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  #1  
Old Mar 2, 2008, 01:13 PM
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Default Games without soundtracks?

Do you guys have any plans of incorporating actual game data as well as all the soundtrack info? Think of it as GMCL in English with VGMdb awesomeness, composer linking, box art, and other cool things. Sure, there are tons of officially released albums out there (looks like VGMdb is at 7,000+ already!) but a lot of games don't get soundtrack releases. They need some db lovin' too. I was doing some digging on Masafumi Takada yesterday and that's what sparked this thought. Imagine clicking a link for him on this site and being taken to a page that lists all his officially released albums and all the other games he composed music for. Games could be linked to albums and, oh man.. the possibilities are endless! Mmm, dreamy~~

This may have been discussed before but I couldn't find it. Consider this a topic revival if it was.

-Mike
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  #2  
Old Mar 2, 2008, 03:02 PM
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In my opinion, this is the biggest flaw of VGMdb. This site is amazing, but omitting the coverage of music that wasn't published independently of the games is unconceivable if the objective would be to cover game music as a whole. However, it was mentioned in the past that the goal of VGMdb is to catalog albums and other official releases, a shortened approach which somewhat deceived me.

Has the vision changed since then?
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  #3  
Old Mar 2, 2008, 03:45 PM
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So, how'd you do that?
Would you start referencing Game rips..? That's silly and insane, and i am absolutly not for this idea..
OR
Would you just simply add a new category, and add a standard common page with something like "this game does not have an official or promo release of any kind" ? Adding of course the name of the composer(s) & game publisher since it would be the only interesting thing.. ?

Last edited by Myrkul; Mar 2, 2008 at 04:02 PM.
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  #4  
Old Mar 2, 2008, 03:56 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Myrkul View Post
So, how'd you do that?
Would you start referencing Game rips..? That's silly and insane, and i am absolutely not for this idea..
Absolutely NOT. Game rips should stay far away from this site.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Myrkul View Post
Would you just simply add a new category, and add a standard common page with something like "this game does not have an official or promo release of any kind" ? Adding of course the name of the composer(s) & game publisher since it would be the only interesting thing.. ?
Yes, pretty much. For a game with no official soundtrack release, add an entry for the actual game itself with composer info, box art, release date, price, etc. And for games that do have soundtrack releases, the same thing applies but link the game's entry to the album's entry. That would make this site the ULTIMATE game music resource, hands down!

-Mike
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  #5  
Old Mar 2, 2008, 04:09 PM
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I do not disagree with this idea.. but in the other hand i am not completely for it.

Adding so much informations (release date, price, box art..and more) looks more like a Game database than a Game Music database to me..

This sounds like MobyGames..
Their database already offers everything you want -including game music composers-)
It would be too similar i think.
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  #6  
Old Mar 2, 2008, 04:33 PM
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There is a lot of potential in this idea, though it's really quite an expansion beyond our stated goals, which pertain to cataloging information primarily with the 'album' as the core unit. We will eventually be linking up games and series for all of the albums, much as we have been doing with artists and groups, and through that process we will start building a database of games. Of course, that database would still present predominately an album/game relationship, and wouldn't be likely to include the games that had no music releases at all.

However, for the present, there are other sites and projects that are currently working on handling the game/composer relationship. I think it makes sense for VGMdb to play some kind of role in their development, since there's a wealth of complementary information right here. For now, I hope everyone just keeps an open mind about the shape of such a future role.

In the meantime, there's plenty to do.
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  #7  
Old Mar 2, 2008, 10:01 PM
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Agreed with the sentiment of no game rips. I don't even see how we'd handle game rips without mulling over the cataloging of too much arbitrary information (ripper, quality, why X track length is more appropriate over Y, proper track titling). It just seems like a mess.

I'd like to think that down the line, the (hopefully growing) popularity of VGMdb would encourage companies to release more soundtracks of previously unreleased material. We're niche, but we should be a hub of organized album releases, not game rips.
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  #8  
Old Mar 3, 2008, 05:54 AM
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Including game credits and cataloging game rips are two different things. My point above concerned game credits, in the same direction as Mike. Without these, a composer's resume can be quite incomplete when "game music" is the basis.

This is a pet peeve of mine. Frequently, I get the impression that for many people, game music is considerable only when it is released on an official album. Intensive physical CD collectors are a prime example of this. Sure, albums are definitely part of the picture, but it isn't the whole of it and certainly not the starting point either. And again, it's not about game rips, it's rather the fact that "game music" would still exists if no albums were ever published (minus arranged music and the like). Yet, many game music websites don't consider this reality and cut off all music/artists which were not lucky enough to get published, as if they are expandable. In some cases, it doesn't make a huge difference (e.g. Nobuo Uemastu's discography vs. game-ography), but in other instances, it's day and night (P.S. not including game credits is the night, or rather the 'nightmare').

If a website has a clear statement that the coverage is only around albums, this is perfectly fine. However, if it considers itself as a game music database without any restrictions to the definition, and there are no plans to somehow include information about the "music from games" without the kind of discrimination described above, it shouldn't be labeled as a "game music database", but rather a "game music album database".

To some this may sound like nothing more than a play on words, but the end results are drastically different.

----------------------------

SS: I'm cool with this. Being a source of information for official releases is a more than valuable goal and yes, a massive task that isn't close to completion yet.
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  #9  
Old Mar 3, 2008, 07:04 AM
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Yes, we'd very much like to have complete works listings for artists. However, like SS said, there are other sites which are actively working on this, and we're looking at a potential data partnership, the specifics of which are yet to be worked out.
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  #10  
Old Aug 15, 2009, 04:40 AM
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Actually I thought about the topic some time ago.

Why does VGMdb not just list entries of not published game music with a memo? For example the Turtles in Time oder NES Duck Tales Soundtrack. Not many people know that the Turtles in Time SNES Soundtrack was actually released on a Super Famicom Music Collection CD with 2-3 tracks. Why does we just not list it with a new entry "no official CD Release"?

I think we could help people with such entries who're desperately searching for a soundtrack that doesn't exist. On the other hand we can complete the listings for the artists too.
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  #11  
Old Aug 15, 2009, 04:53 AM
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Well, that sounds like something we'll do once we've got the products (i.e., games) pages implemented and tied in with everything. There's still a lot of planning to do though.
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