Board 8 > [VGMC] Video Game Music Contest 15 announcement!! Noms are 4/15!!

(+) Yeah! (+)

Hello everyone!! I'm sure a lot of people have been waiting patiently on an announcement for the next iteration of VGMC, and it's finally time! You might be expecting this topic from azuarc, but unfortunately our dear host has passed on.... the torch, that is! This year, the contest will be run by a team of yours truly, banshiryuu (deogenerate) and Toxtricity (Mycro)!! With introductions out of the way, on to the nitty gritty:

VGMC 15 nominations will open on Thursday, April 15th at 10pm Eastern time!! The current plan is to have nominations open for 10 days, and end at the same time on April 25th.

In anticipation of noms opening, I figured I'd briefly go over some of the changes (or lack thereof) that you'll see this year.

- Bracket Size: 256! That's right, now that participation is up and projected to continue in an upward direction this year, we'll be running a full bracket of 256 songs this year!!
- Unfortunately, this means no side bracket this year. Don't wanna overload everyone!!
- Due to bracket expansion, nominations cap bumped up to 30 noms per person! Per-game nom limit also bumped to 3 from 2, but series limit and number of doubles limit is more than likely staying at 5.
- Locking system for the first seven days of nominations will make a return!! Due to bracket expansion the lock number will be raised to 6 votes.
- Eligibility is going to be a LOT more lenient than past years. A document not unlike the one from BOST5 will be posted alongside the noms topic (it's not quite done yet) but I will highlight the change that will probably make the biggest splash, which is that we're totally allowing "anything that is part of a game's soundtrack or otherwise obviously intended to be for the game." Which basically means Nex Machina - Cosmic Hero (trailer music only, not in-game) or Drift Stage - Zadok (wasn't actually in the game in the way it existed yet) are totally okay once again!!

If there's anything else you guys would like to see, there's still plenty of time to plant some thoughts in your hosts minds! And likewise if anything you just read made you visibly disgusted, now's your chance to beg us not to do that! Either way, hope you all are excited for this years contest~

hi

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tag

banshiryuu posted...

nominations cap bumped up to 30 noms per person!

oh no I can't even manage to find 20 songs
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Will there still be a 5 nom limit at the start of nominations?

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gamer

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Oh cool. 30 means I can just support a bunch of stuff and not think too hard on my noms.

3 games almost makes my PSO2 picks easy choosings now since I was down to four songs of interest.

TheArkOfTurus posted...

Will there still be a 5 nom limit at the start of nominations?

Yup, first 24 hours we'll still keep the 5 nom limit to help the insanity lol

banshiryuu posted...

but unfortunately our dear host has passed on

F

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tag AHHH 30 SONGS

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oh 30 songs thats epic

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banshiryuu posted...

- Eligibility is going to be a LOT more lenient than past years. A document not unlike the one from BOST5 will be posted alongside the noms topic (it's not quite done yet) but I will highlight the change that will probably make the biggest splash, which is that we're totally allowing "anything that is part of a game's soundtrack or otherwise obviously intended to be for the game." Which basically means Nex Machina - Cosmic Hero (trailer music only, not in-game) or Drift Stage - Zadok (wasn't actually in the game in the way it existed yet) are totally okay once again!!

cool now i can pick all the actually good drift stage songs too (thus making zadok completely redundant)

banshiryuu posted...

- Locking system for the first seven days of nominations will make a return!! Due to bracket expansion the lock number will be raised to 6 votes.

There's a discussion going on in discord about this, given the bracket expansion, the move from 20 to 30 votes, and the likelihood that we'll have extra people trickling in from a few sources in completely unknown quantity.

Admittedly, it's a pretty one-sided discussion right now.

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banshiryuu posted...

if anything you just read made you visibly disgusted, now's your chance to beg us not to do that!

banshiryuu posted...

VGMC 15 nominations will open

this disgusts me i hate video game music

dinatis caocital hype

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Hype!!!! I haven't seen you post in a while. Took a long break from board 8?

30 nominations...nice. It felt so limited before with only 20 noms. The 3 songs-per-game limit is a nice change, esp. with PSO2. Maybe I'll have a shot at getting supports with my own PSO2 noms now. (actually, no, still probably not)

banshiryuu posted...

anything that is part of a game's soundtrack or otherwise obviously intended to be for the game."

