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

(+) Yeah! (+)

I just barely missed out on participating in the last minute locking rush, but I feel fine about it. If anything, I feel better than I have previous years (because I didn't spend the last few minutes swapping my votes around in ways I would almost immediately come to regret forever).

EDIT: top of page links, for your convenience and mine:

Important links
Spreadsheet: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1_IU5iCFTM_4WEx8ZWKwznMz5v2tarCKh1Ag0mxIgAes
Nomination playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLeKaE-gusMmZ4I2Jzln1QUDenhnj0zGZb
Discord: https://discord.gg/WDvMS4a
Last years spreadsheet: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/16XAaBMDuUnQ4c5AxQNL9ZhvD7VG5kQyrXWWZxnkrn-o
VGMC total stats sheet: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1K1XdLWiUKB2kX99qYBgnRbLU_sCz4dvZSByKKJHCT6o

First thread, including rules:
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/8-gamefaqs-contests/80006092

Second thread:
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/8-gamefaqs-contests/80009413

Third thread:
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/8-gamefaqs-contests/80015351

xp1337 posted...

But you could also maybe try something like 10-15 "original/new" songs

15 original songs was the limit this time until the end of Day 3. That amounted to 887 songs at the end of day 3 which is still a lot to listen to in a week.

I don't have a strong opinion on locks, but I am in favor of less noms and/or a longer nomination period, with both probably being the ideal scenario.

xp1337 posted...

...I recommended then that the lock limit should have been raised.

This ties into nomination amount. As before, I think 30 is just too much.

I also think the nom period got way too condensed in terms of time

I agree with all three of these things.

I've pointed out why it should have been obvious last year we got lucky with the field not fully locking then and even without any additional people added, with everything status quo and a bigger push chronologically in favor of locking vs non-locking period, we should have anticipated this happening. And then we heaped more people with more votes on top.

And while I love the idea of being able to nominate a ton of things, the truth is that there are simply too many participants for that to work unless we set the bar incredibly high. You're going to have to choose between number of participants, number of songs per participants, and number of supports per song. You can have 2 out of 3, but all 3 isn't going to work (unless you expand the bracket to 512, and dear God, please don't do that.)

The calendar was the one thing that bothered me the most, though. I get wanting to start on the first of the month, but this was in direct opposition to having a second weekend. VGMC, imo, should always start on a Thursday or Friday. You can close it on the second Sunday, but please give people the weekends. As it was, the big first wave dropped Sunday night and those of us who could afford to spend Monday listening did so, but it created a huge rift between people who could find time to listen and those who couldn't. Not in the sense xp is talking, but simply in deciding who is in each group. Personally, I think 8 days was also extremely brief for a field of 1000+ songs, so either we need more time, or we need fewer songs in the field.

Suggestion A: Start at the front end of a weekend, end after the second weekend, and limit users to 25 or even 20 songs.

Suggestion B: Give a minimum of two full weeks and raise the locking limit to 8. 7 won't cut it. There were far too many votes still floating around at deadline. Maybe institute a freeze after the first salvo or two of nominations.

Suggestion C: Lean completely into the expectation that the field will lock and plan accordingly. I'm not sure what this entails, but it will probably force an overhaul of some of the rules.

Team Rocket Elite posted...

15 original songs was the limit this time until the end of Day 3. That amounted to 887 songs at the end of day 3 which is still a lot to listen to in a week.

It definitely is. I've managed to listen to all noms from like VGMC7-15 (forget when I first made sure to listen to everything. Could have been as early as VGMC5). And I got through all of... Day 4 this year? I was completely caught up with the playlist when it was at 1028 songs wherever that was. I simply stopped because my interest cratered or else I'd have easily made it through this year too, but I recognize that's a privilege on my end.

That's part of the reason I think noms should be 2 weeks minimum. That's still a lot, honestly, but I don't know how much reception there'd be to move that number (of original noms) down to 10. I was trying to offer up ideas I think might be somewhat agreeable rather than trying to re-fight the rules changes. I accept I lost those arguments so I'm trying to work in the framework of where we are rather than where I wish we were.

Edit: az is probably right about making the lock limit 8 even if you wanted to keep everything else the same. I remember people reacted pretty negatively to my seemingly draconian limits proposed last year so erred on a lower number.

