Fairness and Zykophants

Let’s say, for a split second of fantasy, that we live in a fair world. How would OCReMix look during that split second? Fair has never… Okay, I’m not gonna try to make that funny. My lawyer suggested lack of humor might help my case.

 

60,574 posts, 2,124 threads. I’m talking about the Reviews forum. I’m gonna make a quick scientific experiment. I observed that McVaffe had an unhealthy amount of reviews in comparison with other recent remixes. Further observations should confirm that many OCR forum members are sycos (not to be confused with zyko).

 

I’m gonna list 10 recent remixes and estimate their value based on a formula. The remixes are: Harmony of Destruction, H2O, Nuclear Flash, Kirby’s Mystical Track, Celestial Winds Blah Blah Blah, Heatman (Just a Fuse mix), Livin’ la vida Stockholm, A Day in the Life of a Judge, and Yet Even More Final Fantasy VII. And yes, I’m using nonary for this post.

 

For the sake of fairness, I’m not gonna include the two Final Fantasy tracks just outside the range I just set my mind on using in this statistical experiment. That means that both emo-FF and FFVI tie with Mega Man 2, each with 2 remixes.

 

On average, there are 2 reviews a day on new remixes. The actual number of reviews per day is much higher, due to OA, DA and others, but the older reviews don’t count here. It should be mentioned that at least OA is often seen on the first page of recent review threads.

 

The top scoring tracks here were not FFVII tracks, surprisingly. Less surprising was the sycophancy, most reviews were of McVaffe’s Okami remix and the Sixto Sounds/zircon Mega Man 2 collab. The top scoring tracks had more than twice the average.

 

More surprises await in the low range, with judge JJT and newcomer Kidd Cabbage. Both tracks were from Final Fantasy games, and received less than half of the average number of reviews. While surprising, it doesn’t really break convention.

 

I’ll sum this up by saying that some remixers have a significant status, and I’d like to attribute the unfair review balance to subliminal messaging but there’s a simpler explanation, namely that a significant portion of remix fans are sycophants, and I’m coming after you with Occam’s Razor if you disagree.

 

Terra’s Got Her Track Remixed

Would anyone be surprised if a song from Final Fantasy or Chrono Trigger was the most remixed? I wasn’t. I checked OCReMix’s track listing. Surprisingly, it’s not emo-franchise FF7, it’s FF6. Even more surprising is that there’s a whopping 13 remixes of that one song, and the game features a handful of other over-remixed tracks, and a plethora of under-appreciated and under-remixed ones.

 

Yes, I mean it. More Final Fantasy remixes, please. But not of emo-fantasy. With Voices of the Lifestream, it’s gotten more attention, proportionally as well as otherwise, than it deserves. Loads of decent tracks worth a remix or two. Although I think I’d prefer remixes of games yet to be  touched by OCRers.

 

Anyway, Terra’s theme is in the lead with 13 remixes. Chrono Trigger’s Schala’s Theme and Corridor of Time, Mega Man 2’s Dr. Wily Stage 1, and Radical Dreamers: Nusumenai Houseki’s Far Promise ~ Dream Shore (Part 1) all have 10 remixes. Just look at it! Crazy!

 

The stats don’t really cover re-used themes such as the Mario or Zelda themes, which are also over-remixed. We’ve heard their Overworlds, thank you and remix something else now.

 

Interestingly, Final Fantasy 7 is represented by three tracks, each being remixed 6 times. Is it a coinkidink that it spells 666? Does it have anything to do with Square dominating the top tracks listing?

 

Anyway, I need a better lawyer. I hope Shnabubula won’t sue over the not so subtle reference to the name he picked for his take on the over-remixed track.

 

266 ugottabekiddingme!

I’ve been busy with court, but thanks to my lawyer, I have internet access at the detention center. 

