Board 8 > VGMC 11: Coming Soon(tm) -- AMA

(+) Yeah! (+)

It's been far too long since the board has anything truly VGM-related. When VGMCX ended last summer, I didn't imagine the board would go quite so dead, or that the hole from not running Best OST would be quite so big. As such, I'm making this thread well ahead of time so that hopefully people see it, and start thinking about it, and nobody manages to miss the entire nomination period when it finally opens because they're actually looking for it.

Time frame is not set in stone. I'm very occupied right now cleaning out my dad's house and dealing with other aspects of his estate. I'm not going to pretend that the majority of the work for the contest isn't in the set-up stages. And that's assuming that newbie can update the script to accommodate site changes in time, which he says he intends to work on, but he's been quite busy as well.

But I'm hoping to aim for starting nominations around the beginning of March. So if it comes off that way, consider this four weeks' notice.

Will it be the same nomination format?
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Tag!
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Why isn't it VGMC XI
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Is this going to be excluding (or limited to) past participants?
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Hype
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JONALEON1 posted...

Will it be the same nomination format?

I wanted to try a different nomination format last year, but I saw no benefit to the nominate-and-support method, so I will be sticking to VGMC tradition and doing it the old way. 20 nominations and 5 doubles.

SupremeZero posted...

Why isn't it VGMC XI

It could be, but we haven't done a space before, and VGMCXI looks like some needlessly complicated acronym. Would you prefer it that way?

Hmm, FFXI doesn't have a subtitle, does it...maybe just VGMC Online. =p

NFUN posted...

Is this going to be excluding (or limited to) past participants?

Outside of the retiree list, there will be no exclusions. That was an idea l3fty peppered in last year before we knew it was going to be a field of 128.

Now, if you want to tell me we should be reinviting the retirees, that's a completely separate discussion, and one I will listen to, but it isn't my intention at this time.

azuarc posted...

Outside of the retiree list, there will be no exclusions. That was an idea l3fty peppered in last year before we knew it was going to be a field of 128.

can't wait for my yearly listen to reach for the moon, immortal smoke
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Assuming it loses round 1. You might get to listen to it several times!

Id Purpose let's goooooooooooooooooooo

did that retire? I don't remember
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azuarc posted...

Assuming it loses round 1. You might get to listen to it several times!

Only if me and Drak rally it... which would seriously not be worth it.

Anyway, I guess I'm defending predix champion, so come at me scrublords I'm ripped.
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azuarc posted...

I wanted to try a different nomination format last year, but I saw no benefit to the nominate-and-support method, so I will be sticking to VGMC tradition and doing it the old way. 20 nominations and 5 doubles.

So it's gonna be 256 entrants this year then?
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JONALEON1 posted...

So it's gonna be 256 entrants this year then?

I didn't say that.

ask you anything, huh? okay then.

See, I had a dream a few weeks back where I was on Board 8 and saw a VGMC topic and my reaction was, "Pfft, yeah right, this isn't happening, this is a dream" which was the correct call. But then I woke up and there were even more VGMC topics so I was like "****, that was real!" ...only to realize my waking up was part of the dream and this was still a dream, a fact I realized when I woke up for real.

So, I guess my question is, "How do I know this is real and not the hellscape that is my mind?"

(also march you're killing me here)
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xp1337 posted...

So, I guess my question is, "How do I know this is real and not the hellscape that is my mind?"

In your dreams, would I remind you that Song of the Ancients / Fate lost to Neon Mines?

azuarc posted...

xp1337 posted...

So, I guess my question is, "How do I know this is real and not the hellscape that is my mind?"

In your dreams, would I remind you that Song of the Ancients / Fate lost to Neon Mines?

sorry can't get me down on that right now, i just came over from playing Drakengard 3 and being blessed with its great music

Also, I don't know. Maybe? When my dreams veer off into "faking me out by being about things that could plausibly be real" they can get fairly convincing. That's a pretty obscure way to get me though, presumably my subconscious would go for SPHILIA to troll me.
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Anyway, I guess I could ask you some edge eligibility case questions since my response to said dream was to occupy my time by thinking about VGMC11 noms.

