Hey all, it's been about a week since Fangame Direct 2 premiered and I still have some things to say. This is a bit of a longer read, so feel free to skim through this. I initially wanted to keep quiet while people gathered their thoughts on the event but I'm sure that by now, everyone who was interested has already seen it, or at least the big reveals.

Going straight in, Fangame Direct 2 was a massive project that I, nor anyone else on the team would have expected it to be. We officially started work in March 2023, which was a long time ago. We didn't necessarily have a goal or a vision for the event at the time, but we wanted it to be better than last years FD1, which a lot of people rightfully criticized. We had a lot to prove and for the most part I think we did that.

As stated above, I have a lot to say so I've organized some of my thoughts into sections. Feel free to read as many or as few as you'd like, but they should go into detail about certain questions and concerns that have been raised.

Why did FD2 take so long?

Complete and honest answer, we had other things we wished to do while we were waiting for stuff to happen. Once we got our initial idea down for the event, being all arcade themed, we started contacting artists and people who would help us bring our idea to life.

Long story short, FD2 went through many iterations. There were a lot of reasons for this such as varying interests, misaligned visions with former team members, and just a lot more. I want to make it no secret that FD2 was in development hell for about 90% of it's development. Some of it could have absolutely been avoided, but it was a critical lesson for everyone on board. Which leads perfectly into the next point.

What happened with the management?

One of the biggest complaints from FD1/2 was that our management was subpar to say the least. I agree entirely on that. Martin and I (the managers responsible for both) have never hosted an event ever, let alone one with as massive of a community backing as FD has.

I think comparatively to FD1, we did so much better. We became much more authentic communicators and I think that's something a lot of people involved noticed. FD2 felt like a very natural and promising step forward. Especially with what's happened this past week with the event, I think that we'll be even better.

Why were some trailers outdated?

Somehow our biggest flaw with the entire event was an issue we didn't even think about until the first chat message saying "wrong trailer" was sent. Let me be very clear, this was an oversight at most, it was not intentional by any means. I watched over FD2 twice in it's entirety before I even uploaded it to YouTube. The reason this happened was surprisingly simple.

Our system for submitting trailers was essentially non-existent. We had a system with FD1 to submit trailers through private channels in our private FD Discord. However, with our smaller size and uncertainty if the event would see the light of day we never got this system working again. So we had developers DM their trailers to either me or Martin.

Because FD2 was in development hell for so long, trailers needed to be updated with new assets, better renders, updated dates, whatever else. So by the time we were finally ready to start editing we had half the trailers in Martins DMs and the other in mine. Not to mention some of the file names were extremely similar or in some cases identical. We even had a couple of cases were some developers wanted to go back to previous versions of their trailer. This is not to the fault of any of our developers, it's ours alone for not staying on top of this.

If you haven't already noticed, a new version of FD2 is on the YouTube page replacing the original. I think this is for the best. Even if far less people will sit through the event after it's premiere, it's important that the right trailers will be associated with our event.

What's next?

For the time being me and the rest of our team will be taking a short break to catch our breathes. We're not disappearing off the face of the earth for a while, don't worry. We are taking the time now to really work on the pain points brought to us with this past event. I am making it my number one priority to ensure that none of our faults carry over into any future project we do. After all, this is a learning experience for everyone on board.

I want to personally thank everyone who came out last Friday and supported all of our amazing and talented developers. Watching everyones reactions in the live chat reminded me why I do these things again.

I also want to personally thank anyone who called us out. I am dead serious when I say that this past week has taught me much more than I ever had working on FD. As brutal as some of you were, it helped me a lot more than I'm willing to admit here.

Thanks again everyone, I hope you'll stick with us, we'll be back.