How long do you all think it will be until we hit 2,000,000 members?

[Jousway]

Originally Posted by xXOpkillerXx

Better change this thread to "Name people with alts"

basicly this

lets have a competition where the person with the most alts gets a punch in the face

[Untimely Friction]

man bots tho

[Arch0wl]

the total user # doesn't matter; the active user # does

and this game is far less active than it was ten years ago as a result of simple hardware migration. the game was popular when a lot of people had standardized arrow keys on their desktop keyboards. laptops happened and now a user is compelled to either use their shitty default arrow keys (the up/down arrows on my chromebook are, combined, the size of a single key) or set their own custom keys (e.g. WASD), which a new user isn't going to think to do because they have no idea how the game is supposed to be played in the first place

FFR had a grand opportunity to stay popular by making itself a facebook app using circles with letters on them instead of arrows (a la keybeatonline) but it didn't even take this opportunity because either (a) no one cares enough or (b) the people who make this game have zero audience awareness. perhaps both.

now that facebook realized (a) everyone fucking hated facebook apps and (b) so many people use facebook on their phone now, this has resulted in (c) most apps/games being for phones

FFR for a phone isn't happening. have you tried playing stepmania on a touchscreen? it's a clusterfuck. the screen simply does not have the responsiveness to register that many taps that quickly, and the screen itself isn't meant for that kind of damage, and tapping without any recoil means your fingers will be slower.

I suppose you could make some microUSB arrow add-on for phones, but who the fuck is going to buy that? right, people who already know what FFR is. no one is going to buy goddamned hardware for an app, get out of here, the standard model for app virality since forever has been "make something free and put in ads or make something amazing but it costs a few dollars", with little variation.

now, what you COULD do is make a proprietary music game for steam that uses the keyboard, a la o2jam/keybeatonline, and if possible make other versions for USB add-ons. this sort of game has shown to be sustainable, as PC gaming has generally remained a constant and the steambox is also entering console gaming.

but if you did that it wouldn't be ffr anymore. flash music games are a dead model of game. barring a few exceptions, bemani-style music games are in rapid decline in general, really, since they rely on infrastructure and hardware that is not practical to have anymore.

think about this: the vast majority of custom ddr/itg charts were designed with a metal pad and bar in mind, but metal ddr pads are entirely the realm of enthusiasts now because ddr arcade machines are barely produced anymore. FFR has always been boosted by the popularity of DDR, and while it survived for a bit longer due to its nonreliance on arcades or hardware, it faced a similar hardware decline once laptops and tablets went widespread.

so no, even if FFR gets to 2,000,000 users, it won't mean anything. the site isn't nearly as active anymore and it's an enthusiast's game at this point. there may still be some activity, but the current activity isn't the point -- it's an issue of sustainability and you can't change that without changing the nature of the game and the infrastructure supporting it.

[Arch0wl]

man I went way too hard in the paint with that post

[MixMasterLar]

That needed to be said, though.

I'm all for FFR trying to create another music game that addresses these issues, though; but the current admins have to be willing to do what the admins of old weren't: Letting FFR the game stand on it's own and actually working on the new game til it's polished


"Synthetic Productions" (or whatever Synth tried calling it) had like, what, 5 or six games? They actually where pretty popular in their own right and they pretty much stopped caring about while they where stilll in states where improvements and just basically paying attention to them would have made them much more rewarding experiences

Instead most arn't even hosted online anymore that I can tell and they spent crazy amounts of time on FFR the Game itself when really, it was bloody fine

[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.

[choof]

Originally Posted by Arch0wl

now, what you COULD do is make a proprietary music game for steam that uses the keyboard, a la o2jam/keybeatonline, and if possible make other versions for USB add-ons. this sort of game has shown to be sustainable, as PC gaming has generally remained a constant and the steambox is also entering console gaming.

oh hey, this sounds a lot like stepmania and osu

[Arch0wl]

only superficially, but there are major differences between a steam-exclusive game and an open source game you can play with any playstyle you want or any song you want

[choof]

the major difference would lie in content
...and that's pretty much it

[Deadlyx39]

I mean touchscreen rhythm games are possible, but it wouldn't be FFR. I know Tap Tap Revenge lasted for quite a while before being taken off the market in January. That was only three lanes, not four though. Honestly to me the best bet for this website is exposure on a website like YouTube, where it can be shown to a wide group of new people to enjoy this game that we all love.