The rush as a whole annoys me because I don't really understand why people can't just be okay with some of their nominations not panning out. Like, it feels like people are so against the idea of some of their nominations being used on songs that likely won't make it in that they will end up settling for songs they don't necessarily care all too heavily about. Ends up leading to really cheesy bandwagoning in those final moments too.

Just observations and I can't actually prove any of these thoughts. More just suspicions. I just wish everyone would be okay with letting their nominations be, since supporting songs you don't like as much only worsens those favorites' chances of getting some action. I'm not sure if this actually makes much sense but it's been a pet peeve since like VGMC3 and I don't think there will be any sort of system that keeps this from happening beyond not allowing people to change nominations and lmao everyone would hate that except me.

Locking is way better though

1028 songs is a little over 5 days in.

Do we have a sense for how far people made it? I only got to 924 on the list before nominations closed. I've seen other people say they made it to the end and beyond.

I was able to finish day 1 of nominations

Oh yeah, knock that nomination amount way down too. I'm good with something like 10 unique and 20 to use supporting other tracks.

But then weirdos would hold off on putting forth unique songs because someone else might instead so damn I don't envy trying to make this project functional

In my opinion it is too difficult to get music in a contest when slightly less than a quarter of nominations get into the bracket. That is why I think a better solution to the "it takes forever to get through the music" is to reduce the nominations rather than extending the period for listening to the music.

Also, I think such a high number of nominations hurts the disadvantaged nominators (i.e. those who didn't showcase any of their music on discord) disproportionately, too. Or does it? We could find that out pretty easily, as we have all the nomination data for this year and last. (I would just have to collect the "original nommer" for 1000+ tracks...it would take a while)

Day 1 is around 350 songs. I'm not sure how long it takes to listen through it all but probably over 30 hours?

General sentiment:

• Ignoring some personal issues going in and a bad day in the middle as a result of some IRL stuff, this was my favourite nomination period yet. I had a lot of fun and felt like I succeeded.
• I'm very happy with my personal decisions to: (1) nominate nothing and only support, (2) aim for a full set of 30 locks again, (3) focus on listening to songs within range of the cutoff.
• I feel positive about the field of 256 going into this year. I think it's reasonably diverse and high quality, and I consider myself an advocate of the increased participation from new communities.

Regarding locks:

• I don't mind at all that the entire field locked. In fact, I think I'd enjoy it if this became the standard (with tweaks) over the old system. The security of knowing a song is in is a lot better to me than having to babysit your noms for the entire period and all at once near the end. It's too much to keep track of and very stressful.
• Whether or not the lock limit needs to be raised depends on what VGMC looks like going forward. If we're trying to avoid locking the entire bracket, then it seems inevitable that either the lock cutoff needs to be raised a lot (I'd say to 8), or a cap needs to be introduced on how many locks there are (e.g. 50% of the bracket). I would be okay with either of these outcomes, but they are not my preference.

Regarding nominations:

• I don't think the problem from last year of there being too many noms has been adequately addressed. I didn't even try to listen to everything because I knew it just wouldn't be remotely fun to try to cram over 1000 songs into 7 days. Multiple people who did that this year indicated it burnt them out, and many more said they had no hope of getting through them despite their best effort. I think the length of the nomination period needs to be greatly lengthened (like to 14 days even) if there's going to be consistently over 1000 noms, to give people time to go through them. I'd be more strongly in favor of "more time" rather than "less noms", personally, but either is fine. Something has to change though.
• I am not opposed to the idea of a freeze, however I AM opposed to an unexpected one, or ones that might unexpectedly change length. Moving the last days of nominations (or locks) around for people creates tons of stresses and messes people's plans up. I'd say the best time would be a 48-72 hour freeze that starts 24 hours after noms become unrestricted.

Will post more thoughts on things later.

tazzyboyishere posted...

Oh yeah, knock that nomination amount way down too. I'm good with something like 10 unique and 20 to use spring other tracks.

But then weirdos would hold off on putting forth unique songs because someone else might instead so damn I don't envy trying to make this project functional

The trade off for waiting is even waiting for 5 minutes means the song is buried under hundreds of other songs in the list. The big exceptions would be Reach for the Moon and The Best is Yet to Come which just need someone to be first since they get through dedicated support rather then needed people to actually listen to them.

