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Our Philosophy
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
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 directly.

Incentives / Bid Wars & Bonus Games
Submitting bonus games in particular is encouraged. Short ones can bee seen throughout the entire length of the marathon, while longer ones are perfect to add a little spice to the last day or two.

OLD "ONLINE" GUIDE

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 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).

Guidelines

There is a limit of five submissions per runner. This includes different categories. You can exceed this maximum by being part of a race or Co-Op run another runner has submitted. These do not count towards your personal total.

In order to maintain the high standards we have established on the ESA channel, we are setting some technical requirements for our online events. The following conditions apply:

The following technical requirements apply to online events or online pre-shows only:

• Runners should be able to stream to Twitch at a bitrate of at least 2.5 Mbit. Depending on your game and resolution you might be able to get away with less. Submit your video and let us be the judge!
• Runners must use a camera (face or VTuber avatar) for their run during the marathon. This is to maintain the high production standard we set for all our flagship marathons. With programs like iVCam, your phone can easily be turned into a webcam for this purpose.
• Races may be permitted if they fulfil the following criteria:
  • The race must be between not more than two players.
  • Both runners must fulfil the above stated quality requirement and use a camera.
  • The submission must include at least one dedicated commentator. Runners may still be able to talk on stream, but we believe that a commentator able to keep track of both player's progress is important to make the race clear and entertaining for viewers at home.
• Co-op runs may be permitted if they fulfil the following criteria:
  • If taking place entirely online the showcase might not include more than two screens. More players may be permitted, but we will always only be showing a maximum of two feeds.
  • Runners shown on stream must fulfil the above stated quality requirement and use a camera.

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. Try to make sure that this video also meets the specifications listed above!

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 relevant text field. If there are no leaderboards relevant to your submission, feel free to provide a meme of your choice instead to fulfil the requirements of the form.

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

Until further notice, we will not be able to feature games that make use of licensed music, unless it can be completely muted / removed from the showcase. Unfortunately this includes most music games.

Submitted games must adhere to Twitch’s community guidelines.

Submission Form

If you’re using Oengus for the first time, you will need to register by logging in with either your Discord, Twitter or Twitch account. Either way, we require you to be on the ESA Discord Server in order to be able to submit your showcase(s). This is because Discord will be the main tool for all forms of communication leading up to the event and also the way for the game selection and scheduling team to contact you.

If you don’t have a Discord account yet, please get one HERE and join the ESA Server: https://discord.gg/esamarathon

Please state the time zone you're living in as well as your predicted availability during the event (preferably in CET/CEST) in the relevant text field as well as Oengus' own availability picker. Keep in mind that very short availability windows can cause massive headaches for us when creating the schedule and we may have to reject runs because of this. We will do our best to consider all the different time zones when creating the schedule.

Some parts of your submission may remain editable until the release of the schedule. After that, major changes to things like the estimate are only possible after talking to us directly.

If you are submitting races, Co-Op runs or anything else with multiple people, only one person will be required to submit it. They then hand out the code that's being created to the other participants, who will be able to join the multiplayer submission by entering the code in the bottom of the submission form. Make sure that everybody gets and uses this code.

Incentives / Bid Wars & Bonus Games

Donation incentives and bid wars are a way for viewers to interact with and/or add content to your showcase through donating to a good cause. From character name changes to adding entire bonus games, anything is possible!

Possible donation incentives and bid wars can be entered through the submission form. Note 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 needs some clarification. Keep in mind that the description of the incentive / bid war should be able to explain the content to somebody who has no idea about the game.

A list with all the accepted incentives and bid wars will be published some time after the schedule has been released.

Submitting bonus games in particular is encouraged. Short ones can bee seen throughout the entire length of the marathon, while longer ones are perfect to add a little spice to the last day or two.
We also reserve the possibilty to change any submitted and accepted showcase into a bonus game, only featured if the donation threshold will be reached.

CONTACT US

If you have any questions, PM either Fatzke#4192, eTho#5871 or EnglishBen#1572 on the ESA Discord. We’re happy to help.