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  #1  
Old Jan 21, 2010, 09:58 AM
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quintin3265 quintin3265 is offline
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Default It's time to get real here

Hi,

Recently, there was some controversy at the Shizz about the site. What I took out of it is that there are quite a few people who are vehemently opposed to what this site is trying to do and what it stands for. No matter what is posted on many game music forums, people are often very rude in their replies.

Meanwhile, the number of people posting songs and visiting the site is minuscule at best. While some will say that the site is not "old enough," nine months is more than enough time to determine if greater than 20 people per day are going to stop by, especially since there are tens of thousands of remixes out there.

Perhaps video game remixes are simply on the decline, and people simply aren't interested in making them anymore. If that's the case, then it's understandable, and I don't want to continue spending hundreds of hours and entire weekends working on and promoting something that people aren't interested in. What's clear, though, is that I can't afford to keep bleeding hundreds of dollars if there's no interest.

I hope that some people will respond to this thread. At this point, some action needs to be taken in order to save the site. People need to report bugs, volunteer to organize compos, upload songs, and get the word out. If you don't support what remixSite offers, then perhaps you might be willing to spend a minute and offer a comment as to why you don't think the site is worth saving. Even if your comment is simply that video game remixes aren't what they used to be, it would be very worthwhile.

Remember, no money is being made here. Other sites sell things and post ads, which we do not do. We don't prejudge songs and anyone is able to take advantage of free bandwidth, publicity, and disk space.

I hope that some community members will be moved to take action, but if not, then this was still an effort worth trying and I will be thankful to those who have contributed to this point.

-quintin
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  #2  
Old Jan 21, 2010, 01:48 PM
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im not sure if vg remixing is necessarily on the decline, or if we've gotten to a point where newer artists have seem to be weeded out for the most part. i do think that is a big problem in a lot of ways, no new talent doesnt lend itself well to sustainable growth. we cant necessarily expect growth, but at the same time something needs to be done to take the site to the next level so that the site can be self sustainable. in my eyes, i believe that needs to be the first order of business, making the site able to stand on its own so it isnt a strain, so that any type of 'downtime' can be justified.

it makes me very aggravated to see the site neglected by the community, and i feel i have to pick and choose my words a bit. it just seems completely unwarranted, its as if most people dont really understand what it takes simply in terms of money and time to get any website off the ground, much less a database type site like this. on top of it, it feels like people dont even want to offer a little of their own time to make suggestions. i hope this isnt the case.
  #3  
Old Jan 21, 2010, 02:48 PM
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What annoys me the most is that, for some reason, it's permissible for celebrities to auction their underwear (http://cgi3.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dl...avela-lingerie) to raise money for charity; yet, when a call goes out to post remixes for charity, people start getting up in arms as if someone is making a "profit" off this endeavor.

I disagree with your statement that video game music isn't declining. I think that part of the problem is that it's more difficult to remix songs from modern games because they are already orchestral masterpieces. That doesn't mean it's impossible, just that anything added to a NES-era song is going to sound incredible by comparison. I remember how, in 1997, it was amazing to even hear MIDI arrangements of these songs. These sort of songs are available at http://www.vgmusic.com/ even now, and even though that site has not innovated substantially in years, it receives thousands of times more visitors than this one does.

I am still not convinced that there are not enough remixes out there to support a very vibrant community. When I first conceived of this site in 2009, I estimated that there were 100,000 remixes, transcriptions, covers, and verbatim MIDI files across the various sites. That doesn't include originals. VGMusic alone has 40,000, and when one counts the rejected submissions to Overclocked, there are easily 10,000 there. The VGMix archive had thousands that were lost; I have 4,999 on my hard drive alone.

Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of the past year of development is the arrogance displayed by many "leaders" of the community. Many site coordinators, such as Chris from Square Enix Music or Tim at Squaresound, are very cordial and should be complimented for their respect. On the other hand, I will publicly state here that I have little respect for Liontamer, virt, and djpretzel. I have contacted these people multiple times in an attempt to offer something to the game music community and my messages have been ignored. Liontamer did apologize for closing a thread at Overclocked ReMix, but still did not reply to anything I said to him after that point. If any of these people is reading this message, then please prove me wrong. Even if the answer to whatever was asked was "no," whatever happened to treating others with respect and spending 30 seconds to write a reply to say so? I can see why these people were always involved in one feud or another between VGMix, Overclocked, and other sites, and they should be called out as such.
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  #4  
Old Jan 21, 2010, 02:28 PM
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I don't frequent other remixing sites, so I don't know exactly how many people are paying attention, but I would think that the best thing to do would be to organize another competition, even if it doesn't have any sort of prize. DoD gets tons of hits and they don't offer incentive aside from bragging rights, correct?

Compos are a great idea (I haven't expressed it to you, but I was really excited to see that update despite not having created one myself); however, that as a feature is new, and at a time when people aren't coming to the site, no one's going to know about the great opportunity it provides unless they stumble upon it in other forums. And even then, you make it sound like others aren't taking well to the site, so who's going to even bother looking?

