Cacoward winners being overrated.

[LadyMistDragon]

This is a subject that I wonder didn't come to mind sooner, perhaps because of the ridiculous amount of quality that's available these days, but it's at least food for thought if nothing else. Mainly because people will play things like Cacoward winners and maybe Top 100 Wads without necessarily knowing too much about how Doom mapping has changed throughout the years.

 

I was prompted to post this after just playing the Outer Darkness, the Mormon hell and the Cacoward winner for 2007. As fantastic a swan song as it might be for Varun Krishna, the trouble is that beyond atmosphere, there's not necessarily tons there. Maybe that's a sign of where Doom mapping was at this point. It's just personally strange to see what is basically a highly competent and atmospheric but not necessarily blood-pumping map such as this get that golden Caco. The hub-like, wave-comprising hub fight was pretty cool and the lack of health is quite dread-inducing, but they don't necessarily would make Cacoward winners these days. Although that is one spooky ending, I should say.

 

So what about you? Do you think there are cases where a wad gets overrated because it had received accolades in the past? Like nothing like the marquee names of Memento Mori and Hell Revealed that everyone knows, but stuff like Outer Darkness, or maybe the maps Trevor Primmett was making around this time (though I somewhat doubt the latter, if only because I really liked his Back to Saturn X entry)? Ultimate Torment and Torture is certainly out of place with modern doom, however, it's not an especially talked about wad these days.

[TheMagicMushroomMan]

I think the general response you're going to get is that the Caco's are just personal opinions from the team members that judge them. I don't think it really makes sense to call the opinion of one person/a few people "overrated".

 

Spoiler

I apologize if I'm not understanding the question

 

[Azure_Horror]

For a 2007 map, Outer Darkness appears pretty intriguing at the first glance. So I am not surprised that it got an award that year.

 

As for the overrated cacoward recepients - l think such WADs indeed exist.

 

But!

It is very hard to see if something is overrated or not.

 

My personal example.

I don't get, why Arrival is so great. Arrival is a well made WAD, don't get me wrong. But it is not that remarkable in my book. I would expect that Uprising, Ray Mohawk 2, Atmospheric Extinction, Bourgeois Deathmatch, Cydonia or Micro Slaughter Community Project would get a golden caco before Arrival.

 

But lots and lots of people seem to really like Arrival. And if many players love the WAD so much - maybe it is a really cool WAD indeed, just not for someone like me? Basically, tastes differ. And for this reason it is very hard to pinpoint, if something is overrated.

Edited August 6, 2022 by Azure_Horror : Grammar, Phrasing

[Horus]

Quality of Doom mapping has increased exponentially over recent years. What was a cacoward winner in 2007 may not even be considered for one these days

[baja blast rd.]

I don't think any wad is overrated just because it won a Cacoward, at least outside of the heads of some people who get really mad at what won a Cacoward and what didn't. :P 

 

The most popular, well known wads that are called overrated sometimes transcend 'plaudits' and you'd be hearing lots about them and people calling them overrated in any case anyway.

 

I love BTSX but let's face it, the crowds of people calling it overrated would be thrumming exactly as loudly if the Cacowards were never a thing.

 

Also I don't really see people talking about those wads you mentioned, so I'm wondering where exactly you're spotting that.

 

2 hours ago, LadyMistDragon said:

but they don't necessarily would make Cacoward winners these days

 

A mistake people commonly make is not realizing that the distribution of a set is not necessarily linear. If the awards were ordered (they aren't), 1 to 11 would not be equally far as 11 to 21 are. It would often be more like 1 to 6 and 6 to, idk, 25 being equidistant. 

 

That's just a simple fact of how the bell curve works. There are fewer great/transcendent things than very good ones; and fewer very good ones than pretty good ones; and fewer pretty good ones than decent ones; etc., by any perspective. I don't think that's a hot take or anything.

 

What that means is that among the main Cacos, there can be substantial variations -- but also that the gap between Caco and HM (and I mean HM not runner-up) is actually surprisingly small these days. 

 

So it's kind of funny actually. I sometimes see people thinking that something is overrated because it was a Caco and something was underrated because it was an HM or whatever, when in reality they might be internally have been thought of as reasonably close. Or people asserting there was a clear reason something got a Caco and another got a runner-up for wads where the internal difference was probably like a 0.2/10 if they were rated. 

