AngelCityOutlaw

Yeah exactly, and even then I've heard some stories about VGL (though unconfirmed so I wont share them here). The goal is to break even so your valuable time is not wasted. If you can spare the time and find value in the process of making music itself then that's payment enough (and has been payment enough for all of us here at OCR for over a decade).

A year on after all this mess, and quite honestly my opinion on it all hasn't changed much. I don't trust ANY major gaming webpages, NeoGaf is still trash and is even more ban happy if you don't "tow the party line", and places like Verge/Polygon and Kotaku continue to be as awful as ever the last time I bothered looking at them. I don't care about GG, and really don't think I ever will.
But I can say that while I agree that games can do better with representation in diversity, as can all mediuims, I'm against it being shoe horned in so as to deflect criticism, it ends up being more as tokenism. But I also think we're getting there naturally, it won't happen overnight.
What really gets me annoyed is the way all these journalists/websites say they want to have a discussion and only want to shut down any methods to discussion that doesn't align with their view, a "safe space"/coddle corner if you will. This social stuff has turned me off to any sort of discussions on these topics, I've deleted my Twitter and Tumblr account because I want nothing to do with these people and I don't find them useful anymore. I stuck to the bare minimum of engaging in gaming culture and even less so now, and I'm honestly happier for it.
I firmly think that game journalists got so butt hurt over Roger Ebert's statements in 2010 as to why he didn't think games were art that they were determined to prove him wrong by going to the extremes they do now with their reviews and videos (extra credits, and no I don't care if they first got noticed here), as if their profession will ever be taken serious by people who have no interest in this stuff. I don't care if games are art or if they're "PC" enough to the San Fran hipster Progressive crowd, is the game good and entertaining? Does it play well, or work properly? Does it covey it's story or message fairly well? That's all I want or expect.

I do it by ear. Most do it via MIDI files found on the internet, I think.
 
 
  I play it in a different position on the fretboard on my guitar or hit shift+up/down after playing it in as MIDI via Keyboard. Finale, Sibelius and MuseScore and basically any notation software out there have functions to transpose sheet music to any key you want.

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I recall there being a study that said you could most often tell if a female avatar in a video game was played by a guy if the character jumps and walks backwards often.
 
http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2014/05/13/world_of_warcraft_gender_switching_why_men_choose_female_avatars.html
 
 
Not sure if satire...

Sweet. Hey Alex, I just remembered we did Forze Del Male a few years ago, but a short version for Dwelling of Duels...
 
Maybe we should expand on that?

There was definitely profit.
 

I know I missed the deadline here, but I will have the update to you tomorrow night if possible - If not, Sunday. I kinda realized that the key change was throwing epic/seductive vibe off - so I'm re-doing that part with original composition. So it should be like 60/40 source : original

Oh hell yes! I just recently played through the first game again and I was planning on doing a remix of at least one tune from the game after I finish this Fire Emblem remix. Maybe I'll hold onto that KH remix for when/if this becomes a thing.
 
It should totally be a thing.

What you've described sounds exactly like it's "dying". What else is substantially decreased activity because there are "better" alternatives and a shift in public interest supposed to mean? It's like saying "Sure, people don't really go to video stores anymore, but that doesn't mean they're dying. There are still some left, but with a smaller customer base. Most people just prefer Netflix now, is all."
 
Nothing that's "dead" ever truly goes away most of the time as far as technology is concerned. When I worked for a movie company, brand new movies we'd get were often sent directly from Dreamworks or whatever on VHS. So VHS still around...but it's definitely a dead format.

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.

28 is "old".
 
Okay there Grandpa Strader, I'll get off your lawn. 

That is very true. Most of the remixes I listen to on here or tried remixing myself are from late 90s or early 2000s games. Games I had as a kid in other words. Lots of the newer games don't have music that is as simple and melodic as the older ones, so it's tough to remix or when remixes of it pop up on the site (like those Dark Souls remixes) I either don't listen because I'm not familiar with it or when I do, I'm not familiar with or passionate enough about the material to really give an in-depth review. 

I never want to hurt butts when I point this out but that's inevitable... it might be hard for a site that takes 6 months to a year for judgements to maintain an active member base. A year is a long time, by the time those judgements come out, people could have either given up with music entirely, or the feedback is irrelevant because they've improved. 
 
I would love nothing more than for this community to be large and thriving, and there to be music spilling out of every corner of the site, but that's not the way it's going right now
 
We're all busy and getting old (I'm 28 now) and it's time that we get replaced with the new generation of remixers, but it's harder than ever for them to actually be a part of OCR

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.  

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.

Just got Undying off GOG for 2 bucks. Wooooooo

Is Kirby moving or am I having a stroke?

Clive Barker's Undying is easily one of the most under-rated horror games ever made. If you've never played it...you just need to. I'd crowdfund the hell out of a remake of that game.

The problem is music/voice unions and such have little to no bargaining power in the game industry, because music/voice (performance audio, really) are the only unionized disciplines that appear in game development and production, and even so, there are plenty of (extremely talented) non-union artists and performers. They can't reach to any fellow unions to put pressure, because... well, there are none.
 
Just look at the AFM fiasco with Austin Wintory. AFM didn't get what they wanted, so they made their own union members suffer for it. The game industry didn't like the terms that AFM had put up, because from their perspective, those kinds of demands were ridiculous and they had never seen them before. After all, everyone else doing programming, art, and whatnot aren't part of a union and are just subject to whatever their workplaces throw at them and this includes the publishing economic system in games that SAG-AFTRA is trying to fight (and AFM was trying to fight before them). In their eyes, why should voice actors be any different? The exception would seem unfair from the outside, and of course there's the obvious factor that they would lose money.
 
