As tradition dictates, it's time to sum up the year from an old (lame) duck's viewpoint (FSR President). As educated FSR rules readers will know, I'm officially in charge until December 1st, but idea would be to transfer as much responsibility to new president as soon as possible (providing such appears?). Of course the state of FSR has already been discused to no end last few weeks, but I hope this overview will give next president some idea on what went well and where we can improve.
So first, what went quite well...
- Transition to rF2 went overall better than what I was afraid of. First race of winter season was bit of a disaster, after that and tuning some server settings we went steadily upwards. There were some bugs with collisions such as Greco at Monza, but most of collisions were driver caused, as evidenced by WC, where there were hardly any start collisions all season. We had some issues with users from other side of world due to high pings, but that's reality of Internet gaming. At beginning of season we didn't have full grids in Ace, but towards end participation count increased.
- Tracks. This was biggest single challenge of the season: in winter we had perhaps 5 or 6 drivable F1 tracks for rF2. We more or less had to build China, Montreal (Dominguez) and Suzuka (JES) from scratch for rF2. Intense work on other tracks, including Imola, Hockenheim, Bahrain, Spa, COTA, Melbourne. We succeeded on every point except for one mistake: Spa should never have been used. Lesson learned is to only use the best quality tracks, no matter how hard community wants a Spa or Monaco. The same community will complain when track is buggy, simply pointless to drive on bad conversions.
- New division structure and limitations. There was a clear ladder between categories, this helped us a lot to remove useless turbulence between WC and Ace. This year there was no alien drivers in Ace, almost all drivers were in correct division. I strongly recommend to keep the current rules, so that top3 of Ace&Pro moves up to higher category. Same with Ace drivers in WC, this year we had limit of 3 double weekends. This limit should never be increased, especially not back to the old "top 10 in WC points" rule. Keep it same or decrease number of double race weekends.
- Race format changes. This got both positive and negative feedback. What can't be denied is that Ace Sprint race was generally the most exciting round of the weekend, lots of happenings every lap. The transition between Feature and Sprint race should somehow be done smoother so that we don't lose spectators in between.So what we learn from this is to only organize 30% sprint races... Seriously speaking, I prefer the shorter lengths of 60% in Ace Feature and Pro, it is a lot asked to involve spectators in watching three longer events.
- Broadcasts. FSR managed to maintain high-quality broadcasts, being arguably only league to offer 30+ broadcasts a season, all with two dedicated commentators. Big thanks to this goes to broadcast director Sam Jones and Jaakko Mikkonen and all commentators who mostly did an excellent job. I think Chris de Jong is also excellent candidate to perform stand-up-comedy, but not more about that...
Broadcast numbers increased from previous year, three races hit live viewcounts of well over 200, which is nearly 100% increase of previous peaks. Of course all is relative and much remains to be done when comparing this to some zillion of viewers watching League of Legends events (facepalm). There has been some interest of moving away from YouTube, it is something I understand from German perspective. Having said that, YouTube is one of the most stable platforms and came with zero issues all season.
- Server autodownload. Was a bit difficult to maintain, but having all content on autodownload and FSR server on 24/7 contributed to getting a lot of new drivers to join the server and thus FSR I believe. It was perhaps our best marketing channel. Plus keeping the mod relatively small, about 500 MB, unlike many GB what we had last few years. No extra crap like driver suits etc. are needed.
- Calendar: limited number of races. This kept excitement up until the last races, with WC being decided first time in FSR history in final race. We also managed to avoid "FSR fatigue" in which we lose a lot of members for the final races. If there is plan to increase number of races for next year, please stay moderate and increase by, say, at most a couple of races.
- FSR Manager. For yet another season, thanks to co-operation with Christian Smirnoff, FSR is the only league in 2014 to use proper anti-cheat, and only anti-cheat that exists for rF2. As a bonus, thanks to moving to rF2 we had no cheat cases, first time since 2010 btw. I hope Mr. Tacito, Keanie alias Thomas Cooke, Balanesko alias Kacherghin, Keller, Surralles, Hoffman & co are happy.
- Visibility. Belongs on positive side simply because we improved from previous year, although a lot remains to be done. FSR was featured on ISI Facebook a couple of times, on RD front page before season, broadcasts were announced on Facebook/Twitter and on iRacing and isiforums. We also saw couple of iRacing stars (Uusi-Jaakkola and Kerkhof) guest drive a race in FSR. However, a steady activity could not be maintained on social channels, again due to lack of press department.
- Server worked all season. Knock the wood...
