Post by alden

Posted: 1/30/2012 5:37 PM

Post subject: Bad Game Choice (Long Rant)

Quote

goofydylan8

Experienced player (509)

Joined: 11/2/2010
Posts: 359

After being on this site for a while I feel there needs to be a discussion about the qualifier "Bad Game Choice" when deciding whether or not to approve a movie for publication. We are quickly approaching the stage where, under the current rules, there will be no more publishable NES TAS'es that are not improvements to currently published runs. With NES being a gateway for most people into the world of TAS'ing this is a problem. The current rules state that a movie may be rejected due to various "Bad Game Choice" rules, many of which I agree with, but the one I am arguing is uninteresting game play. The reasons I feel this rule should be looked into is as follows: * As each submission is judged by a single judge and not by a committee of judges or by vote count what may be officially classified as "uninteresting" one day may not be the same tomorrow. * What one finds to be entertaining is not universal and thus limiting the published movies can prevent people from seeing movies that are entertaining to them. * As there is is a rating and star system in place on this website the need to be exclusive is unnecessary. Being more inclusive would allow for more games to be completed and the ratings will dictate what people consider to be the most entertaining videos on the site. An example would be comparing GlitchMan's NES Back to the Future 2 & 3 that was rejected in May of last year with OmnipotentEntity's SNES Lagoon that was approved in January of 2005. I will be the first to admit that both of these games are long and not the most interesting things in the world. But, they were both TAS'ed extremely well. In addition, in both cases 50+% votes were yes (50% for Back to the Future 2 & 3 and 57% for Lagoon). Similarly only 16% voted no for Back to the Future 2 & 3 whereas 28% voted no for Lagoon. Now, if you look through the discussion pages for these submissions they both followed the trend that while at least half of voters agreed it should be published they all had their complaints about the entertainment value, length and repetitiveness. Yet with these complaints both Lagoon and Back to the Future have been viewed, on YouTube since it is impossible to gauge those who viewed it on emulator, hundreds of times (414 for Lagoon and 300+ for every segment of the Back to the Future run). While 400 may be small compared to the views of the new Super Mario Bros submission it is still substantial enough that those viewers should not be ignored. The similarities between these two submission and the fact that one was rejected while the other accepted make clear the arguments I was making before. First, hundreds of people spent over an hour of their life on these game so to say that they are uninteresting would be facetious as they are clearly interesting to some people. Second it exemplifies the subjectivity of the judges. It shows that between different judges there are different standards for what should be accepted and what should be denied as these are similar movies. With that, even if a list of bad game choices was made it would be possible to change over time as the fact that this site is now 8 years old make it impossible to have the same subjective standards. Bisqwit, while still present on the site, is no longer a judge and the rules he used to judge then have evolved to now. Finally the movie proves my third point that we should just put more emphasis on getting people to rate movies and let that dictate the entertainment level. Lagoon currently has a rating of 4.1 which places it at 926 out of 933 (928 if you consider 2 of the movies are lower due to having no rating yet). That means for people who become addicted and want to watch through 925 movies first they can still encounter this movie, or if they only want to look at RPG games it is one of 105, yet it is by far not the first movie that is shown to new visitors of the site. Now for a more recent and completely biased example. My Uncanny X-Men run was recently rejected. I completely agree with the judge and the voters that it is a simply horrendous game, backed up by the fact that I discovered it through AVGN's review. At the same time though people thought it looked technically sound and got a 56% yes overall, which while not great is still majority. When DarkKobold claimed the run for judging he said that it would be a hard decision because of the conflict of bad game choice. So my question is this: Why not remove the uninteresting bad game choice conflict, focusing on quality of the run and allow the ratings to dictate entertainment value?

Posted: 1/30/2012 6:13 PM

Post subject: Re: Bad Game Choice (Long Rant)

Quote

AnS

Emulator Coder, Experienced player (723)

Joined: 2/23/2006
Posts: 682

goofydylan8 wrote:

With NES being a gateway for most people into the world of TAS'ing this is a problem.

This is indeed a problem that should be solved by trying to expand the gateway to other platforms, and not by endorsing NES even more (by accepting bad games from this platform). Your suggestion won't help to solve the problem in long term.

