MISAOS 2020 - DISCUSSION TOPIC

author=Sooz
I feel like it'd be good to work on nomination drives throughout the year- like make announcements at the end of every event, maybe even a seasonal roundup thread for people to talk about new games they think deserve attention.

This is a good idea.

LBR could remind people to vote every time an event ends. Just jump there in the comment section post a gif of Steamed Hams and urge them to nominate.

Also, regarding the number of votes. This is good. I think some of the older years had higher number of votes, but that was accompanied by a crazy amount of categories.

Going to try and have more review events this year that are aimed at games made this year and nominating misaos.

author=Liberty
Going to try and have more review events this year that are aimed at games made this year and nominating misaos.

That would be great, actually.

The review/nominate drive year before last got me to go and try stuff that was under-reviewed, and led to me finding Turovero: The Celestial Tower, which REALLY deserved that music award it won.

I should clarify that I was talking about the issue of this round of misaos only having one game nominated in the best event game category. I didn't notice several posts had been made since then. Yeah I totally agree with everything!

...Yeah uh I've noticed something over the past few years about RMN event games: You guys seem to really like doing events and creating these event games, but when it comes to rounding up and curating event games, this could use a lot of work. Liberty, you've played these games, you've streamed them, you have a better idea than anyone else here of what's good in regards to RMN event games. Would it be possible to create a list of gamepages, for some of these submitted entries once the event was over? I know it's one extra step involved, but it would make things a whole lot easier when highlighting some of the standout titles and nominating them, once these events are over.

The reason why The Game with No Name got nominated this year is because when I went to ask what were some standout event games this year, Marrend was the only one to mention Pudding's game from the Trials of MZ Event - so that's the one I nominated.

I'll be honest, I do not have the time or the energy to participate in RMN events, so when someone says a good game came out of one these events, I listen, I check it out. Frankly, I'm kinda of disappointed here. I thought you guys were a bit more involved in these things. I thought 7 Minutes was a great event game to come out of the Kill the Cuties event. If I knew no one else was going to nominate it, I would've nominated that one instead so The Game With No Name, would have some interesting competition this year.

...To be fair, 2020 was a kind of a shitty and a very unusual year for everyone to begin with. I know I've said this many times already, but I really want to commend RpgmakerAddict and especially Marrend for being able to turn things around so quickly. They deserve eternal pats on the back for all their hardwork this year. Again, Thank you guys.❤(This thread is like 8 pages long just from Marrend's eternal hype alone, amazing! I love this dude! 1200 votes! that's the same amount of votes we had last year! incredible!)

author=Sooz

author=Mirak
Just a reminder for NOMINATIONS is what's needed not really a year wide campaign for advertising the misaos.

Some way to remind people to nom for Misaos year round and not just in the rush to get it all in would be good.

Yeah, as Marrend and Mirak mentioned already, a year round thread does not work. Not only does it not work, but it's too much work for something that does not work.

Marrend posted your thread from 2018
Darken also posted a really good thread in 2019(the way he introduced it, still makes me smile :) )

...However, the reason why these threads do not work is because, in addition to what Marrend said, most of the notable games mentioned in these threads are still in the deciding phase. Notable games like Exile's Journey were highlighted in 2019, only to be moved to next year at the last minute.

The reason why we're starting the year end misao thread in late October/Early November now, is because it's unofficially/(officially) the last shot anyone has at submitting their game for the misaos - everyone's too busy getting ready for the holiday season to market or play rpgmaker games at that point, so that's when everything is settling down and finally setting in stone. And that's the best time to start rounding up contenders and create misao promos and start talking about rpgmaker games, because we now have a solid idea of not only what games are available, but what's eligible. The earlier we start this thread, at the end of the year, the easier it is to talk about, because that's when info slowly starts to trickle in on what's good and what's playable as we reflect upon that year - Now I did not decide on this myself, this just came about from studying how you guys use RMN the in the past. I'm just trying to structure a system here that works to your strengths because we can't afford one that's automated.