What went less well...
- No highlights. This was obviously my main failure of the season, continuing the trend from second part of 2013. At couple of points of season I had a video editor guy available, but no script writer, then later a script writer, but no video editor. It should not be underestimated how serious effort is required to stick to releasing 12+ highlights a season. Only advice I can give: please get "Simon Adebisi" back from Bahamas, no matter what it costs...
- Post-race forum discussion. Directors did mostly a good job and were all committed, but each of them made a couple of unfortunate mistakes, thanks to which community totally overreacted. First part of season went without many issues, then suddenly hell broke lose in second half. Yes, the directors made some mistakes, mostly because 2 out of 3 were new to this job. This post-race crying is exact reason why we lost personnel and had to find rookie directors in first place. I would say 10% of the critic received was justified and the justified critic was acted upon. This problem with post-race checks is really something that we have had for each of the past 3 seasons, so again no easy solution exists. Overall there was no bias from any director what I could see, and the idea to somehow get three "independent" directors I find simply ludicrous.
- Human management (or whatever pseudo-term it should be called). There are two types of persons: those who work spontaneously and those who need regular kicks to butts to do anything. I know I should be the one delivering these kicks, but most of time I ended up doing the task myself quicker. Obviously this approach doesn't work in long run, president can't do everything. Here I can only suggest finding a next president that is better at this social mingling.
- Marketing. I never promised to find XX new sponsors in my campaign, it simply doesn't interest me much to write beg letters, neither did I have time. It has been attempted before by Roald Reurink and failure rate is 99%. Thrustmaster continued to be sponsor and bring us money for yet another season, basically thanks to Dominguez' relations. But of course more can be done on this front.
- Mod. This I rate as "less well" simply because it was huge effort to distribute and build mod, too many working hours, plus it was difficult for new teams to get their skins in. For next year something more efficient should be thought of, even if there is no obvious solution like with rF1.
- Press. For yet another season, Mr. Saxen was the instance of writing most race previews. Thankfully Mr. Patel contributed with post-race interviews. Honourable mention to Mr. Rodriguez for brave attempt. Also I guess to Mr. Kuncman for being only instance bothered to write some kind of post-race reports, like them or not.
- TOA. There was sadly no interaction between TOA and board except for the first few and last few weeks. Mostly because TOA and TOA Chairman were inactive. Part of blame goes to me for not initiating communication more often. Some decisions I made were criticized, such as decision to change slipstream values mid-season. With hindsight, I should have done those changes earlier and let TOA live with it. In my opinion efficient leadership cannot be maintained with current FSR structures.
- Nearly a month of my commitment was lost due to university forcing me to visit some paradise called Portugal in form of summer school. Not ideal.
So to sum it up, this year was mostly a transition year. I would say 80-90% of my time went dealing with technical challenges (rF2+mod+tracks) and daily forum support. Needless to say, the 10% remaining was not enough time to do much creative things. Next year this will hopefully change, as we have a more stable platform in rF2 to continue on.
Finally, the much awaited thanks go to @Eduard Mallorquí for making Minimalist UI and first proper Broadcast UI for rF2 after weeks of work, plus making banners for all broadcasts and tracks. @David Dominguez for Thrustmaster negotiations and building tracks and helping me to understand black art of track editing. @Sam Jones for organizing broadcasts, commentators, broadcasting himself, etc. for yet another season, always being available when needed. @Christian Smirnoff for working on some clever modifications to FSR Manager for rF2 and for running FSR Fantasy League for yet another season, it requires a lot of commitment.
Next, thanks to all directors, who despite being new did a good job. Eduard besides everything else efficiently directing WC, @Kris Cobb despite some issues emerged in midseason committed a lot of hours on correcting everything, really appreciated. @Carlos Martín for taking the interest of carefully judging every incident and pit exit cut etc, lots of hours again. @Jaakko_M for broadcasting and borrowing his PC superpowers for FSR use. All commentators (@Thomas Mundy , @Chris de Jong , @xownage133 , @James Sadler , @Jonny Simon) for entertaining comments and being available all season. First time I guess that no commentator quit mid-season; commentating is a very underestimated challenge.
Finally, thanks to @Pedro Rodrigues for being the treasurer for yet another season, making sure our money stays well. @Muhammed Patel for producing articles regularly which no one else unfortunately managed this year except @Ondrej Kuncman in second half and @Adrian Rodriguez for some help provided. @Georg Winter for doing texture work on Melbourne and making it look less useless track in my critical eyes. @Ron Squire for making updated championship standings on front page. And probably many more I forgot... Also thanks to all teams and drivers for what was an exciting 2014 season, hopefully it will continue well in future.