The only problem with this however, is that I don't believe any of us are big on YouTube or even Dailymotion, so we would need to find a way to get a person to play the game to show it to everyone. This has been proven to lead to more players on games like happy wheels, where many people started playing those games after they saw their favorite YouTuber play it.

If we can find a successful YouTuber to play it, then I think that would be the only way to expand on FFR's community, just because I don't know if the Admins could put in all of their time creating a brand new game and just leaving this one behind after that. If we DO try and get a YouTuber to play it, then who?

[choof]

obviously an autistic youtuber because they tend to have the largest amount of viewers

[Deadlyx39]

Originally Posted by choof

obviously an autistic youtuber because they tend to have the largest amount of viewers

See I wish there was someone who wasn't autistic *cough* PewDiePie *cough* that had a lot of subscribers. Even someone with only 80k or so would help FFR so much.

[Arch0wl]

Originally Posted by choof

the major difference would lie in content
...and that's pretty much it

major difference would lie in UI design and packaging

which is an enormous difference, since minor differences in those two things can completely determine whether a game succeeds or fails

the mere act of not having to add your own songs for example is a factor that brings tremendously more people to the game, because most people simply do not want to learn how to add their own songs

*I* love being able to add my own songs, obviously, and so do you, but you and I like operating systems like linux as well, which is extremely inaccessible to the average computer user. we're an extremely bad demographic to base this off of

I think you're thinking about this from the PoV of how the gameplay would fundamentally change -- i.e. ITG is basically the same thing as DDR. if that's where you're coming from, then you're absolutely right, there is not that much difference at all.

but for music games, packaging (how you bundle songs, what screens the user has to go through to play, how they actually GET the game, what keys they use, how these key setups are explained to the user) matters a lot more.

[MixMasterLar]

I wonder how hard it would be to make a music game on steam. Like for us in the community.

I mean, enough people on here produce music that most people would find passable, and I know some of us took programming. Everyone and their cousin can design charts/think of decent features and we have a boatload of talented artist who can make it all shiny and shit.

It's a nice thought anyway.

[gold stinger]

Bumping because I think it's safe to say that everyone's initial guess has now expired from 4 years ago (MarioNintendo's guess was 3.5 years after December 20th of 2014 which pits it in June/July of this year), and now the only guesses that are still relevant is my guess of May 2019 and DanO's guess of somewhere in 2024.

So what do you guys think now? 3 and a half years later, the numbers have changed quite a bit. How long until we see the FFR solar eclipse?

[icontrolyourworld]

2020

[devonin]

17,374 accounts have logged in at least once in 2018
2,258 accounts have logged in at least once this month

[shrewms]

over 2k? wow
far cry 5 numbers


call of doody: WW2 numbers


even with these games being released only ~1 year ago their numbers really aren't that crazy. these are "popular" games.
this place has decent numbers it's just a small cluster of like minded people, same as any place.

though FPS players are more spread out over many different games as opposed to our one
there are also other rhythm gaming communities with probably thousands on thousands of people all over the internet.




this is the past year for Call of Duty: World at War.

don't ask me why i'm comparing First Person Shooters to rhythm games.
it's all about numbers anyway

tl;dr i guess my point is that really popular games that get tons of advertisement can die out faster than other more obscure games.
this place is still kickin so i wouldn't give up on it.

we hit 2mil next month

[gold stinger]

Originally Posted by shrewms

we hit 2mil next month

I say we won't even hit 1,995,000 by the end of next month

[shrewms]

i will go to door to door and advertise FFR to ensure the numbers hit next month