If you want to do a mid-year misao discussion thread, go for it! I'm all for it. There's nothing stopping you from doing that. But I'm not gonna be involved in it. I'm saving all my time and energy for October because it takes a lot of work to do this stuff.

author=Sooz
I'm not even talking about a dedicated thread, just more calls to action. Like youtubers are always saying "Like, comment, and subscribe!" because that has a measurable positive effect on engagement, so IMO we should work on building a culture of noms in addition to reviews if we want the Misaos to be anything other than an unremarkable, pointless prom court vote.

It'd also be nice if we didn't have completely disqualifiable stuff on the ballots, but that's not something most of us have control over.

ETA:
Like honestly it's pretty discouraging how even when you're trying your damnedest to get any kind of discussion about RPG Maker games going on RPG Maker dot net, apparently not a single person on the site gives a shit. All the promotion and conversation happen off site, and any time someone tries to bring any sort of interaction about these games to the community based around them, the response is

...I'm not poo pooing effort here. I'm saying there's a very real limit to what I can do as one person on RMN and that most of the information I get for the misaos is from actively searching and listening to you guys and then rounding that info up with what little time I have. And I'm pointing out that currently there is a very real problem between event games and the misaos. These event games should be your bread and butter of rpgmaker.net since that's where the most activity seems to be these days. But whenever I try to round these games up for a list, it's an absolute mess, all I have is a list of downloads for these games, not of list of gamepages to nominate on. (I know nothing can be done about it because that's how these event pages are currently setup unfortunately - If I'm wrong correct me)

I tried to also include these games in 2019 thread as well, but honestly, I have no idea what's good because I'm not in involved with RMN event games. These RMN event games are kind of like mini-misao events in and of themselves. I cannot track these games, it's too much work. But I would be willing to list them from someone who has and someone whose actively played them. It would be cool if someone more involved with these RMN events would help me out like Marrend did when I asked for any standout event games I could nominate for the misaos for that year - Whoever this person is, we should be talking right now, and after each RMN event is finished, they should be putting together a list of notable games from these events where it's applicable.

Also a reminder to nominate best event game in the event page, where applicable wouldn't hurt.

This is one of the many ways we can solve the best event nomination problem we had this year.

EDIT:

author=Liberty
Going to try and have more review events this year that are aimed at games made this year and nominating misaos.

I also wanna mention this cause it's kind of important. If you're going to hold an event like this, do it early or in the summer months. Because unless you involve RpgMakerAddict, he's going to review every good game this year, he is a powerhouse (this is what happened last year during the 2019 Misao Nominees event, Not only was the event in November, but you set the search engine criteria to games that didn't have a review yet. The problem with this is that Rpgmakeraddict reviewed most of the interesting games that year - I know this because when it came to piecing together paragraphs for the misao thread, they were mostly his reviews.) So do everything you can to work with this guy. Maybe even provide two lists this time: games from the current year, and games that haven't been review yet, that way we could have supplementary reviews to his reviews, but also cover ground he isn't able to cover that year.

(stuff like his review for Deadly Woods was great because not only were they interesting to read but they provided a very quick glimpse of what this game was about in a very short amount of time, making possible nominations like most trippest game easier - but it'd be cool to hear other peoples take on these games as well)

I usually add event lists if we've used game page features. Meaning for Seasons there'd be one but for something like Birthday Game where it's usually not requiring a game page, I wouldn't.


I usually, if I run the event, do streams of them so people have a chance to experience them without having to play them - especially so they can nominate if they think they're cool. I know people don't have time to play all 20+ event games, but a couple of streams can be a bit easier to digest and still get the idea of what the games are about, how they look, etc - and they can then pick and choose what they want to play from them based on what they've seen, even if they just skipped through the streams.

I'm honestly flabbergasted over the lack of nominations for event games last year because there were so many good ones.


Also, I was thinking maybe 4 review drives this year, but only 2-3 being for games made _this_ year - we still have some older games from previous years that deserve that sweet review love, after all.

Or we can solve the whole thing by removing the best event game misao.