Board 8 > [VGMC] Video Game Music Contest 16 announcement!! Noms are 5/1!!

(+) Yeah! (+)

Hello everyone!! Sorry if you were disappointed at no actual VGMC news with our funny topic on April Fools, so allow me to make it up with the official announcement of our next contest!

VGMC 16 nominations will open on Sunday, May 1st at 10pm Eastern time!! The current plan is to have nominations open for 10 days, and end at the same time on May 11th.

Let's just get into the nitty-gritty of what's gonna be shaken up this year:

- Bracket size will remain at 256 songs!
- Nominations will remain at 30 total and 5 doubles for each person, however this year we'll be running a "staggered nomination" system. Much like how in the past for the first 24 hours of nominations we limit the amount of new songs everyone can post to 5 songs, this year we'll have it so this "only 5 new tracks per day" limit extends through each of the first six days of nominations, with the count resetting every new day. This is so we can slow the flood of new songs while still allowing people to use their full 30 slots for supporting.
- Locking will come back almost as it was last time, with 6 votes guaranteeing a song a spot in the bracket and locking each nominator into supporting that song. This time however the lock period will last for the first 9 days of nominations, leaving the last day for final nominations.
- The eligibility expansion we had last year worked out beautifully, so there are no plans to scale back on that now!

If there's any elaboration on the new changes you'd like or any issues you have with them, please let us know!! There's still plenty of time to have things tweaked in anticipation of this year's contest so don't hesitate to toss in a comment.

++ Crazy Bus | Title Theme | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sC0cvwnG0Ik

It seems so far away when you say it like that.

so you think you can ride this chocobo

+ Umineko no Naku Koro ni || Umineko no Naku Koro ni || https://www.youtube.com/uminekononakukoroni

its finally here
performing for you
the newest member
of the vgmc crew

Nomination rules seem fine enough. It feels like we've hit our limit with this bracket size though - last year was truly "Exhaustion 3" because it takes too dang long to feel like we're getting anywhere! Just round 1 takes an entire month and a half, and even then it's not until round 3 that things actually start to feel high-stakes.

One thing I've found is that I have a lot of surplus energy at the beginning of the contest; could we start with 4 matches a day and scale it back to 3 as we progress through round 1? Otherwise this thing is gonna run into early September. Or without speeding up the matches, could we create a feeling of reaching milestones by finishing R1-3 of a quarter at a time?

start of may is definitely perfect for me, very optimal timing so thanks for setting it this uncharacteristically late this time

I'm interested in nominating a song from Romancing Saga Re;Universe that originated from a Romancing SaGa stage play. Legal?

Tag

Hopefully I actually find things to nominate by then.

I'll get noms together. Not sure if it's in bad faith to ask for eligibility for one of my planned nominations by posting a link or whatever. But would a chip tune remake of a traditional musical piece made for and featured in a video game be eligible? If that makes sense...

TheArkOfTurus posted...

I'm interested in nominating a song from Romancing Saga Re;Universe that originated from a Romancing SaGa stage play. Legal?

i am not deotrix but yes

tazzyboyishere posted...

I'll get noms together. Not sure if it's in bad faith to ask for eligibility for one of my planned nominations by posting a link or whatever. But would a chip tune remake of a traditional musical piece made for and featured in a video game be eligible? If that makes sense...

i am not deotrix but definitely yes that's what tetris is!

Deotrix: precisely half of tetris.

I'm excited to nominate 30 rhythm game songs

andylt posted...

so you think you can ride this chocobo

Do we get negative nominations this year? D:

fuck

Isquen posted...

Do we get negative nominations this year? D:

90% of them would go to two songs

And yet they'd still make the bracket.

*"What can I do for you" is heard in the distance*

Been looking forward to this, and it's happening earlier than anticipated

So anyone for Guacamelee this year? Trying to figure out what the favorite is.

Year of Hollow Knight

Isquen posted...

*"What can I do for you" is heard in the distance*

+1000

NFUN: no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no

Yes, I know that's Real Emotion and not 1000 Words.

Yay.

It looks like you nailed the things I wanted: staggered nominations, a longer lock period and shorter post-lock period! But I wonder if we should make it two days for post-lock just so we get one day to breathe, as well as some time for those who may still be behind on listening. If you did that, it would end on May 12th. However, please don't change it to end on May 13th or 14th 'cause I have stuff going on those evenings where I won't have access to the internet at all!