 

Like in 2019 the #1 was probably either Eviternity or Lost Civilization (intuiting just based on our discussions -- I might be wrong on that), and then if the gap between that and whatever was #10 was around 0.7/10 or something, all runners-up would be no further away than like 0.4/10 or so of #10. And that was 2019 which was way less crowded than 2021.

[Stupid Bunny]

I haven’t been in the community as long, as deep or as consistently as some folks here so I don’t know if there’s any well-known instances of a WAD not receiving a Cacoward that everyone expected would receive one. I doubt there’s been an instance where something did win and everybody went “Really, that??” An obvious problem with an award system like this, apart from the whole subjectivity arbitrariness opinion thing of course, is that there are only so many Cacowards that can be given in a year and there’s a great many works—more every year, I’d imagine, but even so 15-20 years ago—that were almost-winners that didn’t make the cut by such slim margins that it feels like they were a dice-roll away from being the fêted ones in place of whoever the actual winners were.

 

Tangent to what you’re asking, I wonder what are the most well-known and/or celebrated WADs in the community not to receive Cacowards? Ones that for whatever reason have stood the test of time better than the recipients for that year—that even if the winners are also works of brilliance, they just haven’t stuck in the collective memory in the same way. 

[Not Jabba]

It does seem a bit odd to me to compare anything awarded in 2007 to modern standards. Outer Darkness was one of the best wads release in 2007. There are maybe half a dozen wads released in the entire decade of the 2000s that would be compared favorably to a typical 2021 Silver award winner, and few if any from the 1990s (though it does depend a lot on individual taste).

 

I like Outer Darkness personally, and I appreciate that in those days, the awards occasionally had space for fairly ordinary maps that just happened to be well crafted. I'm not always looking for something blood-pumping, and I sure hope that's not considered the only standard for quality, because games have a lot of other things to offer besides that.

[Obsidian]

I remember having a similar conversation with Scuba some time ago about HeDRoX, which I wrote off as a textbook case of style over substance when I first played it years ago. It's only once you place it in the context of when it was made that you see the reasoning why it was considered Cacoward-worthy and its overall place in the community's history.

[TheMagicMushroomMan]

Okay, I re-read the question in a more peaceful environment. I think when it comes to someone getting the feeling that a certain thing is overrated, their level of experience with the subject matter matters a lot. For example, you have someone relatively new to DOOM. They play through Ultimate DOOM and DOOM 2/TNT/Plutonia, and they read about these wad thingies. They come across a thread where people are talking about how incredible Suspended In Dusk is. They play it, and they say "okay". And then they play something like Ultimate Torment and Torture and they say "holy shit" when they see all the new stuff. They didn't appreciate Suspended In Dusk because they didn't have much knowledge about things engine limitations, paying little attention to fine details, tasteful texturing, interconnectivity, etc. Later on they might "mature" and become more knowledgable, but first impressions matter a lot, so they never really enjoy Suspended In Dusk as much as other people, even if they can appreciate it and recommend it to others based on their admiration of it on a technical level.

 

That's one of my personal experiences. I still wouldn't ever call SiD overrated, but I think some people who have had a similar experience with certain wads, especially newer Doomers who play all the hi-tech stuff first, might feel that way sometimes. It's natural.

[YoshizinGordin]

There Is No Such Fallacious Thing As An "Overrated Cacoward Winner", All Of These Cases Were Fully Fabricated By Your Mind.

[DuckReconMajor]

I don't know that there are a lot of wads that get 'too much recognition' because they got a Cacoward. Usually the awarded wads' reputation precedes them

I think this happened a bit more in old days since there were fewer people involved. 

On Tribute's Cacoward entry Hobbs wrote "So why does Tribute get a Cacoward? Well, mostly because I said it does," and I loved that

 

I'd much rather talk about ones that didn't get recognized that are newfound gems, then trying to take down previously recognized works.

I think we've all been let down trying an old award winner, but my thought is usually "this just isn't my style" or "maybe it was good for its time", not "wow I wish this didn't get recognized"

 

Finally, I just want to add my usual 'some of us are just here for the show, prefer style to substance, and don't care nearly as much how a map plays'

I'd hate to miss out on a beautiful set of levels because "oh the fight choreography was a bit off and I had too many rockets 2/3 into the level"

[Ozcar]

Doomworld is overrated because they have many member. 

 

Jk

[TheMagicMushroomMan]

7 minutes ago, Ozcar said:

Doomworld is overrated because they have many member. 

