Best Video Game Song Tournament, 2021-2022: Final Results And Announcements

I’m sorry to jump right to brass tacks. Normally I’d write something about these results, just as normally I’d have written something about the tournament’s progression throughout the knockouts, just as normally I would have listened to every round consistently, just as normally I would have playlists finished within the first week of the tournament starting, if not before the first round.

I’m burnt out. Part of this is natural and inevitable; I ran the first one of these tournaments in October of 2019. Nearly 5 years, 1 pandemic, 1 job, 1 city, and 1 gender ago. I’m not the first person to have her life change from then to now in a way that makes such a large tournament a harder fit. You can see that plain as day in the vote totals; 12 total finals votes, when a few years ago 12 votes might not be enough to win the finals in the first place. (I double-checked; Lonely Rolling Star lost by 1 vote in the finals to Castle in the Mist, 13-14.)

I don’t want to give up entirely, not so close to the finish line. But I need a break, and when I come back I need things to be different. Running this tournament takes time, and work, and it needs to add to my life to be worth it.

So! First off, there will be two new rule changes for the next tournament:

• A change to the past games rule. Previously, a game could get eligible so long as it was ported or rereleased or anything within the eligibility window. I wanted to be permissive at first to avoid low-information traps. Like, Persona 5 is a popular game, lots of people remember it as part of a very strong 2017. Except, that game released in Japan in 2016. Those were different tournaments! I didn’t want anyone to get got by that, showing up to a tournament with nominations that made sense and were disqualified on something ticky-tack.
  
  As you may remember, that hasn’t really been a concern. This tournament has evolved to the point where we don’t really have casual participants nominating songs. P5 in specific had damn near its entire OST nominated for ’13-’16, as everyone either knew outright its original release date or else observed someone else nominating and figured it out.
  
  I’ve also enjoyed that this rule lets truly obscure games have a second chance. One of the really neat things about this tournament series is getting to hear excellent songs from unknown games. I still don’t really know what Onlycans is as a game, but I know it has an excellent theme song, and that’s beautiful.
  
  However, over the past few tournaments this has started getting a bit too aggressive. We’re seeing this rule used to nominate additional tracks from games that already got a good chance in their original tournaments, games that everyone knows. This isn’t intended behavior, and I don’t think it adds to the tournament experience.
  
  So! The new rule is: If a game has been nominated in a previous tournament, then all songs that could have been nominated in that tournament are ineligible. So, if a game got an update, or if a rerelease adds new music, those are still fine regardless of how popular the original OST was. But, if these are base game songs, then they can only loophole into a future tournament if the game was fully overlooked.
  
  In addition to the direct rule, I’d like to give a guidance; if a game fits the letter of this rule, but is well-known enough that it was likely discounted rather than forgotten, please think twice. I’m not going to outright disqualify anything because its source game is too big to count as an overlooked gem, just, think about if the song really deserves a shot. Use your best judgment. We’ve had loophole songs these past few tournaments get 1 vote, or even 0 votes. I don’t want to harp on this, just, the goal should be sharing songs that at least some people will enjoy, even if it’s not successful in competition.

• Okay that was a damn essay! Next one should be quicker: I will no longer be accepting nominations through anything except the Google form. Copying your spreadsheets directly saves time, but honestly I think it saves too much time. These tournament’s long lengths are part of their identity, but frankly we’ve crossed a line I think. A tournament covering 2-years shouldn’t have more nominees than any 4-year tourney, that’s nonsense. I think adding just a small amount of time and inconvenience to every single nomination will help cut that down. Is a song still worth nominating if you have to spend 15 seconds typing it into a form? That’s for you to decide.

In addition, a good old-fashioned survey. I’m considering two paths for the next tournament. Path 1 is a 2023 tournament that I start in September, opening nominations on U.S. Labor Day1Not to be confused with the actual Labor Day, which is today. The U.S. celebrates it on a different date because even symbolic international labor solidarity scares the ruling class shitless.. If we go for this route, I would really like it if things wrapped up this year, or at the very least ended in January.

The other path is a ’23-’24 tournament, starting in January and hopefully only lasting into May or so. For both tournaments, I am willing to go back up to 32-song groups to help things move along. And if anyone has any other suggestions to keep things moving I’m all ears. I will say, I’m not interested in limiting individual nominations. This is still a community project, ultimately. I need to insist on some things to keep myself sane, but it’s not just my tournament, y’know?

Anyway sorry to take 30 minutes to write this. Congrats to Xenoblade Chronicles 3.