Monthly Beatmapping Contest
As implied by its name, the Monthly Beatmapping Contest (MBC) is a contest that runs monthly and allows users to compete with their beatmapping capabilities.
The MBC was originally managed on a nearly monthly basis between 2013 and 2015 and was followed by hiatus until 2020. The first 12 iterations of the MBC can be found on the Contests article. The results for the 13th iteration can be found on its news post.
Since 2020, the MBC has adopted a new schedule, ruleset, voting procedure, and reward scheme. 10 contests were run between January and October 2020, followed by a break until March 2021 while the A Labour of Love Contest was taking submissions. The MBC's 2021 return includes opportunities for mappers of all game modes to participate.
Contest results
Schedule
The timeline for each month's contest is as follows:
- Beatmapping (3 weeks): Contest is announced at the start of the month and beatmappers create their entries.
- Screening (1.5 weeks): Competitive entries are selected by experienced beatmappers.
- Judging (1.5 weeks): Competitive entries are judged by different experienced beatmappers.
- Rewards: Winners are announced and prizes are redeemed.
The judging portion of each contest overlaps with the next month's contest's beatmapping portion. Screening and judging may be formatted differently for smaller game modes.
Ruleset
Submissions for the MBC must abide by the following rules:
- Submissions must be in the contest's specified game mode.
- Submissions must follow the month's beatmapping limitation/theme. The limitation/theme differs month by month and is detailed on each contest's announcement post.
- Submissions must be a single difficulty from one of the month's selected songs. Selected songs differ month by month and are included in each contest's announcement post.
- Submissions must be in
.oszformat. Storyboarded content will not be considered. - Submissions must not be uploaded to the osu! website through the Beatmap Submission System (BSS). Creators of each entry are anonymous during the screening and judging processes.
- Submissions must abide by the ranking criteria.
One or more rules may be added or dropped depending on the month's specifications. Any exceptions will be clearly explained in the contest's announcement post.
Results
Results for the MBC are first narrowed down to the most competitive entries, then evaluated by a team of judges. Creators of all entries are anonymous in the screening and judging stages.
Smaller game modes may use different formats for screening and judging depending on mapper availability.
Screening
A group of at least 10 experienced beatmappers (screening crew) are tasked with reviewing all entries and providing their top picks in order of preference. Entries that receive the most praise from the screening crew will move on to the judging stage.
The amount of beatmaps that advance to the judging stage varies depending on the amount of highly competitive submissions the contest receives and will usually range between 5 and 10 finalists.
Judging
Another group of at least 5 beatmappers (judges) are tasked with judging the finalists chosen by the screening crew. Only the top entries chosen by screeners reach the judging stage because of the contest's tight schedule.
Judges disect each submission and provide ratings for categories to determine the contest's winner and runner-up.
Judging categories:
- Musical representation (10): How effectively the beatmap's rhythms, object placements, and hitsounds fit the music.
- Creativity (10): How inventive the beatmap's structure/design choices are.
- Gameplay (10): How engaging the beatmap is to play.
- Limitation (5) or Theme (10): How effectively the beatmap fits the contest's limitation/theme.
For each submission, the sum of categories is a judge's raw score. A judge's final score for each submission is calculated as follows:
judge X's final score = (judge X's raw score - judge X's average raw score) / judge X's standard deviation
A submission's score is the sum of each judge's final score. Scores are determined this way to avoid variations in score ranges between judges, as popularised by the Pending Cup.
Judging criteria may differ between game modes.
Voting
Due to potential vote manipulation and low voter turnout, the "Voting" aspect of the MBC has been replaced with "Judging" from June 2020 onwards. Community vote may return if those problems can be solved!
In contests before June 2020, voting took place on the respective contest's Community Contests page. Users were encouraged to vote for their favourite entries and to prioritise those that effectively worked with the month's beatmapping limitation.
Rewards
The Monthly Beatmapping Contest rewards users with contest points for different types of results:
- Winner: 2 points
- Runner-up: 1 point
- Screening crew's #1 pick: 1 point
These numbers may vary depending on how many submissions the contest receives. Check the contest point article for details.
Contest points reward users at certain thresholds:
- Profile badges are attainable at 2, 4, and 6 points each. The badges are tiered, meaning each new badge will replace the previous one (and they get progressively shinier!).
- Elite Mapper user title is attainable at 6 points.
Additionally, a Mappers' Guild keychain is optionally rewarded to the winner of each month's contest. Its design is based on the winning beatmap.
Participants who are in the Mappers' Guild will receive small earnings within the guild for submitting a valid entry (5), screening (1), and judging (1). These values are unrelated to MBC points.
Prior to June 2020, community vote winners/runner-ups would receive 2 and 1 points respectively.