MISAO CATEGORY REVIEW

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So the Misaos have gone once more, back into the void of the back of our minds until, like, November, and it's time to look into how we can improve the categories we currently have.

The current awards, as they stand, are:
Best Game Title
The most clever, original, witty, or cool game title of the year.

Best Game Profile
The raddest presentation and marketing of the game.

"Eye Candy" Award
Raddest Graphics & Artwork. An excellent example of art direction and cohesive vision.

Summoner of Sounds
The best soundtrack and creative use of sound.

Excellence in Narrative
The project you think is most effective at telling its story. Think in terms of its presentation, writing, clarity, cutscene direction, or Shyamalan twists.

The "How the Hell Did They Do That?" Award
The game that displays the most technical prowess and feats of ingenuity in gameplay.

"Lawsuit Waiting To Happen" Award
Best Fan Game/Use of rips

The Dark Souls of RMN
The game that delivers the best challenges or coolest puzzles.

Punniest Game Alive
Comedic game of the year. Pick the funniest game you played this year, with the best humour and/or the best/worst puns.

Trippiest Game
The game that was most strange, bizarre, psychedelic, offbeat, and quirky released this year.

The kentona Award for Outstanding Achievement in the Field of Excellence
A game you think needs more recognition for whatever spurious reason

Year of the Hedgehog
Best use of animals/doggos/pets/hedgehogs/lobsters in a game this year.

Best Event Game
For the best of the event games that came from this year.

Revive Something Award
Given to the best old game that was finally finished this year.

Star Stealing Prince Award
The game that used the best original assets this year.

"Everlasting Journey" Award
The game that has the most content to offer.

Best Non-English Game
Given to the best translated or non-English game released this year.

Most Promising Demo
The demo released this year you think has the most potential to be amazing.

Game of the Year
The absolute best game you played from RMN for the current year.




Give ideas as to wording, titles, descriptions, what can be gotten rid of, what you'd like to see (within reason pleaase) and the like. Keep in mind that not all suggestions will come to fruition, for whatever reason. It might just be beyond our ability at this time to do, or there might be a good reason we won't do it.

As for what we are capable of doing, that is limited by the way the site handles games and checks shit, but here's a few things we can make use of:
- Require game to have a demo
- Require that game is marked as in production
- Require that game is marked completed

That's it. That's what we're working with.
My own thoughts:
- get rid of/change the kentona award to be more aimed at not being "for whoever" and instead aimed at either high quality (as its name suggests) or hidden gems
- get mods to do a peer review of the voting stage and pick one from each category to be the 'Staff pick'
- make a push for a site update so that categories/nominations/votes can be edited by admin (removing games that don't fit a category/have a way to exclude games based on tags?)


- there was something else but I forgot it.
pianotm
The TM is for Totally Magical.
32347
Because of the game I just made, I'd suggest adding the title, "Best Adaptation": games that are based on books, poems, songs, historical events, legends and folktales, or whatever.
My personal thoughts on this matter:
I don't think any awards really need to be added to the Misaos, (with the exception of maybe one for hidden gem games, perhaps segmenting it off to only games with under 400 downloads on RPGMaker.net) since it already covers most bases, and if you continue adding stuff it basically secures slots for very niche types of games without much competition.
That said, it'd be nice if all nominees were displayed in order of the amount of votes they received, just so that the "placement" so to speak is more clear to the audience, and to assure a game "sweeping" the awards is less of an issue to people without forcing a "one game per award" rule.
I completely agree with the idea of having the option of removing certain games from undeserved categories.
That's really all I have to say on the matter.
Sooz
They told me I was mad when I said I was going to create a spidertable. Who’s laughing now!!!
5354
Staff pick! Staff pick! STAFF PICK! STAFF PICK!


author=Liberty
- make a push for a site update so that categories/nominations/votes can be edited by admin (removing games that don't fit a category/have a way to exclude games based on tags?)


Also that
I worked really really hard on the misaos this year. I made two really cool videos to promote it, I played several games, I read tons and tons of reviews (thank you rpgmakermakeraddict!♥️) and I made a thread trying to round up the highlights as quickly as possible. But it was a lot of work. I'd say more so than it needs to be for a site of this scope, so please take what I have to say into careful consideration:

1) Rename "The Lawsuit Waiting To Happen" Award.