Nice. Waitamminute.... any track on an official OST is eligible if possible intentions are there? Because I'm really interested in nominating a Secret of Mana PS4 track (alt-arrangement) that's not used in the game (likely was intended to be used in-game but got scrapped).... a track like this is eligible? Meanwhile, something like Star of Tears' from Xenogears is still not eligible (because it probably wasn't intended for in-game), correct?

dinatis caocital hype
Personally I prefer Dinatus Q Vecis and Dinatis Virtula....

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HasteDeux posted...

Nice. Waitamminute.... any track on an official OST is eligible if possible intentions are there? Because I'm really interested in nominating a Secret of Mana PS4 track (alt-arrangement) that's not used in the game (likely was intended to be used in-game but got scrapped).... a track like this is eligible? Meanwhile, something like Star of Tears' from Xenogears is still not eligible (because it probably wasn't intended for in-game), correct?

Regarding Stars of Tears, Xenosaga Wiki says "The song does not appear in direct gameplay, but is preserved as the unheard audio track of a collection of full motion videos on disc 2. It can be heard by watching the video using third-party PlayStation media viewers." So I think both of those would actually be eligible.

the som track you're talking about haste2 is like literally something deo addressed in the original bost5 rules (which were actually more strict); so definitely the type of thing we're thinking. the file is actually in the game files! just doesn't play in game

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Nice, I forgot that I still had VGMC highlighted from last year so this topic jumped right out at me.

At the end of last year I said that I was gonna start making a document for songs that I wanted to nominate this year. I don't think that I actually did that.

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-hotdogturtle-- posted...

At the end of last year I said that I was gonna start making a document for songs that I wanted to nominate this year. I don't think that I actually did that.

This was my plan as well. I put like 3 songs on the list then forgot about it for a year. >_>
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HasteDeux posted...

Nice. Waitamminute.... any track on an official OST is eligible if possible intentions are there? Because I'm really interested in nominating a Secret of Mana PS4 track (alt-arrangement) that's not used in the game (likely was intended to be used in-game but got scrapped).... a track like this is eligible? Meanwhile, something like Star of Tears' from Xenogears is still not eligible (because it probably wasn't intended for in-game), correct?

Redundant cause tox and sergio beat me to it but yup both of these are totally fine, and actually both of these I'd allow even with stricter limits LOL, stars of tears you can actually play in-game if you glitch into the debug menu iirc so yeah good on both accounts

how many nominations are we allowed to make day 1 and at what time will the topic go up
HasteDeux posted...

Hype!!!! I haven't seen you post in a while. Took a long break from board 8?

30 nominations...nice. It felt so limited before with only 20 noms. The 3 songs-per-game limit is a nice change, esp. with PSO2. Maybe I'll have a shot at getting supports with my own PSO2 noms now. (actually, no, still probably not)

Nice. Waitamminute.... any track on an official OST is eligible if possible intentions are there? Because I'm really interested in nominating a Secret of Mana PS4 track (alt-arrangement) that's not used in the game (likely was intended to be used in-game but got scrapped).... a track like this is eligible? Meanwhile, something like Star of Tears' from Xenogears is still not eligible (because it probably wasn't intended for in-game), correct?

dinatis caocital hype
Personally I prefer Dinatus Q Vecis and Dinatis Virtula....

I could be convinced to go for DINATIS Q VECIS if there was no CAOCITAL hype. I'd go DYREINA over VIRTULA though, and would be more wary of nomming that. I don't think ASTELTO AI LIBEICION would go anywhere though

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ASTELTO AI LIBEICION is one i'd get very behind

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i've been wrong before

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I'm just happy to be part of B8 in general this year.

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NFUN posted...

i've been wrong before

I don't believe you

Hoping I don't vanish and stop posting midway through the contest again this year, although I won't make any guarantees.
The neotokyo floodgates have opened. Wondering how well footprint would do

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Akkrillic posted...

footprint

yes

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Tag

I asked this in Discord a while back and don't remember if you saw it, but what's your stance on music made for things like Stepmania, Clone Hero, BMS, etc? They don't have well-defined OSTs (to my knowledge) but people absolutely write music for them.