Posted: 1/30/2012 6:31 PM

Post subject: Re: Bad Game Choice (Long Rant)

Quote

goofydylan8

Experienced player (509)

Joined: 11/2/2010
Posts: 359

AnS wrote:

This is indeed a problem that should be solved by trying to expand the gateway to other platforms, and not by endorsing NES even more (by accepting bad games from this platform). Your suggestion won't help to solve the problem in long term.

That is a valid point. Emphasis does need to be on expanding the quality of other emulators so there won't be as much reliance on NES in the future, especially when systems like Gameboy have equally simplistic control schemes. I mainly put that portion in as it was my thought process to discovering this problem. I had been looking for new NES games to TAS until I was fully ready for a larger one but it seemed all were considered "bad game choices." So while changing the rule won't necessarily fix that issue it will address the other problems I have listed that were 95% of my argument and is what I was hoping to discuss here.

Posted: 1/30/2012 7:17 PM

Quote

CoolKirby

Editor, Experienced player (608)

Joined: 11/8/2010
Posts: 4012

Like you said, we seem to be approaching the point where there aren't any more NES games that would make entertaining TASes. I know most new TASers like making NES TASes because of TAS Edit, but if they can TAS the traditional way, they can run GB/GBC games, which are just as short, simple, and easy to TAS than NES games, if not more so. How unentertaining does a movie have to be before you think it should be rejected? What if there was a game that had terrible graphics and music and a character with a limited moveset that moved at 12 pixels per second, and a TAS was made that was technically amazing but not entertaining at all (because of the game)?

Posted: 1/30/2012 8:00 PM

Post subject: Re: Bad Game Choice (Long Rant)

Quote

DarkKobold

Skilled player (1637)

Joined: 11/15/2004
Posts: 2202
Location: Killjoy

goofydylan8 wrote:

So my question is this: Why not remove the uninteresting bad game choice conflict, focusing on quality of the run and allow the ratings to dictate entertainment value?

The original goal of the site was to provide only the best TAS movies. When TASing was new, it was easy to balance ease of access to becoming a published author and providing great movies that everyone would want to see, and anything remotely substandard got rejected. Yes, some runs got through in the beginning of the site, but most runs were great games, and great runs, for their time. Back in 2009, there was a big push to open content to allow more mediocre runs to be published. On one level, this is good - more runs are published, new inexperienced TASers are able to get publications, and but we still don't accept everything. However, the down side is that we have a watering down of the site. Runs in general get less attention then they deserve. Only 13 people bothered to watch and vote on that game. There has been talk of opening the site to all runs, and reserving the "standard publication" for only the best runs. However, this site is run by volunteers, with real jobs and life responsibilities. Overhauling the entire site is not a trivial task.

Sage advice from a friend of Jim: So put your tinfoil hat back in the closet, open your eyes to the truth, and realize that the government is in fact causing austismal cancer with it's 9/11 fluoride vaccinations of your water supply.

Posted: 1/30/2012 8:46 PM

Quote

goofydylan8

Experienced player (509)

Joined: 11/2/2010
Posts: 359

CoolKirby wrote:

How unentertaining does a movie have to be before you think it should be rejected? What if there was a game that had terrible graphics and music and a character with a limited moveset that moved at 12 pixels per second, and a TAS was made that was technically amazing but not entertaining at all (because of the game)?

I would actually say yes, that 12 pixel per second poor graphics, but from a TAS'ing standpoint amazing run should be accepted as long as it doesn't break any of the other submission rules. It will not have the universal appeal that some games have but it would be entertaining to some and would be an another example of TAS'ing excellence on the site. There are people who purchased that game, played through it struggling and would greatly enjoy watching it be brutally destroyed. And as I stated in the original post there are movie ratings for a reason so that people can gauge how entertaining each movie is. I am sure there are some people who like watching movies simply for the high technical rating and ignore the "entertainment" value. In addition to that what games that have been rejected for having uninteresting game play meet anywhere near that description? There are different rules for rejection and specific rules about hacks that would take care of 99.9% of games that would be that unappealing. Back to the Future 2 & 3 was not rejected for bad graphics, music and its character moved far more than 12 pixels per second. It was rejected people thought it was a little too boring. Hell, I love Back to the Future movies and I would add in a perfectly made hour long TAS to a marathon of the movies in a heartbeat.

