You assume that "new users" have never played those games. Many have (they are, after all, widely popular games), and many visitors might be interested in seeing a TAS of them.
If they are interested, they will look for the TAS and watch it regardless of whether it has a star or not.
I'll be honest in that I'm suprised the "starred movies" concept is still in use.
I would've long left it for "most popular" (i.e., highest rated) as well as seperating movies into categories, not just "NES/SNES" etc.
This would, naturally, require further denomination ("abuses programming errors" -> "some glitch use" or "uses glitches to skip most of the game"), so that only movies the user is interested in watching are shown.
You could also create a "notable movies" category (not best!) for movies that are obviously important somehow, such as the SMB3 run (the movie that introduced most people to TASing years ago)
This way, rather than having arbitrary arguments over which movie gets a star (including that Umihara whatever game), they would be decided by what the community feels is the best movie.
Anybody who has the powers of logical deduction could figure that out. But I challenge you to find it linked anywhere, especially with the text "Top rated movies", on the front page. Oh wait, it's not there. Oops.
Btw, "recommended movies" are something different than "highest rated movies".
Why is this?
Recommended movies should be movies that are entertaining and interesting to watch.
Giving the community itself, as a group, the ability to decide this makes a hell of a lot more sense than giving one person and one person alone the ability to. If nothing else, it'd remove the "who would watch this?" Umihara movie from the recommended list for once.
Editor's note: I don't hate the Umihara movie. But as a "recommended movie", I think it's stupid. It's slow, relatively uninteresting, and is really only a slow demonstration of physics abuse. I'm amazed it's still on the damn list.
But I challenge you to find it linked anywhere, especially with the text "Top rated movies", on the front page. Oh wait, it's not there. Oops.
Indeed, it's not on the front page. If you are on the front page however, you can find it by pressing "search", then "Search movies by category / platform" and then "other...". It's named All movies, sorted by rating.
Xkeeper wrote:
Baxter wrote:
Btw, "recommended movies" are something different than "highest rated movies".
Why is this?
Do you mean "What is the difference?"?
The difference is that a recommended movie is recommended for some reason (obviously). Particular movies can be recommended for a number of reasons (for whatever makes that particular movie good, or different)... the movies are probably all prime examples of what is possible with using tools vs not using them.
You might ask if this same thing isn't accomplished by just replacing the link by the highest rated movies...
I think not, because the starred movies try to provide some kind of variety in types of games, and it also possibly might interest people in games they haven't heard about, to still watch them, because they are recommended. Having a little lower rating might not do justice to a particular movie since it isn't as well known.
But I challenge you to find it linked anywhere, especially with the text "Top rated movies", on the front page. Oh wait, it's not there. Oops.
Indeed, it's not on the front page. If you are on the front page however, you can find it by pressing "search", then "Search movies by category / platform" and then "other...". It's named All movies, sorted by rating.
That's a long, complicated path to find it. Even with instructions I managed to screw up (failed to notice a link on one of the pages near the bottom), and it's hidden under tabs and other such mess. I meant for it to be easily accessible; specifically, replacing the 'recommended movies' link.
The difference is that a recommended movie is recommended for some reason (obviously). Particular movies can be recommended for a number of reasons (for whatever makes that particular movie good, or different)... the movies are probably all prime examples of what is possible with using tools vs not using them.
You might ask if this same thing isn't accomplished by just replacing the link by the highest rated movies...
I think not, because the starred movies try to provide some kind of variety in types of games, and it also possibly might interest people in games they haven't heard about, to still watch them, because they are recommended. Having a little lower rating might not do justice to a particular movie since it isn't as well known.
That would be the concept behind interesting/notable movies. Ones that demonstrate something spectacular or something of extended interest, and not all-around goodness.
This way, you could also let the typical Mario/Zelda/whatever movies float to the top in the rated section, but include gems like extremely glitched/interesting TASes in their own section.
The point I'm trying to make is that "best movies" should not be decided by only one person, but should be community-controlled. To me, it solves many more problems than it creates.
Well, I think we agree then... I thought you were against the concept of giving any movie a little special attention for showing something new/cool/different.