Bumping this up. Getting excited already and gonna try not to have some crappy links like I did last year, unless it can't be helped.

I love video game music.

The VGMC Retirees Playlist has been updated! It has been split into two playlists, as I find a single playlist with 200+ pieces of music a bit hard to manage.

A-M:
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLtm-5nTauRmH9-omKRQf_FQI6GEE84aTu

N-Z:
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLtm-5nTauRmE4iHlAGmEBHXDf3Hs9T0zP

In addition, here is a master list of VGMC nominations from VGMC5 to the present. (I get the feeling there may be another one that exists already....) Both qualifying contestants and failed noms are on there. Game names have been standardized for some of the more popular series--hopefully there are no glaring mistakes.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1qZxAoO6iaKSFj3CpMhx9F9Gs8hCa0zRI8oclVObxEhI/edit?usp=sharing

Oh, yeah, and it has a tab for BOST nominations, too! It doesn't list the individual tracks, though.

That list of nominations is awesome, I'm amazed you actually did it

brb going to go listen to all 7000 vgm tracks

There's a song I want to nominate but the only version on Youtube is a super extended version. What's the best way to handle this?

Team Rocket Elite posted...

There's a song I want to nominate but the only version on Youtube is a super extended version. What's the best way to handle this?

upload an un-extended version

Soon

oh no

Are your bodies ready

crazybusisgood

Will we read the opening rules this time?
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/0/5/1/AAVhdjAADMHT.png

Does # mess with the script

So are the games on the retired list just not going to be included?

Good luck to all! Boy that sure is a lot of songs...

And we're live!!!

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/8-gamefaqs-contests/80006092

+ The Weather Channel | 2006 Storm Alert Theme | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AjAxsWgEexI

Question zero that we should answer because getting into the details is what should next year's nomination process look like. What are the goals? Should it be aiming to have the whole field determined by locking, and the regular process be the new form of the bubble? Should we aim to have some fraction (say a half) of the field be determined by each method? We, or at least the hosts, need to have this answer before messing with other things.

My opinion is we should aim to have the two methods be roughly balanced. I will say that the locking hype that happened tonight was fun and pretty closely resembled the old last-day mania, though it also happened at a less controlled time which was difficult for some to plan around (happening at like 7-8:30 rather than before 10). I'll refrain from going into specifics until we have some form of concensus

I liked the idea of locking every song except for 1.

The panic around locking is way better than the regular panic.

My recommendation would just be to change to 20 noms total and 4 noms per day. The 5 noms per day thing was great. That might also prevent everything from locking early, since people would have less noms to use.

In case you missed it, we did indeed have 256 hit the lock requirement before locks ended... so thus nominations have concluded earlier than expected. The one thing to especially note from this is that the limit was hit in the middle of a post, specifically loweffortmeme's post at Thread 3 Post 459. This post locked Ys III PCECD - Valestein Castle and Sonic Runners - End of the Summer. In the rules I stated that priority would be taken top-down as the post was posted, but shortly after noticing the post was the lock limit and was in the middle of the post, me and Tox talked about it and decided to let lem pick which of the two to keep and which to drop.

Thus, End of the Summer is the 256th lock and Valestein Castle is the "257th lock" that just missed the cutoff.

Stay tuned for the list of the VGMC 16 field, and potentially something else...?!?!

Wher bracket

banshiryuu posted...

This post locked Ys III PCECD - Valestein Castle and Sonic Runners - End of the Summer....me and Tox talked about it and decided to let lem pick which of the two to keep and which to drop.

Thus, End of the Summer is the 256th lock and Valestein Castle is the "257th lock" that just missed the cutoff.

So it locked Valestein Castle and End of the Summer...and then it locked End of the Summer but not Valestein Castle. So what did they pick from that post instead?

Just be sure to have enough time between now and the start of the contest so that both deo AND Tox can rank the whole field before it starts. ;)

Mac Arrowny posted...

The panic around locking is way better than the regular panic.

My recommendation would just be to change to 20 noms total and 4 noms per day. The 5 noms per day thing was great. That might also prevent everything from locking early, since people would have less noms to use.

