FF6 Remix Project -- 2 Week Extension

[Brandon Strader]

It's disgusting. They're "too good" to work with the community so they make a private project, then announce that they've been doing it to deter the community project...

[DarkeSword]

It's disgusting. They're "too good" to work with the community so they make a private project, then announce that they've been doing it to deter the community project...

Nobody's deterring anything. There is nothing that says that this project can't continue.

[Brandon Strader]

If I was running this project, I would definitely be very discouraged :3

I'm glad Prophecy sees it as a type of challenge to go above and beyond, though... It makes me uncomfortable.

[Nekofrog]

Nobody's deterring anything. There is nothing that says that this project can't continue.

These exclusionary tactics for the sake of a "surprise" have to stop.

Don't want a remixer on a song? Just tell them straight up. Filtering people out by invite only is stupid, offensive, and only serves to cause problems in the community.

[Gario]

These exclusionary tactics for the sake of a "surprise" have to stop.

I think that's why they're making their private projects public. I'm glad Prophecy is taking this as well as he is, but for everyone else what else can you expect them to do other than make the announcement now like they have? Damage has already been done - rather than deriding them on it why not appreciate that it's not going to happen again?

I think the staff saw this as a problem and agree with you all, for the most part, hence the announcement. There's nothing that they can do to change the past, though, so it'd be more constructive to focus on damage control rather than assaulting the staff for all this.

[Frederic Petitpas]

With such a huge title, the director must have choosen great remixers.

I hope it'll be diverse and include many differant styles.

But anyway, two FF6 projects meansmore tunes means more styles means more fun and so on

[Level 99]

For months?

Then why let Prophecy run his project for nearly 2 weeks (and people work on remixes) before deciding to reveal it?

Whoever runs this private show just made a mockery out of everyone here, which is pretty rude tbh.

In the same way a director chooses to reveal their project and recruit in public, so too should be their right to keep things exclusive. The best part about OCR projects is that there's no concretely-set way that it has to be organized or worked on, just what involvement they need to get it posted as well as the quality bar (along with a few other assorted things). OCR doesn't not allow multiple projects of the same game, which is why things weren't brought up the moment this was made (same deal with Banjo Kazooie), however it made the staff face the issue of potentially releasing multiple albums for the same game around the same time, which is a little much.

If the person(s) running the closed FF6 album want to keep it private and locked down, that's their choice. Just because there are two does not mean that one needs to shut down, or one is better or more desirable than the other, and it most definitely does not make a mokery out of everyone here. The other one was in the works for months. It would have been much more douchey if staff had done nothing and y'all only knew about it potentially after it had been released, this at least lets people know of its existence. Staff made a decision, put it into effect, and let everyone know what was up as soon as we could. Holidays + MAGFest + Real Life may have potentially added a day or two to the time we acted but that is super-minimal in most respects.

The idea is to never discourage multiple projects, but to keep things fair and more transparent.

I don't think anyone is going to complain if two FF6 albums are released, each with its own music or style or roster or whatever, as long as there is enough time inbetween and potentially enough of a difference in scope and goal.

Hey, no worries. As far as I'm concerned, that's in the past now and things are in the open. I'd like to deal with how things are, not how they were. I'm sure this will be resolved shortly and we'll all move forward with awesome ff6 remixes.

Thanks for having such a positive attitude about all this. You really are providing a very positive example to other people who may and will run into this in the future. Best of luck with everything, looking forward to seeing what comes out of it!

It's disgusting. They're "too good" to work with the community so they make a private project, then announce that they've been doing it to deter the community project...

"too good" to work with the community has nothing to do with it. Closed, private projects have a lot of benefits.

1) less stressed recruitment and rostering: you don't have people hounding down your door to join your album, and you can be much more selective about who or what you want on it without looking like a jerkface. Sometimes directors get ideas in their heads and know exactly where they want to go with them, and who they want involved. Having a public project at this point just adds extra work to turn people away.

2) its a surprise. Surprises are fun, and it allows a lot more flexibility with deadlines, milestones, and is also potentially a plus when it is released because WHOA IT CAME OUT OF NOWHERE HOW AWESOME.

3) It removes interference from outside sources. As long as it is kept under wraps, you don't have to keep answering people about when its coming out or what all is going on with it.

And many more.

A closed project, in regards to mixers on it, really is no different than a normal project except there's no outside talk about it and less pressure. For a director, it can be considerably less hassle and more flexibility.

