Marathon Poll

Alright, marathon is scheduled to happen in less than 3 weeks. Not many people have been practicing, we haven't seen half the games streamed, we haven't been advertising, we have no DS game runners, we have no Zelda II runner, we have no charity set, we have an unfinished webpage, we've got disorganized backup runners and commentators, and we have finally broken TWW and obviously focus is on that. There's a lot of stuff going against us to fix in 3 weeks.

Tompa linked to a Zelda Marathon he had found today. They've got twitter, facebook, webpage set up, stream showing them and the game, interactive, etc, etc etc, all the components of a good marathon. They might not be that great at the games but it doesn't matter, they will raise money.

OPTIONS:
So, what do we do? We can try and fill in the gaps and make it happen on July 9-11 anyway. We can reduce the number of games to exclude the ones we suck at/don't have runners for. We can delay it, we can cancel it. We can do a combination of some of the options together. But we've got to decide what to do about it since it's happening in 3 weeks.

Personally, I'm up for pushing this back and reducing the game count. 15 was a big jump to make from just the 4 3D zelda games, especially when our site pretty much only focuses on those 4 games. We haven't done much advertising yet other than for the schedule really, and we haven't picked a charity yet, so it's not like we have to go through with it on July 9-11. Make it some time in August (or any weekend after that really), only with games we have MULTIPLE players of and who are all comfortable with the game and all have good streams.

I agree on pushing it back and lowering the count, maybe just doing the main console games (Zelda 1, 2, alttp, oot, mm, ww, tp). seems to be a good point to start off at. Then, we'd only have to find someone to run Zelda II really. I'm good with whatever we do unless stated otherwise

Although canceling it entirely also sounds like a good idea just because :S maybe we can wait until next year?

I vote we do a bigger Zelda420 thing. So like, as many games as we WANT to run. In other words, we don`t need to fill in the others that we don`t have runners for :)

Quote

I agree on pushing it back and lowering the count, maybe just doing the main console games

This, mainly because we have more time working on a refined route with Zombie Hovering + Trials skip on Wind Waker.

The DS games lacks proper recording setups and it will be painful for the runner's part to try and avoid covering over the camera lens and possibly playing it in a awkward position for 9 hours in total.
I would only stream a DS run when I get a better PC unit, a capture card and one of these babies...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nL9n3Mf7Mok&feature=channel

Or something as good as that product shown on youtube.

I think we should run all the Zeldas that we have good runners for. I think we can stay on schedule if we do that.

Someone make a good advertisement video for the marathon, then we can all post it on our youtube accounts when the time is right.

I say we just reduce the number of games. I mean, we mostly only focus on the main 3D games (mostly TWW now), actual discussion of 2D games is minimal it seems.

I personally agree with aleck and Runnerguy. We should just do the games that we have enough runners for, but still push it back a little ways. I also just thought of something interesting for when we'd get to OoT: Any% race between two runners. It probably sucks as an idea, but it might draw in viewers. Like, we could do the actual run first as part of the schedule (this way, our viewers would be able to ask questions at that point) then, as part of the races at the end, have our two best OoT runners race each other with the any% RBA route. You never know. If it brings in a lot of viewers, it may mean more donations.

But, yeah, pushing it back a little is probably the best way to go at this point.

I don't really know what to say on the issue.  I feel like we should push the entire marathon back a couple weeks for sure, but at the same time, we should fill that weekend with something with a much smaller scale.

I was thinking something along the lines of a race marathon of the main console games, kind of like 4/20 but with multiple people participating at once and more than just a simple "beat the game" mentality (in other words, we use cosmosis, jianosis, and any new bots that could come in the future).  It could draw a huge crowd, it might not.  But hopefully it'll get us accustomed to the idea of what it's like to host a marathon, how to play under a bit more pressure, and how exactly to get donations to come in the way we want to.

The problem with this is that two marathons this close together doesn't work for anyone except TSG, but they have such a big following group that they can afford frequent marathons.  I mean sure, people will tune in, absolutely, but them not wanting to donate to the same charity twice in a short span could very well be an issue.

Overall, for most of the games, we have people who can run them and will run them.  Until we plug in the gaps, we have to push the date back, but we have to do SOMETHING.  We've gotten word out, there's probably some people out there that are hyped, we can't just delay it and give them nothing in return (or at least, that's the way i feel).

Cancel it.  We'll do it eventually but this has been poorly planned so far, and I think we should focus on getting the main part of the site complete before doing something like this.  And this time, don't make any date until all runners are confirmed and don't advertise months in advance.

Delay it and reduce the number of games. We have yet to complete this site nor the marathon.zeldaspeedruns site, we lack runners for a few games, we can't get things organized when everyone's focused on TWW, we know of only a few people who have actually practiced their games, we haven't even picked our charity; all of these are good reasons to delay the marathon until late August or maybe even Winter Break. And it seems far-fetched that we can jump from running four games that we excel at to running fifteen games, some of which no one has really practiced, others of which likely would bore our viewers (I'm looking at you, Four Swords). I'm not saying that a marathon of the entire series would be impossible; it's just that we aren't organized enough to handle it right now.

I'm sure the poll results speak far louder than this post does; at the time of this writing, not a single person wants to go ahead with the current plan. We definitely need to do something about this before July 9th comes around and bites us in the ass.

Push it back a significant amount of time.  At LEAST a month, possibly longer.  Once we have a charity picked out, and the marathon site DONE, we can set a date and THEN advertise advertise advertise.

Reduce gamecount if we can't get runners.

*feels like a broke record*

If we delay it it will never come to be. We only work under pressure.

hm, wasn't the first marathon improvised in like 2-3 days?

planning these things for too long is what kills them imo. also, the game count jumped too abruptly. making runs of all console Zeldas should have been the next goal after the original 420 marathon.

also, the new breaks of TWW kinda broke what was going to be in that game since most people are in discovery mode atm.

i vote for a 2 month delay so we can find runners for the missing game(s) and make a good TWW route.