Anyway, I suggest you organize an official compo, for getting both activity and to show people the system. Maybe you could even make the first place prize the ability to choose the theme of the next official compo (that may sound useless since people can create their own, but depending whether or not you get a spike in hits from an event such as this, it could be useful). I'm not sure about everyone else, but it would mean more to me if I won an official one, too...
  #5  
Old Jan 22, 2010, 02:17 AM
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Man, I've been reading all these threads you have been making all over the internets, and you are trying way way too hard. And you also had pretty unrealistic expectations regarding the site and the first compo.

And those are my observations. I have no idea how you could make it better or busier.
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Old Jan 22, 2010, 04:05 AM
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The site has functionality, but no identity.

There are no real problems with the site itself, although I do have some peeves about the layout/UI, the real issue is that you have no real community. The users that do upload to your site do not generally talk here so what your left with is more of a random loosely-affiliated group of artists.

Also, most remixers have already 'cliqued up'. You showed up late to the party.
But I can't blame you for being frustrated, I've been having a tough time trying to find a VGM niche myself.
  #7  
Old Jan 22, 2010, 06:37 AM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Mika View Post
Man, I've been reading all these threads you have been making all over the internets, and you are trying way way too hard. And you also had pretty unrealistic expectations regarding the site and the first compo.

And those are my observations. I have no idea how you could make it better or busier.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Zorbfish View Post
The site has functionality, but no identity.

There are no real problems with the site itself, although I do have some peeves about the layout/UI, the real issue is that you have no real community. The users that do upload to your site do not generally talk here so what your left with is more of a random loosely-affiliated group of artists.

Also, most remixers have already 'cliqued up'. You showed up late to the party.
But I can't blame you for being frustrated, I've been having a tough time trying to find a VGM niche myself.
I'm not qualified to state whether I've tried hard or not - that's for other people to decide. What I do know is that one should either give it one's all or not show up to the game. Stopping halfway provides neither the benefits of saving the money nor succeeding as much as one could.

Most importantly, though, I don't believe that there were any unrealistic expectations here. Nobody disputes how many remixes there are, and if you look at how many people are posting at other sites' forums every day, getting 10 or 100 times more visitors here is not unrealistic even if the community didn't expand by a single person. The other sites have proven that such success is realistic.
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  #8  
Old Jan 24, 2010, 11:09 AM
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Originally Posted by quintin3265 View Post
Most importantly, though, I don't believe that there were any unrealistic expectations here. Nobody disputes how many remixes there are, and if you look at how many people are posting at other sites' forums every day, getting 10 or 100 times more visitors here is not unrealistic even if the community didn't expand by a single person. The other sites have proven that such success is realistic.
And this is just it. There is only so much time a person can use for browsing sites of this nature, and if someone has picked OCR or whatever, they are likely to stick to that choice. Being active on a yet another site is something people just don't have the time for.

You can't just expect people to make time to be active on your site, that's unrealistic.

Also, about the money you have been funneling to the site, that's nothing new really. One of the leaders you called out, virt, ran VGMix out of his own pockets for ages.

Speaking of VGMix, I believe there are still quite a few people who are just waiting for it to come back in full gear, and don't want to get too involved in a site very similar to it.
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  #9  
Old Jan 24, 2010, 04:52 PM
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Quote:
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You can't just expect people to make time to be active on your site, that's unrealistic.
I disagree with this quote. If you agree with my assertion that this site is in better condition than VGMix is, then I don't think it's unreasonable to expect people to spend time using a better site. (If you disagree, then my argument is void). In most areas of life, for better or worse, people tend to use whatever is the best product.

I don't think there's some magical force here that makes people prefer Overclocked Remix over this site. Overclocked Remix is not a competitor to this site anyway, because its judging of remixes is very different than what happens here.

The bottom line is that if this site was useful to people, then they would use it. They would use it regardless of whether they visit any other sites, perhaps in addition to the other sites. It wouldn't be necessary to hold promotions, because people would be be downloading lots of songs and wanting to host their compos. It doesn't take more than 30 seconds to download songs.

If there were bugs, people would care enough about the site to work around them and report them, or if the color scheme were poor, they would suggest a new scheme or ignore it. It's wrong to say that some external factor is responsible for the low viewership. To prove this, in May, when the site was announced, 1200 people visited on the first day. Rather, I suggest that I or those who have helped me designed the site wrong in some way so that it's not useful enough for people to visit it, even if it's free to use.

The responsibility lies here, which is why I disagree with the quote above.
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Last edited by quintin3265; Jan 25, 2010 at 06:49 AM. Reason: corrected typos.
  #10  
Old Jan 22, 2010, 07:39 AM
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Secret Squirrel Secret Squirrel is offline
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Starting a site and building a community from scratch is always a challenging task. It is even more difficult when there are other similar more established sites to which you are compared.

I do have a couple of specific pieces of advice, which technically I should give in private, but they've already been mentioned in the thread.

You really have to be careful about how you handle the charity stuff. While it's admirable that you are willing to donate this money to charity, and while you weren't going to profit monetarily from the campaign, remixSite stood to gain by the increase in traffic and the number of submissions, and any ensuing publicity. (This outcome was also the same goal of the remix competition.) Most of us here are pretty cynical, and will see this as an attempt to gain something from the recent tragedy. I know that big companies do this all the time, and yes they are gaining something of value in the process, and yes that is the primary reason they do it. If it weren't the case, they would just take the proper action and donate in private.