DarkKobold wrote:

There has been talk of opening the site to all runs, and reserving the "standard publication" for only the best runs. However, this site is run by volunteers, with real jobs and life responsibilities. Overhauling the entire site is not a trivial task.

I understand that would be a major undertaking and that is why I am not recommending that. I am simply recommending what was already suggested and allowing more runs to be allowed to be published if they meet TAS qualities. I feel this won't lead to a watering down of the site due to the rating system. I feel the rating system says "This is the best that this game can be beaten, but compared to other movies on this site it may not have as much universal appeal." The other rules listed for bad game choice are diverse enough that the site won't suffer because terrible hacks and fixed length, rhythm and games for children can still be denied based on other rules. My ideal would be that the uninteresting game play rule is removed, keeping the other bad game choice rules and then find a way to encourage more people to rate movies so that there could be more clear tiers of movies. In summation to quote the publication (yes published on this site) for what many consider to be the worst NES game ever Swordless Link's NES Action 52 "The Cheetahmen" "Even the worst video games ever made can make up for a good TAS."

Posted: 1/30/2012 9:29 PM

Quote

DarkKobold

Skilled player (1637)

Joined: 11/15/2004
Posts: 2202
Location: Killjoy

goofydylan8 wrote:

In summation to quote the publication (yes published on this site) for what many consider to be the worst NES game ever Swordless Link's NES Action 52 "The Cheetahmen" "Even the worst video games ever made can make up for a good TAS."

It appears you are misunderstanding the difference between "Bad Game" and "Bad Game Choice." The reason Cheetahmen was published was that it contained interesting things happening in the TAS, that exploited the poor game design. People were entertained by the TAS, and messing with the poorly-coded game engine was a technical challenge. On the other hand, there are many great games that make for poor TASes. Things that don't have exploitable engine mechanics, which are straight forward boring platformers, or fixed-length games. Now, lets look at the X-men run. The mechanics were simple - every wall could be walked through by the main character. There was no real route planning needed. The end result was a character walking from point A to B, with nothing happening. It provided neither technical or entertaining value for a TAS.

Sage advice from a friend of Jim: So put your tinfoil hat back in the closet, open your eyes to the truth, and realize that the government is in fact causing austismal cancer with it's 9/11 fluoride vaccinations of your water supply.

Posted: 1/30/2012 9:31 PM

Quote

jlun2

Skilled player (1707)

Joined: 9/17/2009
Posts: 4952
Location: ̶C̶a̶n̶a̶d̶a̶ "Kanatah"

How do you measure the quality of a run? Rerecords? The amount of potential improvement? Or is it based on the author's claim that it is?

LLCoolDave wrote:

This seems to be competing for the "Worst looking TAS of 2011" Award.

Posted: 1/30/2012 9:46 PM

Quote

Kirkq

Player (208)

Joined: 7/7/2006
Posts: 798
Location: US

jlun2 wrote:

How do you measure the quality of a run? Rerecords? The amount of potential improvement? Or is it based on the author's claim that it is?

It's largely up to the trained eye of a viewer. Many people can spot areas of questionable decisions, and many are deluded by the fact that they just want to see the game published. It is usually up to the author to prove the did something more than holding right and turbofiring. Unfortunately runs don't get a whole lot of viewers there days, so little discussion is held, and then decision is often left to the judge's discretion. Quality is subjective. Rerecords should generally at least meet some threshold if the number in the file is accurate. Potential improvements should generally be limited to some specific instances instead of 10 frames lost per room or something silly. It's generally up to the judge to discern if the quality is up to par, and that something more exciting was done than holding right. Voicing your opinion in the thread probably does help contrary to popular belief. Being objective is probably a good way to get a point across. Also, Lagoon is an amazing game. =p

Twitch Stream, Twitter, Youtube, TASVideos Profile

Posted: 1/30/2012 10:22 PM

Quote

goofydylan8

Experienced player (509)

