The Sonic Center
Welcome Center => News and Updates => Topic started by: Thorn on August 28, 2012, 05:15:46 pm
-
It's been a long week, but the marathon is over and archived for viewing anytime (http://www.twitch.tv/tsc_streams/videos), with only minimal editing done. The marathon raised a total of $1813.80. I want to give a thank you to everybody that helped with the marathon in any way; more specific thanks will be in a follow-up post so as not to stretch the home page (click the comment count in the lower-right if you're reading this there for more).
-
The marathon really was an emotional roller coaster, and I feel it's only fitting as the main organizer to detail my feelings throughout the week, which started fearful and slowly changed to enjoyment.
The marathon opened to immediate technical difficulties, with Naegleria unable to mix the Skype commentary into his gameplay. When Naegleria's time was almost up, bertin wasn't at his computer and a "lucky" series of Game Overs in Death Egg Zone gave him just enough time to get back and set up his stream. The day itself had a very slow influx of donations, making me concerned about the marathon as a whole. We ran into more difficulties at the end of the night during Saturn Sonic 3D Blast, when Twitch wasn't showing the stream to half of our audience and my game went on to freeze, forcing me to finish on Genesis. SDM was nowhere to be found on Day 2 for his Sonic 3 & Knuckles run, so I had to run the game myself despite having no practice (although I did manage a no-lights Sandopolis 2 run for a donation). The sheer amount of difficulties caused me to start the first "bonus stream" on the first night, in which we continued to play games well after the supposed end time of 10 PM.
The bonus streams turned out to be a great idea; while people were rarely donating over the course of the day, people donated to see more of us when we hit the end of the night and threatened to turn the stream off according to the schedule. DsS, bertin, Parax, and I all did bonus streams and every single one drew donations. We occasionally received donations for events during the day, such as Sonic 4 Episode 2 co-op and All Stars Racing, but the bonus streams were by far the biggest draw, as if people were paying for us to entertain them more than they were paying money to charity (although I'm sure it was a mix of both :P).
This realization caused me to lighten up more and more as the days passed for the sake of simply being entertaining. I stopped becoming an absolute slave to the schedule and started becoming more flexible, culminating in removing the fan works section entirely when people were more interested in Saturday's four-player shenanigans and wanted more of that. This (http://i.imgur.com/499HU.png) happened and I laughed instead of ignoring it and moving on. I started fooling around on the stream commentary as opposed to talking only about the game, using memes started by the chat and even embracing one directed at me. While I can't speak for the thought processes everybody else had, I think they were similar, because by Friday the commentary had changed from monotone speech and became a bunch of us laughing at memes and silly occurrences on the screen, poking fun at each other with nobody taking offense. Karaoke became a common occurrence and nobody became overly embarrassed about it (the chat loved it). We came to call the bonus streams "TSC After Dark" as we started talking about subjects we'd never touch on while speaking during the "core" marathon.
Sunday opened to a large amount of donations, pushing us from about $940 to about $1020 in no time flat. The middle of the day had no money flowing, but as the day ended and we discussed both bonus streams and the goal while Parax streamed Sonic Generations, the cash began moving again. Then DsS mentioned that he'd stream for 12 hours on Monday if the goal was met, and the cash flow came so fast that ChipIn couldn't keep up. We reached our goal and then some that night, and had a hilarious After Dark stream in which I started reading Internet articles in monotone, then Time Cube, then fanfics being linked by the audience and Parax himself.
Monday's 12-hour DsS stream went by surprisingly quickly for me, as the commentary was a lot of fun. We weren't on the formal schedule anymore, so the content was at the After Dark level all day. DsS landed a donation challenge that Parax couldn't, to much applause, and we continued to play up the marathon memes all day. When we finally did stop the stream, it was almost tough for me to speak about it in Skype as I was sad to see it go.
All in all, I ended up having a great time and it was all for a good cause. We've been discussing the idea of a shorter streaming event a few days after Christmas (can't get edged out by AGDQ in January) and I hope everybody will come to that and participate if possible.
Marathon memes that need to get used on TSC:- Big the Car: Bargain Gamer made the best typo ever, and it stuck. Any instance of Big or vehicles after this typo was turned into a reference to Big the Car.
- Magnets: Just... magnets (http://www.twitch.tv/tsc_streams/b/330047253?t=8m50s). Every quirk in streamed games from that point on could be explained by magnets.
- OH NO: From bertin's vs. Knuckles fight in Sonic Adventure. It became just a bit popular (http://www.twitch.tv/tsc_streams/b/330070794).
