[espher]

inc disorganized post typed when time permits

 

Alright, so the last couple of hint threats have been interestingly cryptic with only one successful guess (iirc), so I just wanted to gather some opinions before deciding on how to proceed with these. Obviously, we don’t want them to be too easy to guess, as that kills some of the mystique, but if nobody is even in the ballpark, they might be /too/ hard (although it’s not like the official DLC hints/teasers were easy by any stretch).

 

Since they’re ostensibly going to be your songs, I’d like to know your personal preferences on difficulty and the nature of hints. Should we go with cool niche trivia? Should we try to engage in more wordplay puns? Should we do something entirely different like providing a quarter-second long sample of some obscure part of each song? Would you guys prefer writing hints (or at least providing the key clue that we can work with) with your submissions?

 

Also, I’d like to do a twenty questions-style hint thread, possibly for this coming week. I’d like to limit it to only a couple of songs (maybe 3?) so we don’t tip our hand as to the number of songs coming out, but I’d like to know which of the prospective releases you guys think might be the trickiest to guess in this format. Thoughts?

[RyanHYK]

I usually like straight up teasing on the song request thread when someone brings up a song I happen to be working on. I did it twice with my Butthole Surfers song, namely in threads about Guitar Hero songs.

[espher]

I usually like straight up teasing on the song request thread when someone brings up a song I happen to be working on. I did it twice with my Butthole Surfers song, namely in threads about Guitar Hero songs.

 

I’m totally cool with that sort of thing, btw.

 

The more vague the tease the better, but I definitely enjoy seeing non-specific hinting about undisclosed, ambiguously dated future content. ” src=”/wp-content/uploads/invision_emoticons/default_SA_smile.gif”>

[Farottone]

This is difficult. Hints always end up being a way to overhype anything. Plus, sometimes they just are plain impossible to get: how can anyone guess a Sonic’s song? However you decide to go with this, is therefore fine by me. ” src=”/wp-content/uploads/invision_emoticons/default_SA_smile.gif”>

[TrojanNemo]

this is why I prefer the idea of letting people guess like they used to in the RB forums. it’s just as accurate as it is expecting them to guess any cryptic hints and I think it’s more fun.

[espher]

“Wild guesses thrown in the dark” is another name for the Song Request forum.

[ws54]

Most of the songs released this week are not mainstream and so it’s practically impossible to guess them with the hints currently being offered. I liked the Energizer Bunny hint this week and the guess someone had for it was great, but maybe adding one extra bit of info would work such as “In this game…” or ” “This rock act…” so that the field is narrowed down just a little.

 

I like your twenty questions idea for at least one of the songs each week. You could start out very vague and only hinting at the band to start. As the week progresses you can start to hint at the song too. By the time you get to Thursday night the hints can get less subtle.

 

20 – Is it a band or solo act? “you all” know.

19 – Mainstream now, but not then

18 – Front man didn’t like their name originally

17 – They could form a basketball team

16 – At one point in their career they needed to get back on the horse

15 – Never gave in to disco (gasp!)

14 – etc.

 

This approach will almost certainly give away the band, if not the song too, so you’d have to be comfortable with this for one song each week. But I think it would be a fun thing to do that progresses as the week goes on and gets people to check the thread throughout the week. You would want to pick a song that has the broadest appeal so people aren’t disappointed when they find out.

[Polish Weener]

In my personal opinion, I think we should make the bands obvious, but the songs difficult to guess. I prefer this because of the convenience of checking the thread Thursday and knowing what bands are coming out the next day. Granted, I can see the schedule so I already know most of the songs, but I think it would be a way to keep the songs secret while still giving people a bit of a heads up.

[TylerFG]

In my personal opinion, I think we should make the bands obvious, but the songs difficult to guess. I prefer this because of the convenience of checking the thread Thursday and knowing what bands are coming out the next day. Granted, I can see the schedule so I already know most of the songs, but I think it would be a way to keep the songs secret while still giving people a bit of a heads up.

 

Well, people could look up their entire discography and pretty much guess what the song is, so I don’t know how that’d go over. Especially if it’s a band with not much music out.

[espher]

Alright, for June 28th, I’m going to go with a 20 questions format, and touch on 1-3 songs that we have queued up. Here are the rules I’ll be listing in the thread.

