LogFAQs > #872236548

Hey, sorry for not responding sooner. Do yourself a favor and if your parents are alive, tell them to sell off all the stuff in their house before they die. My back is killing me. ><


For older songs for which I'm aware of a ruling already in place, like Ring a Bell, I'm going to trust the wisdom of my predecessors, just as I'm not going to overturn the eligibility of Homestuck even if I could make an argument on its behalf. And if there are previous rulings for songs, I'd like to know what they are, but in this case I believe I have to pass judgement myself.

So speaking generally, since this is a discussion topic and you might like to know my thought process, the basis for eligibility on a song is always going to be "is this video game music?" My working interpretation of that will be "was it written for the game?" Most songs have a single composer or team that did the rest of the soundtrack, so duh, this is usually easy to decide. When an outside artist contributes a single, though, we need ways to establish a basis for what is, admittedly, a subjective criteria.

In general, release dates are a great tool here because they can point to a very obvious cause-and-effect relationship. Ain't No Rest For the Wicked was released by Cage the Elephant about a year before Borderlands was released. Even though it wasn't an established mainstream song until afterward, such that many gamers were first exposed to it through the game, there's no mistaking that it was not written for the game. I'm usually going to ask for the release date of a track in various media first because it can often establish ineligibility.

Unfortunately, Over the Clouds is not that clear-cut, either in terms of release date, or in terms of obvious intuitive factors like my Metallica example earlier. It was written by a pop artist. That's a strike against it. The release date coincided with the game's release. That works in its favor. The other song on the single was released for another product that was available to the public 4 months prior. I'm really not sure what to make of that. The lyrics don't appear to have anything to do with the game, but it's also used in the intro. Not a great deal of help so far.

However, what strikes me most is that the most watched link on YouTube has over 10 million views. Normally this wouldn't mean anything, but when this happens with VGM, you can see a trickle down effect of people watching the rest of the OST, or choice other videos related to the game. However, the next most viewed video for anything related to God Eater has less than a seventh of the views on OtC. Therefore, most people who know the song know it for distinctly non-VGM reasons. I'll admit it's an imperfect reason, but it's why I'm inclined to label Over the Clouds a non-VGM song. (Hold that thought.)

By comparison, if Mac's screenshot is accurate, I see no reason to preclude White Light. Eyes on Me was permitted in two contests and, according to the research provided, Superfly was writing the song in large part from inspiration taken from the game. Put that way, it's very hard to argue it wasn't written for the game. But here's the funny thing, if I use the same argument as above for White Light, it's an even worse offender than Over the Clouds. So, in what is a complete and total edge case, my personal philosophy is to favor inclusion over exclusion. Therefore, by a very narrow margin, I'll allow it. (Oh, and White Light, too.)


I will probably not put this much effort into a single song's eligibility during the nomination period, so if anyone else has any iffy songs to consider, now's better than later.