Let me give some notes on the Livestream.
1) I initially decided to enter it in without knowing much of anything else that was happening in NCFC. I did not have any of the games pre-arranged for me prior (Except for the ones which I submitted myself), and thus the scheduling pretty much ended up being "when I was ready" or "When someone else wanted to stream a game".
Next time, (Yes, I'll be back. Too many people enjoyed the Livestream for me not to be back!) I hope at least a -couple- of streams are pre-scheduled. I also hope there's some major things on the stream besides fangame plays - in particular I was disappointed that I didn't get to do anything akin to Skype interviews, major guest cameos, or, well, much of what gives SAGExpo it's "fun" atmosphere outside the fangaming scope.
2) All of my streams are archived on my Youtube page:
http://www.youtube.com/KiddoCabbusses
And all the other streams are saved in the Livestream's own internal archive.
http://www.livestream.com/ncfc2011/folder
EVERYTHING that I know of has been recorded.
We played as many of the games as we could fit into the schedule for this year, and to the best of my knowledge all of them were covered.
3) I apologize to anyone who might've been confused about how the Livestream setup worked, so I'll explain it for next time;
a) Anyone who wanted to simply watch the Livestream can either visit the Livestream page or watch the embedded version of it on the site.
b) Anyone who wanted to stream on the Livestream would have to contact me for information on how to do that.
c) There were no pre-established rules. Eventually when we got a slew of streamers I made ONE rule: "Don't override other streams in progress." So far, this has been the only rule we needed to apply.
d) If you were watching trailers or pre-recorded game footage, then no one was streaming at that time. (Notable exception to ah who pre-recorded his Time Walker play for... some reason.) I handled adding all those trailers myself. Most of them were submitted to me in the trailers thread. There were some which I actually went out of my way to fetch. The Sky High fangame playing to the Daytona USA game "Sky High", I made myself. The Four Swords Online trailer was made by ah with footage from both himself and myself.
Now, moving on to comments about the "Best of Show" event.
I generally agree that it swung too far into the direction of a "Popularity contest" at the expense of games that deserved a fair chance of winning or at -least- being given notable attention.
This is ESPECIALLY true in the Misc. category. MMBN: Chrono X may have been a good MMBN clone, but it was just one really good demo amongst a whole category of really great demos! Final Fantasy: Essence and Fire Emblem: Immortal Sword were also great examples of copying a game engine down to the subtlest details and Xeno Fighters R... Dang, how the heck did everyone neglect Xeno Fighters R so badly? All three of the games I mentioned should've been contenders that gave the awards a sense of suspense, not just throwaways to be ignored! Also, ROM Hacks seemed to be completely neglected, regardless of quality.
I think one good way to solve this next year (Going along with some other suggestions, such as limiting severely how reviews affect the results) would be not basing the "Best of show" categories on the game categories, but instead organizing each "Award category" based on highlighting what can be objectively viewed as a set of fangames' "best" qualities.
For example, let me pick out some examples I would've thought out for this year.
BEST COMPLETE GAME: (Only for game that are called "Complete" that are not mini-games, can be played start-to-end, and have no plans for an update)
For this, since there weren't a "lot" of examples of this, I went with every example I could recall;
- Psycho Waluigi
- Highway Trouble
- Paper Mario
- Super Mario RPG: The Seven Sages
BEST MINI-GAME:
- Super Mario: Red Scare
- Mario's Deadly Flight
- Sky High
- Kirby's Ballin' Adventure
BEST ENGINE - Game Accuracy: (For Game engines which most closely replicate their "Official" counterparts)
- [Insert Hello Engine Mario demo here]
- Supernova Mario World Engine
- Mega Man Battle Network: Chrono X
- Final Fantasy Essence
- AM2R
- The Legend of Zelda: Horn of Balance
BEST ENGINE - Technical Ability: (For Game engine which do highly impressive things outside the scope of their "Official" counterparts. Also, since I'm gonna go out on a limb here and guess that this was the first year with online games, these go in this category by default)
- Gravity Goomba
- Xeno Fighters R
- Pokemon Mystery Universe
- The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords Online
- Earthbound 3
BEST ROM: (Because ROM hacks and homebrews are fangames too, y'know!)
- BS Zelda Map 1+2 Lite
- Fire Emblem: Elibian Nights
- SMW2+3: The Essence Star
- TSRPR
- Rendezvous Delano
BEST SOUNDTRACK: Currently no segmentation between original compositions and simply "Good soundtrack use" here.
- Final Fantasy Essence
- Xeno Fighters R
- Highway Trouble
- AM2R
BEST SIMPLE FUN: (Because some games just don't need all this overly complex engine stuff or fancy-smancy graphical craziness to be good)
- Bowser's Last Stand
- Super Paper Bowser World
- Danger, Bob-omb! Danger!: Handle with Care
- Metroid Defense
- SHPDMBGWL4 Sunshine
Notice how I have some categories in which the popular game still has a good shot at winning, while I have others tailored specifically so that said popular games can't even qualify - just to give the other fangames a fair chance to shine.
(NOTE: If you disagree with my category choices, then, uh... don't take it too seriously. It's not like this is being implemented retroactively anyhow.)
As for combining the Radio and the Livestream in one; We'd probably need a volunteer who'd -constantly- be playing Winamp through the Livestream when everyone else is off - preferably one who can somehow do it while still having some kind of video relating to NCFC playing, possibly audio-less trailers.
It wouldn't be technically impossible, but it WOULD require a pretty dedicated volunteer - who'd also be willing to sign off as soon as an actual streamer is ready.
