ESA Winter 2020 - Submission Information

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ESA Winter 2020 has moved! It will be held, just like Summer, in the Quality Hotel View, Malmö which we will be happy to call home for some time going forward.

Long story short: Submissions will open on Sunday, October 20th, at 18:00 (6:00 pm) CEST!

The submission system will be the same as for ESA Summer and the process of game selection will only be changed a little bit. Even if you’re a regular, please at the very least read the news section to ensure you’re familiar with the changes.

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

Timeline

First submission phase: October 20th - November 3rd (including)
First Accepts & Cuts: November 17th
Submission phase for chase games and unreleased games: December 12th - December 13th
Final game list and schedule: December 15th

News

For this event we will be putting more emphasis on rewarding good commentary quality during our game selection process.
This is especially important for races: we have often prioritized races in the past because they have the potential to provide some really memorable moments while also allowing us to give the spotlight to more runners. However, we have learned that with two or even more people playing at the same time, commentary quality can suffer a lot. Viewer attention is already divided between multiple feeds and forcing them to switch depending on who is talking about their own gameplay often leads to confusion and a disconnect.
That doesn’t mean we will be straight up rejecting races. But we may ask you to turn them into a solo run instead with the other runner(s) providing dedicated commentary.
Depending on the game races can still work incredibly well, but we will see less of them in the final schedule.
You’ll earn some bonus points if you submit your solo run or race together with a dedicated commentator who is focussing entirely on providing enganging commentary throughout the run.

Secondly, we will not be having a 2nd stream at ESA Winter 2020. (This is now a lie)

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 submission 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 add the other runners on the submission page. The other runner(s) will then be notified and are required to confirm that they are willing to take part in the race after they set up their profile within the submission system. Please make sure that everybody accepts these invites. We can’t accept runs if the participants haven’t confirmed that they’re taking part.

When submitting your game, you will be asked to provide a short description about the game as well as 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. If there are no leaderboards relevant to your submission, feel free to just provide a meme of your choice instead to fulfill the requirements of the 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

If you’re using the new form for the first time, you will need to register and link your Twitch account in order to log in. Additionally we require you to link your Discord account as well as include your username on speedrun.com in your profile.

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 profile and keep it updated.

Possible donation incentives/bid wars can also be entered through the form. Keep in mind that those undergo a review process as well and should not add 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, could work better in a different format or just need some clarification. A list with all the accepted incentives and bid wars will be published a few weeks after the schedule has been released.

Your submission will remain editable for the most part 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 second cut will happen at the same time as the schedule release and isolate the final game list.

Every cut game will move to a backup list and can still make a comeback if we need to fill in slots that opened up due to dropouts. Games cut in the second round will be given priority in these decisions.
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).

“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.

Chase Games for ESA Winter 2020:
The Outer Worlds (October 25th)
Death Stranding (November 8th)
Pokémon Sword/Shield (November 15th)
Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order (November 15th)

Of course you can still submit games not part of the list.
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.