Facing facts, not every album needs to be an open and recruiting community effort. I don't hear people bitching about missing out on joining one-man albums that were revealed at release Now that it is at least going to be known that a game or games are being worked on in a closed project, it can sway people towards or away from approaching it themselves. That's their choice. This was not announced to deter people from joining this FF6 project, but rather to let people know that there may be a delay in posting if both are queued up at the same time. To take a page from your own book Brandon, what's wrong with more music?

Both open and closed projects have their benefits, their drawbacks, and their usages here in this community. Try to see it as that, since it is most-definitely not a statement of contempt about the community.

These exclusionary tactics for the sake of a "surprise" have to stop.

Don't want a remixer on a song? Just tell them straight up. Filtering people out by invite only is stupid, offensive, and only serves to cause problems in the community.

I disagree wholeheartedly with most of this. If a director wants something to be a surprise, they have the right to have it be as such. What we're doing now is partially compromising some surprises in order to allow more transparency and better knowledge of the current album landscape should they want to run something similar. Its not an exclusionary tactics, its a director's choice on how they want to run and control their album.

I agree that if you don't want a remixer on your public album, just tell them straight up. However, if a director wants an album to be invite-only, that's their choice. There is absolutely no obligation that anyone has to open a project for recruitment, and butthurt happens in nearly every album regardless of how it is run.

Edit:

With such a huge title, the director must have choosen great remixers.

I hope it'll be diverse and include many differant styles.

But anyway, two FF6 projects meansmore tunes means more styles means more fun and so on

Thank you for having a positive outlook on this.

ALSO

Just to address something bugging me in the back of my head, we can only list albums, open or closed, public or private, that we know about. That means that this policy goes both ways: if anyone else has started a secret project and doesn't want to conflict with others or face a potentially extended timeline, its existence needs to be made known.

[Archangel]

I agree that the staff aren't to blame, but in all fairness, someone could have foreseen this, especially with Final Fantasy VI. Everyone's been begging for this project for a long time.

There have even been plans for a Final Fantasy VI project about a year ago and I was secretly invited to participate in it. You can imagine I was a little surprised when I saw this thread, but because I hadn't received any new information about the secret project, I just assumed it was dropped.

I've never been a fan of secret elite projects. I think they alienate a lot of people because they give an impression that this is a tightly sealed community with a strict hierarchy that doesn't allow newcomers to participate in project albums. That's not true, of course, but it even took me a couple of years to become an active member of the community because I was intimidated and somewhat unsure about whether I'd get accepted--not just by the judges, but by the community in general.

I'm glad things are (more or less) out in the open now. It's a very good decision and I support it.

I hope the artists on this project don't get too discouraged by this. I'm certain you're capable of making wonderful music and it would be a real shame to drop the project just because of this misunderstanding.

[Darangen]

As far as there being an "elitist group" or hierarchy, it's just not true. If you've ever been to MAGFest (if you haven't you should go at least once) or any of the OCR meetups you'd quickly learn that the community is full of incredibly down to earth and accepting people.

I think it's an inherent flaw in online communication or any textual communication for that matter where words are too often taken out of context or read in a way that makes the writer interpreted in a wrong way. I think that's what causes people to see others as elitists, separatists, etc. In most cases they're 100% wrong.

[Rexy]

Darangen's right - when I met Fishy, WillRock and ProtoDome for the London Gaming Con, they came across as extremely friendly and like-minded people. And the sheer amount of organisation on the panel we did and the antics afterwards were great to be a part of, and a worthwhile enlightenment into the more 'human' side of the OCR community. I hope to see them all again this December!

Anyway, back to the point at hand. Naturally I was disappointed with the news when I found out. I saw this as a great working venture to pay honor to that one game that heavily changed my gaming outlook at the time, and that is something that I don't want to deny. So to see the news about the closed project come through, it made me feel as if all we did was a step in the wrong direction.

But let's take Celes's words in the game as an inspiration - "You want to live in the world as it is? No? Then do something about it!" Of course, complaining to the staff is NOT a good idea as they have seen these two sides of the story come through. But what were you expecting them to do - push on the hidden project and release it under our noses, or let us release the thing while upsetting the other side? This comes as a compromise for both sides, and while it may be a stumble on this path, think about how the other side would react as well.

But back to our take on this - let's take it all into perspective, right? Jason barely knows the game much but he has a vision to succeed with OCR's main aim in getting people out there, and coupled with that I have an emotional attachment that would make it work in ways that you can think.

* When I saw the frozen esper in the Narshe mines, I stared at it in awe.

* When I saw the moogle army, I just wanted to dive in the game and cuddle them all.

* When I saw Kefka complaining about sand in his boots, I busted a gut.