Oh wow, somehow things worked out for me with 8:32:40 being the final post - literally 8:30-10:10 was when I was busy with something else!

Haven't started catching up yet, but full locks/partial locks/no locks are all fine imo as long as participants understand what it entails and have realistic expectations. azuarc did a great job of warning in advance that 256 locks were possible, and I hope people were not caught too off-guard at the end there. I tried to ease those tensions a bit, thinking "If everyone starts expecting 256 locks, it'll make 256 locks even more likely" but it was futile in the end! It's interesting to consider whether we would've locked fewer songs without the one-day extension? (not saying full locks was a bad outcome, just a surprising one)

OK gonna actually catch up on everything I missed now.

HasteDeux posted...

Also, I think such a high number of nominations hurts the disadvantaged nominators (i.e. those who didn't showcase any of their music on discord) disproportionately, too. Or does it? We could find that out pretty easily, as we have all the nomination data for this year and last. (I would just have to collect the "original nommer" for 1000+ tracks...it would take a while)

I agree with this part. There's definitely a certain crowd that benefits from having a lot of original noms more than others. Limiting it to 10 original songs and 20 supports per person would be a good way to ensure a greater variety of the field comes from a greater variety of nominators.

HasteDeux posted...

We could find that out pretty easily, as we have all the nomination data for this year and last. (I would just have to collect the "original nommer" for 1000+ tracks...it would take a while)

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ 16cnuTdIwxrvSMxr9NPvRz9101hqGJ46ocYs9qrMk6vE/edit#gid=0

All the data's here, along with the locked songs. I don't think it's quite up to date though.

Regarding lowering the number of votes from 30 to 20, I am FIRMLY against that.

The vast majority of the 1000+ noms we got occured in the first couple of days, when nobody even had more than 15 slots to spend. So... if you lower the cap from 30 to 20, that's not going to change. We will STILL have 1000 songs in the playlist. I would bet my kidney on it. Except now for people who like me, who already struggle with figuring out what to support, I'll only have 20 slots to work with instead of 30, for almost the same amount of songs. That sounds awful.

Restricting the number of new nominations in some way, but still allowing for (at least) 30 total supports though... I can get behind. However I know one of the hosts is firmly against anything that caps the number of new noms, and I think their thoughts on why are quite valid.

DragonGargoyle posted...

I would be very unsurprised if this had more to do with me processing things slowly and struggling to concentrate, but I'll mention that it took me a few days of no-lifing just to get through day 1, and then another day just to sort out my potential supports

Ended up only making it to 431 on the playlist overall

I don't mean this as a criticism, I just mention in case this isn't how the nomination process was meant to pan out. And I'm also kinda worried that I did it wrong

it's quite honestly not on you. there were a ridiculous number of day 1 songs to listen through, not to mention day 2 and day 3 having similar counts

There was some discussion on the discord about reintroducing the 2-phase system (having 'nominations' and 'supports' done at completely separate times), but it's understandably got a number of problems, so I proposed a sort of softer alternative which also includes a freeze:

• Open nominations as normal for a few days. Each day, people can post more nominations (e.g. 4 more), like this year and the previous year.
• Once the number of nominations is unrestricted, keep it open for 24 hours.
• Freeze supports/nominations for a while. E.g. 3-4 days.
• Unfreeze and return to business as usual for the remainder of the nomination period. E.g. another 3-4 days.

I think this would coax the community naturally into a sort of 'nomination phase' and 'support phase', without outright preventing people from supporting during the first half or nominating during the second half. Plus, it would give people plenty of time to listen to the noms. How locks would play into this would depend on how locks are being handled in future.

DireKrow posted...

Regarding lowering the number of votes from 30 to 20, I am FIRMLY against that.

The vast majority of the 1000+ noms we got occured in the first couple of days, when nobody even had more than 15 slots to spend. So... if you lower the cap from 30 to 20, that's not going to change. We will STILL have 1000 songs in the playlist. I would bet my kidney on it. Except now for people who like me, who already struggle with figuring out what to support, I'll only have 20 slots to work with instead of 30, for almost the same amount of songs. That sounds awful.

Restricting the number of new nominations in some way, but still allowing for (at least) 30 total supports though... I can get behind. However I know one of the hosts is firmly against anything that caps the number of new noms, and I think their thoughts on why are quite valid.

