Re: Rhythm Games, A Long-running Niche: A video essay?
*dragonforce intensifies*
*dragonforce intensifies*
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Re: Rhythm Games, A Long-running Niche: A video essay?
In my opinion, it was much more of a late 2000's craze, peaking with Dance Dance Revolution 8th/SuperNOVA, and around the same time Guitar Hero 2 came out and made it mainstream. It was accessible because bars, arcades, movie theaters, and more all carried DDR machines because they sucked up quarters like nobody's business.
But there are multiple problems with the arcade games in general - it cost a lot of money to get good at them. Just learning how to get from Beginner to the very beginning of Heavy mode in DDR would take around $200 and probably 15-30 hours of game play time. On top of that, there are physical restrictions to it as well, since people only have so much stamina to work with, and songs get very draining which only allows people who are trying to get good at the game an hour or so a day they can play before exhaustion sets in.
There's a social stigma too - there's no way around it, but if you're good at rhythm games, most people think you're a dork. I've never once seen someone playing DDR and thought "Wow, that guy looks cool" from an outside perspective. It's a hobby that isn't exactly one you want to brag about on your tinder bio.
Another fact is that the games are simply hard, and that immediately turns people away from them. The coordination required for them even on Light difficulties are very hard, and a lot of people without any understanding of music will find it difficult to figure out how a beat works and how to follow it. Everyone who sees someone playing a difficult expert level song will immediately think "That's too hard for me, I'm just not going to even try". So even the skill floor to the games are incredibly high. There's no easy way to learn them without lots and lots of failure.
Guitar Hero managed to break a lot of this for a couple years, back when they were churning them out like it was the end of the world. It played music and songs that people recognized, it was "cool" because you were playing a guitar and not jumping around on a pad with arrows like a dork, and they laid out the song list to start people out with slow, easy songs instead of just throwing you a 300 song list and saying "go". It was magical, and there had never been an american release game that was so popular in the genre.
Unfortunately, the magic faded out around the time World Tour came around. The games were getting significantly harder, and they weren't bringing anything truly fresh to the table. You could play drums and sing in WT, but at that point people were burning out on it because they kept releasing too many of them, not to mention the peripherals for it were quite pricy and took up a lot of space. Additionally, because they were being released around the same time as the next gen consoles were, people were a lot less inclined to keep purchasing new guitars that adapted to their new consoles. It became expensive, and they just weren't fun anymore. There was a dedicated fanbase that were top tier, but most people had played them and enjoyed it at up to an intermediate level and just simply moved on to another genre.
Other games have a much better "pick up and put down" accessibility to them. Nearly all FPS are played in rounds, all which last around 20 minutes. MOBAs are by far the most dominate because of their competitive nature. MMO's are a niche now, as they faded out similarly due to dedication required to stay relevant, as well as WoW still being far and out the most played, a game that is over 16 years old.
Rhythm games just don't have the competitive and multiplayer appeal that all other genres do. It's entirely a single player experience, and it's all about what your personal best and what you can do to improve. You'll almost never find a rival who is equal skill to you, as unless you're top tier, one of you will surpass the other quickly.
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Re: Rhythm Games, A Long-running Niche: A video essay?
Att: EtienneSMJoin the discussion for "The Currency of the Beast"
from Biggs89 of BetCorps Publications, Inc.Comment
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Re: Rhythm Games, A Long-running Niche: A video essay?
I'm reviving this thread just to show what I wrote out on a whim, progress will be very slow because I'm really busy with school this semester.
There's a lot of research I can do on my own, but every suggestion and feedback from you guys contribute a lot to this as well
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Re: Rhythm Games, A Long-running Niche: A video essay?
I'll do the voice over
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Re: Rhythm Games, A Long-running Niche: A video essay?
My main concern right now is writing a proper script that's actually fun to listen to, and it'd be time-consuming because this is my first time making something like this.
I'm not thinking about the voice over yet, but I appreciate the thought tho.
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Re: Rhythm Games, A Long-running Niche: A video essay?
you might want to change guitadora to guitarfreaks/drummania since gitadora as a name didn't come until 2013
Originally posted by XizOriginally posted by the sun fanComment
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Re: Rhythm Games, A Long-running Niche: A video essay?
Aight, I'm down to see this happen. Keep us posted
My own personal answer is that it would have stayed mainstream had Konami been willing to deliver solid ports of the games and Activision not over saturated the Guitar Hero brand, playing into the cartoony Rock Star angle so much that people just felt they had to be growing out of it nly 2 years after the first release.
Cost of production and music rights becoming more expensive because of Rock Band's success probably didn't help.
[UmActually]
It's from 2001. I remember because I used the term to refer to the series and got corrected by Jonathon Matthews/Disco Man while driving on I-75 back in 2008
It specifically was used in the CS release of GF4th / DM3rd
[/UmActually]
That said, I agree the script should be changed as Storn suggest, lol.Last edited by MixMasterLar; 08-4-2020, 01:16 PM.Comment
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Re: Rhythm Games, A Long-running Niche: A video essay?
My harshest critique I can have, is that I want to scream intense profanities at you for the formatting of the first page. Then I looked at the other pages, and it just got worse.I'm reviving this thread just to show what I wrote out on a whim, progress will be very slow because I'm really busy with school this semester.
There's a lot of research I can do on my own, but every suggestion and feedback from you guys contribute a lot to this as well
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Re: Rhythm Games, A Long-running Niche: A video essay?
lmao it's fair criticism, but I was in a hurry and just wrote everything out on a whim and disregarding the formatting.
this is just a script that I'm gonna read off of, so you don't have to worry about seeing OCD-violating stuff like this again xd
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Re: Rhythm Games, A Long-running Niche: A video essay?
dragonforce def became popular because of guitar hero
i remember being on the bus listening to dragonforce all the time because i knew of them from stepmania and enjoyed their music
tried to share it with some other metalhead friends and only one of them even remotely liked df
eventually guitar hero 3 comes out with through the fire and flames and then all of the sudden everyone and their mother knew dragonforce and liked (at least this one) their music
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