This is a thread for the after-the-fact discussion of the summer 72hrjam, and what we could do differently. I want to promote discussion here - so feel free to chip in with thoughts. I'm going to start off by going through some of the issues raised in response to the survey.
There were also lots of positive comments - I haven't gone through them in detail, but there was at least one kind comment or "nothing was wrong" for each suggestion or complaint. Thanks, folks <3 - as I said, the attitude and kindness of the community made this a pleasure to run, even through the stressful times.
And as a final set of notes from the survey:
- More or Bigger Streams - Good idea! I want to make the streaming and watching streams a bigger part of the Jam next time, but I'm not sure how - i'm not a big streaming person myself. Perhaps a round-up of good streams in the 24hr update posts?
- Throwaway Entries and the Medal - I admit, I was dissapointed by the number of low-quality entries entered just for the medal. (Only about 1/10th of the survey responses said they only entered for the medal - but some of those would be lies, and the majority of people making low-entry submissions didn't stick around to do the survey.) Lots of people are calling for a minimum barrier for entry and i'm considering that... it's tricky to implement though. How do you distinguish a lazy entry from a simply poor-quality one? I don't want anyone being turned away because their honest effort isn't good enough.
- Worth noting: we intended the medal to not be announced until afterward, but didn't communicate that to Valve. We were expecting the hype to have died down by winter - and it probably still will. We can prepare for it to be this big again, but I doubt it will be.
- Finale Video - Again, good idea! We're looking at how we showcase entries now that there are so many (a dedicated site like the content pack sites is a possibility) and a video could promote some things excellently! Once again, all ideas are very welcome.
- Easier Submission - This is something we were already thinking of. What I personally learned from it was just how few people read the rules, or the update posts, or the "How To Enter" post - maybe one in ten submissions was incorrect at first, and that's before the people who asked questions that had already been answered. I want to put together a one-button "ENTER HERE" link that sets everything up for you and makes it nice and easy.
- More Tests - The testing we can do is, sadly, fairly limited: by the burnout on the players and hosts (see "Staff Involvement" below) and on the technical requirements (see "Technical Issues" below). Hosting additional servers was suggested - sadly, we rarely have enough players to run two successful tests at the same time, let alone three. We do have some concrete actions that we're taking on this, though: VBot has been improved to handle large numbers of maps better. The technical issues are being dealt with, and we're going to assign staff roles more strictly.
- Some people also had trouble submitting to tests. I've put together a guide to this, which I'll be sharing around more obviously next time.
- More Flexible Hours - Actually, i'm considering the opposite of this. Tracking the people who started early or late was a pain in the neck for me, and I'm considering just giving entrants a choice of two weekends, without allowing people to start a day or an hour early. Thoughts?
- Technical Issues - Yeah, there were some pretty big issues. I personally take responsibility for the site downtime - I knew full well that the download system had filled up last time, and that this event was bigger - I should have known it would happen. That's nobody's fault but my own, and I apologise sincerely for it. Other issues - including the metadata loss - were completely outside our control, and have been patched so as not to happen again. Again, concrete actions:
- We've patched the vulnerability that allowed the metadata link, and added a regular backup of that data.
- We've figured what was filling the database so fast (a faulty, overzealous backup) and fixed it, opening about 22GB free space. What's more, we're going to do another purge and spring-clean before the next jam.
- We're in the final stages of hiring two new members of technical staff - watch this space.
- Full list of all entries - Perhaps. Hands up who would have read through a five-hundred-row GDoc sheet though?
- WIP Thread - Good shout! I was expecting people to provide more help in the individual threads, but then there were so many of them! (I was expecting maybe 100-200 entries, tops.) I should definitely have been more pro-active in creating one once I realised the scale.
- Make it a contest - No.
- Ultimately, this event plays a different site role and acts in a different way to a contest. If you want a contest, it's not for you - you don't have to "waste your time" entering, as one response said. We do want to run events that cater more to the competitive mindset - we should be announcing the next one within hours - but this is no longer one. Sorry.
- Staff Involvement - There's a couple of complicated issues here, and i'll try to go through them carefully because I know this is a serious complaint. Remember throughout though that first the sheer size and then the number of technical issues were unprecedented.
- I'm bad at delegating. A lot of this is my fault - when we hit an issue, I tried to deal myself, and only passed it off to someone else if I actively couldn't. Again, this is the scale causing problems - by the time I realised it was too big for me, it was pretty late. For next time, I'm going to specifically grab a couple of staff members as dedicated assistants (they won't be entering themselves) and try to be more proactive in handing tasks to them.
- As such, a lot of the reason other staff members did relatively little is because I didn't ask them to. There was never a time at which I requested help and was refused for anything but a good reason.
- Yeah, it's a shame that Geit was given so much to do after leaving. This is because he dropped out quite suddenly, and it's taken us this long to get ready to replace him. (He did offer to keep helping out unofficially). Again, this is my fault - I should have been more proactive in bringing in new people.
- I knew all staff members wouldn't be available to help sort through the results, so I asked for assistance from the veterans. When it came time to help sort them out, we had enough volunteers to make it an easily manageable task without bringing in too many staff members (several of whom now had jobs or lives to get back to.) As before, when I asked for assistance, it was immediately provided.
- And finally I want to deal with a single, rather snide comment about staff who were "added recently without any clear reason." Listen, I know who you're talking about and, not to add a sour note, mate you need to do your fucking research. Killohurtz was by far the most helpful person throughout the jam, and has been proactive in community and site management since joining. I shan't hear a word against her - particularly from the same people that have been grouching ever since she was promoted.
There were also lots of positive comments - I haven't gone through them in detail, but there was at least one kind comment or "nothing was wrong" for each suggestion or complaint. Thanks, folks <3 - as I said, the attitude and kindness of the community made this a pleasure to run, even through the stressful times.
And as a final set of notes from the survey:
- We aren't valve? We can't do anything about hitscan for you, friend.
- Holy shit, don't put your steam password in the survey response, holy shit. It's people like you that are why we have the mobile authenticator, holy shit.
- "give the community a a Unique cosmetic item or melee weapon like the saxxy for submitting something." I have some EXCELLENT news for you.
- Someone is still blaming @Fr0Z3nR for causing the server issues. He's no longer staff... but if you have information, get in touch. Sabotage is not beyond him.