I don't really know that it's fair to publicly call out OCR staff as being unprofessional. They've been fairly busy working on their site, and issues that are peripheral to the main goal often slip. I know that I'm guilty of just that, and I'm quite behind on responding to inquires from a number of people including the OCR folks. Moreover, doesn't remixSite essentially compete with OCR for a portion of the same community? I think it's important to keep your expectations realistic concerning just how much you'd be able to work together.

Anyway, I think there's a lot of good advice in this thread. It would be a shame to see remixSite shut down, and there is probably a niche that you can fill successfully, or something that you can do to differentiate from other similar efforts.
  #11  
Old Jan 22, 2010, 08:40 AM
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Moreover, doesn't remixSite essentially compete with OCR for a portion of the same community?
I think this is the core issue here. I believe the answer is no, but others must believe the answer is yes. I don't see why a site that judges entries can't exist in tandem with a site that does not judge entries. Remember, Overclocked rejects 95% of its submissions the last time I calculated that.

At VGMusic, for example, I even offered to write code for them or pay them hundreds of dollars, and they didn't reply. So I agree with you that a large part of the problem is that there is a lot of arrogance and mistrust on the part of a small portion of the community that others then follow through peer pressure. It's exactly the same thing that happened to Wikipedia - because of a few vandals, they now "assume bad faith" and reject almost every edit, which is why I no longer edit there.

Perhaps the main reason people are mistrustful is because of Overclocked's history of opposing removal of songs. I'm not sure exactly who's responsible for that (nor does it really matter), but I strongly disapprove of their attitude towards song ownership. They have caused significant damage to the community by restricting artists' freedoms. Now, people assume that everyone is out to "steal" their music as a result.
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Old Jan 22, 2010, 09:20 PM
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I guess I can only speak for myself, but a lot of the other sites (formentioned) can be quite elitist at times. They get into cliques and that's that. As is, I've seen a few familiar faces from The Shizz, who seemed to be apparent around comp time, (although most of them are actually pretty cool, at least on the IRC client) and they acted just as I figured they would. Drop onto this site for a bit, then disappear. That's cool for them, but kind've dull for this site, and I dislike those other sites because of the elitism that's inherently with them. I left, but I came here, thinking it would be something different. If this site closed, I don't really think there's anywhere to go if you're really serious about vg music and really want to evolve as an artist. I admit, I don't spend much time on the rest of the site, but it's all about small steps, both for you and us as visitors. I like where this site is headed, and I think you've done more than most, so keep it up. It's worth it - who cares what they said on other sites - it just means you're getting attention!

Aside from that... No, 9 months isn't long. 1 comp isn't enough. DON'T WASTE YOUR MONEY ON THIS YET!! I understand you want to make a true haven here, but it's not going to happen overnight. Sites like these become respected and loved over time, but it's a long road. You're clearly passionate about this, and I love that. I know myself and a few others want good things for this site because of that. If you need attention that badly, make it a torrent site. Otherwise, stick to what your vision is, DON'T SPEND SO MUCH MONEY, and see how it goes. This doesn't have to end because of a struggle. I've already offered my hand with stuff if there was a place for it, so some of us ARE interested in the survival of this site.

*sidenote* I disagree. VGMUSIC isn't dying. Remixing, maybe I dunno, but as original artists, there's way more interest in games as a forefront of music. It'll be a huge boom over the next few years, I'm sure. The interest has increased steadily over the past few years, and due to they way the industry should progress, people will be limited to the same quality tools as eachother (or near enough) and thus we'll see a larger amount of originality in music in order to make their tracks stand out. I think the next decade or so will prove interesting. This site could be one of the first to house those artists.
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Old Jan 23, 2010, 09:54 AM
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Seriously, though, someone else needs to run the compo. I can't do everything. I already said that I'll fully support anyone who wants to host the first compo. That means the compo coordinator can make the rules (even enter the compo if (s)he wants), determine the guidelines, and so on. I'll fix whatever bugs come up in the compo interface and even offer a prize, as stated before. But someone else needs to take the initiative. If you'd like to volunteer, contact me and I'll help with whatever you need.
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Old Jan 25, 2010, 07:33 PM
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I didn't think I'd have enough time, but... alright, I guess I wouldn't mind doing one.

A video compo would be awesome, by the way. If someone sets that up I'll have to purchase and relearn Jitter
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Old Jan 26, 2010, 02:32 AM
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some good points made here. i wish i had more to add other than this but its 5:30 and im exhausted. i just wanted to add that im following the discussion here and trying to give some thought towards what can be done on the end of a little less forceful promotion but still getting more users on the site. i really think perserverence with the site is important. i dont think the site has had enough time overall to develop enough of a catalog to kind of fill out a fully distinctive subniche within the community, though it shouldnt be necessary, its proving that it is and that people simply arent giving the site the benefit of the doubt in terms of the function and the form. i'll get into this a little more later.
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Old Jan 27, 2010, 05:42 AM
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Quote:
Also, most remixers have already 'cliqued up'. You showed up late to the party.
this is basically the problem as i see it. my impression of the site has been that it's "another game music and remix site." not necessarily bad at all, but nonetheless superfluous, as the vgm arranging community is already satiated by other sites... vgmix, R:TS, ocremix and olremix are all hosting game remixes. that's four entire sites dedicated to the same thing, which to my way of thinking is already excessive. sites work better when they focus on something specific that no other site offers -- then do it well.