 

Despite occasional posters’ preferences of music without lyrics, it seems as if the favourite tracks are those with lyrics. A quick research in the Reviews forum revealed the three most reviewed tracks being ones with lyrics. The bottom three? None with lyrics. Despite the reviewing campaign dominated by DA and OA, there are tracks that don’t get the number of reviews they deserve – and some that get an unfair percentage of the total reviews.

 

Naturally, not all posts in the review forum counts as reviews. Still, the average for the1549 posts at the time of writing is about 25 posts per thread. It’s a little unfair that some get almost 200 posts (one way over 200) while others have a measly 5. I downloaded the top three and bottom three remixes recently in order to analyse them. I didn’t have to. The top 6 tracks all have lyrics, all having over 150 replies to their review thread.

 

The top three are: Sonic & Knuckles “Lover Reef” by a horde of remixers at 266 replies; Asterix “Niggaz 4 Life” with 199 replies; Chrono Trigger “TheIncredibleSingingRobot” with 189 replies.

 

The reason for their popularity has to be that there’s so much more to say about the lyrics than the music. The reviews are mixed, there’s irrelevant little replies about offtopic remarks, there’s posts about zyko’s ethnicity… All in all, it’s not an indicator of the most downloaded or people’s favourite tracks, it’s just a list of tracks that due to the lyrics cause a lot of people to want to express themselves (and their ignorance).

 

The bottom three at the time of downloading were Shinobi “Ninja Strut”, Shenmue “Ryo’s Renshuu”, and the creatively named Tinhead “Level 1 Theme (Brain Bucket Mix)”. Okay, Ninja Strut and Ryo’s Renshuu are drum-based pieces and the Tinhead remix was synthy and a bit caught between enjoyable stuff I associate with trackers, and trance. Still, when the average number of replies, these tracks do deserve something at least half way to average.

 

Ultimately, this is the recipe for getting loads of reviews: remix any game but add lyrics, collab with as many singers as possible, make sure you’re using racial language, and make sure the remix contains stuff some people hate.

 

How to make a good remix is a different question, but it probably involves John Williams… and the Cleveland Orchestra.

 

Just for posterity, let’s list the remixers whose tracks are in the top or bottom three, in no particular order:

 

Rayza, pixietricks, zircon, mutagene, Joe Redifer, D-Lux, GeoffreyTaucer, shonensamurai, The Sheriff, Ubik, Star Salzman, zyko.

 

The Most Productive Remixers

The OCReMix community is a interesting place. At the time of writing, the average number of songs is 3,07171314741 per remixer. 50 remixers are responsible for more than 50% of the remixes, leaving the remaining 1452 remixers sharing an average of half a remix. While collaborations make these stats somewhat unreliable, it still points towards nepotistic tendancies.

 

While we might forgive the founder and administrator for the site and “non-profit organization” that is OCR for this 68-remix bias, McVaffe and Mazedude seem to be unjustly favored. Such major contributors to the growing database of rearranged video game tracks must either be extremely talented and productive or enjoy unfair treatment in their favor.

 

Let’s examine these possibilities. After listening to a random McVaffe remix, I feel confident in my assumption that he (or she, or it) is a typical electronica “musician”. Four on the floor, loops and minimalism throughout. Repetition isn’t a very time-consuming process, so we can classify Mcvaffe as “productive”. It seems to me like McVaffe has been banned from OCR, as his latest remix is dated 2004.

 

Mazedude has a more interesting style, but the creepy style he (or she, or it) employs is offputting and bizarre, ultimately more confusing than anything else. Mazedude remains an OCR leech, most likely through bribing the judges to get the works of his Halloween fetish hosted and corrupting millions of innocent surfers.

 

Where does this leave DJPretzel? Presumably, as the owner of the site, he is collecting ridiculous amount of profit from donations, google ads, selling OCR-branded merchandise, and supplying video game music addicts with diverse “discount” items via Amazon. Hence, he only needs to maintain his image as a friendly musician and fellow fan, and he has all the time in the world to produce remixes while sitting in his mansion growing round.