This Old Neon Forum

I was considering ways to make the structure of the 2018 BGE!!! Project more interesting and fresh and different.

For one, we already have a fantastic new polling system on the new version of the forum, so we have a lot of flexibility for how we handle user voting.

One option I was thinking off would be to have a system where we start by pitting the games in the same series against each other, then the games in the same franchise/IP, and then the winners of those against each other. This would see, for example, all the Mario Karts against each other. The winner would then be in a poll against the winners of the other Mario series. The best Mario game to emerge from this gauntlet would face off against games that emerged from similar layered polls. This would produce some skewed results, but each poll would be pretty fun and interesting.

A second option I was thinking about is the equivalent of an exhaustive ballot, where a game requires a majority of votes to advance. If there's no majority in the poll, the lowest-performing games are removed and everyone votes again. This one would make the event take longer since each pool would require multiple rounds of voting.

Please feel free to post your own ideas for formats and structures for the 2018 contest, including the voting itself, and also the nomination process!

I'm up for any change to the format that ensures the top 100 isn't full of different iterations of the same game. It always ends up looking like a contest voted on by Nintendo loyalists and it drives me nuts. I don't think we should pit games from the same universe against one another (Mario vs. Mario Kart, for example), though, aside from the usual scenarios that would see this happen.

VictorViper wrote: ↑11 Nov 2017 00:40 I'm up for any change to the format that ensures the top 100 isn't full of different iterations of the same game. It always ends up looking like a contest voted on by Nintendo loyalists and it drives me nuts. I don't think we should pit games from the same universe against one another (Mario vs. Mario Kart, for example), though, aside from the usual scenarios that would see this happen.

Only two points on that. One, because of the nature of blind Nintendo fanaticism, that's probably going to happen anyway. Two, an argument could be made that it's possible for two games from the same series to be among the best games ever made. And that's fine, but my counterargument would be that that's what previous BGE!!! Projects were for. If we keep playing the same game over and over again, we're going to keep seeing the same results. One of the ways to make this fun is to change the rules and see how things play out in new situations.

Maybe do a console/platform specific BGE first and let the winners (or top 3) compete against each other?

MerlinDrazziw wrote: ↑11 Nov 2017 11:48 Maybe do a console/platform specific BGE first and let the winners (or top 3) compete against each other?

Oooo I like getting console specific! But I also like each series too.

I’m trying to think of a way to give newer games a chance. Maybe when seeding there can be some adjustment based on age that favors newer games? I love Space Invaders and Super Mario Bros as much as the next guy but it’d be refreshing to focus on more current titles...

Sharecrow wrote: ↑11 Nov 2017 16:03 I’m trying to think of a way to give newer games a chance. Maybe when seeding there can be some adjustment based on age that favors newer games? I love Space Invaders and Super Mario Bros as much as the next guy but it’d be refreshing to focus on more current titles...

It's generally not until later in the brackets that those old games tend to blast out the new ones anyway, so I don't know if seeding would help them too much. Besides, I think there's a fair amount of "recency effect" in the contest, too, where newer games get a lot of attention because they're closer to the forefront of people's memories.

Does anyone else have any comments on the format for the next BGE? We have a lot of flexibility this time around because of our new forum software and polling system (ranked votes, multiple votes per poll choice, etc.).

I think I'd be okay with pitting franchises against each other, just to see a different result this time. Though I'd advocate for the top two titles in a franchise moving forward.

We do traditional ranking categories every year and it's really just playing hot-potato with some immortal classics with a couple brand new games thrown in that are still fresh in our minds. Why not just have every user suggest an off the wall poll idea and we nominate games for each of those. I think we could compile lists that are more fun than the top 10 games of all time that you can find almost identically on any website.

Spore wrote: ↑06 Dec 2017 20:49 We do traditional ranking categories every year and it's really just playing hot-potato with some immortal classics with a couple brand new games thrown in that are still fresh in our minds. Why not just have every user suggest an off the wall poll idea and we nominate games for each of those. I think we could compile lists that are more fun than the top 10 games of all time that you can find almost identically on any website.

Big fan of this idea.