Board 8 > [BOST'22] Announcing the Best OST of 2022 contest - NOMINATIONS NEXT WEEKEND!!!

(+) Yeah! (+)

there was no music released in 2022 how will this contest work

Next, here's some more specifications on the whole nomination format (the posts, I mean).

THE WHOLE NOMINATION FORMAT (THE POSTS, I MEAN).

Nominations

• There is no total limit on game nominations. HOWEVER, same as BOST, you get one nomination every 24 hours from the contest start (hard rule), and the nomination period is only 10 days long, meaning there is effectively a 10 game cap.
• If you miss a day, the following day you can nominate up to TWO games (for the current and prior day) at once. (Keep this in mind, since this still applies if you drop in for the first time from day 2 onward.)

Supports

• There is absolutely no cap on supports, you have an unlimited amount and you can also retract them. You cannot support your own nominations (obvious).

Double Supports

• You get up to five (5) revocable double supports, where your vote to support a game counts twice. You get one double support every day for the first five days.

So to reiterate, you can nominate up to 10 games, and there is no cap on the number of games you can support. HOWEVER, you have to wait until the following day to post any more (hard rule). Same as last BOST, if you miss a day, the following day you can nominate up to TWO games (for the current and prior day) at once. And yeah anyone that drops in after the first day can just start off with 2 noms this way, of course it can also apply more than once over the nomination period.

Double nominations exist, however there are similar restrictions placed here too. For one, you can't double your own nominations, here they only apply to games you're supporting. And for another, you can only do up to 5 of them, and you start off only being able to do one per day as well (if you use them later on you can just do all 5 at once though, unlike noms where you can only do up to 2 at a time).

Finally, I'd like to encourage that people include the earliest release dates for the games you nominate yourselves, preferably a line below your noms proper (note that by earliest release, it is the earliest relevant release date between original release, 1.0 release and leaving early access in 2022, and just the original release for games completely prior to then.

Okay, are we on the same page here? No? Well, fortunately, I've provided some examples here.

NOMINATION
Taiko no Tatsujin: Nijiiro Version
(released 3/24/2020)

sample songs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGAE0rTLxVU (added 2/12/2022)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HBc_QxP2haE (added 9/19/2022)

DOUBLE
Taiko no Tatsujin: Rhythm Festival

SINGLE
Taiko no Tatsujin: The Drum Master!

UNDOUBLE
Taikou Risshiden V DX

DROP
Taikou Risshiden V DX

Okay, I admit it, I left some details out until now. So the big change as you can tell here, is this. Nominations are formatted simply with just the game, unlike BOST and even VGMC you actually don't nominate songs specifically, you nominate game soundtracks as a whole. How does this work? You decide.

Well, not actually, but actually though. The nominator and supporters work together during the contest to set the songs for the matches! One major focus for this contest is to cast aside most of the RNG of the matchups usually seen in BOST and put control in the hands of the players.

At any point from pretty much now onwards, I'd like to encourage that people make use of the #bost-vgm forum on the Board 8 Discord server (see here: https://discord.com/channels/87835278454050816/1031588897345511454) to make threads to brainstorm tracks to use, as they WILL be directly relevant if they're among the 32 games that get in.

TRACK SELECTION (and) TOURNAMENT STRUCTURE

Now I'm sure this is leaving you with even more questions than before, so I'll try to explain a few more things.

Games that get in will make use of threads made either in advance or as soon as the bracket is released, and I, your humble (co-)host UF8, will be pinging both the users and the nominators for each game that makes it in, to come to an agreement before the next match on the songs that will be used. I won't say there's a hard rule on how to go about this, as open discussion is encouraged. Either way, at the same time, I'll also be making a dedicated thread for each match, also on #bost-vgm. I'll ping the nominator (please join the Discord if you're not there) or else a suitable representative (preferably somebody who doubled the nomination at least) to submit a set of 3 songs for the match by the deadline (which is 24 hours before match time, or 12 hours in later rounds) in said match thread. These match threads will go up a day or two before the following round, except for the last matches each round (obviously).

Now, I'm sure you just noticed that bolded text in the last paragraph. Yes, with the smaller bracket, it felt like a good excuse to make the whole contest like a finals match in BOST, with 3v3 all the way through (this is also why nominated games need three new songs). Whether you would want to pick a game with only that many songs, thereby demanding their usage in every round, is up to you.

There's also NO LOSERS' BRACKET here if it wasn't obvious from the smaller contest size and different scope, as the inclusion of one would change the pacing of the contest considerably which is just not what we were looking for here. Considering every game that gets in is guaranteed to use at least three songs you pick yourselves, I hope people don't take too much issue with this; it's a much smaller project overall by design.