Joined: 11/2/2010
Posts: 359

DarkKobold: I was just using the quote as it sounded pertinent. And let us look at X-Men run. The mechanics were simple but broke the game almost entirely as well as it was not supposed to be able to beat the game without gathering the keys and it was only through breaking the game logic that they game could be won without accomplishing said goals. There was route planning otherwise you would not have survived or the run would have been slower. Other people seem to disagree that there were no technical value present for the run, mainly complaining that there was little entertainment value, though some did say they were entertained. For that matter you stated that your vote for the run was a yes once you discovered the aspect of having a second character and killing him off was necessary for the fastest run. Now I know judgment is supposed to for the good of all, and that there is currently in place a legitimate reason to not publish the movie as it has "uninteresting gameplay", but how can you claim that there is neither technical or entertaining value for a TAS if you yourself would have voted yes for it? This is my point and the reason I brought up the movie. I am not trying to whine my movie didn't get published. I have submitted movies because I enjoy beating the games completely because I am not good at real time video games but enjoy them as an art and like seeing them completed as fast as possible. It feels like this an entirely subjective rule that does nothing but prevents the publishing of fine runs. Kirkq: This is essentially what I would have said. The problem is not identifying quality runs from an entertainment or technical perspective. The problem in my mind is that there is too much weight put on what individuals to be the "entertainment" portion which is much more subjective. Also, I was not trying to say Lagoon is a bad game, I have never played it and have no opinion. It was just the closest comparison I could find to a Back to the Future 2 & 3 style run.

Posted: 1/30/2012 10:29 PM

Quote

DarkKobold

Skilled player (1637)

Joined: 11/15/2004
Posts: 2202
Location: Killjoy

goofydylan8 wrote:

For that matter you stated that your vote for the run was a yes once you discovered the aspect of having a second character and killing him off was necessary for the fastest run. Now I know judgment is supposed to for the good of all, and that there is currently in place a legitimate reason to not publish the movie as it has "uninteresting gameplay", but how can you claim that there is neither technical or entertaining value for a TAS if you yourself would have voted yes for it?

Like I said, that one was a hard decision. Additionally, I don't believe it is the first or last time I've rejected a run I personally enjoyed. Despite the frequent jokes, I try to stay somewhat unbiased.

goofydylan8 wrote:

Also, I was not trying to say Lagoon is a bad game, I have never played it and have no opinion. It was just the closest comparison I could find to a Back to the Future 2 & 3 style run.

I love Lagoon, so I am biased for it already. However, there is a pertinent quote adelikat uses often: Just because we've made mistakes in the past, doesn't mean we should repeat them again. That said, would people be interested in an Ungrue 2012? I'd be willing to allow for the reconsideration of runs that people feel had questionable rejections.

Sage advice from a friend of Jim: So put your tinfoil hat back in the closet, open your eyes to the truth, and realize that the government is in fact causing austismal cancer with it's 9/11 fluoride vaccinations of your water supply.

Posted: 1/30/2012 10:34 PM

Quote

jlun2

Skilled player (1707)

Joined: 9/17/2009
Posts: 4952
Location: ̶C̶a̶n̶a̶d̶a̶ "Kanatah"

Ungrue this "technical masterpiece". :D

LLCoolDave wrote:

This seems to be competing for the "Worst looking TAS of 2011" Award.

Posted: 1/30/2012 11:14 PM

Quote

mmbossman

Experienced player (822)

Joined: 11/18/2006
Posts: 2426
Location: Back where I belong

DarkKobold wrote:

That said, would people be interested in an Ungrue 2012? I'd be willing to allow for the reconsideration of runs that people feel had questionable rejections.

I originally thought that the idea would come up often enough to warrant such an event annually. I'm glad to see that it's taken almost 3 years for it to be suggested again.

Living Well Is The Best Revenge My Personal Page

Posted: 1/31/2012 12:27 AM

Quote

BigBoct

He/Him

Editor, Former player

Joined: 8/9/2007
Posts: 1692
Location: Tiffin/Republic, OH

Technically, I suggested it last year, but it didn't gain any traction.

Previous Name: boct1584

Posted: 1/31/2012 12:53 AM

Quote

DarkKobold

Skilled player (1637)

Joined: 11/15/2004
Posts: 2202
Location: Killjoy

boct1584 wrote:

Technically, I suggested it last year, but it didn't gain any traction.

So far, it hasn't gained much traction here, other than one sarcastic comment.

Sage advice from a friend of Jim: So put your tinfoil hat back in the closet, open your eyes to the truth, and realize that the government is in fact causing austismal cancer with it's 9/11 fluoride vaccinations of your water supply.

