2021 MISAOS - THOUGHTS, IDEAS, PLANS

I was considering about the thought of hiding the nomination count when we vote for the nominated games. I think it´s better if people don´t know which game had more nominations, sometimes they will subconsciously just gravitate to the highest one and vote for it despite not having played the game.

I think hiding the count might make others actually either play or look more heavily into the games before casting their vote :) just a thought!

I wanted to add one more thing to this. One of the suggestions I had before seeing the results was a new misao nomination catergory:

The BeetleNinja/Sleeper Hit Award
A really great game you played this year that has a download count under 100 - a game so good, It's a secret to everyone.

I worked really hard this year to get BeetleNinja noticed, I think there should be a misao catergory in place so other games won't have to work as hard to get their games noticed. It would work similar to the Best Short Game Award In that only certain games would be eligible for this award - Only games under 100 download would be eligible for this award and The beauty of this award is it will also try and negate the problem of a lot of games largely going unnoticed on RMN because there are a lot of games that fit this criteria - but it's also another good category to catch more great games when misao nominations come around in November.

Systematic issues aside, the catch is, while you can nominate this game throughout the year the game has to be below 100 downloads by November in order to be eligible. It will also be very easily to eliminate games that don't fit into this category, because of the number has to be below 100. (when a game no longer fits this category in means the category is working)

(why 100? why not 300?) because 300 is the new "average" download for RMN games and the idea is to ultimately check the overlooked games that fit into this category.

All I'm asking is a chance to try this and I'll take full responsibility if it doesn't work this year. I like the kentona award, but the problem with the kentona award is that it's not specific about what we're trying to award. However, this below 100 download category is, and it'll be a very easy way to check out great games that have been overlooked for the current year.

EDIT: I know Darken has a knack for finding a shit ton of games that fit into this category.

author=Liberty
The issue with that is that we're trying to get people to nominate games - meaning we want them to play them, meaning people who play a good game are going to want to nominate them/tell people about the cool game they played. Meaning they will get more downloads. Meaning that if they nominated the game in July when it had 20 downloads, then by November it might not be in the running because people were very "HEY THIS GAME IS COOL!"

You're basically telling people NOT to tell other people about a cool game they played just so it can count for one Misao instead of it maybe getting more by being shared around and shouted about, like with Beetle Ninja.

That seems to be the opposite of what we want.

No it is what we want because it's another nomination to highlight a game that we missed.
There's always going to be a game below 100 on RMN that we're going to miss somehow.

Just give it a chance.
I will try to make it work.

author=Liberty
I don't like the idea, tbh, because if a game is good enough that people think of it as a sleeping hit, it'll gain enough traction to get over 100 downloads by November, unless it was released in the latter part of the year.

We can give it a shot but I'm betting that when we curate the game nominations at the end of the year we won't be left with many, if any, early-year ones of decent quality to be given the title of a 'hit'.

You're forgetting BeetleNinja was released on October 14th - it never reached 100 downloads. The purpose of this category is to track those games and games like it. Great games on RMN that for one reason or another fail to gain any sort of traction during the year.

author=Liberty
Instead why not "Best game that was ignored" instead of 'smash hit', which indicates notoriety of some kind. That would open it to some of the random gems we get. That is, I'm more meh about the title and thinking of it as a big game than the idea of under 100 downloads.

I didn't say a "smash hit" I said "sleeper hit"

a "sleeper hit" is a film, television series, music release, video game or some other entertainment product that is initially unsuccessful on release but becomes a big success later on. A sleeper hit may have little promotion or lack a successful launch, but then garner a fan following that rewards it media attention, which in turn increases its public exposure and public interest in the product.

Every single word of that is BeetleNinja - Please call the nomination catergory this:

The BeetleNinja/Sleeper Hit Award
A really great game you played this year that has a download count under 100 - a game so good, It's a secret to everyone.

If this award fails this year. I'll take full blame for it.
But I'm pretty sure it's not going to fail, because I'm going to be working on it.
and I'm going to be working my hardest to make sure that this nomination succeeds.

I haven't let you guys down yet. All I'm asking for is a chance here.

The Sleeper Hit idea is very good in theory. In a best case scenario, it'd put various games that didn't get enough attention together, and get people to play them in order to decide which one was worthy of the award.

While I'm all for giving it a try, we're also going to have to step up our nomination game. Event games only got one game nominated, and there were a heck of a lot of events that produced some pretty great games. The Miasos, for better or worse, have always been a popularity contest and the Sleeper Hit award will fail if these hits are so sleeper that no one nominates them.

author=LordBlueRouge
You're forgetting BeetleNinja was released on October 14th - it never reached 100 downloads. The purpose of this category is to track those games and games like it. Great games on RMN that for one reason or another fail to gain any sort of traction during the year.

But this could also be a problem. It could bias this award towards games that specifically released late in the year. Would Beetle Ninja have even qualified for the award if it had released in January? Could someone release their game in November or December and be a shoe-in for the award even though its lack of downloads is only a matter of timing?

I think the 100 download number as a hard and fast rule may also be flawed. You specifically championed Beetle Ninja as an underappreciated game worthy of attention, and you were 100% correct in that assumption. I think the game would still be worthy of a sleeper hit award even if it had hit 102 downloads before voting. Do you get what I'm saying?

Perhaps a better metric would be how you promoted Beetle Ninja in the first place: games that members of the community have specifically found to fall between the cracks. Or at least use that as a supplement to the normal nomination process: say we had this category, and Beetle Ninja didn't even get nominated. Staff and people in the community could suggest it and get it added. (Actually I think that should be a thing for every category, not just sleeper hit, but that's a rant for another time).

My suggestion for commercial games would be to make a thread to talk about them. And then maybe spotlighting this discussion by playing the most loved game from the discussion on a special misao stream or mentioning it along official misao winners.

Also, categories. There def are categories I don't love or find unnecessary (I would replace animals with a positivity award for a game representing diversity and I possibly would remove trippiest and punniest games categories. Results in these two show that they require too much from voters. Best non-english game is a good idea but very circumstantial), but seeing results of 2020, I think they're well rounded and diverse enough for people to understand that voting for the same one game in every category isn't the right approach.

Edit: Kentona could be changed into a sleeper hit award. I think that making the description fit that category would be enough on its own. I would go with something like Game you really enjoy but don't see anyone talk about instead of whatever spurious raisins.

I just wanna remind you of the "promotion-like events" thing I proposed, those might also help. :P

(Also come on, cover/trailer events sounds like *the bomb*)

author=Sgt M
I see a 100-download minimum causing way more problems than solutions, partly because this would heavily weigh Misao eligibility towards games that get released in January or February, and less towards games that are released towards the end of the year which haven't had enough time to garner attention. Then people will just stop releasing games after September or so and we'll end up with winter content droughts.

Also, as depressing as this might sound, a game getting 100 downloads is an increasingly difficult goal these days. And it could lead to devs finding ways to artificially inflate their download count, which would lead to age-old buzz farming.

It's not a game with a 100 downloads. it's a game below 100 downloads that's eligible for this award.
If the game has 1 download, it's eligible,
if the game has 99 downloads, it's eligible.

BeetleNinja currently has only 86 downloads since it's release on October 14th 2020.