Board 8 > Any interest in "Best FFVII Remake Song" contest? (+ advice needed)

(+) Yeah! (+)

The soundtrack was released today, and of course the songs have been circulating online for some time before now. I've never really ran anything here, and was thinking of re-running a "Best FFVII Song" contest a while back to see what changed, if anything, from the original ran in 2012 by GrapefruitKing (RIP). But then life gets in the way and I never follow through on anything, but maybe posting this gets me one step closer to following through.

Final Fantasy VII Remake's main soundtrack consists of 156 songs (wouldn't include the "Disc 8" jukebox ones) so it is pretty beefy, but of ridiculously great quality. Too much to be done through polls, it'd have to be post-to-vote. Which begs a few questions, like:

(1) Do it bracket-style, or through some other method eg throwing 3 or 4 songs into a group where only top 1 or 2 advance? Or throwing down x songs per round and having posters rank them 1 through x?

(1a) If bracket-style, could double elimination even work or with so many songs, stick with a single elimination bracket? I was always thinking of doing it double-elim style, especially since I'm not even sure how we could go about seeding them, but there really are so many....

(2) Seriously, how would the seeding even happen? Would I do it based on personal preference? Maybe I solicit people to give me their "top x" lists and create seeding based on board consensus? Have one area of the bracket based on brand-new songs and the other based on those modeled off of ones from the original FF7?

(3) How to handle similar songs? For example, we've got a few boss fights which are variations of "Those Who Fight Further". Keep them separated or try to match them up earlier on so there's fewer songs with a similar motif?

I'd lean on people who've been active longer than I have and who's been running these kinds of contests for years... any advice would be appreciated in addition to your poll response, thanks.

Just like last time, my first advice is to wait until after VGMC ends

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Wait, what do you mean by last time... the original Best FFVII Song contest or something else?

That is a fair point though, hadn't even thought about it. But I'd need time to get everything set up anyways so holding works out... assuming I even do it.

There was some other vgm contest somebody ran a year or two ago during vgmc which didn't go well. I assumed it was you who ran it.

I'll give more detailed advice later when I get on a laptop

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Nah I've seriously never ran anything but I imagine whoever that was made the same mistake that I would have. Appreciate the head's up on that (plus any post-laptop advice)

Alright, my opinions:

I glanced at the VGMDB page and it looks like there are almost 150 songs (woops 156 you did the work for me). That's a lot. I'm willing to bet a good deal of those are unremarkable and aren't really worth getting into the contest. Say only half of those would have any real strength. At that point, a 64 song bracket starts to look appropriate. Having every song be from the same game could be a very interesting case study for SFF/LFF, and I have no idea what would happen with that. I'd say it's probably best to avoid it and do 1v1 bracket-style matches, but if you want you can mix up two matches in a free-for-all and let the top two advance like you suggested. The former is more similar to VGMC so the latter could be better at avoiding fatigue and keeping things interesting. Double elimination is probably unnecessary for this. I think those are best for contests with a lot of variety, and this isn't it.

Of course, you need to decide which songs would get into the bracket if you did use one. I think you can kill two birds with one stone by asking for nominations/top x songs, like you said. You can probably have freedom in how you do this since the options are reasonably limited. Freeform VGMC-style noms, a poll somewhere where people can vote for which songs they want, further categorizing by type (battle, character, overworld...) so that people have to voice preferences for their favorites of each genre, etc. Maybe allow people to rank their favorites? This way, you can get an estimate of the strengths of each song for seeding purposes and you know which are safest to through out. if less than 64 unique songs get nommed choose your favorite who cares. As for variations of the same song, I'd say group them together for noms purposes and people can voice which one they most badly want in. Of course, people may not care enough to nominate, which may be a sign that there isn't enough interest to sustain the contest. It may be a good bellwether.

This is GameFAQs, apparently the one place on the Internet where disparate genres face each other in matches. I'd say keep on with this tradition and try to keep as much variety as possible in each division, avoiding grouping similar songs together.

uhh that's my spiel I'm happy to discuss this further. lefty, azuarc, deo (banshiryuu) and mycro (toxtricity) would be good resources for this

keep in mind that I personally have only run one contest. It was of a single soundtrack, like this... run mostly as a joke and which got at most 15 votes per day (which is better than I expected but otoh, was for a better soundtrack). https://challonge.com/AyeshaOfTheYear

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randomize seeding

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it's the dubstep battle theme

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no because hip hop de chocobo has no competition

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thanks NFUN. Though I gotta say, and I know I'm not entirely impartial here, but there really isn't much fat in the soundtrack... it's also not like it's just one composer like most soundtracks are done, there are all kinds of contributors. The guy who did the music in Ace Combat gets parachuted in for a boss theme that's arguably one of the best in the game, for example.

But it's also a case of have unique battle themes, even beyond boss battles, that only show up one time or one area, it does fill up pretty quickly... maybe some fat-cutting opportunities in some preliminary rounds before heading into a bracket style showdown.

And on one hand, keeping different types separate is probably a good idea but maybe grouping together the different battle, boss battle, field, character etc. themes together lend for more direct comparisons in voting. Though again that's my own bias speaking because I'll almost always go for louder, action-oriented songs... but then something like Midnight Rendezvous pops up.

A lot to consider and plenty of time to do it, assuming I do it, I mean that poll's not looking too hot and the effort involved, hmm...

ninkendo posted...

it's the dubstep battle theme

Hell yeah "The Most Muscular"

but does that technically qualify as dubstep... was thinking it's just straight techno

FFDragon posted...

no because hip hop de chocobo has no competition

Yes but that's in the "Jukebox" collection so wouldn't be included/trounce all the competition

Removing Link to make it fairer. Smart.

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