Soreth @Soreth@awoo.space

I'm going to talk a bit about my experience being on-stage at AGDQ last year and prepping to do such this year since people are already spinning tales of super tight policing and controls over GDQ commentary and we haven't even started yet. Repost w/a linkback as you desire.

I think something people don't realize is there's no training/briefing for runners or commentators. You do a simple tech setup a couple of days before the run to make sure things work, but there's no sitting down and being told "Here's how you do the thing, here's what we wanna see and don't wanna see".

An hour before your run you show up and check in with staff. When you're "on deck" you're taken to a green room (at AGDQ2020 this was a corner of the stage with a curtain around it), you check your details are correct (name, pronouns, etc) and get a SUPER quick rundown on how to signal for a mic mute, when to take your headset off, and how to signal for time.

At no point are you told what you can or can't say; you're expected to follow the CoC every attendee is given (especially the section on stream room decorum). What you can see as an attendee or even non-attendee is exactly what commentators/runners are held to.

You're also given no briefing on mic use, which I think could be useful, but the headsets have really rigid mics and you're told not to touch them once audio check is done.

During setup you just plunk on the couch, put a headset on (they sanitize them between each run, thankfully), they go one by one and ask each person with a mic to respond to "Can you hear me? Can you hear each other?" and talk a second. That's what happens during setup while the host is talking.

During the run, tech and the producer can talk directly to your headset. Any time "something" happens and GDQ says "We warned the runner for this", that's how they did it. For my commentary, production never talked; they didn't need to.

There's also a TV with a monitor of what's being sent to Twitch on stage. At AGDQ2020 it was actually right under the runner's feet, but really its only purpose is so you can see when you're live or not. People on the couch and running can see when they're live, what the feed looks like, etc.

When the run is over and setup is cut back in, a gopher hops on stage and starts sheperding people off-- rather quickly to be honest but there's timetable so it's understandable ;)

There's no post-mortem or anything. You go straight from going off stage to the green room to grab anything you left there, and are expected to leave quickly to not distract the next runner that's already in there.

If you didn't do something horribly inappropriate during your run, staff never talks to you aside from setup. If you did, I believe the process is someone from enforcement finds you and asks you to come talk to staff about what happened-- but obviously I've never been in that situation (:

Anyway tl;dr: for as smooth as AGDQ goes, there's SHOCKINGLY little runner-facing setup, pre-flight, and even control and protocol. It's expected for the most part that if you're given a mic, you're already proven to not be an asshole.

Sometimes they get that part wrong though.