djpretzel

Just a note to all - regardless of some of the clear missteps & issues being discussed, let's make good faith assumptions that William has, at the very least, put a lot of time & energy into what he's been working on. Ideally, if there's this much conceptual overlap, it would be one website and not two... I don't know if that can happen now, or even if it should, but there *might* be a way to sort things out to everyone's mutual satisfaction. If bridges are truly burnt, then I guess both parties need to decide whether to proceed in earnest with their individual plans. If William indeed would prefer to cancel his plans based on redundancy with SNESology plans, then whatever information necessary to make that decision easier for him would probably benefit both sides. If that information isn't ready yet, it boils down to a question of patience. Patience is indeed a virtue, but having a rough timeline couldn't hurt if it will dissuade duplicate efforts...

Thanks for the explanation and admission of fault regarding the domain names. What matters the most is that the domains are back with Ari/Sam, where they should be. Regarding sabotage, I don't think Ari's post accomplished that, nor do I truly think that any delay regarding the domains caused by your own actions have sabotaged them. If there's one thing I know a little about, it's that the success of sites like this have very little to do with the INITIAL enthusiasm surrounding them. It's easy to start a website, make a splash, promote like crazy, and get at least a few people on board. That's actually the fun part, but it's not the part that matters as much long term. Persistence, integrity, hard work, and an unrelenting focus not on stats or money but on *concept*... in my opinion those are things that build a successful long-term community-driven website. VGM is a niche, and just as fan arrangements are a niche within that niche, so too is original composition using SNES or other console soundsets/technology. You can get a good deal of hype based on the concept being fresh to some people - for awhile - but the long-term viability comes from fervent belief, a constant influx of talent and support, and boundary exploration. None of these characteristics will be sabotaged by website release dates or domain names or finger-pointing; they rest solely on the shoulders of site administrators & owners.

I think Ari's just trying to avoid forum-drama and thread-crashing. William, can you explain your intentions with regard to the Snesology domains? I see no reason why they should belong to anyone other than Shnabubula, or whomever he wants to own them, in this case Ari... Also if you want to dispute or clarify any of Ari's statements, that is your right. Preemptively squatting someone's domains when you know they're planning on going live, and not informing them, does not reflect positively, if that's what happened...

It's definitely easy to make a taxonomical gripe about this... then again, the ship has already sailed - "8-bit" has become synonymous with "chiptune" when in fact 8-bit microprocessors are quite capable of sample playback. Bottom line? In the world of VGM & chiptunes as well, "8-bit" is used & abused as a matter of course, and is more like a catch-all to describe a certain aesthetic. Naming a site "16-bit Collective" and having it just be SNES digs the hole deeper still, but... well, there was already a hole to begin with, and no one seemed to care much about getting out of it... At any rate, good luck on the site!

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I kinda-sorta think this makes more sense as an integrated set of functionality WITHIN VGMdb, as opposed to a separate website. Perhaps that wouldn't work best for your thesis, but I think it would work far more effectively for end users, especially if the intention is to integrate with VGMdb data already...

Fixed in v6 - the right column persists on both the lyrics and download pages, and the youtube will remain playing if you switch between the three.

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Update (2012-08-20): We worked extensively with Square Enix and were able to reach a fair & reasonable agreement, but after doing so we were informed by Kickstarter that they are technically unable to restore our project. The previous kickstarter is now effectively dead. Kickstarter staff have informed us that there is no need to cancel pledges, as credit cards will NEVER be charged, but feel free to do so anyways if you prefer! We did ask if they could just auto-cancel/delete all pledges, but apparently (as with restoring our project) they are technically unable to do that. Obviously, this is disappointing; we apologize for any inconvenience & frustration it may have caused you, and we are thankful for all the amazing support you've given us. Now that we’ve got everything sorted out, we're going to TRY AGAIN!! Stay tuned for info on a new announcement, and thanks (again) for your patience and support!

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Dafydd - Thanks for being understanding. We can't discus specific details of our interactions, but know that I will ALWAYS do my best to represent the contributions of all artists, staff, and members of the community. Speaking in generalities, many companies consider their characters an extension of their branding, and want to avoid any misconstrued endorsement or sense of something being "official" that could be perceived. While my personal belief is that fan use of artwork in this context only serves to popularize these characters and their worlds - free advertising, in a sense - I acknowledge that my personal opinion matters less than the copyright owner's wishes. While it's an interesting line of discussion, we're limited in what we can disclose, and I'd prefer that we focus on moving forward. As a side note, for the existing mascot pages, one solution might be employing fan art. We wouldn't reinstate the fan art in the upper right hand corner, but it could liven up the pages themselves. We need to work on a basic boilerplate licensing agreement that we can use for fan art - I think we need to start exploring more synergy between the VG fan arrangement & VG fan art communities in general, and this is a good catalyst.

Happy Birthday. The Bortz will be with you... always.

I've got an important announcement regarding mascots: We will soon be taking steps to remove certain site mascots from Square Enix, totaling around ~32. I want to stress that this is something we willingly agreed to do; while I explained the hard work and creativity that went into the bios for these, the copyright owner is concerned about their usage - as is their right - and we are complying with their wishes. The affected mascot BIOS themselves can remain online, sans art. I know that without the link from the right corner, they won't get much of a spotlight, but at least your work will remain online. Temporarily, the mascot images will be replaced with a single mascot, Mega Man X, and we will update the redirects to all point to his bio. Going forward we will not be adding any new SE mascots. We will need to find some new mascots! Super Meat Boy is a lock, but we'll do a thread soon in the main Community forum to see about some others. As always, I want to thank everyone for their hard work on this project AND for your understanding as to why this step is something that, while we wouldn't make in vacuum, is a respectful response to a reasonable request from the copyright owners. We can't answer "why" questions or provide any additional information, but if you've got questions about logistics moving FORWARD, please let me know.

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We may need to do some themed mixfloods to catch up. While this gives a little less "homepage time" to the included mixes, I think we can make it work as long as we can come up with a good grouping/concept. Newcomer floods, secondary album mixfloods, game series floods, etc. Thoughts?