Now, that is a bad thing, yes. More disciplines in game dev/production need to be unionized because working in the game industry is pretty awful, working condition and quality of life considered. But as it stands right now, there isn't enough there for SAG-AFTRA to succeed in a standard union negotiation type deal, so their approach is... well, inefficient.
 
   
That's because the AFM is run by someone who doesn't understand the game industry. Mr. Austin Wintory himself:
 
 

Yeah. This is at the heart of what a lot of union negotiations boil down to: defining what "is" is. You can say something like "I fail to see why your late ass shouldn't be fined for wasting the publisher's money and the studio's time" and that sounds perfectly reasonable because people generally understand that you shouldn't be late for work.
 
But what if you hit traffic? What if you have an emergency? What if you're sick? What if you get into an accident on the way to the studio?  What if the dev miscommunicates the studio recording times? What if the dev told you to go to the wrong studio? What constitutes "late?" 5 minutes past call time? 10? Half-an-hour? What if you're 1 minute late and the publisher decides to slap you with a $2500 fine?
 
What constitutes "wasting the publisher's money and the studio's time?" Who gets to the decide what wasting time is? In the bit Bleck quoted, the word "attentive" is being contended. They have to clearly define what they mean by attentive, because the repercussions for not being "attentive" are pretty severe. A lot of people goof off at work every once in a while. What if whenever you goofed off, your boss took $2500 out of your paycheck?
 
Collective bargaining is all about working as hard as you can to clearly define the terms of the contract that everyone is going to abide by. Everyone in the union plays by the same rules, and management has to treat everyone in the union equally and according to the terms of the agreement. And everyone, generally speaking, has to be on board with the agreement.

Cool beans. I just wound up getting another paying gig with a deadline as tight as noose, plus this gives me an opportunity to do more with my track.

I'm going to offer a much different perspective - Honestly, I find it weird that you consider abandoning orchestral music to be musically "growing up" when command of an orchestra in both the real deal and sequenced is a coveted skill. Not to mention, the orchestra is the most versatile ensemble there is. With just the strings alone, you can write a piece evoking any kind of texture or emotion you can think of without actually having to change or rebuild the timbre of the instruments completely like you'd probably have to with a synth - depending on what you're going for.
 
My thoughts are that instead, you should stick to classical for the moment, but start making hybrid scores. Start integrating synths in your work - maybe take an older piece of yours and try arranging it to incorporate a synth bass or something. This way, the process of learning how to use them will feel much more "organic", if I might dust off the hipster music terms, to you than just throwing yourself completely into uncharted territory and saying "Okay, I used to write symphonies, but now I'm gonna do an acid-breakbeat track that will put the Crystal Method to shame." Eventually, you'll go from "classical with synth elements" to "electronic with some classical elements" and then inevitably "full on electronica".  I started by using synths in rock music and that made learning how to do other, completely electronic genres much easier - Worked for me, anyway.
 
EDIT: Though to be fair, when you do get to the stage of purely electronic, you'll realize that the composition of many electronic tunes of the EDM variety are a lot more "bare-bones" than orchestral. Usually, there's not much in the way of melody and the structure often follows this "build-up and breakdown" idea, adding more layers of synths and effects until it breaks down and starts again, rather than a verse-chorus kind of thing (unless there are vocals). An example, is if you listen to something like "Now Is The Time", it's pretty much the same shit over and over, but each time it repeats, it re-introduces the elements in a different order and a lot of the "leads" are more like synth-sound effects. This isn't to say you can't do more melodic stuff like what Zircon and a lot of VGM composers do, but I know I ran into the problem of my songs just sounding "wrong" compared to what I was going for and this was the most obvious thing I was over-looking.

Holy crap 
 
Tons of great suggestions in here! Thanks a lot, people. 
 
 
 
 On a cold winter morning...in the time before the light 

Oh, another I might recommend would be Way of the Samurai for the PS2. It's not strictly an action RPG. It's a somewhat short story-driven game that takes place in a small area. It's got real-time combat with a wide variety of melee weapons(primarily various asian-themed blades, but a few bludgeoning weapons and the like). All of the weapons have a different style and unlock moves based on how you fight with them. Trying things like jumping and attacking might unlock a new aerial  themed attack, while blocking and attacking with good timing might unlock a counter type move. In addition, your blade has a "Heat" meter that goes up by attacking or blocking(and down when doing nothing), along with a durability meter divided into 1-5 bars. Whenever the Heat meter hits max you lose a durability bar, and if you have no durability the weapon breaks completely. You can have the local blacksmith appraise a weapon ahead of time(before it breaks) to sort of save a copy, but outside of that you're screwed if you aren't careful.
 
No levels or stats. It's all about reflexes. Story-wise it's very short and takes place over the course of a few days, but has a large amount of endings based on almost everything you do. At the start of the game you can even decide to just turn and leave the area to it's own problems. You can respond to dialogues by attacking, or you can even stay silent by not choosing a reply for a period of time. It has a very ambient environment.
 
 
There's also Way of the Samurai 2(PS2) and 3(PS3), but I haven't played them and I've heard they don't quite match up. WotS4 is available on Steam, but I have yet to play that either.