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Ready Steady Yeti wrote:
I really highly recommend that this be rejudged. There's a lot that doesn't seem to have been taken into consideration here. Yes, there are relatively few parts that need to be optimized, but the parts that need to be optimized are solid and hard to distinguish from actual real-time attempts. The train level, the kid collecting level, and the final level in the game where you get the stall are all examples of levels in the game that are technically impressive enough to pass for Vault standards IMO. Even though the platform glitches don't save time, they're also nearly impossible to do perfectly real-time like was done in the TAS. Please, please reconsider this decision.
Not anything against the judge, but it didn't seem like very much time was spent judging this. I know the judge was frustrated by me using an earlier version, and TAStudio kept crashing, so it's at least understandable. But in process, the entire run and the entire game should be taken into exceedingly careful consideration no matter what before the final judgment is made. Please do not be offended by what I am saying, as I'm not trying to attack your position as a judge. I am only trying to be constructive and criticize in a positive manner.
The fact that I took less time for judging this submission compared to the previous ones doesn't mean that I neglected any determinant factor, nor did I let my personal game preferences or the unability to use TAStudio affect my decision.
The documentation you provided in your last post is supposed to demonstrate that the run is not trivial, at least in some sections; however, run triviality is not the only reason for my decision of rejection. The other problem is that it's the game itself being trivial, due to the optimizable sections being immensely small in comparison to the overall gameplay.
Ready Steady Yeti wrote:
Thank you all for bringing this up, and reading what I have to say. When responding or rejudging, please take all the points mentioned into careful consideration. Please know that this run did take quite an amount of effort to complete. It certainly took more effort than my Victorious: Taking the Lead submission, which definitely is a trivial game. But this game is quite different than that in many respects.
I see this really is a borderline case, and many people are questioning my judgement, especially the author. For these reasons, I'm currently considering if resetting the submission to "new" state and letting a different judge work on it. In the meantime, I would appreciate to see some new, and different arguments.
When I said "unassisted play" I was referring to an actual attempt to beat the game as fast as possible, not to a casual play that wastes time on purpose.
Radiant wrote:
I'd agree that this game is pretty boring to watch and clearly made for children. But that makes it prime Vault material, as the main reason behind the Vault was to get rid of "poor game choice" as a rejection criterion.
Still, this doesn't mean that anything can be accepted for Vault.
Radiant wrote:
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BrunoVisnadi wrote:
Is this game really ineligible even for vault? The tier rules says the run must be distinguishable of a real time gameplay.
Indeed, if we exclude the playarounds with the hopping and the camera, it gets really impossible to distinguish it from an unassisted play.
BrunoVisnadi wrote:
Although most of this run is indeed trivial, there are a few sections with frame perfect inputs and even glitch abuse, which sets it apart of a RTA.
You said that right, there are few sections that require actual optimization, across the whole 17:52.19.
And also note that the frame precision is just eating away a ridicously tiny amount of frames. The game is trivial, and the run is as well.
I hope this reply will suffice. If not, then I could start a research for all the precedents of rejection for game triviality.
With that said, I must add that I really apprecciate TASes made with game titles that are less known and less apprecciated by the mass, but only if it turn out in a run that shows off superhuman play.
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I didn't watched the encode yet, but I must note that it's quite an ambitious branch indeed.
I'd like to have much more details about the run, about the route you followed and if you if exploited any glitches or not.
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Pardon me if I won't use quotes now, otherwise the post would get into a total mess.
As I already said twice, I'm aware that the submitted run is a good TAS in all aspects, and the rejection is purely based on a judgement toward the game, so the fact that the run is actually breaking the educational aspects of the game doesn't change the fact that it can't be applied for Vault. There is no mention in the Vault rules about the quality of the run being able to bend the applicability of the game title for Vault tier.
I judged this game as non-applicable for Vault because I considered that the rule is talking about how predominant is the educational aspect, and not about how much trivial gameplay is present, according to what I could understand from the only text line that mentions about "secondariness", and by looking at precedents of rejection of other submissions.
Indeed, I could have misunderstanded the actual goal of the rules, and made a bad judgement that goes aganist the spirit of TASVideos, but that would be because of the rule text having misled me. If that's the case, then my judgement would be wrong and in the need of being reverted.
While I like the idea of seeing this submission being accepted, I have to note that it would entirely depend from the intervention of an administrator in pointing out how the rule should actually be applied, and possibly an improvement to the text of the Vault page.
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feos wrote:
Being unplayable in real time if the math is hidden out is not how the rule defines a rejectable education game either.
You're right. But on the other hand, the Vault page doesn't explain why Sesame Street: Elmo's 123s and ABCs falls under the list of unacceptable titles. So I had only two ways left to evaluate if Math Blaster is Vaultable:
1) Going by exclusion.
Right after the Sesame Street example, the Vault page states that:
"A serious game which happens to have some secondary educational elements scattered within it are eligible."
So I asked myself:
"is this a serious game with secondary educational elements scattered within, or
is this an educational game with secondary serious elements scattered within?"
I concluded it was the latter.
2) Looking at precedents.
The rejection of #5719: EZGames69's SNES Mario's Time Machine in 22:46.12 looks as an appropriate example: the game mostly consists in menuing your way in order to give the correct answers to history-related questions; however the game also features a short minigame as intermission between these tests.
Math Blaster indeed features much more non-trivial gameplay, but how do we measure the "amount of non-triviality" of a game?
feos wrote:
Do you have any more reasons why you think math is the primary gameplay element here? Especially comparing it to the rejectable examples provided by the rules.