Quote:
and the VGMusic staff are closed-minded and not willing to even acknowledge that there is room for synergy.
i don't remember seeing an e-mail, but generally speaking we appear disconnected from the rest of the community because Mike has long work hours and doesn't have a lot of time for the site, and doesn't really engage in the wider vgm community. in fact, most of the staff don't; i think i'm the exception? we'd love to see synergy between vgmusic and other sites in future but right now it is old and broken and in serious need of redesigning, we've been making steps in that area for a long time now, but it's moving at snails pace. so about all we can do for the time-being is put a link on the front page, which i could look into for you if you like.

Quote:
At VGMusic, for example, I even offered to write code for them or pay them hundreds of dollars, and they didn't reply.
yeah that's kinda annoying. again i don't remember seeing that e-mail (i guess it was sent directly to Mike?), but you should have at least got a reply. sometimes i get frustrated with how jaded and indifferent the folks there are. we turned away JDHarding when he offered to help as well, then he even set up a rival site for a couple of weeks.
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Last edited by Blitz Lunar; Jan 27, 2010 at 05:48 AM.
  #17  
Old Jan 27, 2010, 07:45 AM
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Hey Blitz,

It's great to hear from someone at VGMusic, and you don't have to apologize for what others have done

A quick comment about the first paragraph: I'm not sure that VGMix is an alternative to this site in the state that it's in; in fact, that was one of the main motivations for creating this site.

On to the more important part, though: putting a link to the site would be great, and any help you could provide would be appreciated. Yesterday, this site was able to move up to #12 in Google's rankings for "video game music remix," above ThaSauce, and another link will help tremendously, especially from a PageRank 5 site.

But I was also wondering why there's an effort to rewrite the site if you acknowledge that it needs to be rewritten. To me, it seems like that would be a duplication of effort. The same is true with VGMix, a site that people acknowledge needs to be rebuilt from the ground up. A crazy idea would be to take remixSite's code and remixes, add VGMusic's songs, and relaunch the combined site with a shared-ownership, dual administrators model or revenue-sharing agreement. The new site could be rebranded VGMusic, remixSite, or gameremixes.com (which may be preferable because of the keywords in the domain). Then, there would be an all-inclusive community where anyone can upload MIDIs, MP3s, uncompressed music, videos, and whatever else in one place. There would be enough traffic to implement the paid promotion of remixes idea on the front page, which would cover server costs, pay for prizes for compos, and even earn the parties some money while still providing a free service to composers without Google ads. Everyone wins big, and you make money while not having to manually update the site anymore. Heck, Chris from the VGMdb might even see his traffic double.

Something big is needed to revive the video game music community, and I do believe it needs reviving. While this proposal is probably unlikely to be considered, a coming together would be of great benefit to the community, I think. The way things are now, everyone is splintered across many sites and that contributes to the "cliques" feel.


Quote:
Originally Posted by Blitz Lunar View Post
this is basically the problem as i see it. my impression of the site has been that it's "another game music and remix site." not necessarily bad at all, but nonetheless superfluous, as the vgm arranging community is already satiated by other sites... vgmix, R:TS, ocremix and olremix are all hosting game remixes. that's four entire sites dedicated to the same thing, which to my way of thinking is already excessive. sites work better when they focus on something specific that no other site offers -- then do it well.



i don't remember seeing an e-mail, but generally speaking we appear disconnected from the rest of the community because Mike has long work hours and doesn't have a lot of time for the site, and doesn't really engage in the wider vgm community. in fact, most of the staff don't; i think i'm the exception? we'd love to see synergy between vgmusic and other sites in future but right now it is old and broken and in serious need of redesigning, we've been making steps in that area for a long time now, but it's moving at snails pace. so about all we can do for the time-being is put a link on the front page, which i could look into for you if you like.



yeah that's kinda annoying. again i don't remember seeing that e-mail (i guess it was sent directly to Mike?), but you should have at least got a reply. sometimes i get frustrated with how jaded and indifferent the folks there are. we turned away JDHarding when he offered to help as well, then he even set up a rival site for a couple of weeks.
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  #18  
Old Jan 27, 2010, 02:17 PM
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Quote:
A crazy idea would be to take remixSite's code and remixes, add VGMusic's songs, and relaunch the combined site with a shared-ownership, dual administrators model or revenue-sharing agreement.
djpretzel made a similar offer, except he wanted to buy out vgmusic entirely and merge it into ocremix. Mike wasn't at all interested in a merger of any kind though, I doubt that has changed. Gotta admit I tend to agree with him, it's better having smaller specialised sites rather than big catch-all style sites IMO, which I guess is what ocremix is aiming for these days. I believe a similar effect can be achieved with enough site cross-talk... maybe a video game music portal site to connect them all... dunno. there needs to be a roundtable of video game music site admins or something. I'm really the wrong person to speak to anyway

