<aside> ℹ️ I am writing this document to summarise my thoughts on how the Pride Games 2022 event on Friday the 17th of June went, what issues there were, and how it could be improved if we were to run it again.

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🌐 Overall

Overall, the event was a success, there were minimal server issues, we had almost all 100 players show up, and raised over $2,300 for The Trevor Project.

We were given 3 weeks to work on this event, and this time, I concepted and developed the entire thing, as well as doing server maintenance both in Discord and Minecraft. I created the trailer, and managed other staff aspects such as bringing in builders and giving them tasks, and collaborating with the artists/sound designer to create in-game assets.

Although, in the days leading up to the event, we encountered issues mainly surrounding server performance and marketing, with the help of the staff team as well as some other volunteers, we were able to complete it all in time for the creators to play in the event.

The players all had an enjoyable time playing in the event, with viewers providing donations to both help and hinder the streamers, whilst also contributing to the donation goal. This created a good mix of streamer and audience interaction.

🐛 Bugs

• Players who disconnected during the event were not able to rejoin without being sent to the game server manually. This was an issue that occurred due to the disabling of an auto-reconnect plugin in the days leading up to the event during testing.
• Players who disconnected during the player spreading process, after it had began, rejoined with their invincibility still enabled, with no way to reset it This fortunately only happened to 1 player, but a failsafe to manually disable this should have been implemented
• Players who joined late had to be manually assigned to their Bukkit team and teleported
• Players who slept in a bed during the event and then broke it, respawned on top of the spawn room when they died The /spawnpoint command gets overridden by the user right clicking/sleeping in a bed, and when the bed is broken, the spawnpoint defaults to the world spawn
• Server TPS dipped at certain points
• The seed did not have certain items available in it, specifically cacti/berries which were needed for an achievement, so a better seed should have been chosen and analysed. Mobs also had decreased spawns which made achievements that required bones/eggs etc. harder. The seed did not have certain items available in it, specifically cacti/berries which were needed for an achievement, so a better seed should have been chosen and analysed. Mobs also had decreased spawns which made achievements that required bones/eggs etc. harder. Nether didn’t have many fortresses/the fortresses were quite hard to get to for some teams Spawn locations felt unbalanced, due to some being in biomes/locations that gave them an easier head start to beating the end.
• Donators username should be added to in game donation message

💡 Suggestions/Improvements

• The main issue I realised during the event was that after about 45 minutes, it became slightly boring to watch for viewers. This was noticeable by the decrease in donations received after that point. Obviously the players kept playing and donations did keep coming in, but it was a lot slower. To improve this, I think what could have been done is to have mini donation goals. Each goal reached would introduce a new aspect to the game. For example, on $200 being reached, every player would receive a certain item, or a buff. Loot drops could be dropped in areas of the map, increasing as the donation goal increased. Extra challenges such as mobs could be introduced. This would give viewers more of an incentive to donate, and also an incentive to keep watching and engaging in the streams, as they wait for the next goal to be reached. This would also make it more interesting for the players.
• I think the map could have been increased in size. Not by much, but having 100 players on a 7.5kx7.5k world was a bit cramped, and even an increase to 10k could have meant they were more spread out, leading to less conflicts/PVP, as it was allowed but not the main point of the game. However, on the contrary, some players believed that the map was too wide, and that people found it hard to come across any other teams.
• More of a marketing/management issue, but giving more time to work on team announcements would have been ideal, as most of them came out on the day of the event, and some with incorrect skin tones, eye/hair colours, and pronouns, as well as some didn’t have pride flags in the background due to time constraints. In general, team announcements to players as well could have been released earlier, to give more time to get to know each other. Team balancing was also something that was suggested to improve. Game information should have also been released slightly earlier, to give players more of an idea what to plan/strategize for.
• Adding a leaderboard to keep track of other teams progress would be a good idea, as it would help players understand what teams were ahead of them, and possibly even create more tension and be more exciting as they race to try and beat who they know is ahead of them. This would also be a good idea for spectators/staff, as there was no way to see which teams were ahead/close to finishing, other than looking at live streams.