ESA Summer 2018 - Submission Information
Submission status: CLOSED
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End of submission phase: March 10th
First cuts & accepts: April 1st
Chase game submissions: May 10th to 12th
Final cuts & schedule: May 13th
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This post was written by Fatzke
The game submission and scheduling team for this event are Fatzke, eTholon and IrregularJinny. We will be once again reaching out to individuals and game communities regarding runs, rules and so on to help us make our decisions as we have done in previous years.
Our Philosophy
When deciding whether a suggested game will fit into the final schedule, we will consider the following: Length, entertainment value and commentary quality. We will be looking at these three qualities over others such as game popularity.
For example, long games (4 hours or more) are harder to put in the schedule due to how many games could be put in their place. Long games can and still will make it in, but will require more consideration than a shorter game.
Additionally, the entertainment value of runners, games and commentary is taken into consideration. If you are running a game that had a limited release, but is incredibly entertaining or has fantastic commentary, your game is still likely to get in. We also place stock in the scenes and communities around these games and previous marathon runs and runner behaviour (if appropriate).
Pitching games that you have not yet learnt or mastered is OK. But you need to show significant (weekly) progress after the point that your suggestion passes the first cut.
Rules for Submissions
There will be a limit of five submissions (including categories) per person. You can exceed this maximum by being part of a race, relay or co-op run another runner has submitted. These do not count towards your personal total.
You are welcome to submit all content including non-speedrun content so long as it has a relevance, such as score attack, rhythm games, and exhibitions. With a 2nd stream we will have more options to make these part of the marathon. Also feel incentivized to put together and submit things out of the ordinary. The Super Mario 64 70 Star Relay was a great success and we’d like to have more oddball submissions in general.
Non-complete game categories will be allowed provided they are accepted by the individual communities.
Submitted games must adhere to Twitch’s community guidelines.
When you submit your game, you should provide a short description about the run/showcase/exhibition and/or the game(s), a link to a video as well as information about your progress in the game. Bonus points for submitting a video with marathon-like commentary! We suggest adding your times to the speedrun.com leaderboards for your game (or making your own if it doesn’t exist yet!) so we can more easily keep track of times. If your community uses other leaderboards, please link them in your submission form.
If you are submitting races, relays, co-op games or anything else with multiple people, only one runner will be required to submit it and list the other runners on the submission page. All participants also have to have their Twitch account linked. The other runners will then be notified and are required to confirm that they are willing to take part in the race.
The marathon run will be a no-reset run, so you should practice a few runs truly without resetting and find an average of those. Actively practice no reset strats and also have backup strats (or savegames) at hand in case something never happened before. The estimate should consider everything that can go wrong as well as any additional content that you may wish to show off. Remember that you may have been awake for forty hours having fun before your run! It is much better to err on the side of caution and overestimate. You will be able to adjust your estimate time later on and you are advised to do so! Don’t add an inaccurate time in the hope that it will appear more impressive and increase the chance that you are accepted!
Not complying with the rules will cause your submission to be deleted.
The Form
We will be using the same submission form developed by Lordmau5 and FreezyLemon that already proved itself for ESA Winter 2018 and several online marathons.
https://submissions.esamarathon.com/
You will need to register and link your Twitch account in order to log in. Additionally we require you to link your speedrun.com and Discord accounts in the “My connected accounts” section:
We require your speedrun.com account to check your leaderboard times. Discord will be the main tool for all forms of communication leading up to the main event and will also be the way for the game selection and scheduling team to contact you.
If you don’t have an account yet, please get one here (https://discordapp.com/) and join the ESA Server: https://discord.gg/esamarathon
If you already know about your availability during the week, please make that known in your submissions. If you don’t you will be able to edit your submission later, so don’t worry.
Possible donation incentives/bidwars can be entered through the form as well. Keep in mind that those undergo a review process as well and should not add much more than five minutes to your run, unless justified. We will reach out to you if we feel like one of your incentives is inappropriate or could work better in a different format.
You will be able to and are encouraged to update your submission with new information over time. Submission comment, video, estimate, availability and donation incentives will be editable even after submissions are closed.
The Cuts
There will be two rounds of selections:
The first cut will pick out all the games we are interested in and confirm a good amount of the final picks. This will give early security to the runners who are already at the top of their game to book their trip.
The rest of the games will then undergo another selection process directly before the schedule release. The additional time between the first and the second cut is supposed to give runners time to learn their games, hone their skills and get to the desired level to be able to showcase their runs. In the end we will apply the same standards in terms of skill/commentary to the first and the final picks.
We will release those second cuts alongside the schedule on May 13th.
”Chase Games” and submitting unreleased games
Chase games are games that we would like to have in the marathon but are not yet released by the end of the submission phase. For these particular games and games unreleased at the time of the first submission phase we will have separate submissions opening up a few days before schedule release and lasting only a few days. Please do not submit unreleased games during the first submission phase.
The chase game list for ESA Summer 2018:
March 16th: Kirby Star Allies
March 20th: Attack on Titan 2
April 20th: God of War (PS 4)
Important: Just submitting these games will not guarantee them a spot in the marathon. We will hold them and you to the same standards as all the other games. If one of those runs turns out to be a four hour long autoscroller or we think that you are not good enough to show them off properly, they will be cut in the end.
Scheduling Team Information:
If you have any questions, post in the thread on speedrun.com or PM either Fatzke#4192, eTholon#5871 or IrregularJinny#2406 on the ESA Discord. Non-private PMs may be posted in the thread if we feel they would be helpful to others.
