair to the event too, if the runner welcomes additional questions from the host. Especially in a very close and intimate environment as with stream 2 where the runner and host are just a few meters apart and have direct contact. And yes, please, next year do a tech-walkthrough with Hosts. Explain them what scene is active before their shifts. This may also require that the hosting station and tech used is already setup when the host meeting happens.

FINAL THOUGHTS: The event improved a lot over last year. The venue doesn’t feel as big and empty anymore. PC runners are a lot happier about the setup, the overall feel of the tech/runner/host stations was very professional. There were very little complains about the tech on site, they did a phenomenal job as did most hosts. I would have loved a comfier couch behind the console couch in the audience but the setup with screen + chat was very inviting. The lights were pretty annoying but looking at the actual stream well placed and added a lot of flair. I’m quite ok with the location of the event and would definitely come back. The second stream should definitely stay or not given up without a very good reason (like having no technical options to repeat it next year). Liva, Planks, Edenal, Oasiz and all other volunteers are absolutely amazing and I appreciate everyone’s input, dedication and passion. <3 Thanks

"2muchtalk and less hype if you ask me"

I'm pretty sure that nobody did.

Did anyone check the hardware & capacity of the DH PCs or will we find out on day 0 of the event?

This sounds awesome Oasiz. I'm very happy to hear you've taken last years critizism to heart and aim to provide the best experience possible.

A lot of PC runners from our extended group will arrive on Friday and are probably more than happy to help setup any disconnected systems if there are needs for it, as well as help clean up / make the Dreamhack PCs worth playing on in case they are as cluttered and messy as last years

This is definitely appreciated. I'm sure just having reliable systems for streaming is a huge step-up. And by the sound of it this also means a lot more free-use PCs from DH for practice/casual races.

Takeaway from last year was that the PC area was rather small / too small for the amount of PC runners. And I think this year we will be a lot more just alone from the people I know are confirmed going. It would be great if we could get a dedicated area with more than 6 desks so people can setup their laptops etc.

if you want to clean up your savefiles, go to:

C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\LocalLow\Introversion Software\ScannerSombre\saves

And delete the .sssave, .ssmeta and .png for each date

Except the times on the board were flipped so it would reset automatically anyways once I reverse it again (I am also head mod on those two leaderboards)

But ye got it, no fun allowed.

TIL April Fool's is not a thing in France apparently

Hi

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=what+day+is+today%3F

Can I have my name changed to Monojira?

"No glitching through walls or exploiting the game in any way" "Vsync enabled" "Normal" lol

Rule Change:

100%, 99.8% and All Pannels no longer require to end the run at the elevator puzzle. This allows for the end elevator to be done during the run. Save+Load during the cutscene is allowed but the game has to continue from the same load.

Imagine doing Skyrim Any% with the full intro rather than starting from a save xD

As I said twice now, he doesnt respond to messages. The other mods arent active but they aren't supermods so I don't mind.

@Racingmonster What are you trying to say other than pushing your own agenda that already filled this thread with spam plenty of times before? As I mentioned in my request and also the previous request, this person has not responded and hasn't been doing any moderation (verification, leaderboard setup), wasn't involved in any discussions (rules, categories) and hasn't done any runs ever.

Requesting again to have your_name_here removed as super mod from https://www.speedrun.com/thewitness/

Hasnt been doing anything moderation wise, hasnt been responding to messages, hasnt been running or contributing to the game at all, sniped the leaderboard supermod on day one and hasnt been back since.

Excellent.

Formal request to have your_name_here removed as super-mod from The Witness Leaderboards due to not having done anything since creation of the leaderboard and being AWOL for more than half a year.

I feel like some of my points will be repetition but I have a few things that I know can be fixed for next year and I've talked to a bunch of people from the org team and discussed things so it would be a waste not to summarize my points again.

First, some short bulletpoints about my situation:

• First Time at ESA, been to SGDQ15 and various smaller events
• Stayed from 23rd till 31st
• I had two runs in, one was pulled by myself due to tech issues (more on that below)
• I commentated for one run
• I did two host shifts
• I stayed at Scandic
• I arrived with car from Germany

OVERALL FEELING I feel like it is appropriate to start with a general summary of my personal experience at ESA without going into detail. The event was cool but didn't fully meet my - arguably - very high expectations. My main goal was to meet my European speed friends and that point was pretty much fully met and my absolute highlight. The tech issues and the scheduling made the onsite enjoyment of the stream, and also scheduling my hosting, a not-so-fun experience. Having had to drop my run didnt bother me too much since the bad hardware on site made practicing basically impossible and I rather sit out than having a bad showing. The second "run" went well though. The event got a lot more enjoyable towards the end of the week after I got used to the several issues and just decided to make the best out of it.

