Contest Stats and Discussion - Part 1383

All right, let's talk about some Games 2015 stuff since the retrospective starts tomorrow.

First of all, this was announced after Allen canceled his original idea, Worst Character Ever. Not sure how he didn't realize that was a bad idea, but the result was a new Games Contest.

And we finally got what we wanted: 1-on-1, no divisions by era, 24-hour matches. It's wild to think it took until 2015 for us to get that. Allen was always adamant about not reducing the bracket size, so that meant he had to come up with a new format. That format turned out to be four matches per day, with each match starting at 8 P.M. Eastern time instead of midnight.

There was some mixed reaction to the format. There were worries about rally overlap (which turned out to be warranted) or reduced vote totals due to running multiple matches at once, but overall, it was well received as a new format.

The format for deciding the bracket was a bit more controversial because Allen used a weighted system of nominations and Metacritic reviews. The result is that it favored newer games and some older games got the shaft (like Mario 1 or Zelda 1). The Guru nomination, Sonic 3 & Knuckles, also got boned because we used a Steam port (which naturally had no real review scores) as a way to finally get it into the contest. However, Allen's hatred for S3&K could not be denied.

It was also noteworthy that League of Legends was left out. It was ambiguous whether it simply didn't have enough nominations combined with Metacritic scores or if Allen just outright banned it, but either way, it wouldn't stop another contest from getting overrun by rallies.