2021 MISAOS - THOUGHTS, IDEAS, PLANS

I wouldn't be scared of doing review events more than once throughout the year instead of the last two months like "Oh shit, the Misao are coming oh shit let's review oh shit", or just the first two, or just the Summer.

Review events should be periodical, maybe with a little "twist" in the event itself. Like maybe "who reviews the most adventure games", or "who reviews the most games that came out this month" (in order to also categorize them and make each and every one of these events stand out and make them all useful for the upcoming Misao). I don't friggin know but the possibilities are potentially endless. Constant incentives.

They don't even have to be "full blown" events. What about a "sidequests-like" kinda thing? Sidequests were a neat idea. If they make a return for things like reviews and all, that would be great.

Also, we (you guys) focused a lot on how to make people play the thousands, hundreds of games that gets uploaded on RMN each month. What about starting to invest in events or ideas to make the actual developers "get out there" more?

A lot of great games gets uploaded in here and go by unnoticed, but that's also because most devs just throw them in here and then disappear, or do not spend enough time in here being social/being present to properly make their games stand out.

What about events aimed at making the developers go a bit more on the promotion sides of thing? Just a tiny bit. Events should also allow the developers to improve and also explore new, foreign territories, while still keeping the thing fun and all while engaging with the community.

Even stuff such as "Make a cover about your game event" or "Make a trailer about your game event" could help the developers getting out there more and making their games stand out more. It's also that kind of material that's easier to digest for other people, more than playing the actual game. So it would fit with Cap's previous idea (of people being less scared of voting without having played the game) and also, maybe, allow the developers to make stuff that could drag other potential players in. All stuff that gets "centralized" in said event, so it also becomes some kind of index of "trailers/covers/artworks/whatever of new games coming out/that came out".

Also I'm sure that others already suggested this thousands of times already but here goes.
What about a "1st position, 2nd position, 3rd position" kinda thing for Misaos? So that more games gets visibility, not just the winner.

Also yeah, I read about nominations not being there in the past and just votes being there. I actually wouldn't mind that kind of system.
Creating a "two steps to Misaos" kinda thing makes people even more lazy. But if the system is as straightforward as "just cast a vote", more will likely come and cast their vote, because it is more straightforward. They'll be more willing to do that than going through "first nominate, then, when January hits, cast a vote". We live in an era where people prefer to just put a "like", or an emoji, on something, to show appreciation, instead of going through elaborate steps.

I'm all for an off-site kinda thing as well, actually!

Random ideas, you probably just discussed most of these already.

author=Liberty
I mean, some of the games nominated in other categories came from events. They just didn't get nominated in that specific category.


IIRC we cut out nominating people/teams for Misaos because some people felt left out/ignored/etc. It's the same reason we got rid of the Wisaos - because it left bad feelings among members. The fact that people don't have the ability to nominate themselves or get nominated by others for such categories can be a bit too personal for some, so it's best to keep the focus on the games themselves instead of the devs creating them. That way it's about the 'product' and the quality of that. Defining peoples' quality only leads to issues.

author=Marrend
I'm not sure about "Best Event Team" either, to be honest. Like, okay, maybe I haven't been paying too much attention, but, putting together a team is a really rare thing on this site. Especially for events, I feel. Like, I think that's why the McBacon jams of old started being a thing. To get people to work together, and maybe even expand their gammak capacities while they were at it.

Ok, fair enough, no event team based misao, but we still need another RMN event misao. Can we at least agree for you guys to post a mandatory reminder to on the event page to nominate best event game? There's still a big disconnect between event participants and misao nominations. Posting a reminder on the event page, maybe even a playlist to the gamepages, so participates can vote on best event game more easily will fix this. I'd be more than happy to post this reminder myself, but I don't have the current forum privileges to do this - If you guys gave me a shot, I'd be more than happy to fix this everytime an RMN event game jam is posted.

author=16bitking
I'm certain somebody's said this before, but I think consideration should definitely be given to allowing commercial games to be viable for Misaos, or if not for at least a single category (perhaps "best commercial game"?). I get the freeware angle and how it allows for all nominees to be played without financial burden, but I also think that places restrictions on nominations which can end up being extremely frustrating, and often leads to amazing games being completely overlooked simply because they're commercial.
I'd argue commercial games, in fact, are significantly harder to get people to play in the first place, so a little bit of recognition on RMN, I think, would be pretty nice.

+1 I'm for this, Darken mentioned this as well in a previous year. I want to know why we can't do this and if there's a way we can compromise this category. Please let me know.

author=OldPat
What about a "1st position, 2nd position, 3rd position" kinda thing for Misaos? So that more games gets visibility, not just the winner.

+1 I mentioned this idea last year as well. I'm gonna wait till the 2020 results are posted before discussing it any further.

author=OldPat
Even stuff such as "Make a cover about your game event" or "Make a trailer about your game event" could help the developers getting out there more and making their games stand out more. It's also that kind of material that's easier to digest for other people, more than playing the actual game.

+1 I'm 100% behind this ideas as well. I would've loved to see stuff like Amort and Weird and Unfortunate get fan art game covers or something - I'd probably participate in this event as well. I'm doing those silly fake video game magazine ads anyways.

Why do Misao nominations/voting need to happen in December/January?

If people are so busy during the holidays, why not make them like 2021/2022 Misaos, running about games released from July to June?

I've said this for a couple years now and I know it's not all that popular, but I think both of the main problems of 1) big, notable games getting nominated in every category and 2) categories not having enough entrants... would be solved by cutting down on the number of categories in general.

There just aren't many non-event games on the site that more than handful of active users can say they've played in a given year. If there are really under a dozen notable games coming out each year, it doesn't make sense to have more categories than that.

(other stuff: RMN's rating/review system definitely makes it cumbersome to nominate stuff, especially after the fact. I'd love to see, for example, a list of games that I've played this year. Or a way to fill out a nomination ballot by category, vs needing to go to each individual page to nominate)

(and on the "hire someone to fix stuff" front, is there no active web dev currently on staff? I definitely think there would be people in the community willing to volunteer for this sort of stuff, without having to dip into the server fund)

author=Liberty
I wouldn't want to let a bunch of people who don't know it in to tinker unless we had a duplicate site they could fuck around on or something and even then we'd have to vet them to make sure they're not compromising the security of the site, or accidentally an everything. >.<;

That is standard operating procedure for website design bro

Also yeah crowdfund that shit. There's plenty of us who would like to see RMN join the modern internet (and it'd improve QoL for mods and users in general!) Really it'd probably be worse to leave it the way it is.

I could see how, with the current structure of RMN, that allowing commercial games to be nominated for one category, they would need to be able to be nominated for all categories. I'm not saying this is a good or bad thing, as I can see the argument for wanting to be able to nominate commercial games, even if only demos can be provided on RMN's server.