While I was doing up the year end thread, this category was too confusing.
Is it, for best use of copyrighted material in an rpgmaker game?
Just call it what it is. It's for best fan game. So rename it:
Best Fan Game: The Lawsuit Waiting to Happen.

2) Rename/Retool: The Kentona Award for Outstanding Achievement in the Field of Excellent.
This award is originally based off this joke from the Simpsons:(Season 3 Episode 24)

After years of working at the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant, a routine physical exam reveals that safety inspector Homer has become sterile. Fearing a lawsuit, plant owner Mr. Burns awards Homer with a US$2,000 prize and the "First Annual Montgomery Burns Award for Outstanding Achievement in the Field of Excellence" an extraordinary and extravagant fake award ceremony in order to trick homer, into a signing a legal waiver form so he won't sue the power planet for making him sterile.

...It's an award ceremony, for the sake of award ceremonies --- As funny as this award is, as I said on discord, this award does not work, because people keep using it as second game of the year award - It's happened two years in a row already.

author=Liberty
My own thoughts:
- get rid of/change the kentona award to be more aimed at not being "for whoever" and instead aimed at either high quality (as its name suggests) or hidden gems


This is great, but it doesn't solve the issue of voting on game of the year, everyone feels their game is a "hidden gem" - It's just the same award with a different name. Regardless of what we do, with the current categories there's always going to be one game sweeping the misaos every year.

- get mods to do a peer review of the voting stage and pick one from each category to be the 'Staff pick'


This is a great idea too, but a lot of people who are playing nominating and reviewing these games aren't mods or are part of the staff.

- make a push for a site update so that categories/nominations/votes can be edited by admin (removing games that don't fit a category/have a way to exclude games based on tags?)


This is a great idea if you can pull it off and I'm 100% for this.

So, here's my idea... we should create 3 additional categories to the Kentona Award. So for example:

The Kentona Award, Awarded to the game with the second highest votes for any spurious reason. (ur choice for 2nd favorite game of the year)
The Liberty Award, Awarded to the game with the third highest votes that you're not at Liberty to say. (ur choice for 3rd favorite game of year)
The Marrend Award, Awarded to the game with the fourth highest votes that you feel is the secret best game of year that no one knows about. (ur choice 4th favorite game of the year)

These would all be separate game of the year categories. So if any of the games overlapped in 1st place, we'd give the award to the game in second place. if the games overlapped in second place, we'd give the award to the game in third place and fourth place and so forth, etc.

The beauty of this is that everyone has a different 2nd, 3rd and 4th choice for game of the year. Not only would people would have more choices of games to choose from, from the site, but it would also mean more runner ups - and it would also finally cancel out the sweep.

...I'm saying this as someone who worked really hard to promote a lot of these games for 2019. 2019 was a really great year for the misaos. Darken, Marrend, Cap_H and especially TheRpgMakerAddict's reviews were a huge help. I feel very proud that we were able to get it back up to 593 nominations and 1289 votes this year. But it took a lot of work to do this. It probably wouldn't have been even that high this year, if we didn't do all this work. But it was too much work for what we had - So please, take what I have to say into consideration. I think this is completely within rpgmaker.net's current nomination/voting system - But it also means less work for all of us. If people are going to be voting on one game every year anyways, we should be creating ways to accommodate this type of voting so more games will be represented for that current year. All we're doing is using RMN's Nominating/Voting system already place, to show that.

If you're willing to create these additional categories, I am willing to put in the time and effort like I did this year with the misaos to make it work.
First and foremost - half is not sweeping. I've seen various people comment that this year was a sweep. it's not. A sweep is when a game gets around or over 3/4 of the misaos, else almost every year would be counted as 'a sweep' since there's usually one game that gets about half the misaos. Good games are going to be showing up in every category and the shinier one is, the more often it will pop up.



1 - It's for both rips and/or fangame. You can have one without the other. This covers both. Perhaps we should retool it towards only fangames and leave any game that uses rips out. Or vice versa.

