Tinaddar

You make a lot of good points here. I mean, I'm sure that constantly reviewing can get tedious and tiresome, and I'm not gonna lie and say that I plan to review everything that I hear. However, I do plan on listening to everything, and offering what advice that I can. I can also see how songs could get overlooked, and that is a real shame. Some of my favorite songs are from games that I've never heard of, yet I will admit that I tend to listen to songs from Final Fantasy or Wild Arms first, with more optimism, and I'll generally like a song better if I already recognize the main tune. That's pretty much human nature though, and difficult to avoid. Putting systems in place to encourage people to review songs that haven't seen many reviews, or to rate songs that haven't seen many ratings would help those more obscure songs get heard. You're probably right that VGMix 2 wasn't the promised land of feedback, and people are reminiscing and embellishing. Jake seems like a pretty intelligent guy with some good ideas though, and feedback is one of his focuses, at least so far as I understand it. He's seen what works and what doesn't, and has plans to make it better. Further, the community of video game remixing has grown (case in point: I'm here, and I wasn't before), so there are more people to make reviews. So I feel perfectly justified in my optimism. That, and if everybody THINKS that VGMix was a remixer's paradise, then people are more likely to be active reviewers when it is ready. It's like propaganda and peer pressure rolled into one: make them think that everyone is doing it, make them believe that it is true, and they'll follow suit and make it true.

Hurray, and Merry Christmas! I just got my present; VGMix2 torrent! Err, at least I will when and if it comes up. And yes: I shall seed it too. And Jake: congratulations on the weight loss. That's impressive, and I wish I had that kind of will power. I look forward to what comes of this.

I agree that, in a tournament where actual money or prizes are on the line, doing whatever it takes to win is completely acceptable. Regardless of what should be banned, so long as the rules are clearly established and agreed upon, if you are following those rules in order to win (even if you're being a cheap asshole) then you're alright. That said, there is still plenty of room to follow these rules and still be an unsportsmanlike dick. I will use as my example the fight at the end of Karate Kid 2. There is a karate match; whoever gets three points first wins. If you break a rule you lose a point. The bad guy is better than Daniel, and toys with him, scoring points but then breaking the rules to lose his points, hurt Danny, and keep the match going. Now, he's not “playing to win” here, but regardless: just because he is playing within the context of the rules does not exclude him from being a dick. The philosophy being discussed here that "just because you're playing within the rules means that nobody has the right to call you cheap, or an ass" is flawed. If I'm playing in a tournament, and I'm using a super cheap technique that for some reason is allowed, I expect the person I beat to call me cheap. I'll even apologize to them after, and say, "Yeah, I know, what I did was a dick move, they really should ban that." I'll even be one of the first people to talk to those in charge and say, "Did you see what I did there? That isn't cool." Now, yes, everybody should be trying to improve themselves, and always reverting to “That’s cheap” isn’t the best way to go, but considering the fact that it is cheap, you should allow people their frustrations without resorting to childish name calling. (The 'pro' players playing in certain Brawl tournaments, for example, complain when items are allowed because it is all "based on luck". In essence, they're complaining because it is unfair... Sound familiar?) The goal, then, is to create a set of rules that encourage (enforce) fair and diverse gameplay. These rules would not be arbitrary: using Akuma is a clear-cut example of something that breaks the game by forcing everybody to become Akuma. Banning throws is no good because they are an integral part of the game (and fair to boot). Basically, a competition should be about knowing what to do in various situations, and reacting accordingly. Part of the challenge involves being able to do the right thing at the right time, and keeping your nerves in check to get this done. Anything that reduces a game to “pick this character, execute this move, and you win every time” should be banned. It’s kind of like Chess… In every situation, there is an absolutely correct move to make, and that is why I will only ever play Chess for fun, and don’t try to become a pro: it would become as boring as Tic Tac Toe. Now, I’ll add that because Chess is so complicated, it is really hard to know WHAT that exact right move is, so there can be a lot of intellectual stimulation trying to figure it out… But the fact that it exists is problematic for me. How many of you would play in a Tic Tac Toe tournament? What’s the point? The same goes for any game where there is essentially only one option, or only one move that you have to perform.

Operation Neptune was fantastic, but you're right: the only problem I remember is fractions involving healthy barnacles. Number Crunchers was another one I loved. And oh yeah, Sesame Street ABCs for the NES; teaches you to form various three letter words! I've been discussing this topic of educational games with my friends for years, and even wrote about it for one of my classes this semester. I grew up with games, and attribute to them things like learning to read very well. What this relies on, of course, is that I played a lot of games with text, like RPGs where in order to finish the game I HAD to understand everything that was being said, more than action games. What is troubling is that nowadays a lot of RPGs have their main characters have voice actors, and nobody has to read anymore... It seems to me that games generally teach three things: Reading skills, Math and Problem Solving skills, and Other facts. Once you've learned how to sound out words, any game with text will allow you to practice and become better at reading, so you don't have to worry too much about intentionally trying to teach that. Most games have some sort of puzzles, so while you have to keep it in mind while designing a game, it shouldn't take too much effort to get kids practicing their problem solving skills. What is more difficult to put into video games are important facts. If you want to teach kids about US History, and make it fun, well... That's a bigger challenge than trying to teach kids to add two digit numbers. If you want kids to remember things, you have to make them important; if you want them to remember certain historical individuals then you have to make them important characters in your game. If you want them to remember years, you have to highlight that in your game. Imagine Chrono Trigger: I can tell you the date of every important piece of history that happened (65 million BC, 35000 BC, 600 AD, 1000 AD, 1999 AD, 2300AD), and these are facts I never TRIED to learn, I simply did because I had to use them all of the time. Various gods such as Odin, and Shiva, and creatures such as Behemoth and Leviathan I was initially exposed to from Final Fantasy (even though Shiva really doesn't resemble true Shiva). Basically: you remember the things that you have to use often. So far as motivation goes, people tend to be motivated by being faced with challenges. Unless your game is really funny, or has a really moving story or something, if it is too easy people will get bored. Optional really hard challenges are also good; you want to appease those who like things really hard, without turning off those who can't handle it. Also important is rewarding the completion of these challenges. If you get nothing, or get something useless for doing something really hard, what's the motivation to keep playing? If you go out of your way to defeat an annoyingly hard boss, die ten times, but finally win, and you get rewarded with some cheap potion, or worse: nothing at all, just the ability to fight the next annoyingly hard boss... Well, chances are lots of people would just give up on the game. If you could create a game that was as moving and in depth as Metal Gear Solid, as wide appealing and multiplayer as World of Warcraft, and educational enough to give everyone a GED... Well, you'd be both rich, and probably earn a Nobel Prize.