One of the good things about having 20 noms instead of 30 is that more people get to decide the bracket. No one has over 20 songs they voted for get in.

Mac Arrowny posted...

No one has over 20 songs they voted for get in.

I literally have all 30 of my songs locked. Not literally my favourite 30 songs that were nominated, granted, but yeah.

EDIT: Err, in hindsight I might have misunderstood what you were implying.

Mac Arrowny is saying that's a problem. 20 nominations would be a hard cap that prevents anyone from influencing more than 20 songs.

Lots of discussion in the Discord. Probably going to bed now but I will say I'm more or less fine with the current system as is. More time for nominations is almost certainly a good thing from my perspective if nothing else. There's probably other improvements to be made like tweaking lock numbers, though I'm not really upset with how locks played out this year either.

It's also possible there's some clever fundamental rework that makes things better for everyone but I don't personally enough problems with the current system that we should try to force drastic changes unless other people had different experiences than I did.

On a personal level, I think this might have been the best VGMC for me in terms of "songs I like getting into the bracket", so that's very cool!

my idea from the discord that people liked for some reason: 1 triple, 4 doubles, 20 singles, 7 to lock. Implicit goal is 50-60% of the field is locked. This allows for:

1) A fairly broad slate -- not quite as big as the past few years, but still bigger than in any years prior
2) Significantly less "locks pressure": 13% fewer votes, and needing 17% more to lock. I'm also assuming we see additional growth next year.
3) Still allows a given track to make it in with the support of only three people.

Mac Arrowny posted...

One of the good things about having 20 noms instead of 30 is that more people get to decide the bracket. No one has over 20 songs they voted for get in.

It's a continuum, right? SupraDarky's Discord server holds vgm contests where the bracket is entirely decided by people submitting three songs, with no additional support needed, so that the field is almost exactly proportional to the voter base. No matter how nominations are handled though, it's still ultimately a popularity contest, so maybe changes like that will just shift the pain of exclusion into round 1 eliminations...

I like the idea of a single triple. Maybe even up it to a quadruple. It's a way to give people something close to a "get one song into the contest for free" card but the song has to be at least decent enough to get some support.

This year we had 2500 points allocated to songs. We had 1536 points allocated to locks, or 60%. With ~5/6 of the voting power, we'd've'd 2100 points allocated, which can potentially lock 300 songs, but with a similar distribution would've locked 180, or 70%. We definitely could've put a larger proportion of points towards locks if we had space, but with less pressure to lock we probably would've been less efficient, so maybe it's a wash

Really shitty half-assed math but you know how it is, just wanted something more concrete. For the record I think it's interesting that with that system two people tripling can't get a lock, and it's even harder to achieve with doubles, so it might hurt the kcf/mycro type a bit.

NFUN posted...

the kcf/mycro type

Are they the same type? KCF got like 1 original nom in while Mycro got several?

Also I like triples in general, regardless of 7 to lock or whatever.

256-size bracket, and I get exactly one original nomination in

(luckily it was the nomination I most strongly wanted in at least)

FL81 posted...

256-size bracket, and I get exactly one original nomination in

Same tbh

Im sure glad I didnt drop Colony Collapse Disorder like I did my other 1/1s yesterday.

Yesterday?! Jeez, this thing moves fast.

Mac Arrowny posted...

Are they the same type? KCF got like 1 original nom in while Mycro got several?

historically, we've been very similar in terms of difficulty of others' appreciating what we like. i was strategic enough in my init noms this year to a pretty extreme threshold of testing opinions beforehand and "only pushing something i'm reasonably confident will be supported" that i was able to succeed well (plus tastes shifted on both my and others' end to be less excluded than i used to be, these days).

but it wouldn't have gone well for me had i approached more the way i did in the past (the way kcf does now. leaning toward the obscure and caring more about representation of our less common game or music interests than anything)---i think this is a very valid way to approach, and is my preference for how to approach, typically. this is more what nfun was referring to. and the noms i cared about most could only get in thru very permissive thresholds. and both kcf and i have expressed we'd lose interest in the contest massively if this wasn't possible

Criticisms about people feeling like songs they like are getting consistently boxed out hit me harder than criticisms about locking logistics, not being able to listen to all the noms, etc. I wish there was a fair solution to that problem more than anything.

NFUN posted...

