ESA Winter 2019 - Submission Information

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Returning for it’s second installment, ESA Winter 2019 is taking place in the comfortable surroundings of the Quality Hotel Royal Corner, Växjö, raising money once again in benefit of humanitarian organisation Save the Children.

There are no major changes to how we handle submissions this time. But even if you’re a regular, please read the post to ensure a process that’s as smooth as possible for everybody.

You can find the submission form at https://submissions.esamarathon.com/ .

Timeline

First submission phase: Oct. 20th - Nov. 4th
First Accepts & Cuts: Nov. 18th
Submission phase for chase games and unreleased games: Dec. 20th - Dec. 22nd
Final game list and schedule: Dec. 24th

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.
Given a suitable level of submissions we would like to run a second “long RPG” stream with two to four runs a day, from lunch time to the end of the day. So definitely submit these games.
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.

Guidelines

There will be a limit of five submissions per runner. This includes different categories. 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.
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.
Races and Co-Op runs have a limit of two capture feeds for this event.

When submitting your game, you will be asked to provide a short description about the run/showcase/exhibition, a video showcasing it as well as information about your personal 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 your times. If your community uses other leaderboards, please link them in the submission form.

Your estimate should consider everything that can go wrong. Actively practice no-reset runs and have backup strategies (or savegames) ready in case something never happened before. 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.

You are welcome to submit all content including non-speedrun content as long as it has relevance. Non-complete game categories will be allowed provided they are accepted by the individual communities.
We have a similar stance on emulators: presenting the run on the original console is preferred, but if emulators are accepted by the game’s community, they are allowed.

Submitted games must adhere to Twitch’s community guidelines.

Submission Form

We will be using the same submission form developed by Lordmau5 and FreezyLemon that already proved itself for both ESA events in 2018 as well as several online marathons.

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.

The speedrun.com account is required to check your leaderboard times. Discord will be the main tool for all forms of communication leading up to the 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 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 also be entered through the form. 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.

Your submission will remain editable until the release of the schedule. After that only donation incentives and bid wars can be changed and major changes to things like the estimate are only possible after talking to us.

The Cuts

There will be two rounds of selections.
The first cut will pick out all the games we are interested in and already confirm a good amount of the final picks.
The time in between the first cut and the release of the full game list has the purpose of giving us more time to make our minds up about the more difficult decisions as well as giving runners an opportunity to improve in all aspects (making our decisions even harder).

We want to give a run to everybody who makes it past the first cuts. This should mean planning security for everybody after that point and not only after the release of the game list and the schedule.

“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 other 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 three days. **Please do not submit unreleased games during the first submission phase. **

The chase game list for ESA Winter 2019:
Nov. 13th: Hitman 2
Nov. 16th: Pokémon Let’s Go Pikachu/Let’s Go Eevee
Nov. 27th: Darksiders 3
Dec. 4th: Monster Boy and the Cursed Kingdom
Dec. 7th: Super Smash Bros. Ultimate

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.