Search the Community

The Judges Panel has been talking about ways to work through the queue of submitted remixes at a faster pace, and after a lot of discussion and weighing the pros and cons, we've come to a decision that's probably one of the biggest adjustments to our process in a long time: Submissions no longer require four (4) YES votes to pass. A decision is reached as soon as the difference in votes is three (3). To clarify the key change here: when a submission receives three (3) YES votes and there are zero (0) NO votes, the submission is accepted, because the difference in votes is three (3). If a submission continues to go back and forth without reaching +3 in either direction, the panel will continue to vote until all active judges have voted and the majority will determine the decision. This update to our decision making process will immediately apply to any submissions on the panel at the time of this announcement going live, and for all decisions moving forward. We won't be going back to previous rejections to find decisions that started with three (3) uncontested YES votes but eventually got rejected; in those cases, what's done is done. We hope that artists will find this new criteria a little bit easier to understand. Overall, we've been impressed with the quality of work being sent in these past months, and this should make it easier for us to get the slam dunk tracks through the process faster. Thanks to all the artists who continue to participate in our curation process. Hope to hear your work soon. - DarkeSword

In the interest of healthy server space utilization, we'll be removing the audio files that get attached to submissions once the decision is complete. For accepted submissions, we'll remove the file after the remix has been posted to the site. For rejected and withdrawn submissions, we'll remove the file immediately after the decision is published. If you provide an external link to a file, we will not remove that link. Submission entries and all of the comments attached to them will remain intact, so you'll still have that history on your Submissions Tracking page. We'll also be going through the existing submissions to remove files. This process will start tonight (6/11) around 11PM ET. If you'd like to save a file before it gets removed, please do so. Thanks. -- DarkeSword

Due to a recent server migration, there have been some issues with incomplete uploads on our Submissions Form. I've made the following changes to the form to work around this issue while I continue to investigate the root problem. Changed Audio File to be an optional field. Added External Link for Audio File as a new optional field. You can now choose to host your submission file externally. -- DarkeSword

Hey all! Just some quick updates I wanted to let you all know about. Site & Forum Updates If you're an artist, your forum profile now includes a link to your artist page. This also shows up in your little profile box when you post threads. I've been doing a couple of small style and layout tweaks to forum listings in an effort to reduce some whitespace. Guidelines for certain forums have been moved out of the announcements module to the forum's internal rules setting. You'll see a relevant link on forums that have specific guidelines. I did a pass on forum profile fields and deleted a lot of obsolete data (like the field for your ICQ number!). There are a couple of new fields too, like Pronouns and Discord. Make sure you head over to your account settings and keep that profile updated! Tagging has been disabled on forum threads for regular members. We (the staff) weren't seeing a lot of sensical or consistent usage, so we're in the process of cleaning those up. We may revisit forum thread tags later with predefined options. The Ready to Review process in the Post Your Game ReMixes forum has been retired. It served us well for a couple of years but after a while we found that people were not engaging with it, and it felt like another bureacratic layer to the submission process. We've gone back to the older, more open-ended format where you can just post your remixes for feedback. A similar process in the Recruit & Collaborate forum has also been retired. Vote counts on submissions in the queue have been moved out of thread titles and into tags for the purposes of some internal tooling I'd like to try, so you won't see those anymore on the Currently dashboard and I worked on fixing how that data gets pushed to the dashboard, so you'll still see vote counts. Upcoming Events Do you have OPINIONS about REMIXES? Join us this Thursday at 8:30PM EST on Discord where we run the first-of-hopefully-many Review Bombs! We're going to get a listening party going for OC ReMixes that have gone the longest without having any reviews and rectify the situation. I've heard of Metroidvania, but METROID VERSUS VANIA?! This Friday, we're kicking off the second run of Game Set Mash!!, our long-form team-based remix competition. This run features music from two legendary franchises: Metroid and Castlevania, and two teams will compete to see who can make the best Metroidvania Mashups. They'll have two weekends to get their tracks done, so check back at the start of February and get your votes in! Speaking of competitions, I'd be remiss if I didn't shout-out the People's Remix Competition, which just ended a legendary 20 year run under the stewardship of @Bundeslang. I remember back when PRC started back in 2003 (!!) and it's been a rock solid staple of OC ReMix since then, with a lot of musicians in the community developing and honing their skills through their participation. Absolutely incredible work from everyone involved over these past two decades. Make sure you check out the thread for the last round! Well, that's all from me for now. I'm still getting a handle on how everything works and fits together here, but slowly-and-surely we're going to continue to inch OCR ever-forward. Thanks! - DarkeSword

Happy New Year, everyone! Just wanted to check-in and let you all know that we've got a new submissions process for remixes. Since the inception of the site, we've been asking you to host your file somewhere and send us an email with a bunch of information about your remix. This has lead to a lot of headaches on both your end and our end, but now we're finally moving forward with a more modern method. Introducing the new Submissions Tracking page! We've used our forum software to build out a custom form where you can upload your track directly to us. This post will get a status and linked to a decision thread, and it also features a comments section where judges can communicate with you about issues with your remix. Submissions are private, so only you and the judges can see them. In the coming months we'll be retiring the old email method of submitting remixes with an auto-response that'll direct folks towards the new system. This new form, combined with our recently revamped Currently in the Judging Process dashboard, will help you keep tabs on your submissions. A big shout out to all of the ReMixers and Judges who helped me test out this new system. I've had ideas for years for turning our submissions and judging workflows into a fully integrated piece of software, and while the limitations of our forum software prevent us from hitting that goal 100%, this is a huge step in the right direction. I'm looking forward to hearing what you all are going to send us. ? — DarkeSword