Don't worry I'm leaving next Tuesday

 

@DuckReconMajor

Quote

Finally, I just want to add my usual 'some of us are just here for the show, prefer style to substance, and don't care nearly as much how a map plays'

I'd hate to miss out on a beautiful set of levels because "oh the fight choreography was a bit off and I had too many rockets 2/3 into the level"

 

This is a very good point too. My favorite wad of all time is Void and Rainbow, just for the incredible visuals and atmosphere. I think it is a shame that most people haven't played it, because it is such a unique experience even if the gameplay is somewhat more of a side-feature (until the final boss, which I think is the weakest part of the wad just because it goes from sightseeing with casual combat to a long boss fight). I wonder if the gameplay is what stifled its popularity. If so, that sucks. I fully believe DOOM (especially GZ) can be about more than combat, or puzzles. I love seeing it used just to created visual art.

[Ozcar]

2 minutes ago, TheMagicMushroomMan said:

Don't worry I'm leaving next Tuesday

 

 

NO WAIT, IT WAS JOKE, COME BACK.

[YoshizinGordin]

20 minutes ago, Ozcar said:

 

NO WAIT, IT WAS JOKE, COME BACK.

This Is Not How You Apologize To Someone, You Need To Say Something Like "My Mistake Original Gangsta :("

[Thelokk]

I'm not sure about the Caco issue itself (though I do think that, at least to an extent, Cacowards are just like any other award - a beauty pageant, an inner circle deal, and a popularity contest. Whether that's fair, unjust, or a truism is another story), but I do have to chip in on the 'style over substance' argument, and point out that it's 100% bollocks.

 

In my opinion,  the *only* metric of success that has any hope not to be entirely colored by personal taste and preference is answering the following question: "Did this mapset achieve the goal it set out to fulfill?" For a certain mapset the goal might be atmosphere, with the gameplay an afterthought - judging it 'cause its gameplay is lacking would be like criticizing Rothko 'cause he doesn't effectively paint lakeside sceneries. Conversely, I'd be a fool in criticizing Erkattäññe because it doesn't care about texture alignment - compelling, sleek aesthetics simply weren't the name of the game. Goals and context are everything.

 

Define me 'style' and 'substance' in unambiguous, objective terms that everyone can 100% agree on; until then, it's just shorthand for 'I like this, and I don't like that', and it has the same objective value. Which I guess takes me back the Caco issue - mentionations aside, it's just a bunch of people saying just that, 'I don't like this, and I like that'.

 

Perhaps Cacowards winners aren't overrated, but Cacowards as a system maybe are, to an extent. I surely feel for those who take them as a shortlist of what's worth playing and what's not. 

 

 

Edited August 6, 2022 by Thelokk

[Murdoch]

Awards are nice, but ultimately meaningless. It's just somebody's subjective opinion. Different people like different things, and those things change with time and tastes.

[Wilster_Wonkels]

@sandwedge what are your thoughts here?

 

Personally, I think Hellbound deserved a caco. Sure it didn't play the best, but it looked nice.

[Dubbag]

@sandwedge what do you know about bird law and can you represent me?

[StodgyAyatollah]

I don't think "overrated" is the way I would look at it. My perspective is more that they can overshadow. For me the cacowards were a good introduction to some surface level things that had been happening in my absence from the game but I had to do a fair amount of digging to find elements I generally found more interesting. In the end they serve as more a reminder of where the attention of certain elements of the "community" were focused during a given year. More of a time capsule if you will. Ultimately I have paid very little attention to them for the last few years outside of possibly seeing something I may have missed. I generally have this attitude towards all awards as they are often just as much about culture, trends, and interpersonal issues as the actual piece of work, if not more.

[Fletcher`]

I still don't know why people gush so much about Mapgame.

[Omniarch]

I would question the efficacy of the term “overrated” in the context of waddom, or indeed any artspace that is not subject to market forces.

 

I am aware that the term is generally used to describe the negative emotions that can arise when “people” (usually nameless inhabitants of the same sphere of interest) appear, from the viewpoint of the subject, to hold a given piece of media (or broader set of preferences) in higher regard than said subject does. This effect is compounded when the subject feels that their own preferences are held in lower esteem than the target of outrage, which can often induce a vague sense of persecution in the subject.

 

This overblown reaction is, of course, ridiculous, though I imagine most have experienced it to some degree (I certainly have). When used in this context, the term “overrated” has little analytical value, instead serving as a means to encapsulate an entirely emotive position.