- $5 for Game Over: It's as it sounds. A donation that came in for a Game Over was mentioned repeatedly during the marathon.
- Thorn is a BEAST: This was mentioned by sonicsama during my Unleashed 360 stream, with the obvious double meaning in play. I was declared a "beast of epic proportions" after beating the monster that is Sonic Spinball, and once sonicsama joined the commentary on Friday and mentioned it again, I allowed myself to get into it and occasionally grunted and snarled and explained things/problems as due to being a beast whereas nobody else was. The Twitch chat and Skype chat began getting into it, and eventually other declarations were made, such as Parax being a robot and DsS a cyborg.
- Karaoke: Too many instances to count; I'll try to locate all of them sometime.
- PHYSICS: Used in the same context as the pokecapn and posse Let's Play of Sonic 2006 during the 12-hour bonus stream, then carried over into 8-bit Sonic Spinball and Megamix.
- Uncle Thorn: He's the creepy uncle that reads you perverse stories.
- Skypatrol: Chat derailed bertin's 8-bit stream plans in order to see Skypatrol, and DsS wouldn't start his stream until Skypatrol was finished. From that point on, Skypatrol became the game to which everything else was compared, leading to its presence in both the Saturday bonus stream and the Monday 12-hour stream.
- Charpers: These are from the fanfic Parax linked in chat on Saturday night for me to read aloud. Don't forget that there are two instances of Charper 3.
- Team Blast: It's Team Chaotix's only attack.
- sonicacademy: LilyBlade tried to read the chat while looking at the computer sideways, and botched sonicandamy's name into sonicacademy; it stuck.
- 69: sonicacademy planned many of his donations around 69s, making it funny for a different reason than usual whenever 69s appeared.
- Casual yoshifan: We added yoshifan to a "casual" match of Puyo, and he completely dominated. We went on to redefine casual for the rest of the marathon.
Some general and specific thanks:- Everybody who donated: For obvious reasons.
- Everybody in the commentary: Also obvious.
- Everybody who streamed: Still obvious.
- Everybody who watched loyally: We had people such as MigelTheHedgehog, ChilledMadness, and MissMysterics that watched pretty much every day and were very active in the chat the entire time showing support. I hope everybody keeps in touch, and I hope that everybody attends if we have a stream around the holidays.
- Guest participants from other sites: charlie from NiDScores (http://nidscores.com) and Naegleria, footbigmike,and mike89 from Speed Demos Archive (http://www.speeddemosarchive.com) were all a big help, and charlie donated $130 to the cause. Thanks to the guys at SpeedRunsLive (http://speedrunslive.com) for letting us stream on their front page as well. Gamble, who streamed Ristar, is a member here but is more often found at Puyo Nexus (http://puyonexus.net), and many other people from Puyo Nexus came to the stream and were very vocal.
- Bargain Gamer: The sheer amount of work you did for the marathon is incredible, from making a total of $100 in donations, to joining me for the multiplayer events, to buying ad space on 918thefan.com to advertise us, to getting other people on said site to plug us and visit us. Also, Big the Car.
- LilyBlade and GerbilSoft: You guys took the time out of your weekend to help me stream the multiplayer events, and Gerbil even donated as soon as I took him home.
- DarkspinesSonic: Your bonus streams were a big help, as were your donations. You had to sacrifice some cash to be allowed to stream for us, yet did so with little hesitation. The 12-hour stream was a big factor in getting the donation goal met and I don't know what we would've done without having you in the marathon.
- sonikku a.k.a. sonikkusama a.k.a. sonicsama: You helped plug the charity when we were occupied, donated and played on the stream, joined us for commentary for four days, and of course turned me into the beast I've come to embrace. You took it in stride when I mentioned your deviantArt work on the stream, which was an honest attempt to show that you'd helped with past charity marathons and a conversation point, and I hope I didn't embarrass you in any way by mentioning it. Hopefully my commission offer is a nice change of pace, getting to draw something you helped to design instead of "Hay, here's mai fanchar I drew, can you draw it except better in exchange for this virtual currency?"
- Sofox: As with sonikku, you donated and played on the stream and also commentated a good bit. It was cool having both of you joining us for commentary and being surprisingly good at it, and thank you for sticking around instead of bailing out after All Stars Racing.
- Quartz: The banner was great, and you even did more art for our ad on 918thefan. You were also present constantly for commentary.
- werster: Despite the drama that went into your involvement in the marathon, you were a big help with commentary and donations. It only figures that the other admins didn't actually participate in the marathon beyond All Stars Racing; I very much should've left you involved in the actual runs despite being told the contrary.
