[Arch0wl]

any kind of game you have to access a website to play is fighting the odds to begin with

the trend of web use has been OVERWHELMINGLY to hub websites (facebook is a social hub e.g.), rather than specific ones

the only forums/non-social media websites I know now that are still active exists for EXTREMELY specific purposes -- often illicit (bluelight) or with technical, specialized knowledge that isn't easily obtained through mainstream study (bodybuilding, or this 'flyertalk' forum my friend goes to where he figures out how to game flyer points to get trips for free)

steam itself is a hub platform. the vast majority of games still played on PC are played via steam. few people buy pc games any other way anymore.

now, some games go against this trend, like league of legends, but they're a VERY exceptional minority, and they happen to use powerful psychological mechanics that the music game genre simply isn't capable of using. for example, the variable role you will have in a team's win or loss means people will not always have a very clear perception of where they stand, skill-wise, and these differences are not very clear. so people will be fine with replaying for hours, because they think they can win this time.

virtually ANY bemani music game does not have this luck factor, due to the very nature of the game. it's very clear where you stand skill-wise. you will know this within a handful of songs, if not one. improvement is due almost entirely to skill, and very little to luck and definitely not due to the doings of other people.

so holding on to the single-website single-game model that FFR has is ... very 2002, which is exactly when this site was created.

people are going to play games on consoles, or they're going to play games on touchscreens, or both. they're not going to use a keyboard if they don't have to; FFR used the keyboard because it was something everyone had at the time, and it was assumed that everyone would have one since practically no one could use a computer without a keyboard. but since this is changing with touchscreen progress, a fundamental assumption that the game devs had no longer applies.

I really like music games. I will probably always play stepmania. but I am an enthusiast, I realize this is an obscure game that I'm alone in liking among 99.9% of people I know in person, and I don't ever expect games like DDR to return to 2004 levels of popularity or games like FFR to return to 2007 levels of popularity.

think of activity on these sorts of games like barrels of oil -- we can't actually make more oil in the earth, we can just extract what we already have. previously we could make activity because new users would eventually become old users who recruit new users and so on. however, this process has largely stopped, so we're just coasting on whatever activity already exists, with an exceptional group of new players who are extremely impressive but not indicative of the current trend nonetheless.