Board 8 > [VGMC] VGMC Topic 6 -- Results and Discussion, the end is nigh

(+) Yeah! (+)

>How did Emil Karma win?

Uncontroversy is a strength. If everybody thinks a song is fine, with one or two people who hate it and a few who love it, it can do well against opponents who are polarizing, depending on how the exact demographics look. For example, Emil went against Bodhisattva Kill and Laguerra del Mundo. Both of these songs have huge proponents (me and az, for example), but a lot of people hate that style. If 20 people love it and 20 people hate LdM and 2 people hate, 3 people love, and 35 people are fine with Emil, then if the people who love LdM and were going to vote for it regardless are also the people who hate Emil and a couple of the Emil people love both but prefer the latter, then the score might look something like 18-22 Emil.

Of course, those made-up numbers are obscuring perhaps the biggest reason it won: hilariously low votals. That contest had like 25 voters. You're gonna get all kinds of weirdness with small sample sizes.

Anyway, let's look at the reviews of the contest after Emil won:

GOOD SONG GOOD WINNER!:
KCF: Great winners in back-to-back years despite the majority of the two contests being disappointments.
tazzy: Scars > Extreme > Karma > Reset > Zero > Hope > Papilliones > Elferia > Truth > MGS2 Theme > Sphillia
arti: Did not expect it to win the contest when I nominated it, but pretty good champion anyway.
barrel: Good winner, better than last year's.

BAD SONG BAD WINNER!:
Orichamaru: Emil Karma is far from champion material by any means... it is one of three retirees this year I actually outright disliked
az: Emil Karma is far from champion material by any means
Sceptile: Somewhat depressing ending. Oh well, not as depressing as last year

MEH:
pyre: Ok end to what was a mostly bad contest, other than Whereabouts of Light doing well.
Janus:Contest was all over the place. Disappointing (though not outright bad) winner
Mycro: <disappointed that FCDH lost, doesn't care about Emil>
xuxon: i like Emil Karma but it's one of the worse champions in a contest that typically produces really good ones
dowolf: It's a decent finish
xp: Emil / Karma is a good song, but nowhere near champion-worthy IMO

idk:
FL: Hope > EXEC_SPHILIA/. > Zero > The Extreme > Seize the Truth! > Emil Karma > Reset (Thank You version) > Despair of ELFERIA > Papilliones > Scars of Time > MGS2 Theme

It's basically what I remember and how I described. A few fans, a few haters, and a lot of people who thought it was ok, but not exceptional in any way, and didn't want it to win... despite presumably voting for it often.

There's been discussions about stuff like this on Discord in the past (https://discordapp.com/channels/87835278454050816/SPACE 165663406735622145/590277430615474186, https://discordapp.com/channels/87835278454050816/SPACE 165663406735622145/590293496632705025), where people both notice that winners in the past tended to be the songs nobody hates rather than songs a lot of people loved, and express a preference for champions that push the envelope and do something unique and interesting rather than ones they like ok but don't think are special.

I'm not arguing that Endeavour deserves to win more than Isoleucine because a lot of people dislike it. I'm arguing that they both deserve to win. If too many people hate Endeavour for it to be a good winner... then it won't win lmao.

The trend of lowest common denominator songs winning was bucked (probably; Mycro did some analysis on this to the contrary) in VGMC 13, and I would really like it to stay that way. I'd rather have fucking DNF win that some mediocrity I can't muster any strong opinions about. Winners should be special, the best in their class, not whatever is bland enough for everybody to swallow so that polarizing opposition gets steamrolled. Obviously this depends on the voting base's tastes and not cerebral arguments, but I still want to strongly disagree with Gamebop in his core thesis that winners should be unhated. That's the antithesis of what these contests should be

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hey, i hated zero in VGMC6 and it won anyway. clearly, that wasn't a lowest common denominator song!!

edit: i'm mostly joking as i know that nfun said that those kind of songs also have a few haters but i do wonder if my hatred for the song was that uncommon? that contest was so long ago, i don't really remember.

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I definitely like Emil/Karma, and probably voted for it in a good number of its matches, but yeah, I wouldn't say it's the best Nier song or anything. The one thing that really stands out there is arti saying he nominated it, and still only saying it's a "pretty good champion". Like, what? Even the song's initial nominator can't get hyped that it won the contest?

I'm not really going to condemn that type of winner though. I mean, what are you supposed to vote for when all your favorite songs go out in earlier rounds?

Mr Lasastryke posted...

hey, i hated zero in VGMC6 and it won anyway. clearly, that wasn't a lowest common denominator song!!

To me, Seize the Truth and Emil Karma are the only ones that feel like LCD songs. Maybe MGS2 Theme? Can't remember how passionate people were about that.
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Emil / Karma and Seize the Truth both in that "good song, but really weird champion especially given the OSTs they come from" category and that's true for Emil / Karma even accounting for the Nier retirees at the time. (also emil / sacrifice better version fight me)

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I like Emil/Karma a lot more now than I did at the time of that writeup, for the record.