- yoshifan: Thank you for commentary and Sonic Adventure 2, as well as chatting with me about marathon setup.
- sonicacademy: For all of your 69ing.
-
Thorn forgot to thank himself for organizing this whole thing. Very well done job. This whole thing turned out to be a lot of fun and I'm glad I ended up participating. Here's hoping the next one turns out even better.
-
Some donations that didn't clear immediately just went through, adding $41 for a total of $1778.22. Thanks to everybody that donated but didn't get acknowledged due to the delay.
I would love to hear feedback on the marathon from other people and feedback on doing a short, simpler marathon from December 27 to 30.
-
I'd join then. I'll have a computer then, so I can record and participate. I might do Silver's story in sonic 06.
-
A very descriptive, emotional and entertaining piece of writing there Thorn. I couldn't watch the marathon due to being on vacation but from the sounds of things it was a huge success and a well deserved achievement judging from the amount of hard work you and the members involved put into it. I hope future marathons will prove as if not more successful, and I'll check out the recordings in the archive (the meme parts in particular :D). Well done TSC!!
-
Cheers to you for setting it all up Thorn... I know I've been absent frequently, as of late, but I absolutely loved the marathon (watching more now, heh)
-
Grats everyone. Wish I'd had time to watch more, I ended up having a friend in town and we went out a few times. I kinda stealthwatched on Sunday during Rivals 2/Shadow but I had to break away for D&D.
Glad to see things went well. I also watched the replay of Adva2. Combo do WAY better than I would have. Especially on bosses. Any commentary I would've had would include how terribad I am at bosses.
-
In terms of a marathon on Christmas, we should probably think more about what we want to do long-term. Do we want to do a marathon at least every year? If so, then it's worth considering that people might not want to see a marathon of Sonic games over and over. We would be doing the same games every time. In that regard it might be better to space them out a little more, or otherwise switching the focus to different things.
-
In terms of a marathon on Christmas, we should probably think more about what we want to do long-term. Do we want to do a marathon at least every year? If so, then it's worth considering that people might not want to see a marathon of Sonic games over and over. We would be doing the same games every time. In that regard it might be better to space them out a little more, or otherwise switching the focus to different things.
We could always do some "Bastard Children of SEGA" runs... 4P PSOv2 PC clean runthrough/Challenge runs, maybe? JSR just got a digital-distribution re-release, maybe have someone train up on that?
I don't know if I'd be able to stream, or even run, these, just throwing out ideas. I do have a private PSO server for PSOv2PC if other people want to run it, if that's any help...
-
In terms of a marathon on Christmas, we should probably think more about what we want to do long-term. Do we want to do a marathon at least every year? If so, then it's worth considering that people might not want to see a marathon of Sonic games over and over. We would be doing the same games every time. In that regard it might be better to space them out a little more, or otherwise switching the focus to different things.
Well, this is one reason I've mentioned doing four days at five hours each instead of six days at eight hours each. I'm well aware that as a Sonic site, our pool of games to choose from is limited. We could certainly do fuller marathons on an annual basis or so, given that a year is ample space between longer marathons and that we can certainly swap out the less-popular games from the last marathon for other less-popular games. I almost picture the holiday marathon as a smaller event, catered to the crowd that almost begged us to do more with the Twitch account as the last marathon came to a close, while still attractive enough to outside users that it draws views.
I'm seeing the holiday mini-marathon as more of another TSC togetherness thing more so than a balls-to-the-wall charity drive and using it as a way to show that we intend to do more than one event on the Twitch channel; inevitably it will draw donations as well. I repeatedly got the comment that the site was somehow more bonded together or a better community due to the marathon and I'd like to keep that sentiment strong.
-
Couldn't have said what was in the opening post better myself. Or nearly that well.
I recall OH NO being a bit of a mini-meme before all of this. That's why I started using it during the Knuckles battle, at least. I forget when it started spreading out exactly.
Anyhow, fun stuff, gotta do it again sometime, I'll commentate as much as I possibly can, of course. Maybe I'll actually have the convenience to stream some games next time too. It'd be nice to get a capture card or something, I've got plenty of prime games worth playing.
-
I'll admit, I was a bit nervous when my run was coming up and even though my internet blew up during the last stage on me, I still had fun doing this.
Hopefully we can get more participants who can commit their time to stream or even just drop by to commentate (at least). Just seeing that this was possible should raise encouragement and seeing it was a success (we went beyond the initial goal) can hopefully spread our whereabouts and show TSC is still doing things.