 

To convey anything other than a vague, unjustifiable sense of outrage, the term “overrated” needs to be used with care. Here’s my method:

 

Fundamentally, three components are required:

 

1. A subjective assessment of the target media on the part of the subject.

2. Empirical proof of the target’s relative popularity and prestige.

3. Tangible effects resulting from the relative popularity and prestige of the target, which are then evaluated subjectively.

 

To illustrate the point, I shall make use of an example that is a) well known and b) has no bearing on any of my personal interests: the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU).

 

Someone who describes the MCU as “overrated” can very easily meet the requirements of my proposed use of the term. For the sake of specificity, let’s say that this subject’s main critique of the franchise is its focus on broader interconnectivity at the expense of individual movies / series / whatever. This is a subjective but reasonable position to take. That fulfils (1). For (2), the subject need not look far for evidence: the franchise is enormously popular on a global scale, and has made billions of USD across many domains, and is held in high regard by a large portion of its audience. Finally, for (3), the subject need not look further than the many attempts by other franchises to replicate the MCU’s success, demonstrating the target’s tangible effect on its host mediums.

 

Based on this, the subject can feel justified in calling the MCU “overrated”, because it can be proven to be both popular and influential, which, under market conditions, can have a detrimental effect on the subject’s consumption of media, both by crowding out potentially more desirable media – investor money and, ultimately, movie-goers’ disposable incomes are both finite resources, after all –  and also by encouraging imitation. This does not mean that the subject’s reaction is purely rational, of course: the same trivial concerns I described earlier are more likely than not to apply in this case as well. The difference is that this subject can back up their “outrage” with provable negative effects on their quality of life, however ultimately trivial and insubstantial these may be.

 

The above methodology isn’t the only reasonable way to use the term, of course. I myself have found another major use-case with regards to bought (or otherwise money-gated) media: namely, to describe a disconnect between the general perception of the target piece of media (especially its perception by influential figures such as critics, well-known reviewers, social media influencers etc) and its actual demonstrable qualities in a way which forms a misleadingly positive view of it in the subject’s mind, which causes said subject to purchase the target media. The subject, having now wasted some quantity of money on the target, can now justifiably call it “overrated”, since the disconnect described earlier essentially amounts to false advertising from a subjective point of view.

 

Now, with all that being said, I will now (belatedly) explain the rationale behind my opening statement: both of the “reasonable” use-cases described above require the target media to be subject to market forces in order to function correctly. Both require there to be some large-scale “opinion-conveying” system, so that the target’s relative popularity can be empirically proved, whether that be a site like IMDB, Goodreads or MyAnimeList, which compiles user ratings and reviews for a given (set of) medium(s), or any service that allows for product reviews and so on and so on. Systems on this scale almost always depend on the large audience sizes that market-subject media / products generate.

 

(aside: while free content on sites like YT or whatever can generate immense traffic, the lack of pay-gating means that there is little need for “curation” services, since users are unlikely to lose anything more valuable than a few minutes of their time to free media, as opposed to the actual cashbucks required to buy a game or book or streaming service subscription or whatever) 

 

In the case of the second method, there has to be some possibility of actual financial loss in order for it to function, again requiring the target to be pay-gated in some way and thus subject to market forces.

 

TL;DR

 

So, finally, my point: Doom wads cannot be reasonably described as overrated because a) there is no empirical way of judging something’s popularity in the Doom community due to its decentralised nature, small size and subsequent lack of large-scale “opinion-conveying” infrastructure, b) because one has nothing to lose when trying out an “overrated” wad save perhaps a few minutes of their time, so there’s no harm in excessive or misleading hype and c) due to the lack of market forces, there is little incentive for other creators to imitate or draw inspiration from high-profile wads beyond said creators’ own preferences, meaning that an “overrated” wad is unlikely to have any effect on the availability of one’s preferred style of content.

 

Thus, the term “overrated” is overrated in this context. /rant

 

…

 

Actually, before I climb down from my massive, precarious tower of soap-boxes, here’s the thread-tax: people should honestly just see the cacowards for what they are: a series of relatively high-profile opinion pieces, nothing more, nothing less. There’s no pretence of curation, not that I can see anyway (as a member of the committee, I have more insight than most, mind); that label and the associated baggage is a symptom of circumstance rather than intent, from what I can tell at any rate. It would be better for all if this “institution” was seen as a highly subjective celebration of some of waddom’s finest content rather than some divine value-judgement.