The initial idea behind it was "Hey, you're gonna get sued for using someone else's shit" - whether that be their graphics/music/copyrights. Perhaps clearing up the description to make it even clearer would be a good idea, but every game in that category this year hit the description bang on the head.

2 - firstly, why Marrend? XDDD
Not that I don't love the guy but he's not really the first person off the top of my head on who would have an award named after them (ankylo, wip, holbert... unity or red_nova, heck craze even).

I was thinking, maybe for the kentona award, have it for games that have not been featured and unlock it for nominations in December. We could make an affair of it and have it help bring attention to the misaos like "HEY GUYS VOTE FOR THE BEST NON FEATURED GAME THIS YEAR! ...oh and nomimate others while you're at it?"

I've been throwing around ideas in my head like "Have it locked to a non-reviewed game" or "for a game that hasn't had any attention" or "went under the radar". The only issue with this being that they might get nominated early in the year and then gain traction and reviews, so we'd have to cut out a ton of nominations that no longer fit the criteria at the end of the year. Well, that and people would go "let's vote the one game I played that was cool this year".

Or we could go the complete other direction and make it "Kentona's Shitpost Award" and have the memeist games for it, though that invites bad joke games to be thrown around.


While I do like your enthusiasm and the amount of thought you've put into this, I'm not sure about second or third placings, namely because I think you missed an integral point to consider.

How many people do you think would have put Theia as their second, third or fourth choice? All those who voted for others in the Game of the Year, maybe? And those who just click the name of the one game they played regardless of category. It wouldn't be exempted from it and likely would have gotten at least second and third, as well as first, unfortunately.

It's a nice idea but things I've learned doing this for the last four or five years (has it been that long already?) is that you will never be fully prepared for how many votes one game might get even in categories it has no right to be in (Owl of the year, :/ )


Your notice about Staff pick not being good because Staff don't necessarily play all the games - neither do those who end up voting either. At least Staff would be a bit more informed about the games (and be pushed to at least check them out a bit) than Ms Mary-jo who logged in to vote for that one game her friend asked her to vote for. But that's part of the game (Ms Mary-jo and her friend sharing their links far and wide, that is. Marketing will net rewards in numbers. The better-known a game is, the more chances it'll get nominated.)

That said, Reviewers Award... that might be an idea. Nab a few reviewers/streaminers/let's players who have played a number of games over the year and put them in a panel and discuss. It would be a lot more informed a POV. Even if it's something like I did with my picks in the thread (which will result in a small badge, btw, I didn't make that clear at any point but meant to) for each category.

I'm willing to try new things but only if they look like they'll work. I'm not trying to make you feel like you're being ignored because I understand the frustration and appreciate the amount of effort you brought to the misaos this past year.

So let's try to come up with some more ideas on what to do about this.

Marrend
Guardian of the Description Thread
21781
I suppose I appreciate the thought of having an award named after me. However, I tend to agree with Liberty that if such an award comes into being, it probably should be someone with greater name recognition. If the subject of those awards is hidden gems, the person that comes to mind in that regard would actually be ankylo. He may keep quiet 99% of the time, but, we're glad he's here to fix up our messes!



For what it's worth, the idea of having an event centering around getting people to recognize, and even play, games that can be nominated for Misaos, was an idea I think we can use again. Though, limiting the games to completed games might be a necessary evil. Like, the filter for "games updated, sort by descending date" wouldn't necessarily return games that are eligible/viable for the year's Misao period, given that a "game update" could just be somebody making a comment on a gamepage.
yeah get rid of the kentona award. it had its moment.

...but I would argue that p.much EVERY misao is just "Game of the Year Lite", in practice. Most nominations and votes seem to be just blanket 'vote my fave for everything' regardless of what the award is about. Not sure what the ideal solution is, other than a lot of monitoring and handholding and manual culling.
author=Liberty
Best Game Title
The most clever, original, witty, or cool game title of the year.

Best Game Profile
The raddest presentation and marketing of the game.


Leave as they are.

author=Liberty
"Eye Candy" Award
Raddest Graphics & Artwork. An excellent example of art direction and cohesive vision.