Posted: 1/31/2012 1:09 AM
(Edited: 1/31/2012 1:13 AM)

Quote

goofydylan8

Experienced player (509)

Joined: 11/2/2010
Posts: 359

DarkKobold wrote:

So far, it hasn't gained much traction here, other than one sarcastic comment.

I could see why people would want this approach as it would be a quick fix but I really would prefer the rule change completely over this idea. The UnGrue 2012 could certainly help bring back the obvious sort of controversial movies and would satisfy things for a while. On the other hand a rule change would fix the situation for those movies plus alleviate the error in the future. If there was a rule change all movies that would could be potential candidates for UnGrue 2012 could be potentially published in the future but it would give submitters a chance to make slight improvements to rejected films and have a very good chance of being published. This would allow older movies the chance to be published, making people who want to include more movies happy, and it would force either frame improvements or stylistic changes which would make those who didn't want the movies in the first place to accept the change a little by having the movies be slightly better than they were before. The problem with this approach is that it forces improvements on these movies where there may not be any. I am not sure how to adjust around this flaw other than there are very few if any movies that are entirely frame perfect. It would also set it up so that there wouldn't need to be a UnGrue 2013. EDIT And I understand that the chances of any of this happening is very slim which is why I am looking at movies to improve rather than start new NES runs so I guess the rule is working in forcing me to expand my goals to work harder.

Posted: 1/31/2012 1:11 AM

Quote

DarkKobold

Skilled player (1637)

Joined: 11/15/2004
Posts: 2202
Location: Killjoy

goofydylan8 wrote:

On the other hand a rule change would fix the situation for those movies plus alleviate the error in the future.

Uh, I still don't believe either BttF or X-men were errors. There is no guarantee the ungrue would cause them to be published.

Sage advice from a friend of Jim: So put your tinfoil hat back in the closet, open your eyes to the truth, and realize that the government is in fact causing austismal cancer with it's 9/11 fluoride vaccinations of your water supply.

Posted: 1/31/2012 1:17 AM

Quote

goofydylan8

Experienced player (509)

Joined: 11/2/2010
Posts: 359

DarkKobold wrote:

Uh, I still don't believe either BttF or X-men were errors. There is no guarantee the ungrue would cause them to be published.

From the perspective that the rule is wrong, aka my perspective, then BttF not being published is an error. But once again I see why you don't believe so and understand that it is extremely unlikely to change.

Posted: 2/1/2012 8:54 AM

Quote

amaurea

Former player

Joined: 2/19/2007
Posts: 424
Location: UK

I agree that the "bad game choice" should be removed as a reason for rejection. Our goal should be to have as good as possible a TAS for every game, as even the most boring games will have somebody who played it at one time and wonder how fast it can be done, and the games may turn out to only look boring for people who aren't familiar with them. When somebody bothers to make a TAS for a game, that shows that there is at least one person who is interested in seeing such a TAS. Allowing TASes of such games isn't going to make it harder for first time visitors to find interesting TASes to watch, as we already have the starred movies list for that. When I first came here, I first looked up all the games I enjoy playing, and then browsed the starred movies for other interesting games. I think this is pretty representative for what others do too, and it wouldn't be affected by allowing more games. The whole "bad game choice" thing reminds me of editors on Wikipedia who keep deleting useful articles because they are "not notable". What they don't realize is that the threshold for notability depends on your number of articles: If you can only have 1000 articles, you should cover the 1000 most important topics. But if you aren't bound by an article limit, you do not need a notability limit either. Thankfully, deletionism isn't as bad here as in Wikipedia yet, but if it gets to the point where people can't reasonably expect a good TAS to be accepted, we're going to both deprive viewers of runs to watch and ourselves of TASers who are willing to submit new runs.

Posted: 2/1/2012 9:25 AM

Quote

Bobo_the_King

Player (79)

Joined: 8/5/2007
Posts: 865

I will not rest until my Where in Time is Carmen Sandiego run is published!!! (Just ignore me.)

Posted: 2/1/2012 10:41 AM

Quote

RachelB

She/Her

Player (127)

Joined: 12/3/2011
Posts: 1579

I'd support that being published.