9.21 55 SNES Super Mario World (USA) by Fabian & JXQ in 10:28.7
9.17 46 SNES "all items" Super Metroid (JPN/USA) by JXQ in 1:10:45.02 (avi format)
9.14 64 SNES "96-exit" Super Mario World (USA) by Fabian in 1:21:29.63
9.03 54 Genesis Sonic The Hedgehog 2 (any) by Nitsuja in 19:55.43
9.00 54 NES Excitebike (JPN/USA) by Luke in 05:35.38
8.89 55 NES Super Mario Bros 3 (USA PRG1) by Genisto in 10:34.55
8.83 35 Genesis Sonic 3 and Knuckles (any) by Nitsuja in 34:22.02
8.63 29 SNES "120-exit" Super Demo World - TLC (any v1.1) by jimsfriend in 2:08:50.32
8.62 17 GBA "100%" Metroid Zero Mission (USA) by Dragonfangs in 1:01:43.7
8.60 30 SNES "any%" Super Metroid (JPN/USA) by hero of the day in 40:57.85
This the current list of highest rated, notice anything? with the exeption of one game there all from the same popular game series there all over dominated by Metroid, Mario and Sonic. With 5 from the list only really coming from 2 games both being SNES.
My point is that highest rated movies are dictated by games with largest fan bases so why bother reccomending them if new viewers will natrually choose to watch them anyway and instead overlook the likes of Excitebike.
I think the system works fine as it is, but it needs to be more often updated and with community input. As AKA said, if we just switched to an outright top rated videos, it might as well be called the "Mario, Metroid and Sonic" page.
While it has been said that stars are not "awards" - we should perhaps treat them as "prizes" of a sort, and make sure we don't just give them to well played well known games (though S3&K would get the star, etc). It'd have to be for something unique.
It is a difficult situation though.
I think the system works fine as it is, but it needs to be more often updated and with community input. As AKA said, if we just switched to an outright top rated videos, it might as well be called the "Mario, Metroid and Sonic" page.
While it has been said that stars are not "awards" - we should perhaps treat them as "prizes" of a sort, and make sure we don't just give them to well played well known games (though S3&K would get the star, etc). It'd have to be for something unique.
It is a difficult situation though.
meh, just give them a thumbs up
Irony aside, this system works (not perfect), but it works
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I think the system works fairly well right now. Instinctively, the well known games are the games that will (usually) have the most competition to create the perfect run, thus creating more entertaining movies. So, starred runs should mostly be games that are A) Entertaining and B) Games people know well, with other lesser known games with well done movies thrown in for variety. The only one I don't think belongs on the list is Umihara Kawase because A) I (and some others) don't find it very entertaining (despite the fun physics tricks) and B) It's fairly unknown to most players.
But all in all I think there are things on this site that could stand to be worked on much more than what receives a star and what doesn't.
When I first came here, I checked out the recommended movies a lot. As of now though, I think the movies listed are still good, but I would like to suggest a change/rule:
One (1) franchise run per console (Ex: There are five Super Mario runs, which span over three consoles, two on SNES, two on NES, one on N64. Other examples are Mega Man for NES, and Sonic for the Genesis)
This prevents the movie list from being crowded with popular franchises and allows lesser-known but more diverse runs (like Excite-bike, as earlier mentioned) to be on the list.
Also, what happened to Ninja Five-O? I felt that was a really good movie for first-timers because it's like Umihara Kawase, but more action-packed.
Sidenote: I also agree with Xkeeper in saying that Umihara Kawase should probably not be on the list because it doesn't quite display tool-assistance very well.
I also suggest a constant checkup of videos, removing very old videos (2+ years?) from the recommended page that no longer reach the standard of new videos.
After reviewing both Umihara Kawase and Bionic Commando, I can quite catagorically say that I significantly enjoyed Bionic Commando more despite the fact I've never played either game. Mainly because it feels like a more complete game. Of course UK may have very advanced swinging physics but I can't appreaciate it in any way unlike BC I can relate more properly to the game play and almost certainly frame optimal swinging despite it being very NES like. BC also felt just about right in length and had a proper movie feel. Unlike Umihara Kawase the game was very repetive and felt very abrupt when it ended leaving me say "eh... is that it". Plus it doesn't make me want to see a longer run because I know I'm just in for the exact same stuff.
EDIT: [URL=http://tasvideos.org/415M.html] NinjaFive0 [/url] has also been brought to my attention being a simalar based game. It seems to fall very nicely inbetween UK and BC in terms of gameplay. I can certainly appreaciate the game more from a tool assisted point of view because its fast paces and what the characted does on screen changes rapidly all the time given the obvious dangers. Although it does slightly exhaust in length but it kept watching it till the very end. I think this run should probally be favoured mainly becuase it gives a much better spread across the consoles plus GBA is starved of any game that not part of a popular gaming series.