Summoner of Sounds
The best soundtrack and creative use of sound.

Excellence in Narrative
The project you think is most effective at telling its story. Think in terms of its presentation, writing, clarity, cutscene direction, or Shyamalan twists.

The "How the Hell Did They Do That?" Award
The game that displays the most technical prowess and feats of ingenuity in gameplay.

The Dark Souls of RMN
The game that delivers the best challenges or coolest puzzles.


These are the best of; graphics, sound, story... then the final two are blurry. I'd change them to best gameplay and best puzzles. Difficulty has always been really subjective and hard to judge, tying it in with gameplay also muddies what the award is about. By all means have a Dark Souls misao but untangle it from gameplay. I'd also love to see the technical prowess become it's own misao without reference to gameplay to give scripters their own award as there is for artists with eye candy and star stealing prince.

So summary:
"Eye Candy" Award
Summoner of Sounds
Excellence in Narrative
Gameplay Guru
Sudoku/Puzzle Award
Techincal Prowess
Dark Souls?

author=Liberty
"Lawsuit Waiting To Happen" Award
Best Fan Game/Use of rips


Personally I'd drop this misao, fan games have always been a grey area and good ones seem to be dmca'd.

author=Liberty
Punniest Game Alive
Comedic game of the year. Pick the funniest game you played this year, with the best humour and/or the best/worst puns.

Trippiest Game
The game that was most strange, bizarre, psychedelic, offbeat, and quirky released this year.


Both fine as they are.

author=Liberty
The kentona Award for Outstanding Achievement in the Field of Excellence
A game you think needs more recognition for whatever spurious reason


Drop.

author=Liberty
Year of the Hedgehog
Best use of animals/doggos/pets/hedgehogs/lobsters in a game this year.

Best Event Game
For the best of the event games that came from this year.

Revive Something Award
Given to the best old game that was finally finished this year.

Star Stealing Prince Award
The game that used the best original assets this year.

"Everlasting Journey" Award
The game that has the most content to offer.

Best Non-English Game
Given to the best translated or non-English game released this year.

Most Promising Demo
The demo released this year you think has the most potential to be amazing.

Game of the Year
The absolute best game you played from RMN for the current year.


All fine but maybe add a best short game to parallel the long game. I'm all for a staff picks or an elected judging panel who commit to trying all the games (say there were 6-7 people on the panel, each award would have three of them, so the artists choose best eye candy etc).

Also the biggest change, the ability for staff to remove innapropriate nominations, anyone in a years time who checks this year:
https://rpgmaker.net/misaos/2019/
Will see:
Theia - The Crimson Eclipse

As the winner of year of the Owl.

Drop the kentona award. Maybe replace it with another gag award? Lol

I suggested this last year, but also drop or rename "Lawsuit Waiting To Happen" Award. Rips are probably not something we want to draw attention to on today's internet with brands scouring everywhere for infringement, and games that use rips seem to be much, much less common nowadays anyway.

EDIT: I think it might benefit the Lawsuit category to just be called "Best Fangame" including ones that just happen to have rips.
Mirak
Stand back. Artist at work. I paint with enthusiasm if not with talent.
9300
author=lib
Or we could go the complete other direction and make it "Kentona's Shitpost Award" and have the memeist games for it, though that invites bad joke games to be thrown around.
Oh good, you opened the intro to my suggestion.

I'm not saying anyone here is doing that right this very moment but sometimes I kinda get a bit weary of people dismissing strange, non-sequitur and surreal games as "joke", "nonsense", "shitpost" games without any sort of value in them without even giving them a chance. It was a "memey" attitude first, but I've seen it slowly creep up to being almost a trigger response to immediately discredit such games from consideration the moment they're not your "standard" fighting the monsters kind of game. Can we do something about this? Could we, perhaps, try to redirect the conversation from "people are gonna be encouraged to submit bad random weird shit nonsense" to "people are gonna be encouraged to submit GOOD random weird shit nonsense made with a SHITLOAD OF EFFORT"???