anyway, i'll ask about putting a link on the front page.
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Old Jan 31, 2010, 06:39 AM
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So let's get real and honest as you say. You say in your email that the majority of the referrals to your site quickly leave the site. The problem is therefore sadly not lack of unique visitors, but the ability to transform them into regular visitors due to deficiencies in remixSite itself. At the moment, remixSite clearly does not satisfy the masses or make a unique mark on the arrangement community. While potentially a good concept, a lot of work is needed to ensure the site is attractive enough to visitors. That requires a revamped main page, more and better content, more regular updates, constructive feedback, and the establishment of a community foundation. All of this requires much more work that may or may not pay off. Just because you've clearly worked hard on something does not automatically entitle success, unfortunately. I personally feel it is an oversaturated market and remixSite could only become successful among a niche. Furthermore, I think antagonising webmasters of other more successful communities is detrimental and will polarise fan opinion against you. Plenty of people are happy to help and advise you, but do not anticipate success if you continue the same direction. Good luck either way.

Last edited by Chris; Jan 31, 2010 at 06:42 AM.
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Old Jan 31, 2010, 11:23 AM
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Hey Chris,

I actually took a look at the statistics again, and found that I was perhaps wrong in the issue of people not sticking around the site. Many people do not stick around; however, people who search for "video game music remix" or some similar term stay around for an average of 6 minutes. That's an eternity on the Internet. I'm not sure what that indicates, but it seems to show that people who do discover the site are impressed with it.

The problem with content of this site is that the content is provided by the users. In 2005, I wrote a blog (http://www.gamesareforchildren.com) and it was very successful within one month of starting out. I think that's because I was able to write a long, detailed article every day. With this site, though, it's obviously impossible to write one song per day and have it be of any quality.

But even if I did write one song per day, I wouldn't be able to concentrate on the programming. For a year, I worked as hard as I possibly could, spending one or two hours every weekday and up to twelve hours a day on many Saturdays and Sundays to improve the site. There just isn't any harder I could work without missing work or skipping meals or avoiding the gym. While it is true that people volunteered to help out, and some have been very helpful, many people who volunteered have not devoted enough time to make a difference. If the site does fail, I can't say that I didn't work hard enough.

What was a major mistake was not seeing this "market" (if that's what it is) as "competitive." Many of the sites devoted to video game remixes are very hypocritical: they state that music should be free, but they don't allow people to remove songs; and they state their communities are open, as long as people follow complex rules and avoid being banned. After looking around at things, I suspect that some sites are making a profit and don't want to draw attention to their finances because of the public uproar that would ensue. I may have been stupidly lured by an assumption that those at the top levels of the community are interested foremost in sharing music, when in reality some (but not all) communities are actually for-profit.

-quintin
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  #21  
Old Feb 9, 2010, 08:06 AM
DarkeSword DarkeSword is offline
 
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Quote:
Originally Posted by quintin3265 View Post
What was a major mistake was not seeing this "market" (if that's what it is) as "competitive." Many of the sites devoted to video game remixes are very hypocritical: they state that music should be free, but they don't allow people to remove songs; and they state their communities are open, as long as people follow complex rules and avoid being banned. After looking around at things, I suspect that some sites are making a profit and don't want to draw attention to their finances because of the public uproar that would ensue. I may have been stupidly lured by an assumption that those at the top levels of the community are interested foremost in sharing music, when in reality some (but not all) communities are actually for-profit.
What sites do you think are for-profit?
  #22  
Old Feb 9, 2010, 08:11 AM
djpretzel djpretzel is offline
 
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I've worked on OC ReMix for over ten years of my life. You - and anyone else - on this thread wanna call me out for anything, do try to keep that in mind. The overall attitude in this thread is NOT one of bridge-building, but the exact opposite. If you've "lost all respect" for myself and others and we're all "hypocritical" then brother, you're gonna have a real uphill battle ever getting anyone to play nice with you, because them's fighting words.

But I didn't come here to fight. I came here to provide one sole nugget of advice, take it or leave it:

At no point during that ten year period did I throw a temper tantrum, publicly or privately, over essentially not getting enough pageviews. You really seem far more concerned with stats, numbers, pagerank, etc. than on MUSIC and COMMUNITY. Those two things should be at the forefront of your goals, not how many hits you get, or what myself, virt, or anyone else thinks. If you genuinely think you're doing something new, original, and worthwhile, and that your skills are better represented by a standalone site rather than contributing to an existing site, then continue to plow away. Get back to work, seriously. You're wasting time here, stirring up dirt, when you've got a LOT of work to do. If you truly believe in your own dogma about the existing vgm remix sites being inadequate, prove it. Don't whine about failing to prove it.

It seems to me, really, that you're far more concerned about attention, pageviews, and instantly manifesting credibility and community out of thin air by the cunning use of 1.) money and 2.) complaining. With the first strategy, you ARE gonna get some results, because guess what, a lot of mixers are college kids and/or just plain old need da money. That's not community, though, that's human nature, and it's fickle and not particularly authentic.