 

“The C3 Hint Thread: June 28th Edition – Twenty Questions

 

This week, we’re going to mix things up a bit, and go for a “twenty questions” format for a couple (but not all!) of the songs we’ll be releasing this week. I’m sure most of you are familiar with how Twenty Questions as a game works, but for those of you that are not, the gist of it is that you can ask me a series of yes or no questions about a song that I will answer with a truthful yes or no answer, which will give you hints that you can use to try and deduce the the answer. Given the format and nature of this, here are some ground rules for how this will proceed.

• We will only be discussing one song at a time.
• Anyone can ask any number of questions, but you should ask one question PER POST and wait until your question is answered before asking another one.
• I will be answering the questions in the order they are received — you may want to wait until the last question is answered before asking the next one.
• Questions have to be worded in such a way that I can give a “yes”, “no”, or “both yes and no” answer.
• If you ask a question that isn’t worded in that way, but it could be, I reserve the right to re-word it and answer it or ask you to clarify (e.g. “did this song come out in the 80s or 90s”, I may reword to “did this song come out before 1990” and answer yes or no, or ask for clarification as to whether you meant “which of these decades did it come out in” or “did it come out in either of these decades”, reworded if it is the former).
• As soon as we hit twenty answered questions, no more questions will be answered for that song.
• Duplicate questions will not count against the cap.
• You can ask “is the artist x” or “is the song x by artist y” as part of the twenty questions, and I will answer that, but once the questions are depleted, there will be no confirmation or denial regarding your guesses.
• Once all twenty questions have been asked, I will put the list with answers in the OP.

 

Happy hunting!”

 

Let me know if I should add any other rules/clarifications.

[TrojanNemo]

So if they guess the song they actually get a confirmation as long as it’s one of the 20 questions?

[espher]

So if they guess the song they actually get a confirmation as long as it’s one of the 20 questions?

 

Yes. If they say, with guess 18, “is it Seasons of Wither by Aerosmith?”, I would say yes. If it’s a guess after question 20, they get no feedback. If you guys would just rather give them twenty hints, that’s fine, but then they can just ask hints that more or less do the same thing, and a refusal to answer them would be as good as an acknowledgement.

 

I’d only be doing this for some of the tracks to be released in a given week, so there’s still plenty of surprise to be had. It also wouldn’t be every week — sometimes we’d just give hints (text or like the screenshot you sent me), etc.

[DVDSmith]

I like the idea of posting screenshots, like Ubisoft do for the Rocksmith DLC. Obviously it wouldn’t be as easy to figure out because 5-button guitar gives no musical info, but it might work if you have a Pro Keys track with an identifiable riff.

[DeathThreatUK]

Here something I thought of yesterday, and spent some of today thinking about.

 

Rather than questions, why not use obscure words/codes/clues that can be associated with the band/album/song in question? Here’s some examples I thought of for my album, Psalm 69:

 

Head (Title for album on spine is ΚΕΦΑΛΗΞΘ, which is Greek for ‘Head’ 69)

Sex (69 position, also a number that the band frequently reference from this album onwards)

Skull (Cover for The Mind Is A Terrible Thing To Taste)

Illuminati (A New World Order. N.W.O.)

Milk And Honey (The Land Of Rape And Honey)

Heroin (Just One Fix, also Jourgensen’s drug of choice in the 90’s)

Congregation (please be seated… opening line to title track on album)

Grace (The last/missing track)

Angel (Cover art)

W (George H ‘W’ Bush and George ‘W’ Bush, both frequent targets of this band. Also, all tracks on Houses Of The Mole except the opener begin with W)

Uncle (Uncle Al’s nickname)

APBMLCMNJBRSSCAO (A code. It is the first and last initials of all the band members at the time, but with all the first together then followed by the last. It reads out as follows: Al Jourgensen, Paul Barker, Bill Rieflin, Mike Scaccia, Louis Svitek, Chris Connelly, Martin Atkins, Nivek Ogre)

Cowboy (their dress style at the time, mixed with Biker)

Gibby Haynes (singer on Jesus Built My Hotrod, could mislead or throw off the trail)

R.C. (side project Revolting Cocks)

Nostrum (N.W.O. mantra)

 

Obviously some of these are terrible, too obscure or stretching it a bit, but it was an idea I had and I thought i’d share. Possibly a bad idea, but…

[MFX]

For those with multitracks at their disposal, how about an audio clue highlighting a snippet from a more obscure instrumental moment?

[Author]

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