My only assumption there was that songs that receive the "OC_ReMix" tag pass through a panel of judges. Was I wrong? If that panel of judges were to disappear, I don't think that OcRemix would still be the same entity. (And I don't mean to sound contentious, if perhaps I come off that way.) If you still think I'm making unfair assumptions, feel free to let me know just what they are, and how they are incorrect, as I appreciate constructive criticism. However, I sort of feel like I'm derailing the thread, so go ahead and send me a private message, and I'll just get out of everyone's way for now.

This, and a few other recent posts, have been pretty much what I was trying to say, and I'm sorry if I assumed anything or appeared pessimistic. But, even though the WIP forums and threads may be around forever, who can go through every WIP to find the completed songs? What about someone who is new, are they going to go through the forums to find the songs? That's what I meant by disappearing. If you created some system for organizing these non-OCR tunes, then perhaps there wouldn't be a need for a new VGMix. However, this is simply not OcRemix anymore, so while you may not call it VGMix it is still a separate system. Frankly, I don't care who does it or what it is called, and I'm not rejecting the possibility that OcRemix could do it. So far as VGMix2 songs disappearing in the lower tiers, I can only speak for myself but I tried to listen to everything that I could. I downloaded as many songs as I could independent of their ratings, and formed my own opinions on them. They may not have been as noticeable, but at least they were still there to be easily found.

It's not that we're pessimistic, or hate you, or anything like that. However, are you planning, at any point in the future, to let anyone upload anything they've been working on, without putting it through the judges panel? I really don't think you are, as that is against the spirit of OCR. However, that is exactly the spirit of VGMix, and a lot of people like the idea of having both. Yes, you may get a very nice, functional and helpful work in progress section. In fact, I hope you do, and I hope everybody uses it and loves it. But at the end of the day (or rather, the end of the remix) when the artist decides "Yes, it is finished, and I'm happy with it," if the song doesn't live up to your standards it will just disappear. Maybe the song is good and people will like it, but it doesn't quite qualify as a remix. You would have to deny it on OcRemix, yet at VGMix it would still be available.

So I’ve been around for quite a while, though only as a listener, and a pretty quiet one too. Don’t often post on the forums (this is only my second post here at OCR), but this topic really interests me. I’ve been listening to the OcRemixes for a long time, before I ever discovered VGMix. Unfortunately, I discovered VGMix2 too late, just before it came down, and only managed to get 850 of the songs that were there. (I’ve been assured the database is still intact, just not currently online…) Not everything I found there was great, but a lot of it was amazing. For a long time, I wondered what people over here at OCR thought about VGMix. It’s great that I generally am seeing support! It’s so weird to see all of the posters, ‘cause I recognize the names of people who created songs I love. I sort of feel like I know some of you, even though I’ve never even seen you post before, let alone actually talked to you. I like OcRemix, but VGMix did something that I just don’t think OCR is going to ever do. Yes, OCR has a work in progress forum, but VGMix took that (apparently) so much further. I say apparently because sadly, I never got to take part in rating the remixes, but from what I hear it works out very well. Yes, there are alternative ways that artists can upload their music, for example youtube, but I see two glaring problems with that. First, there is no sense of community, and second, how is someone like me supposed to find all the work that is done? Am I supposed to scour youtube for hours and hours every day? This ties in to my thoughts on having a whole bunch of remix sites out there. I am under the impression that back in the day, there was VGMix and OcRemix, and they were the big two. VGMix let anyone in, and helped newcomers out, while OcRemix was more of a site for people who already knew what they were doing. Both are great, and great music came out of both. A number of songs were on both, as were many artists. And, when there were just the two big ones, it wasn’t too much trouble for an artist to kind of hang out in both communities. However, when there are dozens of these sites out there, I know that if I were creating music it would simply be too much of my time trying to hang out in all of them, and as a listener it is sort of a pain to have to try to keep up with everything. I already try to stay on top of the new OcRemixes, the new remix albums they do, as well as DoD and PRC and others, but it gets confusing and I’m a busy guy. I really like the idea of having both VGMix and OcRemix operating at full capacity, because I think they can exist complementary to each other, to improve the music and the community. A few words about Virt. I don’t personally know him, by any means, but I’ve read what he had to say on the VGMix forums. Basically, he’d been saying that he wants to find people to work on it, but that everyone is just too busy. His last posts were in January though, so I really don’t know what he’s been up to in the past year. He did say that he loves the support, and that if there are any programmers interested that they should try to contact him. Now, after reading this thread I found links to two other remix sites, so I know how I’m spending the rest of MY day…