In case people forgot like me, the nom schedule is identical to last year, assuming 20 unique noms and 128 locks still. Even "April 19st" is a typo from copypasting last year's post!
I feel like I'm already late to this topic, but we have a good 11 days to discuss potential rule changes, even if they're not implemented until a future year. Here are some broad topics to consider:
1) Hosting support: Should we open up hosting duties to the community? Seeing deo forget or be unable to post this topic multiple times this week, I'm reminded that 4 months of nominations, bracket construction, topic posting, and vote tallying is a lot of work to put on one person! With the growth from 128 to 192 to 256 and loop/composer tagging, it's only getting worse while we're getting older with outside responsibilities and life changes. deo already gets a lot of help with admin stuff, we're just missing a more official way to contribute. How can I help with posting the topic when deo's away? How do I tally votes accurately? Maybe we can lighten the load by assigning each day of the week to different people for the match topic, but there need to be resources to support that. Many of us know how hosting works by now, and the contest will probably progress towards being more community-run anyway.
2) Long bracket stage: Is 256 songs still worth making the bracket take over 3 months to finish? Can we either reduce it or do something to get through it faster? Last year's songs averaged 3m48s *if* you skip at the loop, which was over 20 minutes of critical listening per day, for half of May and most of June. That's just round 1, the first half of the contest! We can at least do a survey on how people feel about 256, and there's nothing wrong with trying 128 for one year before returning to 256 again. Separately from the bracket size, I've often mentioned how energies are high to start the contest, which we should utilize to power through matches in the first few weeks. This can range from an official "super week" to occasionally posting future matches that people can vote in now to save time later.
3) Noms and representation: Does everyone feel like their voice can be heard with the power of supports and doubles? A community bracket would ideally represent each demographic proportionally, *except* no one gets rounded down to zero representation. We're in a stable B8-Siiva-Supra period where we can try things that were vulnerable to bad actors in the past, like giving people the power to push in that one darling song. It would be a big leap to do auto-include noms, but we can try something with going beyond doubles. Everyone gets three triples? Or two quadruples? One quintuple? Maybe they can distribute their 20 votes across as few songs as they like, but with a cap per song. Representation is connected to bracket size too - we grew to 256 to have more tastes represented, yet doubling the field doesn't shift any demographics directly...we just get more of everything in the same proportions.
4) Nom deadlines: How many rules do we add to try and satisfy everyone? All these deadlines are getting to a point where I have a hard time keeping them in my head, not to mention the newcomers parsing them for the first time. Some people like locks and some people like a moving cutoff, should both deadlines be stuffed in together each year? It can satisfy both sides, but it's also more criteria to worry about. This year, I'm reducing my original noms and have seen comments considering the same - will that make supports more concentrated and push the cutoff higher? I have no idea, so now I have to track how many songs are locking daily, check how many lock slots are free before the deadline, decide if I want to push for any locks, drop songs before the last day, then manage the moving cutoff at the end (whose speed is itself affected by how many users' votes are sitting on locks). I'm getting too old for this! Casual, public games are fun because they impose rules that are easy to learn and play with, and that goes for both veterans and newcomers.
More opinionated thoughts:
I come back to this contest precisely because things change and fiascos happen - last year was uneventful without many newcomers or rule changes, and I couldn't tell you much about the highlights. I do remember the weird but fun VGMC 14 wildcards, the Drift Stage conspiracy being unravelled, and the full bracket lock of VGMC 15 - those are fun memories! I loved the retiree sets of 13 and 14, but I'd get bored if retirees looked like that every year. 18 years has gotten us to a solid community and we shouldn't be afraid of trying small changes, even if they work terribly and promptly get reverted. VGMC will still be VGMC!
Personally, I've always been here for the bracket phase and retirees, but I'm planning to skip a few rounds this year because of how long 256 songs take. But I also see people say nominations are the best part - maybe that's a sign that we need more events like crowdsources, community mixes, or VGM gift exchanges? Putting all your worth into a song making or not making a bracket among 500-1000 other songs has never seemed like a healthy way to connect with a community. The idea of people stopping to appreciate your songs is an illusion too - there's no time for reviews or repeat listens when there are noms to get through, supports to organize, deadlines to worry about...it's more an outdoor music festival than a hangout at a friend's house. I guess I'm saying that VGMC has never felt like it was about anything other than the bracket for me, and it's great that people can find the fun in noms but maybe there can be a better-shaped hole for their square peg.
Well, I wrote too much as usual but it's always fun to gather for a VGM event with such a long history. The community has shown its resilience over the years and I'm sure it'll survive for many more, whether everything goes smoothly or makes grown-ups type angry words on the Internet!