* When I saw Celes proclaim herself as "not a love-starved twit", I busted the other gut.

* When I choked on my first run through the opera, I couldn't stop laughing at how I did that. xD

* When I went through the Magitek Research Facility, I let the beat of the music flow in me, even going as far as doing an early case of the djp.

* When I saw the apocalypse, I was scared and had nightmares on that scene for days.

* When I (unknowingly) let Cid die and saw the following scene, I was crying buckets.

* When I discovered the Falcon, I had this instinct to really work hard to overpower the odds.

* When I saw the interior of Kefka's Tower... I apparently soiled my pants. .__.

That's just a small list of feelings I felt with the game, and many of them ended up sticking inside my head a significant amount and have been very important events for my progression on viewing the world of videogames. In my honest opinion, it is THE best Final Fantasy game in the entire series and I felt honored to be able to work alongside Jason and see what can be done to work with it.

And of course, some people may see us as the "raggy dolls" of this joint in comparison to the closed project. Well, we don't even know who's in the closed one so we can't come to close conclusions.

What I can say is that they may have a vision, and even though we may not be considered the community ultimates, we have ours. There is more than one side to every story, and of course something can be said about a piece of music as well. Jason has a lot of production experience under his belt, while at the same time I want to make sure everyone brings out the soul of the music and really give it a sense of meaning.

tl,dr; Don't worry about a damn thing! Just get in there, make great music, and make Uematsu proud - we can do this!

[Archangel]

I think it's an inherent flaw in online communication or any textual communication for that matter where words are too often taken out of context or read in a way that makes the writer interpreted in a wrong way. I think that's what causes people to see others as elitists, separatists, etc. In most cases they're 100% wrong.

Or maybe people just misread other people's comments. =P I said that the hierarchy thing was not true. It was just the impression I got as a complete newbie.

I've never been to an OCR meetup, though. I live in Europe, so it's not exactly a short trip to the US for me.

[Magnetic Ether]

Just want to give Prophecy a thumbs up for not backing down and to everyone who's taking part as well. Keep at it

[Rozovian]

Just want to give Prophecy a thumbs up for not backing down and to everyone who's taking part as well. Keep at it

+1 thumb. The rest of you, be done whining and get back to making cool music.

[DarkeSword]

Just want to give Prophecy a thumbs up for not backing down and to everyone who's taking part as well. Keep at it

... there's nothing to "back down" from.

Seriously, nobody is trying to shut this project down.

[Eino Keskitalo]

Another cheer to Jason, and Rexy as well, for their outlook in this. I for one see no problem with getting two projectfuls of FF6 ReMixes. (:

(I also see the point Level99 made about the differences in running public and private projects. It's really up to the directors how they want to roll. From the listeners point of view.. 25YEARLEGEND was a total surprise for me, and it was great fun to be surprised. But following projects publicly from beginning to end is just as fun.)

--Eino

[Fishy]

Yeah just to re-iterate, this move was not intended to pressure anyone I'm sure. It was meant to just let people know it was already in the works, and make their own minds up if they want to crack on. More power to ya!

And then the new policy was put in to make sure this situation doesn't happen again.

[Archangel]

... there's nothing to "back down" from.

Seriously, nobody is trying to shut this project down.

I don't think anyone thinks that, but someone might lose their motivation to participate in the project.

I hope no one does, though! Final Fantasy VI is a great game with magical music that, come to think of it, deserves at least two projects to be at least remotely covered. =)

[Liontamer]

From the listeners point of view.. 25YEARLEGEND was a total surprise for me, and it was great fun to be surprised.

By only having indie game composers that Rekcahdam and we knew recruited for a concept album with a specific vision, that project was elitist and wrong. I also think such an approach is bad PR for OC ReMix, because people will be angry with pitchforks that not everyone who would have wanted to be on a Zelda 25th anniversary album got to be on it, as was their God-given right.

(See? It always sounds silly. )

[Magnetic Ether]

I don't think anyone thinks that, but someone might lose their motivation to participate in the project.

I hope no one does, though! Final Fantasy VI is a great game with magical music that, come to think of it, deserves at least two projects to be at least remotely covered. =)

Exactly

More music is always good!

[Tuberz McGee]

Well, I came back to this bombshell.

Cool. There's already one, that's fine and all. We don't have to stop.

It's one of those games that I would cover EVERY SINGLE SONG if I could.

It's my second favourite game (behind Chrono Trigger), and It brought me joy.

This ReMix project is for members of the community that want to express their pure emotion.