I'm gonna get the elephant out of the room first: I can see how this might look like it is about Frogge and me mostly BUT, i WANT to see more of US, in DIFFERENT presentations. Game developer minds are such an universe of fuckery, we should encourage artists whose brushing hands stroke without abandon and restriction! The ones that "fail" the most spectacularly, the ones that create all these trainwrecks you people claim to dislike and yet it's so obvious how you cannot avert your eyes.

Thus, help me name a new alternative category for "Best Shitpost Game", to redirect it towards a positive purpose. Be either thanks to the art direction, the absurdist plot, or whatever, if it's a "meme joke game" which was crafted lovingly and beautifully, it shouldn't get pushed aside as mere piffle because it somehow is not worth anything thanks to it not having a conventional, classic story formula.

The Incredibad Award for Tasteful Gamedev Shitposting
So bad, and yet so satisfying!
Came for the meme game, left after I came.ok maybe not this one. See i'm not so good at naming things.

inclusions of the terms "you people", "you" or any other seemingly accusatory remarks were added just as dramatic flair, because mexican soap operas are my life
author=Fomar0153
author=Liberty
"Lawsuit Waiting To Happen" Award
Best Fan Game/Use of rips


Personally I'd drop this misao, fan games have always been a grey area and good ones seem to be dmca'd.



author=Sgt M
I suggested this last year, but also drop or rename "Lawsuit Waiting To Happen" Award. Rips are probably not something we want to draw attention to on today's internet with brands scouring everywhere for infringement, and games that use rips seem to be much, much less common nowadays anyway.


My whole life is a lie
QQ
Cap_H
DIGITAL IDENTITY CRISIS
6625
I think an update is the most important thing as some cotegories needcurration. Ofc I mean already widely discussed Kentona's Award. It shouldn't be a free award for game of the year and making it staff picks or a hidden gem award is a great idea.

Personally, I would stick with Lawsuit as can games are a big part of the hobbyist nature of the community. Maybe drop best use of rips out of description.

I know star stealing and eye candy awards are two different thing, but I think a single misao for visuals would be sufficient.

I would combine the trippiest and the punniest game award in best alternative quality misao.
Dark Souls of RMN and How the Hell are good categories in theory but again they need some manipulation (although Theia is both technically amazing and probably offers some really cool gameplay). I guess I would make it more obvious that it is a gameplay misao and probably manipulate technical prowess award a little.
Said this a million times, but for the record: Would rather just have a top 10 or whatever system that actually fits how people vote. I think we're too attached to categories and should just adapt the system to way people actually vote for their favs or the one or two games they actually played.

I disagree with staff picks since it's way too much effort and energy. The nice thing about misaos is that they're somewhat automated for the most part (which should be the whole point of the site, automating the process in which games are submitted/reviewed/ranked). I also think the category picking process is also too much energy for what it's worth and a standard top 10 would just make the awards run themselves better in a way. I rather just know what the highlights of the year were in a concise way.
Sooz
They told me I was mad when I said I was going to create a spidertable. Who’s laughing now!!!
5354
MarrEND Award, for the game that got the least votes :V
author=Cap_H
I think an update is the most important thing as some cotegories needcurration. Ofc I mean already widely discussed Kentona's Award. It shouldn't be a free award for game of the year and making it staff picks or a hidden gem award is a great idea./quote]

Perhaps it can be turned into an award in which the staff picks the best game that didn't win in any other category?
author=Darken
Said this a million times, but for the record: Would rather just have a top 10 or whatever system that actually fits how people vote. I think we're too attached to categories and should just adapt the system to way people actually vote for their favs or the one or two games they actually played.

I disagree with staff picks since it's way too much effort and energy. The nice thing about misaos is that they're somewhat automated for the most part (which should be the whole point of the site, automating the process in which games are submitted/reviewed/ranked). I also think the category picking process is also too much energy for what it's worth and a standard top 10 would just make the awards run themselves better in a way. I rather just know what the highlights of the year were in a concise way.


Now that you mention it, this does sound a lot easier. It also gets ten games in the spotlight as opposed to just 4 or 5 that grab several of the categories.
Okay, you code it.

Thanks!
staff picks


If you think about it, the Featured Games are kinda staff picks. So I don't think we need a Misao for it, too.
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