Posted: 2/1/2012 12:38 PM

Quote

jlun2

Skilled player (1707)

Joined: 9/17/2009
Posts: 4952
Location: ̶C̶a̶n̶a̶d̶a̶ "Kanatah"

amaurea wrote:

Our goal should be to have as good as possible a TAS for every game, as even the most boring games will have somebody who played it at one time and wonder how fast it can be done, and the games may turn out to only look boring for people who aren't familiar with them.

Every game? YES!!! If this rule gets accepted, I'm definitely going to try to TAS EVERY port of the most popular movies so I can be popular too! HAHAH! AHAHAHAHA! HAAAAAAAAHAHAHA!

LLCoolDave wrote:

This seems to be competing for the "Worst looking TAS of 2011" Award.

Posted: 2/1/2012 4:15 PM

Post subject: in which i propose a possible solution

Quote

alden

Player (120)

Joined: 2/11/2007
Posts: 1522

Here's an idea: add a tier between starred and non-starred. It would include pretty much every movie where most people say "whoa, that's crazy". Tuck everything else away, not so buried as gruefood delight but not as prominent as the awesomer movies. We could call everything else something like "Archives". Then we have the advantage of a place where people can go to reliably find awesome movies, and the advantage of having a huge variety of probably-boring-but-maybe-not-to-some-people movies. I think my Dizzy the Adventurer movie falls in the latter category: it is pretty dull to most, but it has received some very positive comments on youtube from Dizzy's (mostly Polish) fanbase. Probably wouldn't have to redesign the site that much either. You could theoretically add a "category" tag and use that to filter movies. I don't know if there's something that makes this unfeasible, but I could check it out if given permissions. I am familiar with php and mysql and stuff.

I make a comic with no image files and you should read it. While there is a lower class, I am in it, and while there is a criminal element I am of it, and while there is a soul in prison, I am not free. -Eugene Debs

Posted: 2/2/2012 3:23 AM

Quote

OmegaWatcher

Joined: 5/2/2009
Posts: 656

AnS wrote:

goofydylan8 wrote:
With NES being a gateway for most people into the world of TAS'ing this is a problem.
This is indeed a problem that should be solved by trying to expand the gateway to other platforms, and not by endorsing NES even more (by accepting bad games from this platform). Your suggestion won't help to solve the problem in long term.

there are a lot of reasons for using mostly NES games, one of the most enduring plataforms this side of Atari 2600. Going after other games for other consoles, like Lynx or Master System, is an adventure in itself, since most sites do not cover these consoles, just a few people actually played games from this consoles.

jlun2 wrote:

Every game? YES!!! If this rule gets accepted, I'm definitely going to try to TAS EVERY port of the most popular movies so I can be popular too! HAHAH! AHAHAHAHA! HAAAAAAAAHAHAHA!

I CHALLENGE YOU TO MAKE A GOOD MOVIE OUT OF EVERY PORT OF THE MOST POPULAR MOVIES WITH SOMETHING DIFFERENT. Seriously. I suggest starting with Mega Man - The Wily Wars

DarkKobold wrote:

boct1584 wrote:
Technically, I suggested it last year, but it didn't gain any traction.
So far, it hasn't gained much traction here, other than one sarcastic comment.

I openly agree with giving another round of ungruing. The site is different from 2009, more open minded. And, about the topic itself: I've seen countless insanely long RPGs being published here. I see most of them as unbelievably boring. For example the Final Fantasy VI's run. This is one of my favorite games of all time, but I can't stand the movie. I can't say it's badly done because it isn't, at all, but I don't watch it. As well as I don't vote in any kind of RPG run (Chrono Trigger being an amazing exception, due to how the movie works). And it works the same with a lot of users from here hating on fighting games, since most games which aren't Mortal Kombat are not published. Entertainment is subjective. This is not a TV station where we have timeslots, and worries about the shows' audience. This is a site about entertainment, and it varies. I'd rather see a 3 minutes movie about Front Line from watching more than 3 hours of a semi-obscure Japanese RPG. I'm not saying they should be banned, not at all. I'm saying the site should be as extensive as possible, giving as many options for the viewer as possible. ...and also, I miss the random button... and, anyway, that's just my opinion....

My first language is not English, so please excuse myself if I write something wrong. I'll do my best do write as cleary as I can, so cope with me here =) (ﾉಥ益ಥ）ﾉ