This year we had 2500 points allocated to songs. We had 1536 points allocated to locks, or 60%. With ~5/6 of the voting power, we'd've'd 2100 points allocated, which can potentially lock 300 songs, but with a similar distribution would've locked 180, or 70%.

Which looks curiously like last year's bracket.

We were far from finished the funneling process, though. Adding more space, as you assert, wouldn't change things, I don't think. I wasn't there for the final rush, but everyone did exactly what I predicted they would do and would have continued to do, regardless of how many spots were remaining in the bracket. If there was a frenzy that I didn't witness of "OMG I have to lock now because if I don't I lose out" which was driving the hype, then okay, maybe. But I think the deadline alone was enough to do it, largely because there was virtually no time assigned to non-locking. We had one token day assigned that felt more like "eh, whatever space we got left, we'll give it one good shake and see what comes out of the box." I have to imagine that most people realized this, at least subconsciously, and placed a strong emphasis on locking.

azuarc posted...

Which looks curiously like last year's bracket.

We were far from finished the funneling process, though. Adding more space, as you assert, wouldn't change things, I don't think. I wasn't there for the final rush, but everyone did exactly what I predicted they would do and would have continued to do, regardless of how many spots were remaining in the bracket. If there was a frenzy that I didn't witness of "OMG I have to lock now because if I don't I lose out" which was driving the hype, then okay, maybe. But I think the deadline alone was enough to do it, largely because there was virtually no time assigned to non-locking. We had one token day assigned that felt more like "eh, whatever space we got left, we'll give it one good shake and see what comes out of the box." I have to imagine that most people realized this, at least subconsciously, and placed a strong emphasis on locking.

Since I'm new to VGMC. I don't know what it's like to not have every slot locked, I didn't hate the outcome although I got quite a few in so I probably can't say much. Definitely felt the rush to get stuff I liked in because I might not have the opportunity to later.

It seems that the locking threshold has to increase no matter what the ultimate goal is (and should have increased this year based on the observed results of last year). If the goal is to lock the entire field, then it should be at least 7, accounting for the speed at which we filled the bracket this year and the inevitable increase in voters that happens from year to year. If the goal is to make it more like previous years with a cutoff and a bubble, then locks should be even higher to decrease the number of them. Locks would need to no longer be the expected way of getting a song in, and would only happen consequentially to the more generally-liked songs. Maybe add the proposed +++ to help people who nominate more obscure songs. A bracket cutoff for a certain number of locked songs also seems beneficial in this case.

The nom freeze needs to be a permanent VGMC feature. It helps solve the problem of "listening time" without filling that time with even more songs. Whether it's in the middle or near the end, and for how long, can be adjusted. Also I know that this year's nom period was shorter than last year's, and I was in the minority who felt that last year's was too long (mainly due to that dead period near the end (well also due to the fact that I was not making a dedicated attempt at listening to the entire field, so I had no use for that extra time which other people did)), but starting on a weekend and ending after the following weekend seems completely reasonable.

This might be unpopular but would it help if the new nom cutoff was earlier than the final cutoff? Like for example, new noms are only accepted until the penultimate day and on the final 24 hours you can only post supports. I know it's been discussed that the cutoff can't be too early because of other problems.

The support freeze is fine but it isn't necessary. New song submissions had dried up by the time of the support freeze this year.

I'm not a fan of a cutoff for new nominations. If memory serves, there was one time VGMC did this and someone showed up after the cutoff but before the support period ended. They were not allowed to submit new songs and unsurprisingly was not happy.

Damn, I didn't consider the aspect of new posters for that idea.

I don't really have anything to add - I might have liked more time to listen to noms, but (a) half the reason I didn't get past day 1 was just lack of motivation on my part (illness didn't help) and (b) it would have made the actual act of trying to choose supports harder if I had more stuff I was familiar with. I like the idea of restricting "new" noms overall for mitigating that, though I'd understand if people took issue with that.

Kind of an aside, but as someone that's been increasingly bad about listening to noms for these, I'm glad I at least gave it a shot this time - there was a lot of cool stuff in there, even among songs I knew I was unlikely to support.

This is gonna be quite the bracket

I think more time to listen to noms would be nice. I managed to get through the whole playlist but it was pretty intense and required me to use all my free time on it, two weeks would've been much more viable.