No. The only reason why I judged this run as non-applicable for Vault, is because solving math problems is the primary requirement for playing through the game.
feos wrote:
So far, being impossible to beat for a regular human hasn't been a reason to reject a TAS.
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feos wrote:
ThunderAxe31 wrote:
If a game has the mandatory requirement to do a lot of Math, we consider it a non-serious game, regardless of what it could seem for someone that never played it.
That's not what the rule says. For clarity of my argument I'll quote it.
For the purposes of this tier, a game which is a board game, educational game or game show game is not defined as a serious game. Examples of unacceptable education games for this tier are Sesame Street: Elmo's 123s and ABCs. A serious game which happens to have some secondary educational elements scattered within it are eligible.
The amount of math involved is irrelevant, and there's no definition of "a lot". There's a definition of "primarily educational game" that we can obtain via provided example. Then when rendering a judgment of a game that's probably educational to some degree, we compare it to Sesame Street: Elmo's 123s to get the basic idea. So let's do this.
Sorry, I expressed that post with a misunderstable choice of words. Like I said in my subsequent post, I judged this game title as non-applicable for Vault because the educational content comes before the gaming one, not because of the quantity.
feos wrote:
This game has educational elements to it, but its actual gameplay, that remains when you discard math, allows for an optimizable TAS that can even be improved further if some harder glitch is found in the second level. The rule requires that this game only has "some secondary educational elements scattered within it", and it perfectly fits, especially if you compare it to the example game that clearly doesn't.
Except that you cannot "discard math" in this game without causing it to became unplayable, at least for a real-time play. The Vault rule that did bring this submission to rejection, is judging the game itself, and not anything about the submitted TAS.
As I already said in this post, I'm perfectly aware this TAS features non-trivial gameplay. I'm the one who judged this run, and I did all my considerations before giving the rejection verdict.
For the sake of the conversation, I think at this point I should make it clear what I think about this submission and about my judgement: I like this run, and I'm the first one that got sad in seeing it rejected. But neverthless, I think I've followed the current rules correctly. I think I don't have the right to raise an exception and accept this run, unless the specific Vault rule gets changed or adjusted.
I didn't requested for a rule change because I think it's quite an overkill to request for a change just for the sake of a single, low entertaining run, especially since a run with a much more entertaining goal would likely to get accepted with the current Moon tier rules.
Also, if we decide to change the rules in order to accept this run, then we would automatically also be forced to accept a lot of runs done on very bad educational games like SNES Mario's Time Machine, just because 1% of the gameplay is non-trivial.
For these reasons, I would prefer to have the rules unchanged, having this submission to be kept rejected, and patiently wait for someone to make a "maximum score" run.
By the way, I'm going to be ok with any decision.
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I assume the movie length is longer due to different emulation speed, right?
Also, I noticed that the currently published movie is actually 20 frames slower, not 23 as you claim in your submission text. You may want to make a correction or explain better.
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goldenband wrote:
Plenty of games intended as entertainment (not edutainment) require doing lots of math. Most are on computer, but a game like Artillery Duel on the Atari 2600 is literally about calculating angles, power and nothing else -- there's no action/dexterity component. Other examples include space travel and rocketry simulators (and some RPGs come pretty damn close). Perhaps most of those don't have enough going onscreen to justify a TAS as a watched experience; Math Blaster, however, clearly does.
What I suspect you really mean is if the game forces you to solve math problems as a central gameplay element and the intent of the game is to teach math, it's a non-serious game. But -- if that's a correct gloss of your stance -- I don't think even that is a coherent standard, or that any judging criteria attempting to be objective should include "intent" as a criterion. The Oregon Trail's intent is didactic/pedagogical; so is Carmen Sandiego. Both are on this site.
Meanwhile, Math Blaster's gameplay may involve solving math problems, but I'd argue that it doesn't consist of solving math problems: it consists of shooting, platforming, etc. If you can't see the difference and want a game that consists of solving math problems, the Apple II library has plenty of examples where you just type in the answer and that's all you do.
No one ever said Math Blaster doesn't contain actual gameplay. The problem for this game is that the educational part comes before the gaming one, that is forcing the player to execute an activity that has nothing to do with shooting and platforming and specifically doing it in an educational way. On the other hand, it makes just sense for some kind of strategic games to require you to do calculations, because it's relative to that gaming ambiance and it's not specifically crafted in order to teach any school subject to the player.
goldenband wrote:
Also, once again, let me ask: where are "serious" and "non-serious" defined on this site? If these are matters of policy, shouldn't they be spelled out explicitly, so that anyone can know in advance where a given submission will stand? Isn't that what rules are for -- to ensure accountability for all parties?
I already linked the Vault rules page in my judgement notes, that is the place where TASers are supposed to learn about which games and which game goals could be accepted and which not; if that's not enough, everyone is still free to ask if a specific game title could be potentially accepted for Vault, by posting in this thread or contacting a judge privately via PM, IRC or Discord.
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goldenband wrote:
As I'm sure you realize, my point is, if the person watching the run couldn't see the math elements, they'd see what appeared to them to be a standard (if uninspired) space cockpit shooter, then a kind of platformer, etc. And those events are actually being controlled by player input, so their impression -- of a game being played -- would be correct.
We don't care about what a casual watcher may think or not think by watching the encode of a game they aren't familiar of; what we care about is what the game played actually *is*.
If a game has the mandatory requirement to do a lot of Math, we consider it a non-serious game, regardless of what it could seem for someone that never played it.