Now, time to hibernate for winter...
So first, what went quite well...
- Transition to rF2 went overall better than what I was afraid of. First race of winter season was bit of a disaster, after that and tuning some server settings we went steadily upwards. There were some bugs with collisions such as Greco at Monza, but most of collisions were driver caused, as evidenced by WC, where there were hardly any start collisions all season. We had some issues with users from other side of world due to high pings, but that's reality of Internet gaming. At beginning of season we didn't have full grids in Ace, but towards end participation count increased.
- Tracks. This was biggest single challenge of the season: in winter we had perhaps 5 or 6 drivable F1 tracks for rF2. We more or less had to build China, Montreal (Dominguez) and Suzuka (JES) from scratch for rF2. Intense work on other tracks, including Imola, Hockenheim, Bahrain, Spa, COTA, Melbourne. We succeeded on every point except for one mistake: Spa should never have been used. Lesson learned is to only use the best quality tracks, no matter how hard community wants a Spa or Monaco. The same community will complain when track is buggy, simply pointless to drive on bad conversions.
- New division structure and limitations. There was a clear ladder between categories, this helped us a lot to remove useless turbulence between WC and Ace. This year there was no alien drivers in Ace, almost all drivers were in correct division. I strongly recommend to keep the current rules, so that top3 of Ace&Pro moves up to higher category. Same with Ace drivers in WC, this year we had limit of 3 double weekends. This limit should never be increased, especially not back to the old "top 10 in WC points" rule. Keep it same or decrease number of double race weekends.
- Race format changes. This got both positive and negative feedback. What can't be denied is that Ace Sprint race was generally the most exciting round of the weekend, lots of happenings every lap. The transition between Feature and Sprint race should somehow be done smoother so that we don't lose spectators in between.So what we learn from this is to only organize 30% sprint races... Seriously speaking, I prefer the shorter lengths of 60% in Ace Feature and Pro, it is a lot asked to involve spectators in watching three longer events.
- Broadcasts. FSR managed to maintain high-quality broadcasts, being arguably only league to offer 30+ broadcasts a season, all with two dedicated commentators. Big thanks to this goes to broadcast director Sam Jones and Jaakko Mikkonen and all commentators who mostly did an excellent job. I think Chris de Jong is also excellent candidate to perform stand-up-comedy, but not more about that...
Broadcast numbers increased from previous year, three races hit live viewcounts of well over 200, which is nearly 100% increase of previous peaks. Of course all is relative and much remains to be done when comparing this to some zillion of viewers watching League of Legends events (facepalm). There has been some interest of moving away from YouTube, it is something I understand from German perspective. Having said that, YouTube is one of the most stable platforms and came with zero issues all season.
- Server autodownload. Was a bit difficult to maintain, but having all content on autodownload and FSR server on 24/7 contributed to getting a lot of new drivers to join the server and thus FSR I believe. It was perhaps our best marketing channel. Plus keeping the mod relatively small, about 500 MB, unlike many GB what we had last few years. No extra crap like driver suits etc. are needed.
- Calendar: limited number of races. This kept excitement up until the last races, with WC being decided first time in FSR history in final race. We also managed to avoid "FSR fatigue" in which we lose a lot of members for the final races. If there is plan to increase number of races for next year, please stay moderate and increase by, say, at most a couple of races.
- FSR Manager. For yet another season, thanks to co-operation with Christian Smirnoff, FSR is the only league in 2014 to use proper anti-cheat, and only anti-cheat that exists for rF2. As a bonus, thanks to moving to rF2 we had no cheat cases, first time since 2010 btw. I hope Mr. Tacito, Keanie alias Thomas Cooke, Balanesko alias Kacherghin, Keller, Surralles, Hoffman & co are happy.
- Visibility. Belongs on positive side simply because we improved from previous year, although a lot remains to be done. FSR was featured on ISI Facebook a couple of times, on RD front page before season, broadcasts were announced on Facebook/Twitter and on iRacing and isiforums. We also saw couple of iRacing stars (Uusi-Jaakkola and Kerkhof) guest drive a race in FSR. However, a steady activity could not be maintained on social channels, again due to lack of press department.
- Server worked all season. Knock the wood...
What went less well...