Unfortunately by the time I got through everything and was ready to pick supports, several of my picks had already been dropped by their nominators as they hadn't gotten traction (and there were about two hours left of the nomination period it turns out lol). It's definitely an overwhelming amount of stuff to listen to, and I'd say the current system benefits more famous music, people who list their noms the second the topic opens, and music from known franchises too much. Not sure how to fix that though.

That said, I had a great time 'discovering' new songs and the end rush was very fun. Some of my favourite new findings didn't get close to making the bracket, but I'm still aware of them and can look up more stuff like them now. And it's kinda neat knowing that a bunch of people listened to things I nominated, regardless of whether my noms received any support or not. I've had fun here no matter how the actual contest goes, so thanks to everyone involved in running this!

-hotdogturtle-- posted...

This might be unpopular but would it help if the new nom cutoff was earlier than the final cutoff? Like for example, new noms are only accepted until the penultimate day and on the final 24 hours you can only post supports. I know it's been discussed that the cutoff can't be too early because of other problems.

But then how will we get Trails in the Sky SC music in at the last minute?

OrangeCrush980 posted...

But then how will we get Trails in the Sky SC music in at the last minute?

that's the beauty of it

we won't

Just thought I'd say as a first-timer to VGMC this year, I had a ton of fun with the nomination period. The song quality nominated was generally pretty good, and I discovered a lot of good new music through this. The way the locking period ended obviously will need some adjustments for next year to prevent spontaneous madness, but that didn't take away from my overall enjoyment of this phase. So thanks for the nominations, everyone, and I'm looking forward to the contest proper.

Thinking more on it, I was actually very lucky with my supports. My noms went 1/13 for getting into the bracket but of my final 24 supports, 15 made it in!

I also want to show some appreciation to my fav tracks that got no support, and to their nominators for introducing me to them. I really like all of these and would've supported them all if possible (I had about 40 tracks on my shortlist at the end so I cut out the lowest noms by default). Shout-outs to:

Wangan Midnight Maximum Tune 6RR | Starry Night (Future Ver.), nominated by UF8
DoDonPachi Daioujou Black Label Extra | A Peaceful Death - Ending, nominated by ZelRaat
Master Spy | Mission 3 (Hk), nominated by KCF
Tree of Savior | The Die is Cast, nominated by Mac
OutRun 2019 | Steal Into the Night, nominated by tazzy
Castlevania Judgment | Mad Forest, nominated by Taffer
Noby Noby Boy | Noby Noby Folk Guitar, nominated by KidDivinegon
STEEP | Drum Surf, nominated by KCF

I hope these get brought back in the future and get a better shot (I may even bring some myself if I do this again), but even if they don't I am grateful to have been made aware of their existence. There's a ton of others I liked too, you folks generally have great taste!

NFUN posted...

This year we had 2500 points allocated to songs. We had 1536 points allocated to locks, or 60%. With ~5/6 of the voting power, we'd've'd 2100 points allocated, which can potentially lock 300 songs, but with a similar distribution would've locked 180, or 70%. We definitely could've put a larger proportion of points towards locks if we had space, but with less pressure to lock we probably would've been less efficient, so maybe it's a wash

Really shitty half-assed math but you know how it is, just wanted something more concrete. For the record I think it's interesting that with that system two people tripling can't get a lock, and it's even harder to achieve with doubles, so it might hurt the kcf/mycro type a bit.

You're absolutely correct on the math. And, obviously, people are not going to achieve maximum efficiency... Perhaps 5 triples, 20 singles (or even 25, if people prefer 30 total that strongly), 8 to lock would actually give a better outcome? But at some point this stops being an engineering problem and starts being a political problem of getting various people on board, and I am not very good at that.

As for kcf/mycro/me (yes i am throwing myself in here, because this nom period basically went atrociously for me), this (5 triples, no doubles) might actually be a boost. 6/2 "pops" more than 4/2 does, in terms of getting attention for the last two singles. Plus, a 9/3 lock under that system would be just as easy to achieve as a 6/3 lock under the current system.

I just have things to say, it may not flow well, be as coherent, or make much of a point to where it helps on any future changes, but I just want to say these things.