I agree on "not the best Nier song", but it's probably top 5 and like at this point I'd probably consider something like 25% of the Nier/Nier Automata soundtracks to be great champions.
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ehhhh maybe I shouldn't make posts like that at 4:30 am. Or while I've got enough outside things in my life to worry about for that matter.

In retrospect I feel like the bigger thing isn't that Endeavour itself makes a bad champion (well, to me it still would but that's aside the point), but rather Isoleucine losing is what would really feel like such a shame to me here. Like ideally a contest winner would be -loved- by all, but realistically I don't think that's happening. I wasn't around for contests 6-12 and don't often like looking back on those results so maybe that is some of why this sort of thing was coming from me or why I didn't really think much of winners "weakly liked by all" which certainly misses the ideal mark. Arguably yeah Endeavour probably does a better job at reaching the ideal situation than something like that, being "-loved- by many" but at the cost of being despised by others. But meanwhile Isoleucine feels like it reaches the same sort of "-loved- by many" level, while still appearing to be enjoyed by most of the rest of the broad community, even to a point stronger than I'd expect from most unoffensive songs. Or maybe I'm still just simultaneously overthinking & underthinking stats and stuff again. Whatever, we'll see what happens.

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GameBopAdv posted...

ehhhh maybe I shouldn't make posts like that at 4:30 am. Or while I've got enough outside things in my life to worry about for that matter.

don't worry, 6:45 (and still awake) me nearly came in hot with a post that would've been embarrassing even by several years ago me standards

Emil/Karma is by far the best example of an LCD winner, but I never really heard people talking about this idea until after Sunshine Coastline won. SC is a lot more enjoyable of a song, so it has that radio pop flair that EK does not, so I can understand why someone might say it won for being unhated rather than being well-liked. I don't really agree with that sentiment, but I would understand it. (And the same argument can extend to Seize the Truth.)

However, i will go on record that Emil/Karma is also the worst champion we've had. It is the one I like least, and I also think it is objectively the least good song of the bunch. I don't hate Emil/Karma, because it's got good drumwork and you have to be some kind of monster (or GBA) to dislike Emi Evans's vocals, however I can't imagine there's anyone who feels strongly about it. It's very much the epitome of a 6/10 song, and champions should not be 6/10 when there's got to be at least a few dozen tracks that should surpass that even under the most extreme of evaluations.

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I feel quite strongly about Emil/Karma now. This is probably anathema to the music preferences of some people in this group, but to me there's something to be said for simplicity in music composition. If you can make a song to be emotionally clear and compelling then that is really all you need in order to make memorable music, and the value of simplicity in this context is that it allows the concise presentation of whatever that emotional idea is. My go-to example for this is Dreams of the Shore Bordering Another World which could easily be my favorite vgm ever, but Emil/Karma is another good example of this.

I do see where you are coming from though because some of my least favorite champions so far are Reset and Seize the Truth, and one way I would describe my thoughts on those is "aggressively uninteresting". I'm not quite sure what leads to some songs being compelling and some being uninteresting, but that's how I feel at any rate.

Also this isn't to say complex music is bad or that I don't like complex music--either statement would be very wrong.
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the worst champion we've had is reset (thank you) because bad songs shouldn't be winning matches let alone contests

boom got 'em

(Reset is actually good, but Reset (Thank You) is ughhhhhh)

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Hope is easily the least deserving winner as it is the epitome of a nothing song. It doesn't do anything, attempt to go anyway, or stand out in any way. I'm 100% positive it only won matches because of whatever contextual value it has because this was during the period where B8 was obsessed with Umineko, and I was seemingly the only person in the VGM scene who didn't read it.
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It's not like Hope plays in particularly amazing scenes, early on at least, but I loved it the first time I heard it. The big zts songs are far more enhanced by context than Hope is.
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the real problem with Hope's title is that it beat the vastly superior Trombe! in the final tbqh
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I absolutely disagree with the claim that Hope does not go anywhere or attempt to stand out.
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lol trombe

now there's a meme of a song if there ever was one
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https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/8-gamefaqs-contests/78892792

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NFUN posted...

idk:
FL: Hope > EXEC_SPHILIA/. > Zero > The Extreme > Seize the Truth! > Emil Karma > Reset (Thank You version) > Despair of ELFERIA > Papilliones > Scars of Time > MGS2 Theme

You could probably stick me in the "meh" category. Anyways, now that the contest is done, 2020 revised champions ranking!

EXEC_SPHILIA/. > Hope > Class::EXSPHERE_NOSURGE; > Zero > The Extreme > Papiliones > Sunshine Coastline > Seize the Truth! > Endeavour > Emil Karma > Despair of ELFERIA > Reset (Thank You version) > Scars of Time > MGS2 Theme

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