Leaderboard

Symptom of a larger problem sure. A significant part of OCR is the nostalgia factor. It hits pretty hard and people love to relive things they once found interesting and pleasurable. But the nostalgia wears off quickly when you have to live it everyday. Psychologists call the decrease in response to a stimuli over time "habituation" and I think we are seeing a significant dip in interest in VGRemixes across the board because of it. It's probably also compounded by the lack of loss we have in the digital age. Back when technology moved forward and left the past behind you probably were not going to be able to play "classic" games ever again. This added to the feeling of loss and likelihood of nostalgia. Now you can get almost any game you want and play it in all of it's retro glory. Until you get tired of it. which is probably pretty quick. At some point you gotta stop living in the past and get on with things. ...not me tho.

So I've been wondering about something. When I joined OCR in around 2008, seemed like there was a quite an interest in new mixposts. Mixes would get 10-20 reviews, 30-40 if you were lucky. And i'm talking quite in depth reviews, people actually took the time to post honest positive feedback. Fast forward to 2015! - Now, seems like you're lucky to get 5-10 reviews. So my question is this - what happened? Now... sure, YouTube is a new means of getting feedback, but its hardly the same in terms of the quality of the responses you'd get. Getting a "WOW THIS SOUNDS AMAZING" is a lot more common than getting an in-depth response on there, plus many of the comments lack that personal touch you'd get from people on OCR. The mass of comments, for me, made the long wait to get on OCR worth it, whereas now... you wait for about a year, and get a writeup from DJP and about 2 comments on the site. Seems a little anticlimactic compared to how it used to be. I'm just wondering why because personally, I never really looked at many new mixposts ever. I've always just looked at the stuff I wanted to after the fact and ignored the front page generally, so I can't really say what changed. So... 2 questions: 1: Why, if applicable, don't you comment on new mixposts on OCR? 2: How do you suggest the number of reviews is brought back up again?

I think it's a couple of things for me. For starters, like most of us here already said, I have much less time than a few years ago. When I look at the active people at the forums (not calling myself that, because I hardly contribute at the forums), I have a feeling that the average age is higher than when I first joined these forums. Something which could easily be caused by a decline in new members and thus the old members growing up, but in these age categories, people have jobs and families. I can't miss five hours a day to check all of the new mixes and give reviews. I used to do that - I at least used to listen to all of the mixes on the front page, but I don't even do that anymore. Another thing is YouTube and Facebook. Because new mixes are popping up in my Facebook/YouTube feeds, I listen to the ones from there. That means I never visit the OCR homepage anymore and I don't see djp's write-up or come in contact with the review thread. And the drive to write a review gets higher when you see other reviews - this is nto the case now. If I like something, I just hit the 'like' button on YouTube/Facebook and write a short sentence - even though I know how great it is to get a full review by other OCR'ers. I'm not really sure how to fix that though... perhaps copy the write-up to YouTube as the first comment? It could be that people are more likely to write a more extensive comment

I think it's a symptom of a larger problem. OCR seems super dead in general compared to when I first came here a few years back. I don't know, it just seemed like this place was really happening around 2011-13. Now, the top threads in almost any part of the forum remain unchanged for days and some of those threads don't see a new post for quite some time. It's like everyone is either not here, or just lurking. I'll admit that I don't really listen to a lot of the new mixposts, but that's due to my decreased interest in game remixes. I don't venture too far from the production and community forums these days, but I notice even in the workshop, it's not uncommon now for mixes to get over a hundred views but absolutely no response.

It'd be awesome is more people wrote reviews here, I'll admit I am more excited to just read djp's thoughts and the Youtube reviews because that's about all we get these days, but the couple of ocr-based reviews I get from people who actually listen and enjoy the music really means a lot. I put the blame squarely on William Harby, who has not reviewed a mix in months.

Honestly, I didn't darkozl and Modus were one and the same person! lol As for visual art/trailer work, you are most welcome in doing whatever you feel comfortable with for the project. Granted, I'd prefer us to be further along with the overall album before we start dedicating time to this portion but if you feel you can do both now, then I won't stop you. As for doing tracks, I'm sure we could find someone to help you with that producer bit before its all over and your style would be perfect for a track or two on the album. The only snare for those types of remixes is that they can get repetative if the remixer doesn't switch it up over the course of the song. If this takes off nicely, I plan on petitioning this to be an official OCRemix album. But that's getting ahead of ourselves. Now if you are interested in claiming a track, feel free to either post it here or PM me regarding that and you can place a temp claim on a track until a WIP can be produced. And I agree, Battle 1/2 are great tracks and I think combining them into one track might lend itself to a diverse song that takes best elements of both - almost like a music compo that Darkesword usually does, mixing two themes together! lol As for me, the project director, I'm not musically talented but I know what I like and I've handled big projects before but not of this specific type. The projects I've handled are video game/modding projects. For a quick rundown of what I've been involved in and what I am still working on: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Creator/DarkFlameWolf (if the link doesn't work, just look up darkflamewolf at tvtropes.org, I'm there) That details most of my accomplishments. So I'm pretty good at seeing projects through, especially if I get the help needed. (for example, trying to do a computer based CCG card game and a MM-like clone with RPG elements but looking for programmers, but that's neither here nor there.) Most notable projects I've released is of course Megaman: Revenge of the Fallen, Desent Vignettes (for Descent 1), Lost Isle & Origin for Zelda Classic and written some popular fanfics on the side. I like to diversify my portfolio a lot, keeps me active and skilled in a lot of areas. (just not programming, I suck at that) If you got any more questions about me, feel free to ask. I'm pretty darn open. Thanks for the question Modus!

So it might be unorthodox to come back and post a second comment on a remix, but I just wanted to let Joe know that I've been running this thing on repeat for awhile and it just sits better and better with me the more I listen. I think an artist needs to know when their work is appreciated at the core, and it is! Makes Monday morning a lot smoother.

YES ...what they said