The second strategy, though, with the whining and the finger-pointing and the "getting real"... I'd drop it. Like it's hot.
  #23  
Old Feb 9, 2010, 12:18 PM
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Liontamer Liontamer is offline
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Haha, I can assure you I've been extremely busy with life. SS has it right when he said if anything's more of a peripheral project or inquiry, we have a LOT of stuff unwillingly fall by the wayside. (Thanks for vouching for us there, SS. I'll try to touch base on our stuff too. :-)

I've been pretty inactive here and have scaled back my work at OC ReMix due to being so busy. Last September was the first time, after 5 1/2 years and 3,000 straight submissions, that I haven't been able to vote on every submission we receive. Hence being called out on January 21st and not even seeing it or responding until now.

I'll reply more later, but I've seen a lot of bad faith from quentin (no worries, I'm not personally offended, just amused), as well as several wrong assumptions, including that we're making some serious coin at OC ReMix. :-) The notion that we're hiding that we're making serious bank is awesome, but it ain't happening. :-D I'd definitely say do not sink money into anything. That's not how we or anyone else has done it.
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  #24  
Old Feb 9, 2010, 01:49 PM
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quintin3265 quintin3265 is offline
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I wanted to point out that I never stated that Overclocked ReMix makes money. I stated that some sites do seem interested more in profit than in sharing music, but I did not say that Overclocked ReMix is one of them. This assumption could be seen as an example of bad faith.

But as to bad faith, there seems to be enough of that around the community. Posting almost anything to the Shizz results in a nearly instantaneous display of bad faith. When seifer created remixed.vg, he was basically ridiculed into being banned, and in turn he saw the release of remixSite as some sort of joke aimed at him. Private messages at community websites to musicians are often ignored, and I heard that people assumed that KiddCabbage would not be paid the grand prize for Composition Combat. Some people post at VGMdb or at the Shizz solely because they hate people at Overclocked ReMix and want the site to suffer.

I suggest that bad faith had its origins half a decade ago because of arguments over song removal from sites. Whoever was at fault, artist rights are what led to the splintering of various "factions," and everyone now is hesitant to contribute work because it might be "taken advantage of" by someone else. Memories are long-lasting and rumors spread. There are people who would not submit songs to the last compo because they thought the songs were going to be used in a game without payment. When new sites sprout up, they're seen as attempting to gather music to exploit. Now, people have forgotten what the initial arguments were about and simply continue bickering with each other in various forums about minor things unrelated to music. This disagreement between you and I, in which I assert we are both at fault, is just another example of being caught up in the precedent.

I don't know how to change the issue of bad faith now that it has become entrenched, but this is the core issue with the community. If there were some step that could be taken to stop the cycle of distrust between everyone, then the video game music community would become a force to be reckoned with.



[QUOTE=Liontamer;15664]Haha, I can assure you I've been extremely busy with life. SS has it right when he said if anything'
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Last edited by quintin3265; Feb 9, 2010 at 02:03 PM.
  #25  
Old Feb 9, 2010, 02:38 PM
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i dont want step on toes here, but you guys have ignored him. thats the big thing. he sent feelers out all over the community to tons of people. everybody ignored them. hes got a right to be a lil upset about that. you say you put ten years of work into ocr. your ten years worth of work in your mind and what you have given to the community is overshadowed in my eyes when you ignore people in the community that try and combine their efforts like steve tried to do what he wanted to do and what he thought was right.

i dont even know what he was asking fully in specifics, but when someone whos starting a site writes promotional email and takes time to do it and it gets ignored, i donno. personally it would make me mad. this is steve's forum to voice his concerns. you dont have a right to say he's stirring up dirt when he's just telling the truth and you dont like that its on the internet to see. thats the mistakes you've always made with your dealing with people in every skirmish ive seen you be in over the years, the fights with brendan, the fights with virt, everybody. you're too quick to write anybody or anything off.

you must have cared to read this when i brought it to your attention. you cared even more to reply instead of keeping it in and accepting it. you wrote a pretty cocky assy reply, and im not upset at that, im upset at you having simply ignored his reaching out to begin with after all this time and then you have the gall to come here and say this as the founder of ocr after i asked you to simply read. community. you dont speak of pride for community, you speak from a derision of your own integrity that you dont even see in yourself that you show others, and it makes them take you less seriously and makes your own work cornier and cornier to me.

i am honestly a little bit let down in you that you'd come here and accuse him of stirring up shit when it took how long now? over a year to even get you to acknowledge that he exists? i had to get with you and say 'hey you might want to read this'. i didnt even say you should reply. that isnt perpetuating the dirt i dont think. and hey, what do i know. maybe you really didnt see his messages.

he has had absolutely no help from within this community from anybody other than myself and another toad, and everybody else within the community, just like how you did, told him he was doing something wrong. that isnt community, thats some people ignoring another person who has the same goal they do, and why? because they dont want to consolidate effort? i donno, i really dont know.

