Some disclaimers: I fully realize the difficult job of encoding a movie to the standards of this website (it is far beyond my abilities). I also realize that encoders, just like the other contributors at this site, do so without compensation in their own free time. That being said:
Recently, I’ve become aware of several incidents of “competition” among encoders.
Example. It seems that encoding has become yet another way to try and 1-up someone. I can’t think of a worse way to spend the resource of time on this site.
There are over forty accepted runs in the queue, and our two main encoders, Bisqwit and DeHackEd, are busy fighting to get the most popular videos. This is positively asinine, and not beneficial to the site at all.
The queue is getting out of control. There is a steady stream of new runs being submitted – I would estimate a run could be published every other day and we would not exhaust our supply at the current rate. Yet the runs aren’t interesting enough for our encoders to bother with, so they sit and sit. This is bad in many ways:
1) If users are watching, voting, and commenting on runs in order to help the judges decide the fate to get movies published, and this isn’t happening, then some people may decide there isn’t a point to watching all the runs they do, and stop contributing.
2) It can be disheartening for those submitting movies. Many people would not have come to this site in the first place if there weren't AVIs made from the emulator movie files.
3) It is bad for those who watched encoded AVIs, and not runs on the emulator. If the run they are excited about probably won’t be published for six months, then what’s the point of visiting the site very often?
How is this fixable? Efforts could be coordinated among encoders better. For example, Maza had first encoded my Castlevania run, and then Nach also decided to encode it himself. This could have been avoided with better coordination, with Nach spending the time encoding a different run, and we’d have more runs published as a result, with less wasted time by both encoders.
A little more effort on the publisher’s part would do wonders. There are encoded runs waiting to be published. This is a five-minute process, if that, yet it just doesn’t happen. This is either straight laziness, or a purposeful delay of publishing movies (which is biting the site in the ass since the queue is so cramped with accepted runs).
More encoders would be helpful. However, the chances of that happening are slim when the page explaining
how to encode things comes across like a condescending jackass (“spoon-fed instructions”).
Lastly, I want to make sure I give a special mention to Maza. What does this guy do? He encodes movies –
lots of them, and not just the most popular ones. Then he has them ready for a publisher to put on the site. Guess how often this happens? Not too much, since the publishers are busy figuring out which Mega Man run to encode next. Seriously it takes LESS THAN FIVE MINUTES. I can’t believe Maza still does it; he’s even been bitched at for encoding a movie that wasn’t yet accepted. So THANK YOU MAZA, for your attempts at keeping the queue manageable and the site afloat.
Upthorn: Well yes, but it just unlocks a cool feature. It'd be a neat run anyways, not meant to obsolete a normal run. Maybe the hack won't be approved and it won't even matter ;)