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JXQ wrote:
Why not change the front page to say "List Bisqwit's recommended movies"?
Agreed, I think this would settle a lot of the debates.
Kles wrote:
I also suggest a constant checkup of videos, removing very old videos (2+ years?) from the recommended page that no longer reach the standard of new videos.
Again, agreed. Though most of the old star movies have been obsoleted by now.
Sorry to be bringing this thread back from the dead again, but I'm not wanting to suggest any new movies, I'm here to question the star policy in general.
Personally, I think its had its day. 3 years ago I can see how it would have been a great idea, but I think largely it sends out the wrong message of "this is what you should like". When the reality is that no one ultimatley wants to be told what they should/shouldn't like. Plus a lot of them are of games pretty much anyone would choose to watch anyway, so its kind of just saying 'duh'. Also there is some really long and 100% runs, which goes against the main rule.
- Keeps the pace and doesn't exhaust the audience with length
No one is gonna choose to watch these runs first regardless of how well known the game is. Even though it can be strongly argued by a veteran TASer or viewer that there most entertaining to watch. Just as an example I believe the Dark Castle run on SDA has more downloads than the Sonic 2 run, mainly because the Dark Castle run is only a few minutes long, despite it being a bad game.
If you really want to attract newer people then you would need to showboat newer games, with that I mean games that aren't quite TASable yet. While 32 and 128-bit era games aren't quite TASable yet, I'm sure they wlll do sometime in the future. Also starred movies don't represent site opinion in general, only that of the administrator.
Why not change the front page to say "List Bisqwit's recommended movies"?
I don't want me to be advertised (at least not on this site), because I'm not really special.
That said, I apologize for neglecting this thread for some time.
In any case, I'll remove the stars temporarily (as in, indefinitely until something different comes up), as they have not been verified for some time and there may be discrepancies in them that I am not able to off-hand justify.
Personally, I think its had its day. 3 years ago I can see how it would have been a great idea, but I think largely it sends out the wrong message of "this is what you should like". When the reality is that no one ultimatley wants to be told what they should/shouldn't like.
I disagree with this. It's not "this is what you should like", but "this is what we, the tasing community like, maybe you could start with these if you don't have anything else in mind". I think the list of recommended movies is a good idea. Someone who stumbles accross this site and sees a list of hundreds and hundreds of movies will be quite lost. Showing a concise list of "best of the show" movies may be a good start for a newcomer.
I agree, though, that the list of starred movies could perhaps be re-evaluated and brought "up to date", so to speak. And maybe make the list shorter than it currently was.
Plus a lot of them are of games pretty much anyone would choose to watch anyway, so its kind of just saying 'duh'.
Not really. Not everyone has played the games. Many people might like some tas-videos even without having ever played the game in question (I haven't played but just very few of the games from which tases have been made I like a lot). If you have never played the games, you then don't necessarily have a good idea of what you would like to watch. A "the tasing community recommends" list could be a helpful start.
If you really want to attract newer people then you would need to showboat newer games
This site isn't really about newest games, but about classic games. Its target audience are mainly the people who played those classic console games. The age of the game doesn't really matter.
Also starred movies don't represent site opinion in general, only that of the administrator.
"Recommended for first time viewers" and "highest voting scores" might not always coincide in the same list. A long-time taser or watcher of tases may appreciate rather different things than a first-time viewer.
Here's a list of things I don't agree with from your post AKA:
It largely sends out the wrong message of "this is what you should like".
A lot of them are games pretty much anyone would choose to watch anyway, so its kind of just saying "duh".
There is some really long and 100% runs, which goes against the main rule. Keeps the pace and doesn't exhaust the audience with length.
No one is going to choose to watch these runs first regardless of how well known the game is.
If you really want to attract newer people then you would need to showboard newer games.
Don't think I need to elaborate obviously. I do agree that starred movies don't represent the site opinion in general, so we have that at least.
Here's a list of things I agree with from your post AKA:
It largely sends out the wrong message of "this is what you should like".
A lot of them are games pretty much anyone would choose to watch anyway, so its kind of just saying "duh".
There is some really long and 100% runs, which goes against the main rule. Keeps the pace and doesn't exhaust the audience with length.
No one is going to choose to watch these runs first regardless of how well known the game is.
If you really want to attract newer people then you would need to showboard newer games.
Don't think I need to elaborate obviously. I also agree that starred movies don't represent the site opinion in general.
Thank you Fabian, I glad you agree. I guess there is no reason to elaborate after all.
Irony aside, this system works (not perfect), but it works