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Thanks for the clarification. I am more excited now =D.

Toxtricity posted...
ASTELTO AI LIBEICION is one i'd get very behind

See my Youtube comment on how I think it sounds >_>

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banshiryuu posted...

nominations cap bumped up to 30 noms per person!

fuck

banshiryuu posted...

- Eligibility is going to be a LOT more lenient than past years. A document not unlike the one from BOST5 will be posted alongside the noms topic (it's not quite done yet) but I will highlight the change that will probably make the biggest splash, which is that we're totally allowing "anything that is part of a game's soundtrack or otherwise obviously intended to be for the game."

I'm not a fan of this change but I suspect the ship has already sailed here. The old eligibility rules were perfectly fine and I don't think there's any need to expand them from what they were.

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NFUN posted...

how many nominations are we allowed to make day 1 and at what time will the topic go up

I could be convinced to go for DINATIS Q VECIS if there was no CAOCITAL hype. I'd go DYREINA over VIRTULA though, and would be more wary of nomming that. I don't think ASTELTO AI LIBEICION would go anywhere though

I would definitely back any of the Caocitals though I have a preference for APUTURA the most. DINATIS Q VECIS and DINATIS VIRTULA are excellent as well.

The main problem for me is that I am dead set on Unfathomable Darkness and Kohri for my first two and will only swap them out late if I have to. There's just too much good stuff lmao.

HasteDeux posted...

Nice. Waitamminute.... any track on an official OST is eligible if possible intentions are there? Because I'm really interested in nominating a Secret of Mana PS4 track (alt-arrangement) that's not used in the game (likely was intended to be used in-game but got scrapped).... a track like this is eligible? Meanwhile, something like Star of Tears' from Xenogears is still not eligible (because it probably wasn't intended for in-game), correct?

Okay so I have my own question regarding official soundtracks @banshiryuu

Say a game is released on a system with a limited soundchip (more specifically looking at GBA and DS in my case) and the the official OST releases are remasters of the in-game music. Will these be allowed?

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Akkrillic posted...

The neotokyo floodgates have opened. Wondering how well footprint would do

Neotokyo was pretty big in VGMC like ~10 years ago, so it has a shot!

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xp1337 posted...

I'm not a fan of this change but I suspect the ship has already sailed here. The old eligibility rules were perfectly fine and I don't think there's any need to expand them from what they were.

Ship definitely hasn't sailed!! We still have time that if a crowd of people that are really not receptive to changes we're putting forward speaks up then we can reevaluate with the community, so I'm glad you said this! I think stuff like the mentioned Cosmic Hero/Zadok cases where on the surface there's no reason anyone would raise an eyebrow but they technically didn't follow the rules and got banned is pretty much proof there was some problem with eligibility, and what we're doing hopefully will open up possibilities that people have been barred from without much good reason without changing the whole climate drastically. Is there anything specifically you're worried about being in? (Totally fine if not, just curious lol)

Janus5k posted...

I asked this in Discord a while back and don't remember if you saw it, but what's your stance on music made for things like Stepmania, Clone Hero, BMS, etc? They don't have well-defined OSTs (to my knowledge) but people absolutely write music for them.

Good question, and actually is one of the things that I'm still kinda thinking about and was hoping could get community feedback for. (and thus is one of the reasons the eligibility doc isn't just posted in this topic yet lol) The way I see it is that you could definitely see how these count as a "game", but from how I see it songs released for simulators are released as just files and not actually games, which are then loaded into simulators. Not sure if that sounds super wishy-washy but one question to ask, especially for BMS, is what game do we say the song comes from? BMS specifically is the name of the specific file format for IIDX charts (non-official format), and there are multiple programs used to open these without a "standard simulator" so to speak (beatoraja, Lunatic Rave 2, etc.) BMS songs are most often than not associated with the contests that they're submitted for as well. So for.... let's say, Halcyon, do we call it...