VENUE First impression: Damn, this Arena is huge... and empty. It wasn't ideal for our event but it definitely was spacious. I personally wouldn't mind having the event in the same venue again if a few things were adjusted but I'd also welcome a slightly smaller, better divided venue.

• Large space and room for the setup, never felt too crowded and the air was definitely breathable (the temperature was an issue but that's due to the hot first few days I suppose)
• The side room on top ("Kitchen") and tables was a great spot to hang out and look over the venue without too much noise. I just wished it could have been turned into a "side-stream" / laid-back stream room with a similar setup as the bonus stream where people could have just streamed their runs - OR - turned it into a room where the live stream could have been watched from.
• The B-Hall, although empty at first, was a great place for bonus activities. Having the Vive setup, Mafia, etc. there was a good thing.
• Overall, the venue >itself< was clean and - given the large size - relatively compact.
• The location wasn't too bad. Scandic was close enough and the mall + several restaurants were in walking distance. People complaining about the walking distance towards those locations are definitely too spoiled in my personal opinion.

• The empty seats were a bit depressing to look at. I know this is such a minor complaint, but the huge arena took away from the comfy feeling that ESA is known for. The place made the event look more serious/important than I felt it was.
• The distance to the city center is a bit too far. We still managed to walk to town several nights and it didnt bother me too much. But I can understand the complaints of others. I had the benefit of owning and bringing a car that enabled me to drive to more remote places and also drive people to the airport and the trainstation. I do not have insight in the bus transit but I am glad I got to avoid dealing with that.

HOTEL The hotel (Scandic) was decent. The people inside friendly and the fact that there was a noise complaint was slight dampener but understandable. The breakfast was ok-good, the restaurant itself too expensive though. Overall, the pricing was in the upper-end of what I would have been willing to pay if I were asked to name a price per night. And this was with the coupon, several months ahead.

ON STREAM Honestly, I didn't bother watching the stream much. The lack of TVs in the beginning and the total lack of a projector + screen made it not that enjoyable. When supporting your friends (aka couching/sitting behind the PC area specifically) all you got to see was the runner's PC if anything at all... This is my single biggest suggestion, add a big central screen near tech or in front of the runners so everyone can see the run and the runner knows when they are live and can check the timer. The layout was suboptimal. One example: Borderlands 2. Absolute catastrophy. Even my suggestion to simply add a black box as a layer between layout and footage to cover the misaligned layout to make it look a bit more bearable wasn't done during a 2h run. The layout wasted too much space and sometimes the people responsible didn't take the time to fully align stuff when it really isn't that much work.

SCHEDULING Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy. The schedule was a hot mess. Obviously, tech issues in the beginning caused a big delay and moved runs back further and further as we progressed. But there were several things that could have been improved on site to fix it but instead every runner, tech and host was just asked to adapt to the delays. One thing that can be improved for next time: PLEASE, do not put several races/coop runs behind each other, especially for PC runs. Setup time can be drastically improved if the run logistics are kept in mind when scheduling. Obviously, the hardware issues added to this issue, but still, some of the delay could have been easily preventable with clever scheduling beforehand. And now another point: You guys realized you were 7h delayed. This is a very unwanted situation. Unpleasant situations require unpleasant solutions. Yet nobody proposed to move the 7h Final Fantasy Run towards the end (given the runner would have been available that day). That would have reset the entire schedule for everyone but this one runner (at least at that point). It could have more-or-less fixed the issues of having prime-time runs moved towards the morning graveyard slots.

AS A RUNNER / COMMENTATOR I mentioned the delays. Fuck those delays. They basically destroyed my sleep schedule and made the commentary less fun. Throughout the event the time for certain runs kept being unclear and although the Horaro was updated frequently, it was still confusing. But here's some room for my number one complaint during this entire event:

The PCs on site were... shit. Yes, that's Dreamhack's fault, but generally speaking, the environment for PC runners was pretty poorly managed. All practice PCs were super outdated. Sure, PCs are expensive, but if you are expecting PC runners to show up at your event and show their runs, you should provide PCs that are strong enough to run the games. And it wasnt just the poor hardware of the practice PCs... these machines were CLUTTERED with garbage programs and that's before anyone even laid their hands on them. I, and a few other PC runners who inquired about drivers were explicitly told to NOT INSTALL any driver software to keep the PCs clean but that really wasnt a concern when we first checked and found stuff like TeamViewer, Skype, DiscCleaner and other crap running on autostart + minimized in the background. Please, for next year, check your PC setup and make sure it runs. Because in theory, the one single main "PC" (aka laptop) that ran most of the PC games for the stream had better hardware than my own but refused to start my game. The one next to it ran it at under 30 FPS which is nowhere near enough and the game wouldn't render any textures on any of the practice PCs. This game isn't known to run badly, nor is it too old. We also had issues with games running just fine before we left and at time of setup for the run suddenly the game capture didnt work or the game wouldnt launch anymore. FIND A DEDICATED SPONSOR FOR YOUR PC RUNS. If you want to use Dreamhack machines, make sure they work.

AS A HOST Hosting was fun but also tiresome. Due to scheduling I ended up with some of the worst shifts after already having had trouble with bad spots the nights before. It still worked out fine because my partner and I were motivated and excited for the whole thing. The tracker is definitely great, that part worked just fine. What I believe needs some improvement is the communication between tech and hosts. The hosts are the ones ON STREAM in front of all the thousands of viewers, live, so please please please make sure that the hosts get to know what is going on at tech in case of delays and how much longer we need to be on air. Most of the time it was just a guessing-game, looking at the runner and the guys at tech, and then communicating to the stream that "we are probably about to start" or "that we have small issues with the setup". Better communication would help. At one point we had a no-show during our host shift and the runner of the previous run left and not a single person was at any of the stations (console or pc). Meanwhile, the two people that were left at tech stood up and LEFT, trying to find somebody from the org team or the runner or whatever. So my partner and I were left on cam, live, without having ANYONE to talk to or anyone telling us what is going on. That wasn't the best feeling to be honest. A permanent channel off-stream via headsets between tech and hosts (+ the runners during setup) would be fantastic. Sometimes the tech stuff didnt even hear the stream and werent aware of what we were talking at host station and cut us off or played an add over us (that improved slowly). They sometimes weren't aware that we ran out of things to say after 15 minutes of being on camera and that it might have been a good idea to cut to the wideshot/mute the mics. Also, putting the hosting schedules towards dedicated games was fine but with the many delays it would have been wiser to go by timeslots. ... regardeles, hosting was fun. Exhausting, but fun.

SMALL IDEAS To conclude, here are a few brainfarts of things that could be improved on:

• G2A scared too many people. Think of it what you want and I am aware that the benefits of basically no cuts were great but having people refuse to donate due to this payment site being used outweights the benefits in my opinion. The payment options didnt work well on mobile, the site itself for donations was too cluttered and small, something I've mentioned many times before, also talked to Maral about. I understand that this was a very recent addition and I guess it worked out, but for next year, build a dedicated donation site without the stream open, make the layout easier to use and user- (and mobile) friendly.

• The overall tech setup seemed too complicated. I don't know much about tech but I talked to people who do. And pretty much everyone agreed that some of the mechanics behind tech were too specific, too complicated or over-the-top and ended up breaking and bottlenecking the entire system. It worked the years before, even with two streams, so it came as a surprise to see this many issues.

• Gather tech and give them a group-runthrough for the setup. Often times crutial people were missing when shit went down and that could have been prevented if everyone was schooled on the setup beforehand.

• Make sure the camera positioning is actually capturing the people and not showing an empty venue. This slowly improved. A lower angle would have helped for a few runs, also sometimes some of the commentators were cut off...

• Not enough seating. Please make sure you have enough chairs inside the venue.

• The music should have been added from the start. Prepare that for next time in case shit goes down again.

• Give hosts an on-site mod account so they can use chat to update on the status and also moderate in case the scheduled mods arent around. We had to have tech crew (only people with access to a modded account) to do chat moderation during a run when the scheduled off-site mods didnt show up and spam got bad.

• Have people dedicated to communication. This does not only include communicating between runners, hosts and tech but also talk to upcoming runners regarding schedule changes - via social media or on site - and also READ and LISTEN and COMMUNICATE feedback from chat, reddit, forums and especially on site to the people that are responsible.

• Make it clear that people have to clean up their stations. It should be common sense but apparently many people had some lack of just that. Print out and hang up/tape down some signs telling people to actually throw their stuff away...

I guess that's all for now.

Thanks to all volunteers and everybody that worked their asses off to make this event great fun. I know I posted a lot of negative feedback but I tried my best to make sure I gave all positive feedback on site directly to the people involved. Things weren't nearly as bad as many people claimed they were. I personally had lots of fun.

Cheers