I'm kind of conflicted here. It is nice to not have to deal with the uncertainty of the post-lock rush at the end of nominations. On the other hand, the lack of a definite closing time is very problematic for those people who have busy schedules or whatever. (poor cakophon) Hmmmm....

Maybe there's something new we could try in the future that has neither of those disadvantages?

(But I kind of agree with reducing the noms per person next year...)

VGMC Retrospective:

I'm going to preface this with saying I definitely feel like I'm out of step with VGMC's current direction. I was on the losing side of most of the rules change arguments and other various decisions. I honestly had intended for VGMC15 to be my last VGMC but came back because I was just too giddy to share more VGM that I really fell in love with over the past year. And honestly through 98% of this nomination phase I regretted that I backtracked on that decision because I was constantly reminded of all the reasons and internal debate I had with myself last year and planned to just fade away after this nomination phase ended. The end rush remains incredibly fun though so I briefly thought of giving it one more try but I still don't know. All of this to say, in a probably overdramatic way, that I honestly wouldn't fault my opinions here being dismissed as just being the "old guy yelling at clouds." Like I didn't want to say anything about all this because I didn't want to make any of this about me but I feel I should add it as a disclaimer before I offer criticism.

Honestly, I feel like a good deal of this is me repeating what I said in last year's post-nom comments. While I admitted I'm on the losing side of the lock system in general, I recommended then that the lock limit should have been raised. My argument then was that if it were to be available it should be set a level expected to be above where the cutoff ends up being. I forget the exact number I was recommending, but I think it was in the 8-9 range. In light of what happened here I feel like 9 seems about right? There's probably a way to math out a good number but I feel like I've had a decent intuition on how VGMC noms end up working. I "joked" about this exact scenario occurring days ago because to me it seemed patently obvious this is where we were heading.

Now, granted, maybe some prefer a method where we end up locking the entire field and if so then I guess this isn't really a problem. Still think I'd tentatively recommend an increase to 7 then to try and keep it from happening early as it did here. Fundamentally my issue with locking - and in particular a low number on it - is that it favors those who have the free time to just listen through over a 1000 songs in about a week. I feel like it divides nominators into two (or more) different classes based on how much of the playlist they can get through. Those who can have a grasp of the entire field while those who can't have to just throw up their hands and either throw support behind songs they already recognize or be left behind because the field locked on them.

This ties into nomination amount. As before, I think 30 is just too much. Ironically, I think we actually dodged a bullet here in that I think there was actually a broad understanding among most of the participants to not actually use all 30 noms for original nominations and then consolidate behind support later. This ended up feeling about equivalent to last year as a result which... was still way too much IMO. The easy reform would be to drop back to 20. But you could also maybe try something like 10-15 "original/new" songs while the overall total remains at 5/30 and essentially require the remainder goes into support or else go unused. Though if so, I think that has to factor into the lock limit because you'll be funneling more total noms into support and so might want to increase the lock limit to compensate.

I also think the nom period got way too condensed in terms of time, which is another reason I'm not a fan of locks - it creates the possibility of a time limit where one doesn't have to exist and where there's already a great deal of time required to listen to everything. We saw complaints over time here and I think noms should basically be a 2 week minimum. I know this could lead to some slower days towards the end but I think that's the tradeoff you get for giving others more time to listen and that should be a goal IMO. I think a freeze like the one we had is a bit of a half measure and not ideal. I actually don't think it prolonged noms that long (for instance, I don't think we lock 24 hours earlier if we took that away) and while instituting a pause can help for listening, I think the timing is definitely tricky and almost something that requires some real-time monitoring if you used in conjunction with locks and that's at odds with presenting a clear schedule for everyone upfront.

IDK, I feel like I'm rambling now but those were some of my first thoughts looking back on all this.

And if we want opinions on the locking stuff, I'd probably have loved it if I had been there. However, I had an appointment until 8:45, and had believed I'd have time to get back for the tail end of the madness, which didn't happen. The fact that the ending time is unpredictable is a huge downside to just letting the full field lock. I'm also not sure you want to leave the numbers as they were and risk the full locking happening at an increasingly early point, albeit the main push was obviously prompted by the deadline.

I personally maintain that locking was never intended to be the primary method for determining nominations, but it is an acceptable one and if we collectively decide that's the future of VGMC, who am I to argue. If anything, I brought it down upon myself. =p