- No highlights. This was obviously my main failure of the season, continuing the trend from second part of 2013. At couple of points of season I had a video editor guy available, but no script writer, then later a script writer, but no video editor. It should not be underestimated how serious effort is required to stick to releasing 12+ highlights a season. Only advice I can give: please get "Simon Adebisi" back from Bahamas, no matter what it costs...
- Post-race forum discussion. Directors did mostly a good job and were all committed, but each of them made a couple of unfortunate mistakes, thanks to which community totally overreacted. First part of season went without many issues, then suddenly hell broke lose in second half. Yes, the directors made some mistakes, mostly because 2 out of 3 were new to this job. This post-race crying is exact reason why we lost personnel and had to find rookie directors in first place. I would say 10% of the critic received was justified and the justified critic was acted upon. This problem with post-race checks is really something that we have had for each of the past 3 seasons, so again no easy solution exists. Overall there was no bias from any director what I could see, and the idea to somehow get three "independent" directors I find simply ludicrous.
- Human management (or whatever pseudo-term it should be called). There are two types of persons: those who work spontaneously and those who need regular kicks to butts to do anything. I know I should be the one delivering these kicks, but most of time I ended up doing the task myself quicker. Obviously this approach doesn't work in long run, president can't do everything. Here I can only suggest finding a next president that is better at this social mingling.
- Marketing. I never promised to find XX new sponsors in my campaign, it simply doesn't interest me much to write beg letters, neither did I have time. It has been attempted before by Roald Reurink and failure rate is 99%. Thrustmaster continued to be sponsor and bring us money for yet another season, basically thanks to Dominguez' relations. But of course more can be done on this front.
- Mod. This I rate as "less well" simply because it was huge effort to distribute and build mod, too many working hours, plus it was difficult for new teams to get their skins in. For next year something more efficient should be thought of, even if there is no obvious solution like with rF1.
- Press. For yet another season, Mr. Saxen was the instance of writing most race previews. Thankfully Mr. Patel contributed with post-race interviews. Honourable mention to Mr. Rodriguez for brave attempt. Also I guess to Mr. Kuncman for being only instance bothered to write some kind of post-race reports, like them or not.
- TOA. There was sadly no interaction between TOA and board except for the first few and last few weeks. Mostly because TOA and TOA Chairman were inactive. Part of blame goes to me for not initiating communication more often. Some decisions I made were criticized, such as decision to change slipstream values mid-season. With hindsight, I should have done those changes earlier and let TOA live with it. In my opinion efficient leadership cannot be maintained with current FSR structures.
- Nearly a month of my commitment was lost due to university forcing me to visit some paradise called Portugal in form of summer school. Not ideal.
So to sum it up, this year was mostly a transition year. I would say 80-90% of my time went dealing with technical challenges (rF2+mod+tracks) and daily forum support. Needless to say, the 10% remaining was not enough time to do much creative things. Next year this will hopefully change, as we have a more stable platform in rF2 to continue on.
Finally, the much awaited thanks go to @Eduard Mallorquí for making Minimalist UI and first proper Broadcast UI for rF2 after weeks of work, plus making banners for all broadcasts and tracks. @David Dominguez for Thrustmaster negotiations and building tracks and helping me to understand black art of track editing. @Sam Jones for organizing broadcasts, commentators, broadcasting himself, etc. for yet another season, always being available when needed. @Christian Smirnoff for working on some clever modifications to FSR Manager for rF2 and for running FSR Fantasy League for yet another season, it requires a lot of commitment.
Next, thanks to all directors, who despite being new did a good job. Eduard besides everything else efficiently directing WC, @Kris Cobb despite some issues emerged in midseason committed a lot of hours on correcting everything, really appreciated. @Carlos Martín for taking the interest of carefully judging every incident and pit exit cut etc, lots of hours again. @Jaakko_M for broadcasting and borrowing his PC superpowers for FSR use. All commentators (@Thomas Mundy , @Chris de Jong , @xownage133 , @James Sadler , @Jonny Simon) for entertaining comments and being available all season. First time I guess that no commentator quit mid-season; commentating is a very underestimated challenge.
Finally, thanks to @Pedro Rodrigues for being the treasurer for yet another season, making sure our money stays well. @Muhammed Patel for producing articles regularly which no one else unfortunately managed this year except @Ondrej Kuncman in second half and @Adrian Rodriguez for some help provided. @Georg Winter for doing texture work on Melbourne and making it look less useless track in my critical eyes. @Ron Squire for making updated championship standings on front page. And probably many more I forgot... Also thanks to all teams and drivers for what was an exciting 2014 season, hopefully it will continue well in future.
Now, time to hibernate for winter...