If you don't want to deal with this now and would rather handle it during noms, that's cool, I mean it's possible I just abandon these nom ideas later anyway so it never matters.

God Eater - Over the Clouds. I was looking into this to see if it originated before the game. I think I found that it got a CD release in Japan the day before the game's JPN release (and a ringtone like a week or two before or something?). Does that technically mean it didn't originate in a game?
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Is there a list of any sorts of all songs ever nominated and been in the contest?
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Sweet
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greengravy294 posted...

Is there a list of any sorts of all songs ever nominated and been in the contest?

This is mostly accurate: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1K1XdLWiUKB2kX99qYBgnRbLU_sCz4dvZSByKKJHCT6o/edit#gid=0

xp1337 posted...

God Eater - Over the Clouds. I was looking into this to see if it originated before the game. I think I found that it got a CD release in Japan the day before the game's JPN release (and a ringtone like a week or two before or something?). Does that technically mean it didn't originate in a game?

If that's accurate, then technically yes, by past precedents it would be. Not precedents I'm fond of enforcing, mind you, if it's literally only one day's difference. Given the small difference, can I safely assume the song was written for the game?

i don't know that's more research than i'd care to do >_>
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Ask Nio. I bet she knows.

azuarc posted...

greengravy294 posted...

Is there a list of any sorts of all songs ever nominated and been in the contest?

This is mostly accurate: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1K1XdLWiUKB2kX99qYBgnRbLU_sCz4dvZSByKKJHCT6o/edit#gid=0

I made a new rendition of the "Top Unretired" sheet using the super precise ranking formula of Appearances * AvgRound^2, and sorting. While there's some predictable perennials in there, it's still a pretty interesting list to contemplate at the top. Here's what a bracket of the top 64 there would look like:

http://www.bracketmaker.com/tmenu.cfm?tid=465658

azuarc posted...

As such, I'm making this thread well ahead of time so that hopefully people see it, and start thinking about it, and nobody manages to miss the entire nomination period when it finally opens because they're actually looking for it.

heyo
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azuarc posted...

Ask Nio. I bet she knows.

I don't think Go Shiina was involved on this one! But I'd have to double-check to be 100% sure.

Eh, we can revisit this later I guess provided I still want to nom it. We can crowd-source the research because I'm lazy and way too rule-paranoid. >_>

So am I right in this being an accurate summary so far:
-Probably starts in early March
-Classic VGMC nom style
-Probably 128 songs
-Same retirement/exclusion rules
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I haven't been here for a "classic" nomination style, how does that work?
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Even if he (likely) wasn't, I know Nio has the soundtrack, and she's also been a good reference for pop songs in Asia. There have been a few times in the past where she's helped the host deem a song ineligible by virtue of having heard it outside of game context, equivalent to if we couldn't find proof that Florence and the Machine song from The Witcher 2 was out before the game was, and someone said they heard it on the radio a year earlier.

Your summary is accurate, as it stands. I toyed with the notion of permitting the retired list for one contest for the lulz, but I'm not thinking I'm going to do that. And I think 128 is the correct length for the contest. 256 is unbearably lengthy -- round 1 takes as long as the entire contest did last year (in number of matches). At 128, there's less fatigue, we still get to hear a bunch of interesting songs assuming you waded through the nominations, and maybe just maybe it will leave us with the desire to run some other projects in the interim since it won't run for 5 months.

trdl23 posted...

I haven't been here for a "classic" nomination style, how does that work?

Everyone has 20 nominations and 5 "doubles". You put them on whichever songs you want, and the songs with the most support get in.