Lastly, I didn't find a good place to insert this before, but back on noms: without a dedicated set of songs being nominated, I was worried about how awkward the nomination period would be without music to listen to, so... This isn't an outright rule, but I strongly encourage you to post a set of "sample songs" with the sets you nominate yourselves. Preferably 2, so we can have a playlist like those "first 2 songs from each set" ones az usually does for BOST proper. For songs you know were added after the initial release, including their release dates is also encouraged too, since I'd like to use some of that info for the matches if possible)

TIMELINE

Anyway, I guess I should finally talk a bit more about the whole nomination phase as a whole, and when everything is happening in general.

As you probably gathered already, nominations will run from Sunday, October 1st to Tuesday, October 10th. To be specific, I'm thinking about starting it in about... 2 and a half hours earlier than this topic has gone up now, I was actually aiming to get this up sooner but I ended up rewriting a lot of it after getting Dawn's final editing pass back to me (sorry!!!)

I'll be testing out my experimental new "soft-locking" system here (not that I think this is really the best place for it) where nominations that are within the tied top 8 at the end of any given day cannot be dropped. The games affected by this will reset each day, so it's not like something that had 2 supports on day 1 can never be removed for the rest of nominations or anything like that. It's just a non-intrusive way of preventing any funny business like people dropping noms that are "guaranteed" in and then them getting cut on the bubble... I'll be posting the relevant list of games at the start of each day so there's no confusion here.

At the end of the period, the top 32 most nominated games (tiebreaker process TBD. If anyone has a preferred method here we're open to suggestions) will make it in, and we'll be looking at a roughly two-week wait before the start of the contest proper. Hopefully, we'll have the bracket out on bracketmaker around the 20th or so maybe a couple of days later? And, as mentioned, anything that doesn't already have a thread made for it will get one then, too. Then, "the contest proper" should start sometime in the week starting October 23rd and running through to the end of November. It is highly probable there will be no delays in the schedule since we'll be using combined votes across the three matches as a tiebreaker measure instead of overtime. (If they should still be tied after that... well, there is a simple backup method in play here too. I'll talk about it if it ever comes up.)

As for stuff that doesn't make it in, we're exploring the possibility of running a quick snubs bracket and a mini-losers bracket for the last few rounds in the polls, likely using the first of the songs we get from sample picks in noms, we'll see if those ideas pan out.

Anyway... Yeah, this was a very long-winded, rambling post, even for me. Honestly, I'm not sure how well this whole thing is going to go down since I've never run a contest before; I doubt I ever could've gotten this far without the help I've received. I'd like to express my incredibly deep gratitude to those who supported these horrendous ideas of mine, especially my co-host Dawn, who really did 99% of the prep here (Dawn edit: UF8 is being very humble here. This is decidedly his brainchild <3). Thank you SO SO SO much I could not be more happy with how this is just a reality now.

NFUN posted...

there was no music released in 2022 how will this contest work

short answer it won't

Tag

tag

Two notes I neglected to bring up in the initial announcement.

First of all, obligatory promo for the Mega Man Music Mania contest running currently. It's currently 10 days deep and while it's unlikely to overlap with this contest outright, I don't want this announcement to detract from its participation. You can catch up on the results over here if this is the first you've heard of it, not that I think that's very likely. https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/8-gamefaqs-contests/80564455

Secondly, another obligatory promo for the unofficial listening party night next saturday (time tbd, expect it to run for most of the afternoon/evening in US times) for this contest. Anyone (and I mean anyone) is welcome to drop into the vgmusic channels on the b8 discord then to post songs they want to share from games they want to nominate when that happens some time. They can be songs planned to be also shared in the sample songs for said noms or just whatever you want really as long as it's something that can actually be used for the 2022 contest

Cool.

But I haven't explored much music in 2022. There's Pokemon Legends: Arceus and that 's pretty much it. I figure someone else will nominate it, so I will likely relegate myself to a supporter only.

is this instead of or in addition to regular BOST

apparently regular BOST is in strife (again) but the intent is for it to complement it rather than replace it. regular BOST is definitely not a yearly thing any more, since it's so hard to maintain enough interest to run it remotely frequently, but this... hopefully will be, since it's such a small project by comparison it should be a lot more manageable and i'm hoping the "of the year" hook can give it some staying power

but yeah i definitely hope BOST (real) can come back

Haste_2 posted...

Cool.

But I haven't explored much music in 2022. There's Pokemon Legends: Arceus and that 's pretty much it. I figure someone else will nominate it, so I will likely relegate myself to a supporter only.

that's totally fine and understandable. I can imagine you absolutely won't see people managing to use all of their nominations even with them being separated from supports entirely. i do hope you find some ones that stick out to you since i have a lot of ones I'm definitely attached to for sure and i'm pretty keen to see what others have in mind