you finally acknowledge steve's hard work and you preface it with 'ive worked on ocremix for over yen years of my life'. but how much of that work did you have help with? and how many people were actually willing to help you? that was your blessing in your being able to say now 'i did this', and i know you have a lot of pride in ocr and its honestly brought me around to the community, the longevity of it. now yure coming here and talking up your credibility like its something you built alone. but conversely, steve has had no real outside help except from me, who writes and releases music and does publication work and production work on top of helping my elderly parents and i still make that time to help him when its legitimately become a full time thing for me. but that hard work and responsibility, that falls squarely on my shoulders and i dont go around making posts about how awesome i am and then insulting other people like you did this morning. i simply give people the love and respect that i'd want given to me. you gave a bunch of negi vibes that i guess you had pent up towards steve. great.

i have so much music on his site because i believe in it. id have music on ocr im sure if i didnt feel like it was too much of a challenge to find acceptance in two people and have them be able to say whether it's hosted there. i simply havent submitted since 2003.

regardless of what steve might or might not be most concerned with out of remixsite, its only insult after the injury any sort of prophetic opinion you can give him. i wont ever insult what you've built in ocr, i will only say that in my work i can lay claim on tss and say it's my and housethegrate and ashanes work from 1997 until 2007 and forevermore now when i formed a full band, and it was more than uphilll to get where i went. but all the while i tried to help people out, answered every email, filled every order, everything.

i guess what im trying to say without starting a big fiasco or an argument with you is this; you guys work hard with ocr, but if you are going to operate with a modicum of pride for yourselves personally what you do and have it appear to be convincing to people like me or any other person in the community, you're gonna have to start reaching out within the community more. i see what you've done with ocr, i believe in it. but you havent ever showed me that you cared about it reaching its potential and its always been 'were trying to' or 'were doing'. whats been done is a lot of segregation due to the way you act and head overclocked remix.

i and others see community at ocr in terms of the musical output and the appreciation startin to slip a lil and its startin at the people at the top acting historically with their actions and words. your responses both were both all the same stuff you've said five years ago with little or no gravity in what i see because theres no positive suggestion in any of it, just insult on top of steves injury.

ive said my piece, i've tried with as little pushing and prodding to get you guys to just take a look at what steves been trying to do and its like he gets returned with opinions that what he's wanting to do isnt worthwhile from everybody because he doesnt know how to do things. if what he was trying to do wasnt worthwhile, would i spend any of my time helping him? you can plead ignorance or not knowing he's doing it, but i've told both you and larry what he's been doing over the months. ive talked to larry more in private about remixsite than i have you but still. i hope you guys arent personally offended, but i felt like laying it on the line here.

if you guys want to help him the way ive tried to for a long time, we'd appreciate it. otherwise, no further conversation or input is necessary here or no followups or anything. i doubt i'll personally be checking out this thread again unless someone msg's me and tells me they wrote a different kind of reply then the stuff i've seen from every single person who's replied here. sorry for lettin all this out, i really apologize. but it had to be said.
  #26  
Old Feb 9, 2010, 03:00 PM
BahamutWC BahamutWC is offline
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I'm just going to put it like this since the point Dave made doesn't seem to be getting through.

Imagine you were busy & maximizing your time promoting an album, and someone yells at you vague accusations as if it was a crime against humanity for not responding/helping them in promoting their album (i.e. missing one PM or email), then try to guilt trip you into helping him/her, even if they had absolutely nothing to do with what you have been promoting.

Is that sense of entitlement good treatment of others, and encouraging for others to help you out?
  #27  
Old Feb 9, 2010, 03:06 PM
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OK, really, Shawn? I love your music, but you're saying that because Dave didn't answer a single PM, his ten years of work on OCR don't count? Dave doesn't even answer PMs/IMs/emails from the site staff half the time. It's not something to take personally. He runs and maintains a site that gets hundreds of thousands of visitors per month and which is partnered with VGL, Capcom, Sega, etc. Even setting aside all the external communication, there is a massive amount of internal communication that goes on. The public doesn't see even 1/10 of the stuff that we talk about internally, all of which requires Dave's time.

Yet instead of thinking "hmm, he's probably just busy, that must be why I didn't get a response", you guys jump to the worst conclusion, that he's an elitist asshole intentionally ignoring people that want to help, all because.... uh, what was the reasoning behind that? Oh yeah, he's making millions of dollars off the site. Obviously.

Speaking of this "bad faith" stuff, it's bullshit. The drama that happened 9 years ago, and which spawned VGmix, is dead and gone. It has BEEN dead and gone. Jake posts on OCR and contributes to OCR projects, along with many people from the VGmix community. OCReMixers participated on VGmix 2, when it was around. The Shizz? OCR participates in DoD all the time, shizzies post on OCR and participate in our projects, etc. OneUp Studios? We're doing a collaboration album as we speak with people that 8 years ago probably would have never considered it. OCR has an official presence at MAGfest (and has had one for.. 5 years now?) Everyone in the community has grown up. Quintin has his history wrong.

I especially don't understand the accusation that Dave isn't somehow appreciate of help he's received, but you're also grossly underestimating how much time he's spent by himself. Nobody has ever helped him with the most tedious work involved with the site, the actual coding and design, and I can attest that he puts a great deal of time to it (and, I might add, rarely if ever gets thanked.) I've been contributing to the site for years, as a judge, as a panelist at events, as a mod, etc. I can guarantee that every other person on the site staff would agree that he's NEVER been unappreciative of our help. If anything he's the first person to want to volunteer his OWN time to help promote someone in the community doing something special.