Next time, maybe we can get some prize incentives going to help raise more donations (singing and sky patrol was good, but we need more).
More cams next time for that singing! (can't believe I was the only one that had mine up)
-
I really enjoyed watching the marathon, both the gameplay and the commentary were brilliant (especially those memes). Congrats to everyone who streamed, donated and helped make the marathon successful in reaching and going over it's target.
In terms of a Christmas marathon. I think it is a good idea as many people I'm sure would love to see more
-
I'm down for more marathons. This site needs more exposure. Also I like to entertain people with my Sonic Advance 2 run.
-
thorn you sexy beast. i think another marathon would be great. those last few days in the recent one was some of the most fun i've ever had. i didn't even play anything. might be hard to get money for a charity so close to the sda marathon though
We could always do some "Bastard Children of SEGA" runs... 4P PSOv2 PC clean runthrough/Challenge runs, maybe? JSR just got a digital-distribution re-release, maybe have someone train up on that?
I don't know if I'd be able to stream, or even run, these, just throwing out ideas. I do have a private PSO server for PSOv2PC if other people want to run it, if that's any help...
i am 100% down for some pso, seriously. the world needs more pso
-
I can't wait for the Christmas stream. I came for a bit for the last stream, but I had the first few days of school like registration and stuff, so I couldn't stay for that long. Since I will be on break, I think this would definately be a possibility. I can help commentate, maybe stream and stuff. If you guys need an '06 player, I'll be up for it.
-
thorn you sexy beast.
Oh, you.~
i think another marathon would be great. those last few days in the recent one was some of the most fun i've ever had. i didn't even play anything. might be hard to get money for a charity so close to the sda marathon though
We'll be pretty hard-pressed to plan around SDA no matter what we do. I thought of December 27 to 30 because people will have time off from school for the holidays and most people will have finished their holiday traveling by December 27. Again, a lot of this marathon is more of a "TSC should keep doing stuff together"... although the charity's nice too!
i am 100% down for some pso, seriously. the world needs more pso
I asked people about Billy Hatcher and PSO and Burning Rangers for being Sonic Team games, but couldn't get anybody to run them for the last marathon.
So, here's my rough idea (wouldn't call it a "plan" yet). We run from 5 PM EDT to 10 PM EDT again as our normal schedule, removing the first three hours of each day of the last marathon that received minimal views relative to the later hours and allowing bonus stream time afterwards if necessary/requested. We make sure to have some popular games that are almost required at every marathon, but go out of our way to play the games we missed last time in order to keep things varied. We get people to STREAM THE GAMES THEY'RE GOOD AT, as myself and some other people picked up games only because they weren't being done (e.g.,Mr. Skypatrol Guy hates his title). We look into little prizes/incentives for which people can donate: $100 collectively from all donators for a particular bonus stream, $5 for playing online with us in <insert game here>, $2 to enter a raffle for a Virtual Console game to be gifted, etc., and have people specify in their comments how they want their donations distributed (a $20 donation may have a raffle entry and online play with $13 going towards the bonus stream pool). I've had some people ask me about physical prizes such as boxed games, plushes, and art, but that depends if somebody's willing to ship such things.
The final bonus stream needs to be $500 for DsS to stream from noon on December 31 until the ball drops on January 1. There is no other conceivable option.
-
That seems awesome. Totally coming for that.
As for playing games we're good at, eh. I can really do anything with a decent amount of practice. If one of the more recent games aren't being played (or stories) I can fill in with about 4 days notice. just send a pm. (Sorry if I sound like I'm begging to be on. I just want to be a part of something community-based.) And I can commentate. Just saying, my voice is high, (well, high for a thirteen year old girl) so. Might need to take a listen.
-
This actually happened? Seems like a whole other era that I once said "Hey guys we should totally..." and then did very little to make it happen.
Congratulations, over again, to everyone involved. I don't even need to have seen it (and I am sorry that I didn't) to get a strong feeling of how epic this was. And, as different as TSC is now than it was when I joined, it is anything but dead or dying and collaborative efforts like this prove it.
Keep on truckin', TSC.
-
I asked people about Billy Hatcher and PSO and Burning Rangers for being Sonic Team games, but couldn't get anybody to run them for the last marathon.
If someone gets me a capture card I'll do all that's in my power to practice Billy Hatcher. Or I can try to get one myself and some cords or something but I dunno how much that would be. Which pretty much amounts to "I doubt it'll be happening in winter unless I get lucky or someone else helps"