I have been a part of B8's VGM community for nearly 16 years now and have been heavily involved in all aspects of VGMC since the second one. I have always been an outlier in terms of tastes, one would say. Not trying sound arrogant or say that I am a better VGMer or whatever, but I have a very ecclectic and open-minded tastes in all things entertainment and have long been one of the prominent examples of that in the VGM community here. So while I have always had difficulties appealing to the majority at a decent clip, I never felt like I didn't belong or that VGMC was an exhausting struggle. On an annual basis, I always had these weird or random connections or moments that clicked with people. I had Diddy Kong Racing's Jungle Falls inexplicably get a #1 seed. After initially nominating Killer7's Rave On, it might have been my first nom to make the retirement round too, it became a VGMC fixture for awhile even after I stopped nominating it. As a more recent example, I took part in an interesting board project regarding game OSTs (not BOST) where I once again pushed the Dustforce soundtrack, finally getting through to some B8ers and saw both of my noms in the next VGMC from it make the field. While it wasn't until my 13th contest that I finally had a nom retire, I always found the journey to be fun and full of pleasant surprises. Any inherent issues with a bunch of humans engaging in a contest on the internet didn't seem to be as prevelent or obvious.

What happened to turn VGMC to where it is has now become a cynical, results-based approach where its a blistering race to the starting and finish line, missing the forest for the trees? I don't want to romanticize it as if it was something totally pure, but the direction VGMC has seemingly taken just kind of makes me sad. It feels like a non-insignificant amount of songs that make the contest had already been guaranteed to make it in before nominations. I know that I have brough that up before and very few people have concerns with that, but does that not go against the spirit of a video game music contest? It's only partially about people collectively deciding on things and more about gamemanship and manipulation so that some users wield significantly more power and influence than others with what is the end result?

Before this is interpreted incorrectly, I want to say that I like the people that have come through this rapid expansion from outside of B8. With the exception of NFUN, as we all know, they have been nice, and I hope they like it here, are happy, and want to remain with us. I would never want people to feel unwelcome here.

A lot of these newer people are friends of the people who introduced them to this place, and have a connection through some shared VGM interests. While each individual is ultimately their own person with their own collective tastes and interests, I feel like there is an elevated level of homogeneity of video game and VGM interests that with the increased user count leaves people like me feeling like an outsider and that I am being pushed out through some bizarre social gentrification, and there's nothing I can do about it, even with the accomodations that I have made to reflect this.

I have been a massive proponent of representation, games more than than anything, and it just feels like with the current landscape of VGMC, this is a futile act as some of my favorite OSTs that would have definitely had an excellent chance in the past will never come close to sniffing VGMC. That to me is a major problem. No song or soundtrack should be theoretically dead in the water, but here we are. I feel like I may be on the verge of, or are potentially already, no longer really belonging in a community that I have been in for roughly half my life, and I find that unsettling.

Interesting nomination period this year. I didn't look at the topic for two hours and when I checked back in, the topic had six additional pages of posts and nominations were over. I had no idea the locking period would not even finish

A meh year in terms of how noms went. We've Got to Believe in Something making it in was a pleasant surprise, but the songs that almost made it last year saw little to no support from the same people this year, and my goal was to get the tracks in.

hey im from b8

MaxGalactica posted...

The way the locking period ended obviously will need some adjustments for next year to prevent spontaneous madness, but that didn't take away from my overall enjoyment of this phase.

From what I understand, spontaneous madness happens every year regardless of how the nomination phase is structured.

KCF0107 posted...

I have been a massive proponent of representation, games more than than anything, and it just feels like with the current landscape of VGMC, this is a futile act as some of my favorite OSTs that would have definitely had an excellent chance in the past will never come close to sniffing VGMC. That to me is a major problem. No song or soundtrack should be theoretically dead in the water, but here we are. I feel like I may be on the verge of, or are potentially already, no longer really belonging in a community that I have been in for roughly half my life, and I find that unsettling.

KCF, I really love the things you put forward this year, and I'm especially gutted that Flight of the Space Monks and Forest of Harmony didn't make it. I'm thankful to you for introducing me to Apple Slash, and for pushing Boyfriend Dungeon as well. I already want to make a real effort to get songs from those games into the field next year (and I hope you'll feel you belong enough at that point to be a part of that). I don't know how meaningful this will be coming from the person who wins most of your guessing games due to shared taste/knowledge, but I appreciate what you bring to VGMC and I'm sorry that your submissions often struggle. I hope that VGMC can change in some way that addresses this.