Even though they may not necessarily have "MAD STUDIO CHO-" nah, I'll ruin that if I use it. Heh

Whereas that secret project is for people that are already quite versed in the art of ReMixing. (Why it's invite only)

Either way, you'll end up with two entirely different feels because of this)

I support as much Final Fantasy VI love as possible.

[OceansAndrew]

Hey guys, you can calm down now, i'm on the project.

[Jason Covenant]

Hey guys, you can calm down now, i'm on the project.

=)

We're going to be getting forums very soon here, so I'll update the tracklist when that happens. And people have been practically spamming my inbox with awesome wip's so there will be more updates.

[Pavos]

Just what this project needed: More drama

It's too bad that we have to share the remixer pool (and especially the more experienced mixers) between the two projects and that the attention for the 2nd FF6 album will probably be less than the first to be released.

I remember when Heroes vs Villians was announced when we were working on BadAss, which wasn't something I liked very much. Fortunatly we could differentiate ourselves by having only boss themes and sticking to a dark vibe on the entire album, but I don't see such a difference possible between these two FF6 albums. I highly doubt that the other one is genre based, just that it is handled by the 'pro's'.

Ah well, there's nothing that can be done or could have been better done otherwise and we'll make sure that this FF6 album will be a kickass one. Just one question Prophecy: with your strict deadlines (which I liked about this album, it meant that it could potentially be done in a year), would we face the same potential release date as the other album? In other words: do we have to wait to make the time between releases larger?

[Darangen]

I'm still excited to be on this project!

[Rockos]

Darangen's right - when I met Fishy, WillRock and ProtoDome for the London Gaming Con, they came across as extremely friendly and like-minded people. And the sheer amount of organisation on the panel we did and the antics afterwards were great to be a part of, and a worthwhile enlightenment into the more 'human' side of the OCR community. I hope to see them all again this December!

Anyway, back to the point at hand. Naturally I was disappointed with the news when I found out. I saw this as a great working venture to pay honor to that one game that heavily changed my gaming outlook at the time, and that is something that I don't want to deny. So to see the news about the closed project come through, it made me feel as if all we did was a step in the wrong direction.

But let's take Celes's words in the game as an inspiration - "You want to live in the world as it is? No? Then do something about it!" Of course, complaining to the staff is NOT a good idea as they have seen these two sides of the story come through. But what were you expecting them to do - push on the hidden project and release it under our noses, or let us release the thing while upsetting the other side? This comes as a compromise for both sides, and while it may be a stumble on this path, think about how the other side would react as well.

But back to our take on this - let's take it all into perspective, right? Jason barely knows the game much but he has a vision to succeed with OCR's main aim in getting people out there, and coupled with that I have an emotional attachment that would make it work in ways that you can think.

* When I saw the frozen esper in the Narshe mines, I stared at it in awe.

* When I saw the moogle army, I just wanted to dive in the game and cuddle them all.

* When I saw Kefka complaining about sand in his boots, I busted a gut.

* When I saw Celes proclaim herself as "not a love-starved twit", I busted the other gut.

* When I choked on my first run through the opera, I couldn't stop laughing at how I did that. xD

* When I went through the Magitek Research Facility, I let the beat of the music flow in me, even going as far as doing an early case of the djp.

* When I saw the apocalypse, I was scared and had nightmares on that scene for days.

* When I (unknowingly) let Cid die and saw the following scene, I was crying buckets.

* When I discovered the Falcon, I had this instinct to really work hard to overpower the odds.

* When I saw the interior of Kefka's Tower... I apparently soiled my pants. .__.

That's just a small list of feelings I felt with the game, and many of them ended up sticking inside my head a significant amount and have been very important events for my progression on viewing the world of videogames. In my honest opinion, it is THE best Final Fantasy game in the entire series and I felt honored to be able to work alongside Jason and see what can be done to work with it.

And of course, some people may see us as the "raggy dolls" of this joint in comparison to the closed project. Well, we don't even know who's in the closed one so we can't come to close conclusions.

What I can say is that they may have a vision, and even though we may not be considered the community ultimates, we have ours. There is more than one side to every story, and of course something can be said about a piece of music as well. Jason has a lot of production experience under his belt, while at the same time I want to make sure everyone brings out the soul of the music and really give it a sense of meaning.

tl,dr; Don't worry about a damn thing! Just get in there, make great music, and make Uematsu proud - we can do this!

This ^

This is my fav game. The feelings, the character, the music, the story, kefka ^^. Everything was so perfect about this game. And I'm happy to try my best on a remix and to participate (even tho my mix is not as cool as the others.) and give feedback comment and anything to help. I'll be happy to follow every mix on this album while it's taking form.