There tends to be a LOT of shifting and consolidating of votes under this system, as people who try to lead the way by promoting a bunch of tracks early realize that nobody's biting on some of their stuff and retract it to support other songs. And then the people who have supports on a song that's only got 2 total supports realize 2 isn't going to cut it, so they either cut ties for something else or they reinforce it by using one of their doubles. And then...

The last 24 hours of the nomination period tends to be madness. I was hoping to manage this a bit with the system I used last year, but I don't think there were any clear benefits, and as long as we have a functioning script parser, it isn't that much more work to tally 3 topics worth of posts (with retractions and new supports aplenty) than it is 2.

Thank you, Nio. I'm not sure I understand the significance of having them as ringtones. Was it released in those other formats before God Eater came out?

Fun fact I realized today: Death Magnetic, the Metallica album, was released for DLC on Guitar Hero 3 on the same day the album was available to the public.

If you're wondering, no, you will not be able to nominate tracks from it. Those tracks were not composed for the game, unlike, say, Buckethead's Jordan.

eligibility has always been based on the song being written for the game

the rule is intended to filter out stuff like rhythm game music and licensed soundtracks a la Braid, not songs released to promote the game
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I assume we'll still have no changes allowed in the last 24 hours?
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azuarc posted...

Fun fact I realized today: Death Magnetic, the Metallica album, was released for DLC on Guitar Hero 3 on the same day the album was available to the public.

If you're wondering, no, you will not be able to nominate tracks from it. Those tracks were not composed for the game, unlike, say, Buckethead's Jordan.

This reminds me, does anybody know if Tales of Zestiria's White Light OP is elligible for nomination? Cause if so that has my vote
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http://puu.sh/tLL2F/0dc0b3c9e8.png
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Also sad that songs from previous contests will still be allowed, but oh wells.
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White Light is the perfect example of a song that should be ineligible by technicality, but eligible by common sense
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#FreeWhiteLight

I feel like we can afford some latitude in elligibility so long as a song is clearly meant for a game. Like...the quintessential example I'd go to for inelligibility is Way to Fall from MGS3. Nobody remembers it for any reason other than being featured in that game, but since it came out wayyyyy before Snake Eater did, it's not elligible. Something that was made FOR a game and basically joint-released with it should count though.
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there's no need to free it - we have PRECEDENT

Karma was released a month before TotA and that's been in a contest
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I just want to nominate Ring a Bell this year so I support whatever stipulations allow that to happen.
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Thanks for the info, Nio. After that I was tending to agree with your assessment of ineligible... but lefty seems to be saying it should be okay by the spirit of the rule, even if not strictly the letter? Or maybe I'm misreading?
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There are tons of games that had their soundtracks released before the game actually came out. I'm astounded that people are actually debating the eligibility of stuff like that.
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Had too long a day. I'll catch up with all this tomorrow. ><

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.

I'm not going to lie. I have some misgivings about this ruling, since I feel like it's setting me up for other songs to be argued, but that's how I'm going to play it for now.

But yes, of course we want the in-game version.

azuarc posted...

I'm not going to lie. I have some misgivings about this ruling, since I feel like it's setting me up for other songs to be argued, but that's how I'm going to play it for now.

But yes, of course we want the in-game version.

So for example in White Light's case the short versions used for the game OPs would be employed? I can live with that. Means we lose a couple b****in' solos but it's better than no song at all!
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I think it makes sense to always be as inclusive as possible. If something's on the borderline, include it. To who's benefit is banning it?
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man that ruling just makes me feel like i'm being told "i'll allow it but you should feel bad if you try"

Okay, here's another one: Trails of Cold Steel II - Aria -Holy Saint, Holy Spirit-

Backstory: Technically, the origin is that it appeared on Falcom's Super Arrange Album of Cold Steel I songs. It's a vocal arrange of a song that originated in Cold Steel I that winds up being used in Cold Steel II.

Bonus Mode: The Super Arrange version almost serves as a "Full Version" of the song, as the CS2 in-game version loops much earlier, cutting out a good deal of the Super Arrange version.
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