"BMS - Halycon"
"beatoraja/Lunatic Rave 2/etc. - Halcyon"
"THE BMS OF FIGHTERS 2010 -THE EVOLUTION OF WAR- - Halcyon"

...Ignoring the fact that Halcyon is actually in real games lol if it wasn't then what realistically would you say it comes from. StepMania doesn't have simulator competition really so it would be easy to say DDR simfiles are from that, but if there were other simulators (which there might be, I'm hilariously uneducated on non-IIDX simfiles ngl lmfaoooo) then we'd run into the BMS issue stated again. It's weird....

Sorry for the tl;dr but yeah if anyone else is following this please weigh in!! My instinct says right now that songs made for simulators are just files and not games, but I would love to hear others on this.

FL81 posted...

Say a game is released on a system with a limited soundchip (more specifically looking at GBA and DS in my case) and the the official OST releases are remasters of the in-game music. Will these be allowed?

Gonna take a blind guess at what this is about and use Mega Man Zero as an example LMFAO but in the case where that's the only OST, and it is labeled as such (an OST), then yeah it'd be good. So Zero/ZX have the "ROCKMAN ZERO & ZX SOUND BOX" now which would render Remastered/Idea/Telos/Physis and the ZX Tunes as remix albums. I think (think, can't remember) the Zero & ZX Sound Box uses the Zero Collection stuff so I think you can say Zero Collection versions are from Zero # fine. I know that's probably not the answer you were wanting :((( but even with our relaxation the remastered album tracks are much closer to remixes.

xp1337 posted...

I'm not a fan of this change but I suspect the ship has already sailed here. The old eligibility rules were perfectly fine and I don't think there's any need to expand them from what they were.

By old, do you mean during the ed bellis and lefty years, or as of last year?

Eligibility rules, sadly, are always going to be contentious no matter where you draw the line. Whenever you adjust a rule to include something you feel belongs, it potentially opens the door for someone to drive a wedge into your interpretation of what else might be allowed. And then when that becomes the new normal...I was mostly pretty happy with where the rules were, but there's always gray areas and always weird songs where we have to go "but this was clearly made for the game..." or "but it's on the freaking OST!" So I'm neither for nor against this, but I certainly knew it was coming.

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banshiryuu posted...

Sorry for the tl;dr but yeah if anyone else is following this please weigh in!! My instinct says right now that songs made for simulators are just files and not games, but I would love to hear others on this.

I think it sets a dangerous precedent if you allow songs like this because literally any song can be simulated in games like these. Does that mean that ALL music is VGM, and the only restriction is whether or not the music is licensed?

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banshiryuu posted...

Gonna take a blind guess at what this is about and use Mega Man Zero as an example LMFAO but in the case where that's the only OST, and it is labeled as such (an OST), then yeah it'd be good. So Zero/ZX have the "ROCKMAN ZERO & ZX SOUND BOX" now which would render Remastered/Idea/Telos/Physis and the ZX Tunes as remix albums. I think (think, can't remember) the Zero & ZX Sound Box uses the Zero Collection stuff so I think you can say Zero Collection versions are from Zero # fine. I know that's probably not the answer you were wanting :((( but even with our relaxation the remastered album tracks are much closer to remixes.

Okay this answers my question (yes it was Mega Man Zero)

there's actually a totally different game soundtrack in a similar situation where the OST has "remastered remixes" and AFAIK there's no other official release, but I don't think I'm going to go through the effort of vetting out an obscure game just to find a loophole with the rules >_>

(I actually liked the old eligibility and would support a remix contest as something separate, I asked this mostly for my own nomination planning)

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azuarc posted...

I think it sets a dangerous precedent if you allow songs like this because literally any song can be simulated in games like these. Does that mean that ALL music is VGM, and the only restriction is whether or not the music is licensed?

Yeah this was the biggest red flag to me as well, but it could pretty easily be circumvented even if we started to allow simulator songs by saying they must be made specifically for that simulator... but even then, there's tons of stuff that I personally don't think should be allowed that technically could be. (KIRBY-CHAN'D CANYON comes to mind) So I'm very hesitant to consider going down this rabbit hole.

banshiryuu posted...

but yeah if anyone else is following this please weigh in!! My instinct says right now that songs made for simulators are just files and not games, but I would love to hear others on this.

