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On The Evolution Of Dance Dance Revolution
Thanks to Gaming-Age for its feature discussing the continued popularity of Konami's Dance Dance Revolution series, which starts out by noting "the DDR series now has had nearly 50 different releases, all territories figured in", and interviews Konami's Yasumi Takase about the possibility of being able to use any music CD in a DDR game ("Having access to your personal music CDs is great, but coming up with your own step data for these songs is not so easy unless you are an expert player"), before talking to female DDR player 'Lyra' about her views of female players ("We do tend to have a lot more guy players than girls, the only girls we ever get are people who either try it out once, or sluts who are trying to get a guy.") Elsewhere, DDRFreak points to an academic essay on the history of DDR (PDF link), produced for Stanford University's History Of Computer Game Design class.
That's exactly the opposite I see. While there are a surprising amount of guys (surprising to me at least, most guys I know have no rythym at all,) the players I do see are predominantely female. I'd say like 70%.
:-/
We've got a DDR machine or two at every arcade in the area (South Florida) and they are always booming with people. There's usually a line, though many are just spectators. You don't see anything like that for the racers, shooters, or fighters in the arcades. Actually, I'm seeing fewer and fewers racers, shooters, and fighters all together
*Stan and a goth watch as the asian kid dances frantically.*
Stan: Oh my god... he's really good.
Goth: He should be, he's spent like $6,000 on that thing.
*Asian kid stops playing, Stan approaches him.*
Stan: You're really good, kid... would you help me in my dance competition?
Asian kid: You mean dancing without a machine telling you what to do?
And as long as I'm trying to be funny, why not look at QDB on the subject of DDR, too.
"To confine our attention to terrestrial matters would be to limit the human spirit." -Stephen Hawking
Honestly, the first article did not really give any new information, besides that something new is coming to DDR.
However, definitely check out the essay paper - there's some interesting stuff on 'DDR communities'. This is funny because some of the DDR players I've met were just discussing the same exact thing. We (us DDR players) have basically have met each other through the playing the game. Otherwise, we would have never met. In some sense, we participate in a DDR sub-culture, discussing the game and music, sharing tricks/techniques, talking about local heroes (people that can pass Paranoia Survivor Max Oni), etc.
Call it silly, but we even have DDR nicknames - I always play at 1.5X speed - thus I am "jason 1.5". Then there is a guy who disapproves of any mods in general, hence he is "captain anti-speed mod". (I suspect only DDR players will understand this!).
If you haven't played DDR, I definitely recommend it. Just try it on beginner mode in the arcade, or try it on xbox/ps2.
--
jason
Why don't they mix DDR with a gesture based game like "Eye Toy : Groove" ? Then you could really have a disco experience ! There is no way at the moment to check in which direction the body is turned, so all the salsa or rock'n'roll moves are usually wrong in comparison to the "real" ones (not to mention the lack of an opposite sex partner you can feel in your arms).
Google passes Turing test : see my journal
While we're being stereotypical, for every one of those female anime otakus, there are another ten smelly male anime otakus who dream about said female anime otakus.
;)
There's someone out there for everyone. You seldomly see a female wandering an animecon alone, I bet.
Females are females... especially to horny smelly male otaku.
food for thought.