 

(note: this post is not intended as a call-out or response or whatever. I just saw the term "overrated" and couldn't resist the urge to ramble, heh)

[Ozcar]

Calling overrated is overrated.

Change in my mind.

[Nefelibeta]

51 minutes ago, Ozcar said:

Calling overrated is overrated.

Change in my mind.

How philosophical.

[YoshizinGordin]

3 hours ago, Ozcar said:

Calling overrated is overrated.

Change in my mind.

The Bad English Makes This Better.

[Solmyr]

I think it's a mistake to judge a product of its time as overrated, because the quality of the medium said product belongs to, had increased over the years. It would be like dismising Doom as an overrated old game and brand its community as rose tinted cultists clinging to the past for no reason since we have far technically superior FPSs ever since Duke 3D came out. 

 

What makes cacoward material is up to the team that chooses what they enjoyed and considered an outstanding work, which may or may not align with the general consensus of what makes a wad outstanding. 

[esselfortium]

7 hours ago, Fletcher` said:

I still don't know why people gush so much about Mapgame.

It's really good, shush and accept the praise :p

[Azure_Horror]

Re: @Omniarch describing semantics of 'Overrated'.

 

I agree with most of the points raised*.

 

However, there is another meaning to 'Overrated', which can apply here. People say "Y is Overrated", when they imply that many things, say K, M, P, Q and more, are just as good as the thing Y, but the thing Y gets praised as special somehow.

 

When someone says that "1000 Lines Community Project 3 is overrated", what do they mean exactly?

- That WADs like 1000 Lines Community Project 3 are clogging the WAD design and discussion space? (Definition 1, suggested by Omniarch)

- Or that 1000 Lines Community Project 3 is not that impressive in the world, where Back to the Saturn X, Zone 300, 180 Minutes pour Vivre, Roudy Rudy duology, Struggle, Zone 400, Eviternity, Uprising exist? (Definition 2 discussed above)

 

It is very important to understand, what exactly we mean by 'Overrated'. There is a big risk of talking past each other otherwise.

 

 

*There is one point in @Omniarch's post, with which I dissagree.

6 hours ago, Omniarch said:

c) due to the lack of market forces, there is little incentive for other creators to imitate or draw inspiration from high-profile wads beyond said creators’ own preferences, meaning that an “overrated” wad is unlikely to have any effect on the availability of one’s preferred style of content.

 

Market forces are not present, but there is something else at play, that works the same way. Popularity and Fame.

 

1) If something is popular or famous, than more people get exposed to it.

And here is the thing. Creators are people too. They are more likely to stumble upon more popular/famous work.

Therefore, a more popular/famous work would naturally influence more creators.

No market forces needed!

 

2) Many creators want to create a work that would be enjoyed by other people. 

Suppose that a creator likes work A and work B, and decides to do something inspired by either of those things.

Suppose work A is more popular than work B.

The creator may decide "Well, people seem to like A more. I want to make as many people happy as possible. So I will create my work C, which would draw heavy inspiration from work A. After all, I like both A and B, and don't care that much, while my potential audience seems to prefer A."

Again, no market forces here!

[ginc]

18 hours ago, Azure_Horror said:

But lots and lots of people seem to really like Arrival. And if many players love the WAD so much - maybe it is a really cool WAD indeed, just not for someone like me? Basically, tastes differ. And for this reason it is very hard to pinpoint, if something is overrated.

 

Going off on a bit of a tangent, I have noticed that while the Cacowards don't have categories for WADs, the panel does seem to like representing a variety of WAD types. Basically, it seems like they like a variety of source port compatibility, WAD length, and gameplay types (difficulty is usually a function of this, ie. slaughter). They also like to represent a few oddballs or hipster picks (ie. WADs that didn't get a lot of hype).

Disclaimer: this is just speculation based on what I see getting the awards, I am not affiliated with the panel in any way.

 

This is probably because Doomworld is the largest Classic Doom community and its tastes vary quite widely. One of those subsections is the purists, who prefer vanilla-compatible WADs and generally won't play anything that doesn't run in DSDA-Doom. And when it comes to vanilla-compatible WADs, Arrival was particularly good last year. It's also a bit of an oddball, much like Syringe in 2020.

Edited August 6, 2022 by ginc

[MFG38]

The word "overrated" is overrated.