all i can say is i am very excited about them being viable for vgmc in general

regarding the three hypothetical formats, i'd say the 2nd one or singular program variants of it are the best way to format them text-wise, though i'd hesitate to impose any form of game limit for them, just treating it under a generic rhythm game music "series" limit

likewise i'd like to suggest similar approaches for royalty free music so that it can be technically eligible but, you know, not technically also viable to fill all 30 slots by "representing" a billion games

New eligibility sounds good on paper. "Part of a game's soundtrack" actually makes things easier, because like hell I'm gonna check if my songs actually play in-game instead of just looking them up on VGMdb (I'm assuming "soundtrack" means a soundtrack release here, rather than in-game soundtrack?). "Obviously intended to be for the game" is the one that could get tricky, I think just a ton of example cases would help clear that up. In general, the eligibility document should cover the most important bases, but not be so verbose that it alienates first-time participants. You might have to make some tough exclusions just to get easier-to-follow rules.

Locking at 6 seems fine, but could be inaccurate in two directions. If people coordinate their votes together really well, 6 is too low and everything gets locked. It's not a problem on its own, but you get burned if you didn't have time to listen to noms as quickly as everyone else, and were relying on the post-lock days to catch up and start supporting. If people don't coordinate, 6 is too high because the final cutoff will be 4-ish and those who committed to locks feel like they were misled by the initial target. You can make an easy adjustment here by saying that 6 is tentative and subject to change at the end of day 1. Now you can actually tally the number of participants and tweak if needed, and it's not like nominators care about the exact threshold during day 1.

I think there's more to play around with in the locking system...maybe it's best considered for next year. Last year had talks of just having a single locking deadline with no post-lock period, and I don't think that necessarily eliminates the thrill of the endgame rush. You're still racing against the shrinking pool of vacancies, or the deadline itself (whichever comes first). We can extend by a day if the bracket doesn't get filled, maybe kill the 1/x and 2/x's if you really want things to get moving. Just feels like a more straightforward system than dealing with a continuously rising cutoff.

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After adjusting some of my numbers to account for doubles, which I forgot about, I feel better about 6 being the target than I did last night. 5 votes last year is equivalent to 5.25 this year. IOW, pushing to 6 takes a comparatively greater effort. We'd need to have a massive influx of new voters for that to be a real concern.

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azuarc posted...

I think it sets a dangerous precedent if you allow songs like this because literally any song can be simulated in games like these. Does that mean that ALL music is VGM, and the only restriction is whether or not the music is licensed?

Format radical context radical: a text file is vgm

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banshiryuu posted...

participation is up and projected to continue in an upward direction this year

banshiryuu posted...

nominations cap bumped up to 30 noms per person!

banshiryuu posted...

The current plan is to have nominations open for 10 days

Looks like I can give up on listening to all of everyone else's noms lol

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I assume that stuff like GTA's radio still isn't eligible?
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woo

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azuarc posted...

By old, do you mean during the ed bellis and lefty years, or as of last year?

I was thinking of ed/lefty-era but in practice it was probably your rules from last year. I didn't think you deviated too far from that but maybe my memory is just totally shot. What did you change again? Full versions of songs allowed, IIRC.

DoctorJimmy133 posted...

Looks like I can give up on listening to all of everyone else's noms lol

omg i didn't even consider that. revert to 20 noms so i don't die please.

banshiryuu posted...

Is there anything specifically you're worried about being in? (Totally fine if not, just curious lol)

It's kinda weird because on paper I don't find what you changed it to super objectionable, it's actually the in-topic discussion that's making me nervous about how it's going.

Broadly speaking by working outwards from the older rules.

Plays in-game - duh. That's the obvious.

Full Versions of songs when in-game it only plays a shortened/modified version - I'm generally cool with this, if only for ease of getting links for the contest. From personal experience I can tell you plenty of times I know a song doesn't play a full version but that's all you're gonna find on Youtube barring an occasional Let's Play which has its own issues.

Somewhere in the game files - I can live with this, I think. It's feel like a really niche cut out and while it might skirt the spirit of the original rules like full versions do, I mean, glitching into debug modes, ACE, etc. It's already a weird grey area, I think I'm cool with this.