In short, these vague, passive-aggressive rants are doing nothing but digging remixSite deeper and painting its staff as petty, ignorant, and prone to tantrums. If you really want to help yourselves out, you might want to listen to Dave and apologize to him (and the rest of the OCR staff), stop painting yourselves as "victims" of the remix community, and stop throwing out false accusations.
  #28  
Old Feb 9, 2010, 04:08 PM
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razakin razakin is online now
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Guys, where's the love man?

And this is coming from total outsider of the whole deal, quintin, just keep building up your site especially if you're doing it for the music and shit, don't care about pageviews. Care about the music. That's the important thing in here.

Also, as people have said, you can't except all the people to have the time to read pms/mails, especially if they're running sites like ocremix.

Guys, just get into a sauna and love each other, and make some great music for me to listen. Like now.
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Old Feb 9, 2010, 04:23 PM
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Originally Posted by Razakin View Post
Guys, just get into a sauna and love each other, and make some great music for me to listen. Like now.
*gets into the sauna with Razakin*
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  #30  
Old Feb 9, 2010, 05:23 PM
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shawnphase shawnphase is offline
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bahamut, what you said was just a bad analogy and i dont know how you draw a distinction like that in your mind. all i can say about that is that for me, that particular scenario wouldnt ever happen and leave it at that. i donno if you got what i wrote really.


to clarify a few things and as i already said in the last message, there is nobody at all helping steve other than me. there is no remixsite 'staff' other than steve. i am not a staff member, at one point i was going to be a staff member but when we couldnt come to contractual terms i bowed out of any of that. i honestly did not want to be staff for his or any site because i dont want to get mixed up with this kind of thing, the politics, the decisions that have to be made. but why do you think that remixsite are the victims in this? are there actually 'victims'? i dont see that..all i see is people pointing the finger saying 'you need to stop whining about how people arent helping you and umm' without really giving any constructive ideas to the guy, all but inferring that he should give up. thats when people should just straight up not say anything at all, because it makes whoever is doing the sayin look equally as bad as the one complaining.

not only is it mean, it makes me a little bit nervous and makes my stomach hurt to think that theres not enough community in the community to give a few posi suggestions and not just hatefulness.

yes, i guess maybe you guys see it as steves thinking and mindset are making himself and his site out to be a victim or maybe you dont think that his mindset in all of it has all but collapsed his hope in doing it, so in either case theres really nothing for anybody to 'dig' in or out of. he spoke some truth. i am a fairly impartial onlooker in all of this because ive had nothing to lose or gain in any of it and from both sides of the coin i can see this and agree and disagree with certain aspects of all of it.

i have done what i can for remixsite as passively as well as sincerely as possible, and ive told steve when i can or cant make an obligation to the site that i dont think is right for _me_. dont be so quick to forget or turn a blind eye to what youve seen and what you can see in life. i really have no anger or frustration personally towards dave or anybody at ocr. but i felt like i had to point out this thread, really i am just let down that there couldnt or maybe cant be a convergence of the effort everybodys put forth so that this can grow as much as it has the potential to.

im certainly not saying that dave didnt acknowledge anybody thats ever wrote him or tried to correspond, and im sure that hes answered tons more than he's ignored, but he and larry didnt reply to any of steves attempts at correspondence and i have told him and larry both privately that steve has been trying to get in touch with him before. everything that could be done to simply make communication happened, and thats what has made steve so frustrated with the situation. if you dont like that and how it happened and how its been made light of here now, thats cool. but keep in mind that unlike steve, i have a clear knowledge of ocr's history and the stuff thats happened over the years and anybody can say what they want, but i know whats happened and what hasnt. notice i havent and wont say a single utterance about money. im strictly talking about how people are being treated.

i certainly didnt say any of dave's work didnt matter either, it's not that. the very fact that you'd admit publically that he ignores your pm's when you are staff is some needtoknow basis information that nobody even questioned and makes ocr look less bad on top of the crappy stuff thats been said. my personal opinion is that if you dont want your plans at ocr continue to take as long to come together as they do then you need to start improving your communication over because real lucrative opportunities happen to everybody all the time and if you guys dont improve your communication skills and stop acting like your status quo is as complacent as you say it is. it isnt. not to me. and this is kind of what this is all about, is it not? you're admitting that he sometimes lets things slip by, but when i tell you that in my history of what i do that i have never let anything like that slip then i guess it does indeed comes off as standoffish and i can understand that, and i didnt mean for it to be that way. i wanted it to be an example of how what you're saying and what dave is doing are not the same things. i can admit and be apologetic without letting the frustration out, maybe steve isnt so lucky.

one last thing before i go, i absoltely didnt say he wasnt appreciative of the help he receives either, what i said is that he is taking a little too much credit for the sum of the whole of the work. did he not do that in this thread? that isnt an accusation. its right there in writing. he got real mean towards steve when he didnt need to even reply, and/or it could have been an email to steve privately if he had something to say to him now. but i guess maybe he wanted to say that publically to him? i really dont know man.

if it was how you were saying it is...well you wouldnt be saying in the same breath that he ignores the staff's attempts at communication. its hard to take whats said here at face value.
 

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