LogFAQs > #939101075

Pre-Contest Thoughts
The first Game of the Decade was a fantastic contest. It was quite possibly the best contest weve had, so I was very excited when this one was announced as expected. In fact, Ive been some level of excited since the previous one ended, but mostly instantly afterwards and the past years. A lot have happened here since then, so its a slightly different format. While still 128 entrants in a 1v1 bracket, this time 12-hour matches are no longer a thing, instead we have several matches a day, which I do prefer.

Since then weve had some large rallies overtaking the contest partly due to the aforementioned low votals, so in 2018 a lot of anti-rally measurements were taken and all of those still apply today. This meant a registered user bonus when voting so that votes count double if you registered an account before the contest began and it also meant you had to vote in every match a day. The former of the two had changed results in the previous contest, so it is worth factoring in. The second thing while smaller likely also makes a difference in earlier matches.

There were no losers bracket this time, perhaps partly because most of the field has not been a contest before, so who would you remove? Of course, we couldve still had the losers bracket when we reached top 16 if we wanted to, but I dont mind it not being around this time, in particular if it would be constructed like last time where you run into the same entrant again in the losers bracket instead of being thrown into the opposite side. We did still get a second chance bracket that would go up in a week long break after the first three rounds, so there would still be something other than the regular bracket challenge to work on. Last Game of the Decade we had the Battle Challenge contest. I like that we try out some different things, as long as we keep the ordinary challenge.

Nominations went on for quite a while this time, there was a few delays for unexplained reasons both during nominations and during bracket creation. It did serve the purpose of pushing the contest into the time where the whole world was closed down to the pandemic and I have personally loved having this during the worst of it. The timing was perfect to me. The most interesting thing we learned during the nomination period was that remakes and remasters were in the database making them eligible for the first time. Allen actively removed Ocarina of Time 3D and Majoras Mask 3D indicating that it had to be full remakes, but the line ended up being shaky. The database had things such as Shadow of the Colossus and Ico, which would be very weird and stupid to have in the contest so perhaps Allen only actively removed the Zelda games because people were actually nominating them.

The bracket came out and theres a lot to talk about there. On the account of remakes, three of them ended up being in and it shows that the line of eligibility is a bit weird. Resident Evil 2 is quite the different game and right after its Game of the Year victory here it was expected to make it in. Then we had Pokemon HeartGold and SoulSilver and Persona 4 Golden, which were both more debatable. The latter especially is not much more original than the Zelda games, so perhaps Allen just specifically wanted no previous contest winners. Hopefully well still be able to see FFVIIR in a decade from now, thats a vastly different game! All three remakes were high seeds, so its possible Allen were not hugely in favor of remakes in general while these three were too popular to keep out. They made for a lot of discussion about whether or not they would act as proxies for the games theyre a remake of and to what extent.

While were talking about Pokemon, one of the first things I noticed were how little representation it had. The only entry is a remake of a 90s game which didnt even release this decade in Japan. It seems odd that Pokemon GO or some other generation didnt get in especially considering HGSS was seeded 3. Was it really favored that much? I have a hard time believing that no other Pokemon game had no more nominations than some of the things that made it in, perhaps Allen thought one was enough seeing how similar they are.

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Guinness Book of World Records is the name of the diary that belongs to azuarc, the winner of the Game of the Decade II guru contest.