On the OST - On its face, I don't find this objectionable but in practice I know this can get weird fast. I still have buried somewhere on my computer notes on what Neotokyo songs played in-game according to Mycro as an "eligibility list" for example and it's a surprising (to me) number. There's also not-in-game image songs and such on the EXA_PICO Hymmnos Concert CDs which serve as the "OST" for the hymms/cielns/CLASS songs (they are, with almost no exceptions, not on the "regular" OST.) This is where I start getting antsy, personally, because of how this seemingly innocent expansion can get a bit out of control.

The OST is not the original in-game music - This is definitely where you start losing me. I understand it can sometimes result in finding links becoming a real chore but this definitely feels like we're entering firm violation of the spirit of a VGM contest territory. Off the top of my head, I think the Kingdom Hearts 358/2 OST is redone so it's not Nintendo DS quality. I think most prefer it that way, but I don't, and while this sounds like me pouting over personal preference I mean this in a "they read as different versions of the same base song" and a VGM contest, in my mind, should be for the music in the actual video game. OTOH, I acknowledge legitimately difficult case examples where strictly speaking this may not be entirely possible. For example, I am, and have been for years, convinced that the in-game CLASS::XIO_PROCEED is subtly different from the OST version and that it's most obvious at the very start. I actually like the in-game one a fair deal more, but finding that actual version with a link I think is VGMC-friendly (no spoilers, not a let's play, etc.)? i've failed each time i made an attempt. Ultimately, I don't think the difference is that much even after I just said it impacts my enjoyment a fair amount but examples like these I'm a lot more forgiving of instead of the KH "whole OST is different" kind of thing.

"Obviously made for a video game"/Simulator music - I see both sides of this and I feel like if you went there enforcement would become pretty arbitrary and while most of us might ultimately agree on a "common sense" basis I'm not sure it's a box we really want to open.

idk something like that.

tl;dr: I dunno, I think the rules azuarc was using (so take last year as an example) were fine and while I acknowledge there are some edge cases that lurk in the shadows that are addressed by your expanded eligibility I kinda feel like the better option is to have those cases raised individually and dealt with case-by-case. That that is literally arbitrary is less than ideal, but I think opening up the rules still leaves the arbitrary decision-making in place (just further at the edges now) and might open us up to some headaches.

My general philosophy is basically "A VGM Contest should try to limit itself to songs that actually play in a video game." If technical issues make this exceedingly difficult/impossible, we can put our heads together and decide on case-by-case solutions, whether it be allowing a slightly different version of the song in because of link availability or unfortunately deciding it doesn't qualify. Full Versions of songs is the elephant in the room there I admit and if you rolled that back in pursuit of that goal I couldn't complain.

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OrangeCrush980 posted...

I assume that stuff like GTA's radio still isn't eligible?

Licensed music will not be eligible. The question is where the line on that is drawn. I tried to set a standard in the last two years that sounds that are technically licensed, but that nobody would have otherwise ever heard of, like the Braid soundtrack or M4 Part 2, are fine because even if they didn't start as VGM, they serve no other real role. Dance of the Spheares would fall under this indirectly, as a MOD file that eventually got used in Tetrinet.

Also, anything where the game release pre-dates the official release, such as Jordan from Guitar Hero 2, since Harmonix literally commissioned Buckethead to write it for the game.

But I do wonder if we would allow someone to nominate, say, Outside from Rock Band. One of the loading screens for that song teases that Tribe still gets a royalty check for 2 cents every other year from some Australian station that occasionally plays the track. But the song is 30 years old. It clearly predates Rock Band by a mile. And it is technically licensed.

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xp1337 posted...

I was thinking of ed/lefty-era but in practice it was probably your rules from last year. I didn't think you deviated too far from that but maybe my memory is just totally shot. What did you change again? Full versions of songs allowed, IIRC.

Ed/lefty years were extremely strict. I was more relaxed in general, albeit I was always fighting a war over rhythm and anime opening full songs. It wasn't so much that I explicitly changed the rules as I allowed for shades of gray.

On the OST - On its face, I don't find this objectionable but in practice I know this can get weird fast. ... This is where I start getting antsy, personally, because of how this seemingly innocent expansion can get a bit out of control.

The OST is not the original in-game music - This is definitely where you start losing me. ... in my mind, should be for the music in the actual video game. ...

"Obviously made for a video game"/Simulator music - I see both sides of this and I feel like if you went there enforcement would become pretty arbitrary and while most of us might ultimately agree on a "common sense" basis I'm not sure it's a box we really want to open.

1) I've generally been against this precisely because there are sometimes songs included on OSTs that aren't really meant for the game. They were written, or that version at least was written, specifically for the OST and not for the game. Taking an orchestral arrangement of some main theme feels like we're admitting covers. However, I also admit that it's a lot simpler to allow anything on an OST and it does allow us to include songs that are extensions of the game like trailer music, unreleased tracks, etc.

2) See my remark about allowing covers.

3) The lack of standards of enforceability is what makes this hard. It definitely runs the risk of becoming arbitrary what can stay and what can't. I remember in one of the early BOSTs someone nominated some game that was basically a DDR mod where people submit songs to a contest to get included in this "game," and I ultimately disallowed it because the songs weren't written for a game so much as they were written and then submitted. However, this is kinda weird sometimes, because then how do you term the Castle Crashers soundtrack, which was a bunch of uploads to newgrounds that The Behemoth used with permission.

In general, I agree with xp's final remarks, but, well, I got to have my say for the last five years. I know one of the things deo and mycro were most excited about being able to change was the eligibility standards. So, other than that I tried to mostly be a traditionalist in my years of hosting, I think it's pretty evident where my beliefs lie. This post is just to try to explain why.

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DoctorJimmy133 posted...

Looks like I can give up on listening to all of everyone else's noms lol

This is one of the big things I was worried about seeing from a lot of people ^^;; Is it the increase in amount in general or if there was a longer time period submissions were open would you be more likely to listen to more noms?

OrangeCrush980 posted...

I assume that stuff like GTA's radio still isn't eligible?

Yeah, our stance on licensed stuff is more than likely not going to change much, if at all, from previous years.

xp1337 posted...

For example, I am, and have been for years, convinced that the in-game CLASS::XIO_PROCEED is subtly different from the OST version and that it's most obvious at the very start. I actually like the in-game one a fair deal more, but finding that actual version with a link I think is VGMC-friendly (no spoilers, not a let's play, etc.)? i've failed each time i made an attempt.

i... actually almost did this in BOST to try and convince the ar nosurge submitter to use the in-game version cause i love the intro of the main part too LOL (but i also love the ost intro/separate game intro part too so hnnnng) but yeah I do have it and if you were in need of a yt link I can definitely provide ^^

Funny you mentioned EXA_PICO Hymmnos Concert CDs cause songs like Sen or Homura or like... the extra songs for Ciel nosurge's soundtrack were other examples we were explicitly thinking about being open and how we would differentiate them from other EXA_PICO side material stuff. In the case of those, or Ar nosurge's Tentoki/Tokikagura, etc., they're very clearly named and marked as being for games. While in the case of like... METHOD_HYMME_GRANZERO=SPEAR/., the album that's on doesn't have any specific branding that connects it to a game. Golden Sneer ~A Lovely Dinner~ or the other arranges on the Umineko no Naku Koro ni single are kinda funky cause... the album is the games name, but it's obviously meant to be named after the song, and nothing really links it to the game besides being remixes that don't appear in game. There may be some gray areas that come up, but to me most cases I can think of are pretty black and white scenarios. If I'm putting too much faith into my own beliefs on this.... then so be it.

On the topic of KH 358/2 actually, that's pretty much the same situation as Mega Man Zero that I mentioned to FL81 earlier. I think the difference we have here is that you see it as a redone soundtrack as you said, while I see it as the original tracks, that were then put into a lower quality due to system constraints. So if the original soundtrack uses those pre-compression versions, then that's what is intended to be listened to without actually deviating from what the game's version sounds like too much. I'm not actually familiar with 358/2 that much though so I might be misinterpreting what you're saying (and massive apologies if I am OTL) but that's a good way to highlight what I meant with the earlier post kinda.

I hope this doesn't come across as condescending I'm trying to be reassuring that we've thought of the leftover gray areas but I don't know if it worked at all LOL

I would definitely need an increasing nomination time period in order to listen to everything if the number of nominations is increased by 50%.

Of course I wasn't quite able to finish everything the last 2 years anyways.
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